Passport to Pimlico is a 1949 British comedy film made by Ealing Studios and starring Stanley Holloway, Margaret Rutherford and Hermione Baddeley.

Like other Ealing comedies, the film pits a small group of British people against a series of changes to the status quo from an external agent.

He was inspired by an incident during the Second World War, when the maternity ward of Ottawa Civic Hospital was temporarily declared extraterritorial by the Canadian government so that when Princess Juliana of the Netherlands gave birth, the baby was born on Dutch territory and would not lose her right to the throne.

The film's opening credits end with the words "dedicated to the memory of", with an image of Second World War British food and clothing ration coupons.

The document is authenticated by the historian Professor Hatton-Jones as a royal charter of Edward IV that ceded a house and its estates to Charles, the last Duke of Burgundy, when he sought refuge there after being presumed dead at the 1477 Battle of Nancy.

As the British government has no legal jurisdiction, it requires the local residents to form a representative committee according to the laws of the long-defunct dukedom before negotiating with them.

He forms the governing body, which includes Spiller, the local policeman; Mr. Wix, the manager of the bank branch; and Arthur Pemberton, a neighbourhood shopkeeper, who is appointed as Burgundy's prime minister.

After it dawns on people that Burgundy is not subject to post-war rationing or other bureaucratic restrictions, the district is quickly flooded with black marketeers and shoppers.

With the final piece of the deadlock eliminated, Burgundy reunites with Britain, which also sees the return of rationing for food and clothing to the area.

Passport to Pimlico contains numerous references to the Second World War and the postwar Labour Government to accentuate the spirit within the small Burgundian enclave.

[7] The film historians Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards describe Passport to Pimlico as a progressive comedy because it upsets the established social order to promote the well-being of a community.

[9] According to Aldgate and Richards, the welcome return to the ration books at the end of the film signifies an acceptance that the measures of the British government are in the best interests of the people.

[10] At the close of the story, when the summer heatwave turns to a torrential downpour, the film has "something of the quality of a fever-dream", according to Aldgate and Richards.

[7] This was one of the aspects that appealed to Margaret Rutherford, who liked the way the British were portrayed "accentuating their individuality and decency, while acknowledging some parochial idiosyncracies".

[14][n 1] The plot was an original story by T. E. B. Clarke, a writer of both comedy and drama scripts for Ealing; his other screenplays for the studio include Hue and Cry (1947), Against the Wind (1948), The Blue Lamp (1950), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953).

[16] Clarke was inspired by an incident during the Second World War, when the maternity ward of Ottawa Civic Hospital was temporarily declared extraterritorial by the Canadian government so that when the then-Princess Juliana of the Netherlands gave birth to Princess Margriet of the Netherlands, the baby was born on Dutch territory, and would not lose her right to the throne.

At the conclusion of filming, the site had to be returned to the same bomb-damaged state as before, to enable the locals to claim war damage compensation.

[25] The critic Henry Raynor, writing for Sight and Sound, thought that the film "sacrificed a comic enquiry into motives and personality to a farcical romp ...