Turn of the Tide

Rank joined with Lady Yule to form British National.The film was distributed by Gaumont British.However because of his disatisfaction with their efforts he went on to make a deal with GFD and the rest is history. This is an excellent film of its type and stands up well today.The cinematography is excellent.

I visited the scene of the location work for ToftheT a few years ago and interviewed the camera operator Eric Cross then 91 on Beta SP, Robin Hood's Bay the small North Yorkshire fishing village has in fact changed v.little since- but the fishing industry is finished. The original story was based on a Leo Walmsley novel and the feuding families it portrays are real - and are around the area today still. I think influenced by the documentary movement of the time-Flaherty especially, this film conveys a superb sense of realism and the dialogue is unusual for British films of this time that dealt with the working class - it is naturalistic and convincing. The British cinema was notorious for its stereotyping of the working classes, ToftheT is sympathetic and not at all patronising. This was J Arthur Rank's first baby and it strongly reflects his methodist values which makes it a valuable piece to study on many levels. Rank could not get the film distributed, his frustration with the system led him to actually buy up a major distributor: GDF and so began the Rank film empire.

Andrew Youdell of the BFI is the ToftheT champion and is mainly responsible for the recent revival.

TURN OF THE TIDE is a splendid British film about rival families in a fishing village in Yorkshire. Filmed in and around Whitby, there are some stunning panoramas of sea and cliffs and stone houses built on water's edge. The Fosdyck family is headed by mean old Isaac (J. Fisher White) who seethes at the very thought of those "foreigners" the Lunns (they came from 20 miles away) in his village and competing for fish. But his granddaughter (Geraldine Fitzgerald) causes him more grief when she starts going out with one of the Lunns (Niall MacGinnis). But the younger family members grudgingly get along as they battle the sea for their livelihood. But old Isaac keeps causing trouble by cutting fishing lines and such. Storyline is familiar, but the film is very watchable because of the location shooting and excellent village sets. John Garrick is the nominal star as the head Lunn, but the film is mostly an ensemble piece. Moore Marriott, Wilfrid Lawson, Joan Maude, Hilda Davies, Sam Livesey, and young Derek Blomfield round out the cast. The ending is not unexpected but is quite satisfying. J. Fisher White steals the show.

Directed by Norman Walker, our own Ed Wood, this artificial and inept drama has some good moments when the director shows locations shots of Robin Hoods Bay or Whitby, but for the most part it takes place on a cardboard cut out sea front set . Real location shots of ships at sea and fish being bought into Whitby are welcome but are little compensation for the wooden acting, in which the Kensington drawing room style of the cast overlays the Yorkshire more often in an uncomfortable hybrid of speech. The director Norman Walker moves from scene to scene at one pace, and the conflict and characterisation are simply not dealt with dramatically, so that the piece often seems like an amateur drama, where things are "champion". The best bits are usually reminiscent of the superb and ground breaking documentaries which Grierson was then producing under the aegis of the Empire Marketing Board and the music is good . Also, as an early example of combining drama with documentary footage, it deserves praise for originality, but the film as a whole is poor.

Few people have actually seen this title that holds a prominent position in the history of the British cinema as the film that drew J.Arthur Rank into the industry. The authentic location footage shot by the distinguished Austrian cameraman Franz Planer in exotic North Yorkshire depicting the fictional fishing village of Bramblewick repeatedly clashes with the studio exteriors depicting the village itself, the contrast heightened by the vertiginous Soviet-style cutting in the earlier scenes then all the rage in British films; although the tempo of the piece settles down eventually.

The 'foreign' interlopers the Lunns from twenty miles up the coast are the first to use new-fangled engines on their boats, while tugboats are depicted as brash new competitors during a salvage operation. The sense of a long vanished era is further reinforced by the sums of money discussed; "ten quid's ten quid remember" one character says. An almost unrecognisably young and slender Niall MacGinnis makes his debut here; he made an even longer trek soon afterwards to the Shetland island of Foula to make Michael Powell's 'Edge of the World'.