THE CINEMA
Love on the Dole and " Merchant Seamen. At the Odeon -" The Letter." At Warner's.
BRITISH film studios are at the moment trying to justify their future existence before the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Labour, and the recent completion of three films so remarkable as Major Barbara, Kipps and Love on the Dole is a strong argument for the retention of the industry. These films compare with the best which Hollywood can offer in world-markets, and the Govern- ment must seriously consider whether it can afford in time of war to sacrifice a form of national expression which can do so much to promote understanding abroad and to fortify morale at home. It may perhaps seem inappropriate to talk of fortifying morale in relation to the filming of Walter Greenwood's play Love on the Dole. Here is a film which comes to the most depressing conclusions about the effects of pre-war unemployment upon the national life and which contains, in its moving sequence upon the Means Test, the most damning exposure of reactionary politics which has ever appeared in a British feature-film. Yet Love on the Dole is good for war-time morale, not simply because, in the fact of its production, it proves the survival of free speech, but because it demonstrates that the one inconceivable war-aim would be a return to the status quo ante. It makes clear what we are not fighting for.
Love on the Dole begins and ends in the combined living- room, kitchen and scullery of a miner's cottage in a Lancashire industrial town. We hear at the start of the film the sound of coals rattling from a kitchen-shovel into the grate, the slam of the grate-door; we see Mrs. Hardcastle coax the fire into flame with a newspaper which she had carefully stored under the seat of an -armchair. In this opening sequence the film establishes an authentic atmosphere which it never loses. We are shown the life of Hankey Park and, in particular, the family-life of the Hardcastles as no film has ever portrayed communal or family- life before. We see how industrial depression gives a special significance to the pawnshop, the book-maker and the clothing- club; we see how rarely in these circumstances the unequal battle for decency and honesty can be won; and yet always we see People who retain minds, souls and firm loyalties of their own. The story of the Hardcastle family is a full-blooded dramatic story full of native humour and brilliantly adapted for the screen; but the story itself is overshadowed by the fact that its people, their alleys, backyards and kitchens, are so real that it is often difficult to believe that Love on the Dole came out of a film studio. For the deep sincerity of their work the highest praise must go to the whole production-staff and cast. John Baxter's direction has never been surpassed, and Deborah Kerr, George Carney and Geoffrey Hibbert must be specially mentioned if only
because their parts provide them with greater opportunities than are open to others of the cast.
The Letter is based upon a story by Somerset Maugham. Bette Davis—now surely established as an actress in- the very highest tradition—plays superbly the part of the secretly unfaithful wife of a dull and obtuse rubber-planter (Herbert Marshall). She kills her lover in a paroxysm of jealousy and, in spite of her brazen and cold-blooded success in lying her way to an acquittal of the charge of murder, she finally submits of her own free will to the vengeance of her lover's Malay wife. Director William Wyler has made a very polished film, the dialogue and acting is beauti- fully smooth and free, and the camera conveys skilfully the oppressive humidity of the atmosphere and the incongruous European social life of the plantations up-country from Singapore.
Merchant Seamen is made by the Crown Film Unit and it is about the hazards of life on board a British merchant-ship in war-time. The film makes no attempt to conceal its propaganda purpose, but—except in a scrappy and unsatisfactory climax—it carries complete conviction because of the sensitive handling by Jack Holmes of a cast of non-actors drawn from the Merchpnt Navy. Their performance is remarkable. All the conscious skill of the professional could not equal the timing, gesture and delivery of these men who, given an authentic script, can interpret the situations of the film because these situations are a part of their
Previous page
