Angelus News | February 24, 2023 | Vol. 8 No. 4

DESIRE LINES
HEATHER KING
A ’50s classic’s tough critique of humanity
A scene from “An Inspector Calls.” | IMDB
I’m a sucker for classic British films:
black-and-white dramas from the
’40s and ’50s, with top-notch actors,
sharp directors, and often a thorny
moral dilemma.
One such gem, “An Inspector Calls”
(1954), is based on the play by J.B.
Priestley, and stars Alistair Sim (of
Scrooge fame) as an otherworldly
examiner of conscience.
You can stream it for free on Internet
Archive or the Kanopy feature of your
LA Public Library card.
The credits roll over a sumptuously
laid dinner table. The Birling family
is celebrating the engagement of their
daughter Sheila to Gerald Croft, an
upper-crust scion who is marrying
ever-so-slightly down. Not to worry:
Arthur Birling, the insufferably smug
factory-owning patriarch, is up for a
knighthood.
The formidable Mrs. Birling keeps
watch over her brood with an eagle
eye. “You’ll get used to being alone a
good bit of the time, dear,” she counsels
Sheila, apropos of what promises
to be Gerald’s endless business travels.
“I did.”
Eric, the perpetually tipsy Birling son,
is belittled by his father and treated
like a baby by his mother. He alone
has trouble getting into the spirit of the
occasion, making mordant asides and
nodding off over the liqueurs.
Just as Mr. Birling proposes a toast, a
large, urbane figure appears — materializes,
actually. He’s not come through
the front door. And who has let him
in?
He introduces himself as Inspector
Poole and announces that a young
woman named Eva Smith has been
brought to the infirmary that afternoon
and, having ingested a strong antiseptic,
died.
Was it suicide? they all ask. The
inspector — who’s had access to Eva’s
diaries and journals — declines to
answer and instead proposes showing
the dead woman’s photograph to each
member of the family in turn.
He starts with Mr. Birling. A couple
of years ago, turns out, Eva had been
employed as a shop girl at his factory.
Her crime, we learn in flashback, was
to have joined a delegation of sister
workers and asked Birling for a raise.
Not my problem, he’d blustered, then
had her fired.
“You seem to forget that we’re respectable
citizens,” Gerald protests to this
line of questioning, “not criminals.”
30 • ANGELUS • February 24, 2023