Pink String and Sealing Wax

Excellent acting from the lead players, (especially from Mervyn Johns as the puritanical Victorian pater familias and Googie Withers as the pub landlady and murderess), and a good supporting cast as well mean that this Victorian-era pot boiler set in Brighton could have been something special, given the right direction. Unfortunately, though, it lacks this latter quality and the plot development is disjointed and lacks the necessary twists and thrills to have done the job. What results is a very average, Saturday afternoon matinee thriller, which leaves you thinking of the many ways it could have been improved upon. Perhaps a film studies seminar could use it for this purpose? 6/10.

A regrettably subdued film from a first-rate director. He hadn't really got into his stride when he made this. Its studio setting feels as if it were something of a straitjacket for him.

There are compensations, though. There is an excellent leading lady, Googie Withers, who smolders superbly. Mervyn Johns is likewise splendid as a rigid paterfamilias. There a number of imaginatively shot scenes, notably the main act of villainy. And there are a couple of unintentionally hilarious moments, such as when a subplot character sings HOME SWEET HOME to gain the attention of Dame Nellie Melba - no, I'm not making that up.

Ronald Hamer's masterpieces were soon to come: IT ALWAYS RAINS ON Sunday (again with Ms Withers) and KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS.

Pink String and Sealing Wax is directed by Robert Hamer and adapted to screen by Diana Morgan from the play written by Roland Pertweee. It stars Mervyn Johns, Googie Withers, Gordon Jackson, Jean Ireland and Sally Ann Howes. Music is by Norman Demuth and cinematography by Stanley Pavey.

The wife of a pub landlord plots to rid herself of her abusive husband - roping in the innocent son of a chemist to achieve her aims.

One can sometimes forget that Ealing Studios was not solely about crafty comedies, it was a production house of many genre splinters. Here they dabble in the realm of the dark period piece, setting it in Victorian England down on the South Coast in Brighton. Essentially it's a straight forward plot line of a potential murderess and the big questions of if she does it and if so will she get away with it - more pertinently, will someone else be taking the fall?

Within this simple plotting though, there's a fascinating group of characters operating out of this part of Brighton - chiefly out of The Dolphin Public House and the local Pharmacy. There's class distinctions which grab the eyes and ears, but mostly it's the everyday actions of the main protagonists that hold court.

Johns (excellent) is the pharmacist and an almost tyrannical husband and father, his treatment of his family in the name of tough love is irritatingly troubling. It's no wonder his kin want to fly the nest in search of happiness. Pub landlord Joe Bond (Gary Marsh) is an abusive drunk, while his wife Pearl (Withers top draw) is a man chaser and as we know, a murderess in waiting.

The support characters are a mixed bunch of barfly gin guzzlers, jack the lads or wannabe singers who fill the air with a shrill din. All of which is cloaked roughly with a melodramatic bleakness that's initially slow to get off the ground, but comes to the fore for dramatic worth come the second period of the story.

This is far from being Hamer on his best form, he would be saving that for Kind Hearts and Coronets 4 years later, but with Withers good value, the period flavours strong and the photography suitably set at moody, this is well worth a peak for genre enthusiasts. 6.5/10

Having supplied an elderly female customer with a remedy for flatulence and served as analyst at a murder trial, stern faced pharmacist, Mervyn Johns returns home to impress his holier than thou, never spare the rod brand of ultra muscular Christianity upon his deeply unhappy, largely subservient family.

He perpetuates his oppressive regime by blocking daughter (Jean Ireland)'s ambition to become an opera singer, coercing her towards an unwanted marriage and a mundane future as a piano teacher. Eldest son (Gordon Jackson) is then ridiculed for writing love poems to the girl of his dreams. It's enough to drive the poor bloke to drink.....which it inevitably does! And that's before we even begin to consider his experiments on small animals. All in the name of science, of course. Everything stems from a sense of duty. Not least, rigorous church attendance, whilst bemoaning the fact that sermons are becoming ever shorter. (Sometimes, less is more mate!)

Drinking culture in Brighton 1880's style: Mainly flat capped men supping tankards of ale in a smoky, poky pub. Women prefer a succession of whiskies, with the odd brandy or port for variety. Inebriated landlord, Garry Marsh is a disciple of the hard stuff.....and just when we're all thinking that Johns is the villain for putting the fear of God into his timid family, Marsh's wife, Googie Withers - a piece of work if ever there was one - springs into action, making the formidable pharmacist look positively saintly. Attaching herself to the docile Jackson (amongst a legion of others) she sneakily gains access to some of the more virulent concoctions stored at the pharmacy and a cunning plan to dispose of her big, bald, boozy husband begins to take shape. Whilst on the domestic front there may be seeds of rebellion in the ranks at the Johns household.

With a similar ring to 'Arsenic and Old Lace', Pink String is the familiar title of a movie offering a fascinating vignette of late Victorian life. The extremes of deeply rooted Christian faith, overspilling into moralistic rigidity, starkly contrasting with the consequences of alcohol fuelled lasciviousness. Never quite goth, but set in a still steam driven world. The approaching advances of the next century remain two decades away. The only electricity here is generated entirely by Withers.

Don't be fooled by the silly title, this is no flimsy, lightweight piece but rather a lurid, moralistic tale taking in adultery, murder, blackmail and suicide within its tightly-wrapped 90 minutes.

The action is set in late Victorian-era Brighton and framed by the local newspaper editor dictating recent town events to his copy-writer. It's fair to say this was a heavy-news day as we are flash-backed and introduced to the two town background settings for the story, the first being the local pub, run by a boozy landlord who drinks himself to a stupor to overlook his tarty wife's extra-marital affairs, particularly her current one with the appropriately-named dapper Dan, a handsome but married dandy of the insincere type. When the barman knocks her about once too many times for her perceived indiscretions the feisty wife hatches a plan to clear a better path for her and Dan which naturally doesn't bode well for her old man.

The other background setting is the family of the town coroner, the unforgiving, Puritanical Mr Sutton who rules his loveless house with a rod of iron in his bible-punching zeal, squashing the singing ambitions of his daughter, the romantic dreams of his impressionable young son and worst of all, the swine, the guinea-pig pets of his youngest daughter, which he instead plans to dissect for scientific research. There's only so much such a put-upon family can take however and they all proceed to quietly rebel in their own way against papa's iron-will authority, his seemingly docile wife quietly but tellingly informing her husband of her resistance over breakfast, the daughters secretly attend the concert of a famous singer who is visiting the town, with the intention of catching her ear by giving an impromptu public audition after the show and most significantly, the young son, his hopes of marrying his sweetheart dashed by dad, who wanders into the pub one night and sets his puppy-dog eyes on the figure of the landlord's alluring wife.

The two elements are nicely bound up together, no doubt with the pink string and sealing wax of the title and by the end the murdering widow has run her race, though not before a game attempt to shift the blame elsewhere and in an even bigger turnabout, the flinty old patriarch has changed his outlook towards his family, serving up a nice bow with which to tie up all the loose ends, in the process neatly reintroducing the newspaper article device introduced at the beginning.

Featuring in its cast two future doyens of British TV, Googie "Within These Walls" Withers as the scheming wife, her bosom heaving as she imperiously cuts a swathe through the menfolk in her wake until she takes it too far and the young Gordon "Upstairs Downstairs" / "The Professionals" Jackson as the simpering, lovelorn youth who falls under her spell. There are other good performances too, notably Mervyn Johns as the unyielding father, Mary Merrall as his long-suffering wife and John Carol who plays the heartless Dan, he and Withers possible fore-runners to the warring Dirty Den and Angie characters in the 80's BBC soap-opera "Eastenders".

I enjoyed Robert Hamer's direction, besides the tidy ending, I liked the way he used the pub lush, always asking for her penn'orth of gin, to comment on and indeed at times move along the action.

All in all, a highly enjoyable period melodrama well worth discovering and unwrapping.