Schwarze Fackel

Coming six years before "guess who's coming to dinner " , "flame on the streets ' is much more convincing ;here one does not meet a bourgeois family whose daughter wants to marry a future Nobel Prize ;it takes place in the British low middle-class ; it all happens in one day ,on Guy Fawkes '.

The fifth of November is a judicious choice: it's time for celabration,merrymakings in the streets , but it also means alcohol, violence,interracial resentment which has been building up for years. Kathy Palmer's plan does not bode well in that context : to marry an educated black schoolteacher (Peter Lincoln ,check the surname) in the early sixties is a thing her mom -who blames her husband for not climbing up the social scale- would never accept ,in a month of Sundays . The dad 's attitude is more ambiguous : in the meeting , superbly played by John Mills , he delivers a liberal speech, urging the men from the union to stand together , and championing the promotion as a foreman of a colored man ;but when confronted to his daughter's plan , without being so openly racist as his wife , his finer feelings have vanished into thin air and he tells the young schoolmistress what she should "ideally " do.

In the streets , meanwhile ,hatred is simmering , the riot is brewing : not only the angry young white louts ,but also the colored girls , or the gossip ladies who "warn " Kathy's mom , nobody is prepared to accept peace,love and understanding .So Kathy 's predicament is mirrored by this town on fire ; given the hostile milieu ,the denouement cannot ,by any means,considered a happy end .There was still a hard road to hoe.

Some people might steer clear of this movie because of its race relations theme. They'd be missing a good movie.

Despite a few warts, this is mostly a well-acted and well-directed drama. To be sure, some of the issues that the characters confront are dated. However, other issues are as relevant today as they were in 1961 when this film was made.

Above all else, I enjoyed the dominating performance of the always reliable John Mills. I enjoyed his stirring speeches as Jacko Palmer, a leader in his labor union. I also enjoyed his sensitive handling of family issues, trying to negotiate a difficult path between the starkly conflicting viewpoints of his wife Nell and his daughter Kathie.

Some of the dialogue in this movie is painful to hear. A couple of white factory workers tell Jacko `We don't like to take orders from spades.' Nell Palmer tells her daughter `They're not like us . If you marry him (her West Indian boyfriend), you'll have a roomful of black children . The thought of them (Kathie and her boyfriend) in bed makes me sick . You're worse than a whore.' Nell uses the `N word' twice.

Not surprisingly, Kathie shrugs off her mother's acid-tongued advice. However, it's harder for her to ignore her father's advice, which is geared toward making her understand the risks of her (marriage) decision. Her reasoning is so clouded by love that she tells him `Prejudice will end someday.' Well, not in her lifetime, as we in the 21st Century know.

The movie is sometimes heavy-handed and melodramatic. Even the title is somewhat `inflammatory' (There is only one flame in the movie ... a large bonfire, a British tradition for the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day). The movie ends without a tidy resolution, but this is fitting considering the predicament of the characters and their social environment.

I reviewed this movie as part of a project at the Library of Congress. I've named the project FIFTY: 50 Notable Films Forgotten Within 50 Years. As best I can determine, this film, like the other forty-nine I've identified, has not been on video, telecast, or distributed in the U.S. since its original release. In my opinion, it is worthy of being made available again.

This film is more of a social document than an entertaining piece of film making.It was made just 3 years after the infamous Notting Hill Riots.This was at a time when immigrants were just starting to settle in the Uk and met some resistance from the local population.I would add that prejudice was still rife in the population at the time.Both myself at school and my father in public office suffered anti semitism.So this country was good for a good shake up.I doubt that this film did much to advance the cause.It is just so dull at times i am sure that it would not have done that well commercially at the time.It is odd to note that John mills here plays Sylvia Sims father when a couple of years earlier in "Ice Cold In Alex" he portrayed her potential lover.

This film is a very enjoyable and courageous film about racism in London in the early 1960s. Apparently, there was a lot of negative feeling towards West Indians living there--and it's all quite similar to the feelings in much of the US at the same time.

The first portion of the film involves workers and their union. A major problem is that a lot of white workers are resentful of blacks--especially when they are placed in positions of authority. One of the union reps, Jacko Palmer (John Mills), believes in promoting people according to their merits--and goes to bat for these people.

Ironically, at the same time this is happening, Jocko's daughter is dating a Jamaican man. She is uneasy about how people will treat her but she loves the man and wants to marry him. When she tells her 'liberal-minded family', they show themselves to by hypocritical butt-heads--and the mother is truly vile in the way she talks about blacks and shows herself to be a shameful mother. How is all this to work out by the end of the film?

I liked the film and appreciate that it didn't pull its punches. I love "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" but at times it did seem a bit too sanitary and 'nice'. In contrast, this British film used extremely disturbing and graphic language--and better showed the ugliness of racism. Well worth seeing.

Flame in the Streets was adapted from a stage play and often feels like it. The acting is occasionally stilted and other times too heavy-handed. Not the worst offender nor entirely out of step of other performances of its mostly pre-method era. It's just that, given it's serious subject matter, it didn't need any extra help to wind up the audience and it might have done a better overall job if it was more clever and subtle in its approach. Additionally, some of the dialog, especially from minor characters, is very on the nose and almost comically rote. In some ways this film feels more like it's from the 30s or 40s and not the early 60s.

The plot involves a union leader who, full of righteousness, defends a black man's promotion to a minor management role in a manufacturing company. His progressivism and sense of fairness is challenged and turned on its ear when he learns his daughter intends to marry a black man. All of this takes place amid the backdrop of his crumbling marriage and a neighborhood that has started to boil over with racial tensions.

While it's easy to criticize the execution, I appreciated how directly and incisively it goes after its controversial themes, particularly that of the half-way liberal who will righteously advocate for the downtrodden as long as, on some level, he can continue to see them as lower and separate from himself, and those truly close to him. That hypocrisy is still very relevant today as many talk endlessly and fiery about inclusion, but at the end of the day still seem to be surrounded by people who look the same as they do.