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A decade before I'm All Right, Jack (d. John Boulting, 1959) and The Angry
Silence (d. Guy Green, 1960) depicted industrial strife through respective
comedic and melodramatic lenses, Bernard Miles' second film as director
presented a post-war plea for harmony on the factory floor.
Such harmony is scarcely in evidence at the outset of the film: the opening
scenes pulse with tension between management and workforce, an antipathy
stemming from wartime ranks and experiences. If the outcome of employer-employee
unity seems utopian, it is much to the film's credit that the progression of
events is rendered credibly, thanks in no little part to expert casting. Basil
Radford and Bernard Miles embody decency on opposite sides of the industrial
equation, and the factory is filled with accomplished character actors, such as
Niall MacGinnis as the main troublemaker Baxter. Novelist Compton MacKenzie
contributes a cameo as the bank president, while Peter Jones plays one of the
borderline comic Xenobians, benevolent emissaries apparently from behind the
Iron Curtain.
The film's final line highlights its consensual message: with reference to
their revolutionary plough, a tearful Miss Cooper is moved to remark, "We've
found the one way too, haven't we?" Despite works manager Bland's quip that
the "half-baked bolshies" will be painting the factory red, and the horror of
Dickinson's moneyed cronies, Dickinson opts for compromise. This reassuring
conclusion also smacks of compromise on the part of Miles and his
co-screenwriter Walter Greenwood (author of Love on the Dole). Retreating, like
many leftwing filmmakers of the time, from the more revolutionary implications
of their premise, they have the fledgling managers abandon the boardroom, thus
demonstrating just how much the workers need their superiors.
Bernard Miles seems to have practiced the democratic spirit he preached,
insisting that his editor Alan Osbiston be credited as associate director. Alas,
the world of film distribution failed to prove as harmonious as Miles' film set.
Reacting against its perceived socialist agenda, the major film circuits refused
to show it, and it was even castigated as "propaganda for communism and workers'
control in industry" by the Ministry of Labour. The President of the Board of
Trade, Harold Wilson, disagreed and, urged on by the film's producer Filippe del
Guidice, personally intervened to impose its release on the Odeon circuit.
Regrettably, it was not a financial success, although Miles later spoke of his
pride on making a film to "speak for England".
Fintan McDonagh
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1. Social conscience (4:23)
Monthly Film Bulletin review
