Directions Unit: Director Alexander Mackendrick

I've already, briefly, discussed Mackendrick's directional style in my directing presentation. But going into much more detail with this style he has. Alexandre Mackendrick  is know for his efforts to change British Comedy and introduce this rather darker satirical side to humour and life, rather than having these typical flowery British comedies.
He started out as a commercial illustrator, and his first experience in film was with animation (for advertising films) but he soon found himself attracted by live-action, shooting numerous short documentaries and writing screenplays throughout the 1940s.

As his career developed, and he was employed by "Ealing Studios", Mackendrick began to take full advantage of the resources available to him and started having sets built for his films. This was a new experience to him as with his previous films and his first Ealing film "Whisky Galore!" (1949), he was on location; for Whisky Galore was mostly filmed in Scotland, a place Mackendrick was familiar
with after his heritage growing up there.

The Ladykillers is seen as a 'meta-film, a commentary on not only England but also on Ealings own stagnation and refusal too move with the times, with Philip Kemp seeing its final shots as looking down at the little isolated house at the end of the street, as 'unmistakably valedictory'.

Its good to read Mackendrick's retrospective of the film, which
is much more celebratory of Mrs. Wilberforce's as a 'much diminished Britannia. Mackendrick said:

"Her house is a cut-de-sac... dwarfed by the grim landscape of railway yards and screaming express trains. its is Edwardiaan England, an anachronism in the contemporary world. Bill Rose's sentimental hope for the country that he and I saw through fond but sceptical eyes was that it might still, against all logic, survive its enemies. A theme, a message of sorts, one that I felt very attached to."

Mackendrick asserts his support for the little old lady and all she represents; traditional Englishness and traditional Ealing. 

Direction Style 
Mackendrick likes to keep the audience on their toes. This was adopted as part of his satirical style. This is very typical of his style and can be seen in many of his films. Below are a few examples:

Something Ive notice with Mackendrick's work is that he likes to build up tension and then suddenly drop it again, almost to keep the audience on their toes. The build up in the ladykillers when Marcus is at the door is suddenly dropped after the loud sounding bell rings and the door is answered. He would increase tension by having the mysterious figure of Marcus follow Mrs Wilberforce to her house, and walk around the outside of the house. The way in which Mackendrick films the silhouette is a suspenseful build up, of this stalker-like character.

He likes his extreme Closeups. Whenever watching a Mackendrick film, I've noticed he will usually include closeup shots to focus on something specific/important. The is usually with objects, but will also on occasions include characters. I feel this really shows his eyes for detail.

In his directing style, Mackendrick was very ahead of the times. In The Ladykillers I noticed in the car scenes, he was very clever in camera position. Especially for the time when cameras were a lot bigger, and cars usually smaller. Despite this, he films interior car scenes, and even goes so far as to record a shot of all the characters in the car at the same time by recording their reflection in the front mirror. I couldn't workout if the interior car shots are actually in a car or studio-built car. I know the film itself was studio based so it probably was studio-built. With the special effects commonly used today, its easy to forget just how genius the filming techniques of the likes of Mackendrick actually are.

I would like to attempt to re-create this shot without the car

The Man in the White Suit steals much of its visual design elements from existing films with 'mad scientist' characters such as Frankenstein (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933)  Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941). Many films of this period that present a mad scientist seem to closely categories between science fiction, horror, thriller,  and comedy genre. 

Sound Design
In terms of his sound design, Mackendrick uses music to add humour and build tension. His use of music isn't very frequent; even in The LadyKillers when One Round drops the money everywhere, there is no music playing at all. This choice is rather unexpected, as music will often add to such a scene in creating surprise. The use of comedic sounds produced by instruments like the triangle or flute adds to its satirical humour.
In The Man in The White Suit, Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness) has all this laboratory equipment: a complex system of tubes and a series of glass tubes and beakers, through which shoot spurts of liquid, which eventually come to rest as a bubbling layer in the largest baker. Every appearance of this setup is accompanied by brilliant sound design: a gargling, electronic sound that suggests whatever is in those beakers is complex, unusual, scientific or even alien (see clip):

Bibliography

BFI- Ealing Revisited- Edited by Mark Duguid, Lee Freeman, Keith M. Johnson and Melanine Williams

http://www.ealingstudios.com 
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-keith-m-johnston/ealing-film-studios-80_b_1099483.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ealing_Studios