Went the Day Well? is one of the most unusual Ealing Studios pictures, a distinctly unsentimental war film made in the darkest days of WWII. Houston studies why the film avoids the cosy Ealing trademark. This Film Classics 20th anniversary edition comes with a new foreword by Geoff Brown, and a stunning new jacket design by Mark Swan.
In a sustained, imaginative survey of the whole post-war scene, Penelope Houston shows how the cinema has adjusted itself to meet a new audience which approaches films more critically than before, but in doing so encourages new talent. At the same time, she makes clear the industrial problems (in particular, the flight to co-exist with TV) which are inseparable from the business of making, distributing, and promoting a very expensive product to a highly unreliable market.