An Inspector Calls (1954)

For the first decade of my working life I lived in Leeds in West Yorkshire. This meant that I was a fairly regular visitor to Bradford.

Bradford has many attractions, not least of all the quality of its curry houses.

Fairly central to the city is the National Museum of Film and Photography, in my memory one of the first major national museums located purposefully outside of London.

And just outside of the Museum is a bronze statue of the novelist and playwright JB Priestley, someone whose writings have somewhat fallen out of fashion in more recent times.

One of his most important early works is his English Journey, and I remember that 50 years after it was written, another important writer of a different generation was commissioned to write a similar work that followed in the kind of footsteps of this pioneering writer.

In spite of having what might be described as socialist leanings, one of the most interesting facts concerning the original JB Priestley English Journey is that he undertook it from the back seat of his chauffeured limousine.

This perhaps sets him apart from someone like George Orwell, who of course famously went down and out in London and Paris, and whilst not exactly adopting a disguise to do so, he actually lived the life of someone without a penny to his name.

And this is the background to the man that wrote An Inspector Calls, perhaps one of his most famous stage works, and one that I have at some point in my theatre going life seen presented on the London stage.

Most recently, I have recorded a broadcast version of this work, and transferred it to my growing collection of over 600 films, accessible at the click of a mouse from a 2 TB hard disk attached to my computer.

It is extraordinary that such an elderly play can be so fabulously engaging even in the present day.

A recent blog entry of mine talked about the way in which the BBC has been looking at the circumstances in the lead up to the First World War, in this centenary year.

In some respects, this play is closely linked to an understanding of what was lost by the destruction of the generation that fought this terrible war.

At the outset of the play, we are told that it is 1912, and the events that take place on a single night that will forever transform the lives of the participants shed great light on this time in our nation’s history.

Without giving away any of the plot details, no spoilers, sufficient to say that a mysterious police inspector interrupts a family in the middle of a family celebration.

Without providing any significant detail, but simply by asking questions about the knowledge that the family members have of a young girl that has taken poison and died horribly at the local infirmary, it is discovered that each of them has played some crucial role in determining the fate of this woman.

It is an extraordinarily moral work, and one which it would be difficult to imagine staged outside of its own period.

But it is fundamentally a work of great insight into the human condition, and the way in which we affect the lives of others, quite fitting then that such an imposing statue of the author should stand so prominently as a memorial to him in his home town.

I am sure it was not simply a quirk of fate that it should be shown at this point in time, when there is so much s thought about the world left behind after this conflict.

That the play should have had such a durable life is a tribute to its quality, and if anyone has not read or seen it, catching the film is an excellent way of appreciating it.