Love on the Dole (1941)
Country: GB
Technical: bw 94m
Director: John Baxter
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Clifford Evans, George Carney, Mary Merrall
Synopsis:
As the Depression tightens its grip on a Lancashire mill town, Sally Hardcastle and her family scrimp and make sacrifices but increasingly find that the old values of avoiding credit and only marrying when you can afford a home are rendered obsolete by trading conditions and the government's austerity policies.
Review:
Plus ça change... Conceived very much as an apology to a forgotten generation whose offspring were now fighting the Nazi menace, this filming of Walter Greenwood's novel is Zolaësque in its accumulation of detail: the new suit, the winning racing ticket bringing fleeting and illusory prosperity, the coterie of old women enjoying a gossip and a snifter. A bleaker film for the war years it is hard to imagine, but it looks ahead to the fulfilment of its closing promise in the Welfare State after the war. Filmically, it constructs its fictional town convincingly in the studio (the terraces with their cold sheds out the back), even if there seem to be three industries rubbing shoulders in one place (mill, mine and dockyard). Kerr gives an impassioned performance as Sal, still capable of drawing a tear, and Evans is equally excellent as her activist lover.
Country: GB
Technical: bw 94m
Director: John Baxter
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Clifford Evans, George Carney, Mary Merrall
Synopsis:
As the Depression tightens its grip on a Lancashire mill town, Sally Hardcastle and her family scrimp and make sacrifices but increasingly find that the old values of avoiding credit and only marrying when you can afford a home are rendered obsolete by trading conditions and the government's austerity policies.
Review:
Plus ça change... Conceived very much as an apology to a forgotten generation whose offspring were now fighting the Nazi menace, this filming of Walter Greenwood's novel is Zolaësque in its accumulation of detail: the new suit, the winning racing ticket bringing fleeting and illusory prosperity, the coterie of old women enjoying a gossip and a snifter. A bleaker film for the war years it is hard to imagine, but it looks ahead to the fulfilment of its closing promise in the Welfare State after the war. Filmically, it constructs its fictional town convincingly in the studio (the terraces with their cold sheds out the back), even if there seem to be three industries rubbing shoulders in one place (mill, mine and dockyard). Kerr gives an impassioned performance as Sal, still capable of drawing a tear, and Evans is equally excellent as her activist lover.
Country: GB
Technical: bw 94m
Director: John Baxter
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Clifford Evans, George Carney, Mary Merrall
Synopsis:
As the Depression tightens its grip on a Lancashire mill town, Sally Hardcastle and her family scrimp and make sacrifices but increasingly find that the old values of avoiding credit and only marrying when you can afford a home are rendered obsolete by trading conditions and the government's austerity policies.
Review:
Plus ça change... Conceived very much as an apology to a forgotten generation whose offspring were now fighting the Nazi menace, this filming of Walter Greenwood's novel is Zolaësque in its accumulation of detail: the new suit, the winning racing ticket bringing fleeting and illusory prosperity, the coterie of old women enjoying a gossip and a snifter. A bleaker film for the war years it is hard to imagine, but it looks ahead to the fulfilment of its closing promise in the Welfare State after the war. Filmically, it constructs its fictional town convincingly in the studio (the terraces with their cold sheds out the back), even if there seem to be three industries rubbing shoulders in one place (mill, mine and dockyard). Kerr gives an impassioned performance as Sal, still capable of drawing a tear, and Evans is equally excellent as her activist lover.