Les Naufragés de la vie

There were a number of potential films that were unmade until war was declared,and this was one.Directed by one of the great British directors,John Baxter.Starring Deborah Kerr on her way to the top,without as claimed in another review a cockney accent.

This 1941 British film was believed lost for decades. Where a copy was finally found I have no idea. But let's be thankful this grim and gritty film survives for 2 reasons: it's Deborah Kerr's first starring role in a film, and the chronicle of slum-life outside Manchester in 1930 is beautifully done.

Kerr plays Sally, a teenager who lives with her parents and her 17-year-old brother (Geoffrey Hibbert). The family makes do as the Depression goes along with the kids more worried about love and marriage than earning a living. But then the father's work week is cut to 3 days and the son is let go after he finishes his apprenticeship.

Kerr's idealistic boyfriend gets killed in a street riot when the government starts cutting back on unemployment checks and welfare. The son's girlfriend gets pregnant but no one can afford to feed and care for the youngsters.

As things gets worse and worse, Kerr finally gives in to a wealthy bookie (Frank Cellier) and becomes his "housekeeper" with a promise to get jobs for her father and brother. Kerr is shunned by the neighbors, her reputation is ruined, but the family survives.

Amid the grim surroundings are some wonderful vignettes. The son wins some money on a horse race, but instead of saving it he does as his father suggests and blows the money on a trip for him and his girl friends to Blackpool. As the father says, it'll give him something wonderful to look back on all his life.

Another subplot concerns a gaggle of old ladies, led by an agent for a pawn shop who measures out sharp advice along with shots of booze at threepence a drink. They serve as a sort of Greek Chorus, making comments on everything that happens in the neighborhood.

Kerr, at age 20, radiates warmth despite the harsh story. Hibbert is also excellent as the stoic brother. George Carney and Nary Merrall score as the hapless parents. Clifford Evans plays the doomed boy friend. Marie Ault, Marjorie Rhodes, Maire O'Neill, and Iris Vandeleur are terrific as the old ladies. The final speech, given by Merrall is a high point of the film. Joyce Howard is the pregnant girl friend.

I suppose there are many similarities between this story and Steinbeck's GRAPES OF WRATH. What struck me, however, is how the political story of the working poor in 1930s England has so many parallels to our current recession.

This is one to search for.

A British drama; A story set in Salford, England, during the depression. A proud miner struggles to provide for his family, while his daughter fends off the advances of two men: a kindly Labour Party representative and an oily bookmaker. Tightly scripted and deeply affecting, it deals with the theme of a classic 1930s dilemma: escape poverty or keep faith with the morality of her class and Lancashire values. The film resonates with a strong feeling for the genuine harshness and brutal truths of poverty and unemployment. There are all-round good performances, especially by Deborah Kerr, who is subtly affecting in her portrayal of personal conflict, and Geoffrey Hibbert, who plays his part with innocence and remarkable poignance. While the film has a gloomy feel, it also has comic relief as well as pathos, and there is a heartfelt feeling throughout the different subplots that avoids mawkishness and over-sentimentality. As an aside, this was an adaptation of the Walter Greenwood novel, scripted by himself, and was censored up until its release for its "sordid" story and comment on social conditions. The film reinforced the view at the time that Britain and its working classes had survived such hardships and would survive others. The outbreak of war was one of the main catalysts for change in housing conditions in communities like Hanky Park due to full employment and a Labour Party landslide victory in 1946.

Twenty-year-old Deborah Kerr has the biggest role in this movie about a poor family and the people around them. It was her second movie appearance -- another had wound up on the cutting-room floor -- and she is affecting amidst the turbulent tale of a girl working in the cotton mills while her father, George Carney, and brother, Geoffrey Hibbert, can barely keep their heads above water on their meager wages. Then times get worse, and the men wind up on the dole....

It's the beginning of the Kitchen Sink dramas of the 1950s, arising out of the Manchester School, so there's a trip to Blackpool, and a pending marriage with socialist Clifford Evans, and gossiping neighbors, and even police striking down marchers protesting the dole getting cut. Director John Baxter spent most of his career directing unpretentious entertainment, and while he manages the personal tragedies well, there's no real sense of anything larger, just the grind, grind, grind of poverty in the depths of the Great Depression; but perhaps there's nothing more required to make the larger point.

This is a typical BBC2 or Channel 4 afternoon offering: British, black and white, at least 40 years old and just what you'd watch if you are indeed on the dole.

It reminds me of This Happy Breed (1944), featuring working class people and their daily struggle for survival in a class-ridden society, only this time it's the Great Depression in the Welsh valleys. They face temptations, peer hostility if they do not conform to the norm, and total frustration (though in this case alleviated by a seaside visit to Blackpool, that epitome of Englishness).

It is actually a very political film, containing a violent clash between the unemployed demonstrators and the stubborn, violent police. Presumably the prime minister of the day - Winston Churchill - would have loved this film as he battered the workers himself a few times.

John Baxter, the director, was never a household name, probably because of his strange, expressionist editing which is unusual for any British film, let alone this offering from the war years. However, there are some advanced - for 1941 - special effects.

The film could have benefited from some outside, location shooting down in south Wales, too. Somewhere like Ferndale, perhaps.