An Inspector Calls (1954 film) An Inspector Calls (1954 film) An Inspector Calls is a British 1954 film directed by Guy Hamilton and written for the screen by Desmond Davis. It is based upon the play "An Inspector Calls" by J.B. Priestley. It stars Alastair Sim. Set in 1912, a dinner party held by the upper class Birling family is interrupted by a man calling himself Inspector Poole, investigating the suicide of a lower class girl Eva Smith whose death is linked to each family member. "An Inspector Calls" was filmed at Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England, under the auspices of the Watergate Productions Ltd.
An Inspector Calls regional repertory theatre. Following several successful revivals (including Stephen Daldry's 1992 production for the National Theatre), the play was "rediscovered" and hailed as a damning social criticism of capitalism and middle-class hypocrisy in the manner of the social realist dramas of Shaw and Ibsen. It has been read as a parable about the destruction of Victorian social values and the disintegration of pre-World War I English society, and Goole's final speech has been interpreted variously as a quasi-Christian vision of hell and judgement, and as a socialist manifesto. The struggle between the embattled patriarch Arthur Birling and Inspector Goole has