The Magnet (1950)
Directed by
Charles Frend
Writing credits
T.E.B. Clarke
Genre: Comedy
Plot Outline: A boy steals a powerful magnet from a younger boy and gets him into all sorts of trouble.
User Rating: 7.7/10 (57 votes)
Cast overview, first billed only:
Stephen Murray .... Dr Brent
Kay Walsh .... Mrs Brent
James Fox .... Johnny Brent (as William Fox)
Meredith Edwards .... Harper
Gladys Henson .... Nanny
Thora Hird .... Nanny's friend
Michael Brooke Jr. .... Kit
Wylie Watson .... Pickering
Julien Mitchell .... Mayor
Anthony Oliver .... Policeman
Molly Hamley-Clifford .... Mrs. Dean
Harold Goodwin .... Pin table man
Edward Davies .... Delinquent youth
Keith Robinson .... Spike
Thomas Johnston .... Perce
Runtime: 79 min
Country: UK
Language: English
Color: Black and White
Sound Mix: Mono
I bought this black & white video recently from a street vendor in St Albans market, Hertfordshire as part of a job lot of three Ealing comedies he was selling for £15.The others were "Whisky Galore" and "Passport to Pimlico".The other comments written below adequately deal with the basic plot, so I shall not elaborate further on that.What is interesting is to see the young William Fox play the juvenile lead small boy and whose later stage name was changed to James Fox (brother of Edward Fox) who later became well known in the film "The Servant" and "Performance".I was born in 1946 and this film was produced in 1950 so those scenes shown of early post war Britain have a reminiscence for me, when I remember those bomb sites, school dinners, food rationing which extended up to 1955, and an altogether more simple life.In those days children went "out to play" with their friends much more than todays TV/computer bound generation.
The jokes about the Labour Government and psychiatry give the film a distinctly middle class feel which Ealing Studios did not usually portray in their comedies but which was firmly entrenched in the mainstream British film industry at the time.It would be some time before genuine British working class actors exploded onto the screen.The dockside gang the small boy befriends appeared to be genuine working class and so those scenes were the highlight for me.Of course this film being produced in 1950, there has to be a morality tale in the script.Here the evils of cheating someone bring inevitable feelings of guilt until assuaged by an equal measure of generosity by the little boy to the aggrieved party, a handicapped boy of similar age.
I had never seen this Ealing comedy before so was delighted by the unexpected twists and turns in the plot.If you are a fan of gentle Ealing comedies, you may want to seek out this long forgotten (by the major TV networks) film and you will be entertained I feel sure.
Datos tecnicos:
The Magnet (Charles Frend, 1950).avi
Tamaño....: 522 MB (or 535,453 KB or 548,304,384 bytes)
------------------ Video ------------------
Codec.....: DivX 5.0
Duración..: 01:14:28 (107,115 fr)
Resolución: 640x432 (1.48:1) [=40:27]
Bitrate...: 784 kb/s
FPS.......: 23.976
------------------ Audio ------------------
Codec.....: 0x0055(MP3) ID'd as MPEG-1 Layer 3
Bitrate...: 192 kb/s (96/ch, stereo) CBR
The Magnet (Charles Frend, 1950).avi 
saludos
