Mandy
Mandy: Daughter of Transition
By Pam Cook
From All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema (BFI, 1986)
Mandy, a film about a deaf child’s struggle to enter ‘normal’ society, was shot at Ealing in 1951 and released in July 1952. It is commonly identified as a film ‘authored’ by Alexander Mackendrick, an Ealing director who worked against the grain of the studio’s preference for safe subject matter and a realist aesthetic. It is, equally, a key film of the early 1950s, appearing at an important moment for Britain, Ealing, and British cinema. 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain, which celebrated the achievements of the outgoing Labour government, was also the year of The Lavender Hill Mob and The Man in the White Suit.
PDF here. Here for a review of the film from The New York Times. Here for a review from Monthly Film Bulletin.
