The Four Just Men

Griffith Jones - James Brodie
Francis L. Sullivan - Leon Poiccard
Frank Lawton - Terry
George Merritt - Insp. Falmouth
Frederick Piper - Pickpocket
Hugh Sinclair - Humphrey Mansfield
Anna Lee - Ann Lodge
Garry Marsh - Bill Grant
Basil Sydney - Frank Snell

Based on a an Edgar Wallace story, this film was originally made as a silent by George Ridgeway in 1921 but this 1939 remake fulfils a topical patriotic need . It powerfully expresses Ealing's late-thirties opposition to ruling-class decadence. The four men are all an assorted group of successful people who join up to protect the British Empire from foreign megalomaniacs who wish to destroy the Suez Canal, main target of the four is the high ranking politician Sir Hamar Ryman, an appeaser and a traitor: the film enforces, irresistibly, the inference that appeasement is treachery.

The Four are a secret band of militant patriots who resemble Leslie Howard's Pimpernel Smith both in this quality of secrecy and in their lack of conventionally robust masculinity: they are an actor, a musical dramatist, a couturier, and a consumptive. The film was re-released in 1944 during the war with an updated news-reel-based ending, presenting Churchill's leadership and the Allied war effort as fulfilment of the vision of the Four. Ealing's adviser on the extensive House of Commons scenes was Aneurin Bevan.
Extract© Charles Barr: Ealing Studios.