You won't be disappointed!

Good concept, poorly executed.

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

An accidental explosion in the London district of Pimlico leads to the discovery that almost 600 years ago, it belonged to the state of Burgundy, and evidence of this convinces the locales to cede from the mother country and create their own. This creates chaos amongst the law and order of the region, and before you know it, passports are required to go from other parts of London through Pimlico which now has its own customs agent before even crossing the channel over to the mainland. Later, barbed wire fences are installed and the water supply is cut off, but the London neighbors, aghast by this, begin showing the new country support in ways that Parliment didn't expect.This is a grand political comedy with dark overtones that really makes one think of how much we both love and hate our own individual governments, loyal to the ideals on which they were created, but aghast by the abuses the people in power take on. The locales of Pimlico here go haywire as the news breaks, a huge party at the local pub breaks out (with the constable on duty joining in!), and with the recent world war still having an effect on society, and rationing the law of England, the townsfolk break out their goods for sale and begin peddling them on the street as they had before the war. An all-star cast of some of England's greatest actors all deliver excellent performances, with Hermoine Baddley as a local dress shop keeper, Margaret Rutherford as a history expert, and Stanley Holloway as one of the local leaders standing out. Some of the references to British culture and trends may seem a bit foreign to American audiences, but it is a good way to learn a little bit of another culture and understand some of the slang terms (at least of the times) while having a good laugh at convention and the leadership of government which at some times still seems like schoolboys playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians. There's a very funny metaphor concerning the temperature which rises immediately upon ceding from England and the results of what happens when the plot is resolved.

Rarely am I this compelled to write a review but after watching Passport to Pimlico I have no choice. Truly the most invigorating, entertaining and joyful film experience I've had in too many years. Laugh out loud funny! Every positive review, and this is one of the few films on the IMDb without a negative, is spot on. I was charmed and captivated by each character and wish I lived in Burgundy. The only point I can add to the already, and rightfully so, glorious observations is that every performance in this film should be, and particularly by today's standards, Oscar nominated achievements. But as usual the caliber in general of all British actors is of the highest degree. I never sensed for a moment that a performance was given. Hail Burgundy!

Although sometimes it takes a bit of knowledge of foreign institutions to get some of the humor being imparted in a comedy like Passport To Pimlico in this case American audiences could have identified with it immediately. We had the same kind of price controls that were kept in place even after peace was declared in the USA and American moviegoers could have truly related to what the residents of Pimlico were going through.It's now peace in Europe as the United Kingdom as well as the rest of the continent start to rebuild after World War II. The residents of the London working class neighborhood of Pimlico one fine day have one of Mr. Hitler's unexploded calling cards go off on them. One of the leading citizens of Pimlico, green grocer Stanley Holloway goes down into the hole and comes up with treasure which the crown immediately claims. But he also uncovers a document which reveals that the last Duke of Burgundy did not die in 1477, but escaped and was granted asylum in England by Edward IV and given a royal charter for what is now the neighborhood of Pimlico. And along comes a Frenchman, Jean Dupuis who claims to be a descendant of the Duke and the current rightful Duke. He makes Holloway his prime minister.Getting a few city blocks declared foreign territory opens up some interesting possibilities, all exploited in Passport To Pimlico. It gets kind of wild there with London trams stopped for customs and immigration, when the black market can operate with impunity in these blocks, the local bank is nationalized by the new Burgundian government. It's all quite merry and done with style.Naturally this does come to an end though I will not say how. I have to also single out Margaret Rutherford as an eccentric history professor who is the one who translates the charter scroll and sets all this merriment in motion.The British public just as the American public was tired of the wartime rationing and price controls. Their movie-going public and our's both responded well to one of Ealing Studios best comedies of the era.

My former Cambridge contemporary Simon Heffer, today a writer and journalist, has put forward the theory that, just as British film-makers in the eighties were often critical of what they called "Thatcher's Britain", the Ealing comedies were intended as satires on "Attlee's Britain", the Britain which had come into being after the Labour victory in the 1945 general election. This theory was presumably not intended to apply to, say, "Kind Hearts and Coronets" (which is, if anything, a satire on the Edwardian upper classes) or to "The Ladykillers" or "The Lavender Hill Mob", both of which may contain some satire but are not political in nature. It can, however, be applied to most of the other films in the series, especially "Passport to Pimlico".Pimlico is, or at least was in the forties, a predominantly working-class district of London, set on the North Bank of the Thames about a mile from Victoria station. It is not quite correct to say, as has often been said, that the film is about Pimlico "declaring itself independent" of Britain. What happens is that an ancient charter comes to light proving that in the fifteenth century the area was ceded by King Edward IV to the Duchy of Burgundy. This means that, technically, Pimlico is an independent state, and has been for nearly five hundred years, irrespective of the wishes of its inhabitants. The government promise to pass a special Act of Parliament to rectify the anomaly, but until the Act receives the Royal Assent the area remains outside the United Kingdom and British laws do not apply.Because Pimlico is not subject to British law, the landlord of the local pub is free to open whatever hours he chooses and local shopkeepers can sell whatever they please to whomever they please, unhindered by the rationing laws. When other traders start moving into the area to sell their goods in the streets, the British authorities are horrified by what they regard as legalised black-marketeering and seal off the area to try and force the "Burgundians", as the people of Pimlico have renamed themselves, to surrender.Many of the Ealing comedies have as their central theme the idea of the little man taking on the system, either as an individual as happens in "The Man in the White Suit" or "The Lavender Hill Mob", or as part of a larger community as happens in "Whisky Galore" or "The Titfield Thunderbolt". The central theme of "Passport" is that of ordinary men and women taking on bureaucracy and government-imposed regulations which seemed to be an increasingly important feature of life in the Britain of the forties. The film's particular target is the rationing system. During the war the system had been accepted by most people as a necessary sacrifice in the fight against Nazism, but it became increasingly politically controversial when the government tried to retain it in peacetime. It was a major factor in the growing unpopularity of the Attlee administration which had been elected with a large majority in 1945, and organisations such as the British Housewives' League were set up to campaign for the abolition of rationing. I cannot agree with the reviewer who stated that the main targets of the film's satire were the "spivs" (black marketeers), who play a relatively minor part in the action, or the Housewives' League, who do not appear at all. The satire is very much targeted at the bureaucrats, who are portrayed either as having a "rules for rules' sake" mentality or a desire to pass the buck and avoid having to take any action at all.I suspect that if the film were to be made today it would have a different ending with Pimlico remaining independent as a British version of Monaco or San Marino. (Indeed, I suspect that today this concept would probably serve as the basis of a TV sitcom rather than a film). In 1949, however, four years after the end of the war, the film-makers were keen stress patriotism and British identity, so the film ends with Pimlico being reabsorbed into Britain. One of the best-known lines from the film is "We always were English and we always will be English and it's just because we ARE English that we're sticking up for our right to be Burgundians". There is a sharp contrast between the rather heartless attitude of officialdom with the common sense, tolerance and good humour of the Cockneys of Pimlico, all of which are presented as being quintessentially British characteristics.Most of the action takes place during a summer drought and sweltering heatwave, but in the last scene, after Pimlico has rejoined the UK the temperature drops and it starts to pour with rain. Global warming may have altered things slightly, but for many years part of being British was the ability to hold the belief, whatever statistics might say to the contrary, that Britain had an abnormally wet climate. The ability to make jokes about that climate was equally important.There is a good performance from Stanley Holloway as Arthur Pemberton, the grocer and small-time local politician who becomes the Prime Minister of free Pimlico, and an amusing cameo from Margaret Rutherford as a batty history professor. In the main, however, this is, appropriately enough for a film about a small community pulling together, an example of ensemble acting with no real star performances but with everyone making a contribution to an excellent film. It lacks the ill-will and rancour of many more recent satirical films, but its wit and satire are no less effective for all that. It remains one of the funniest satires on bureaucracy ever made and, with the possible exception of "Kind Hearts and Coronets" is my personal favourite among the Ealing comedies. 10/10