Passport to Pimlico (1949)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Passport to Pimlico (1949) – H. Cornelius

Another of those Ealing Studios comedies – this time without Alec Guinness – that takes an absurd premise to the nth degree.  In this case, Stanley Holloway falls in the hole created by a newly exploded bomb (leftover from the war) and finds some buried treasure.  Said treasure includes a royal decree providing land to the Duke of Burgundy for his own separate country – and thus the fine folks on a few streets in central London suddenly find themselves foreigners.  As the Home Office (led by those two comic Brits from Hitch’s The Lady Vanishes) struggles to figure out what to do, Burgundy becomes lawless.  Then begins a series of battles with Britain over customs, immigration, and the like.  As I said, the film crosses merrily into absurd territory and makes some points about British society and the recent period of austerity at the same time. Amusing, if not hilarious.