Dictionary

Ealing comedy en · NOUN

Etymology

From Ealing Studios, the studio which released most such films, named after the London town of Ealing.

Meanings

1. (uncountable) A genre of English comedy film, typically populist and satirical about life in post-WWII British society.
   • The use of voice-over, characteristic of Ealing comedy, is also ironic. 2014 July 14, Marcia Landy, British Genres: Cinema and Society, 1930-1960, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 377:
   • Ealing comedy was a reaction against the sort of earnest fare the Ealing Studios themselves had produced in wartime. 2023 July 27, David Stubbs, Different Times: A History of British Comedy, Faber & Faber, →ISBN, page 1886:
   • What Michael Balcon described as the 'mild anarchy' (1969: 159) permeating Ealing comedy was, over the course of the decade, usurped by the moderate anarchy of the St Trinians and Carry On films. 2006 March 23, Gill Plain, John Mills and British Cinema: Masculinity, Identity and Nation, Edinburgh University Press, →ISBN, page 210:
   • Ealing comedy is suddenly being regarded as the intellectual's treat. 2004 June 3, James Chapman, Cinemas of the World: Film and Society from 1895 to the Present, Reaktion Books, →ISBN, page 281:
2. (countable) A film in this genre.
   • OK, it's [The Ladykillers] an Ealing comedy so there's something very British and very genteel about it , which isn't particularly our thing. 2006, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, The Coen Brothers: Interviews, Univ. Press of Mississippi, →ISBN, page 200:
   • Its finest moments are nevertheless as always the vignettes of tenderly observed British ordinariness: Wallace remarking 'Cracking piece of toast, Gromit' at the breakfast table, just like Stanley Holloway in an Ealing comedy 2014 October 16, Gilbert Adair, Surfing the Zeitgeist, Faber & Faber, →ISBN:
   • This new film follows the pattern of an Ealing comedy, with escalating chaos and fantasy as the entire fabric of life collapses for the inhabitants of a Leningrad apartment block 1989 August 1, Julian Graffy, Geoffrey Hosking, Culture and the Media in the USSR Today, Springer, →ISBN, page 67:

Forms

wikipedia: Ealing Studios