Passport to Pimlico

Passport to Pimlico (1949) is the classic Ealing comedy you can watch online on iFILM. When a leftover wartime bomb goes off by accident in a London neighborhood, it unearths a buried hoard and a set of old documents. The papers prove something absurd: this little patch of the city legally belongs to the long-vanished Duchy of Burgundy.

Overnight, the people of Pimlico are foreigners on their own street. If the ground is Burgundian, then British rules no longer apply here — ration books, pub closing times, taxes, all out the window. The residents set up their own government and revel in the freedom, right up until Whitehall fights back by throwing border posts around the block and cutting off water and supplies. A tiny breakaway republic ends up under siege in the middle of London, holding out mostly to spite the cozy machinery of British bureaucracy.

Directed by Henry Cornelius from a script by T.E.B. Clarke, the film leans on a deep ensemble, with Stanley Holloway and a wonderful Margaret Rutherford as the historian who vouches for the ancient charter. This is Ealing at its purest: gentle absurdity, affection for the ordinary citizen, and a sly poke at the postwar restrictions every viewer of the day knew by heart. Stream Passport to Pimlico (1949) online on iFILM.