In the Australia of the 1940s and 1950s the Ealing Films were special. They premiered in Sydney at the Embassy and State theatres and were screened throughout Australia by the Greater Union chain. These unpretentious low-budget films from a small studio in the London suburb of Ealing had an enthusiastic following. The famous Ealing comedies such as Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Lavender Hill Mob were regularly revived, as were the studio’s dramas, which in fact made up three quarters of its output. I remember in the late 1950s my father taking me to see one of Ealing’s great…