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Light travels at the speed of electricity

platforms of Chalk Farm and Hampstead Underground Stations

Holborn Underground Railway Station, Kingsway, Holborn, City of London, England, UK

Michael Maguire in Adventure in the Hopfields (1954)

Laurence Carter and Mark Dightam in The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972)

Mark Dightam in The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972)

Robert Eddison in The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972)

Mark Dightam and Lem Dobbs in The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972)

Mark Dightam and Robert Eddison in The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972)

Mark Dightam

Robert Eddison

Helen Weir

Emeric Pressburger

John and his class visit the Tower of London, where he loses his pet mouse. He falls asleep during a lesson on electricity, but with Nick&apos;s help, he learns about it, invades the Tower, and saves his pet mouse.

Michael Powell

The Boy Who Turned Yellow

How did this come to be?

I&apos;m really curious about the backstory to this. Michael Powell, who had been effectively exiled from the British film industry, went to Australia, made two movies, and came back to make one final film with his long-term creative partner, Emeric Pressburger, and it&apos;s this weird, children&apos;s thing that supposed to be teaching kids about electricity? It&apos;s hard to say, this thing is so stuffed with events that have nothing to do with electricity and how it works, and its such a sugar rush of those events without any real grounding in, well, any kind of storytelling convention that I wonder if Pressburger was having a stroke while writing it.

John (Mark Dightam) is a schoolboy whose class takes a trip to the Tower of London. He brings along his pet mouse Alice and promptly loses her on the tour. Convinced to go back to school by his friend Munro (Lem Dobbs) and return later to find Alice (what?). While in class, listening to a lecture about how electricity works by his teacher (Laurence Carter), John falls asleep. Returning home from school, though, on the Underground, he and the entire subway car he&apos;s in turn yellow inexplicably. It&apos;s an accident caused by the falling of an electrical alien named Nick (Robert Eddison). John has to show Nick around the electrical world of his living room after which Nick takes John into the electrical currents from the television to try and get into the Tower and find Alice.

I mean, this is a mess. Is it about learning about electricity? If it is, what&apos;s with this nonsense about a boy traveling through electrical circuits to jump out of a television in the Tower of London? Is it about the rescue of a mouse? Well, then what&apos;s with all the electrical stuff? If I had to hazard a guess, I&apos;d say that neither Powell nor Pressburger had any clue how to appeal to the young of the early 70s, and just kind of threw a random electrically-themed adventure together as their one last hurrah.

The mechanics of how John uses his other mouse, Father Christmas, to try and locate Alice are time-wasting and kind of dull, probably supposed to be cute. The film gets weird when John gets caught by the Beefeaters, Nick can&apos;t intervene because he&apos;s just a creature of energy that only yellow people can see and hear, so Nick decides to go and get Munro to help. Except...Munro doesn&apos;t do anything? John gets himself out of his execution (what?) by asking for a last minute exposure to television that Nick then uses to transport John out (what? Were there no light sockets nearby at any other point?).

And, of course, it&apos;s all a dream which seems to wave away the absolute insanity of the plotting, except everything is presented more like a straight boys&apos; adventure than something dream-like, so it doesn&apos;t work like a film that does do dream-logic. It just feels random. Could that work for a children&apos;s audience? I suppose, but it didn&apos;t work for me.

There&apos;s not a whole lot to talk about here. It&apos;s all plot with some smattering of lecture about how electricity works in a classroom setting. It doesn&apos;t work. It&apos;s too random, too unfocused, and too dull. The only real joys are in the production design where we get flashes of the formalism that had defined the Archer&apos;s best and most well-known work through the 40s, in particular the quick time we spend in that yellow subway car.

I mean, this is not good. It&apos;s a last gasp of creative energy without real purpose or direction. It&apos;s not the worst thing in the world, but it&apos;s mostly just kind of weirdly unengaging.

I'm really curious about the backstory to this. Michael Powell, who had been effectively exiled from the British film industry, went to Australia, made two movies, and came back to make one final film with his long-term creative partner, Emeric Pressburger, and it's this weird, children's thing that supposed to be teaching kids about electricity? It's hard to say, this thing is so stuffed with events that have nothing to do with electricity and how it works, and its such a sugar rush of those events without any real grounding in, well, any kind of storytelling convention that I wonder if Pressburger was having a stroke while writing it.

John (Mark Dightam) is a schoolboy whose class takes a trip to the Tower of London. He brings along his pet mouse Alice and promptly loses her on the tour. Convinced to go back to school by his friend Munro (Lem Dobbs) and return later to find Alice (what?). While in class, listening to a lecture about how electricity works by his teacher (Laurence Carter), John falls asleep. Returning home from school, though, on the Underground, he and the entire subway car he's in turn yellow inexplicably. It's an accident caused by the falling of an electrical alien named Nick (Robert Eddison). John has to show Nick around the electrical world of his living room after which Nick takes John into the electrical currents from the television to try and get into the Tower and find Alice.

I mean, this is a mess. Is it about learning about electricity? If it is, what's with this nonsense about a boy traveling through electrical circuits to jump out of a television in the Tower of London? Is it about the rescue of a mouse? Well, then what's with all the electrical stuff? If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that neither Powell nor Pressburger had any clue how to appeal to the young of the early 70s, and just kind of threw a random electrically-themed adventure together as their one last hurrah.

The mechanics of how John uses his other mouse, Father Christmas, to try and locate Alice are time-wasting and kind of dull, probably supposed to be cute. The film gets weird when John gets caught by the Beefeaters, Nick can't intervene because he's just a creature of energy that only yellow people can see and hear, so Nick decides to go and get Munro to help. Except...Munro doesn't do anything? John gets himself out of his execution (what?) by asking for a last minute exposure to television that Nick then uses to transport John out (what? Were there no light sockets nearby at any other point?).

And, of course, it's all a dream which seems to wave away the absolute insanity of the plotting, except everything is presented more like a straight boys' adventure than something dream-like, so it doesn't work like a film that does do dream-logic. It just feels random. Could that work for a children's audience? I suppose, but it didn't work for me.

There's not a whole lot to talk about here. It's all plot with some smattering of lecture about how electricity works in a classroom setting. It doesn't work. It's too random, too unfocused, and too dull. The only real joys are in the production design where we get flashes of the formalism that had defined the Archer's best and most well-known work through the 40s, in particular the quick time we spend in that yellow subway car.

I mean, this is not good. It's a last gasp of creative energy without real purpose or direction. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's mostly just kind of weirdly unengaging.

John and his class visit the Tower of London, where he loses his pet mouse. He falls asleep during a lesson on electricity, but with Nick's help, he learns about it, invades the Tower, and saves his pet mouse.

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