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 It is she who opens the door to allow the Inspector into the Birling's lives, although she is often taken for granted and treated somewhat poorly at times, as if she were not actually there. Highly successful after its first and subsequent London productions, the play is now considered one of Priestley's greatest works, and has been subject to a variety of critical interpretations. After the new wave of social realist theatre in the 1950s and 1960s, the play fell out of fashion, and was dismissed as an example of outdated bourgeois "drawing room" dramas, and became a staple of