Hungry Hill

Daphne DuMaurier helped adapt one of her lesser known novels, Hungry Hill to the big screen in 1947. Possibly the problem is that it is one of his lesser known novels and was not that good a read to begin with.

Hungry Hill is where a copper mine is started by Cecil Parker the head of the Brodrick clan and Parker's his usual arrogant self once again on the screen. This piece of property the other family, the Donovans, feel the Brodricks cheated them out of way back when so this was an ongoing feud when the viewer enters the picture. When the mine opens the head of the Donovans, Arthur Sinclair, pronounces a curse on the Brodricks.

The Brodricks due seem like a cursed clan, but the curse also seems to ring down on the Donovans as well over the three generations that this tale is told.

The primary characters are Margaret Lockwood who marries into the Brodricks and Dennis Price who becomes a lawyer and tries not to have anything to do with the mine. They raise a new generation of Brodricks who have their own problems with the Donovans, especially young Dermot Walsh.

Cecil Parker being the fatuous oaf he is turns out to be a great businessman, but that's about all he is. He makes mistakes in the raising of both his son and grandson that really are the cause of a lot of the issues.

Jean Simmons has a brief role as Dennis Price's sister who I wish we had seen more of. She's in at the beginning and then we're told she marries an army man and is now in India. Smart girl, she showed sense in getting away from the Hungry Hill curse.

Hungry Hill moves at way too slow a pace. It's like a British version of The Magnificent Ambersons, the director's vision of Ambersons that is. Maybe it needed someone like Orson Welles at the helm.

Adapted from a Dahpnee DeMaurier novel about a hundred year feud between Irish families Hungry Hill suffers from trying to cover too much ground in just over an hour and half. Working it's way through three generations Hill's cast, save for family patriarch Copper John Broderick (Cecil Parker), remains constantly in tragic transition with characters barely developed before disappearing for the duration.

Copper John brings employment to Hungry Hill by opening a mine but the resentment of the townspeople led by the Donovans runs deep. Brodrick can be stern and firm in family and business matters but the head of the Donovan clan is even more implacable and it leads to a mining disasters. Years pass and the hatred ebbs and flows as Brodrick loses children and grandsons assume leadership roles in the company while the Donovans stew in their juices and almost become part of the family.

Hungry Hill never really builds up much steam. For the most part it remains disjointed and lifeless with the stubborn patriarchs facing off first followed by the next generation along with an ironic romantic twist that leads to more tragedy. Brian Desmond Hurst's direction fails to ignite passion in scenes or cast as well as make much sense of the feud by forgoing detail in favor of passing years, leaping ahead without finishing up and leaving gaping holes in the plot. Making matters worse censorship further obfuscates the plot regarding a tryst between a Donovan and Brodrick that Hurst's ham fisted direction deals with through clumsy innuendo.

Margaret Lockwood is excellent, especially as she ages, from a rather wild young woman to a pathetic addict in London, exiled from Ireland by her own son, ruining herself at the roulette.

Everything in this film is about the same vein: tragedy as the result of self abuse, recklessness, whisky, brawls and terrible conflicts lasting over 50 years, as these hard-headed Irish never can take it easy and always are carried away by their bad temper. The exception is Dennis Price, the one with a diplomatic talent and some human understanding crossing the limitations of self-centredness, while his father Cecil Parker is the most impossible of all starting all the trouble and beating his grandson into a rogue.

It's all very Irish, you have seen it all before, they never change but stick to cultivating their hard heads making it worse by revelling in whisky, and there will always be hard relentless fights for nothing. After 50 years, according to this story, there is at last peace between the two families, but how long will it last? Probably not any longer than at most until the civil war with mad dogs and Irishmen, unionists and nationalists; but the film is worth seeing for Margaret Lockwood and Dennis Price, and another thing: the famous ball scene, when the fiddler gets too eager and leaves his pianist behind, bolting into a general gig of astounding dimensions, leading the entire ball into an orgy of dancing in the garden. It's a splendid scene, which hardly ever has been surpassed, until the latest "Anna Karenina" version 2012 with Keira Knightley with a similar ball scene transcending the stage.

In County Cork, the most republican corner of Ireland, an Anglo-Irish landowner (Brodrick) invests in a copper-mine that brings welcome employment to the villagers, whose spokesman (Donovan) manages to find grievances from the start, and calls down a curse on his employer's family.

And that's the setup for the best part of a century, which could have made for a fairly predictable bosses v. workers drama, except that we're in the capable hands of Daphne du Maurier, who never wrote a predictable word in her long life.

Top of the bill, deservedly, is Margaret Lockwood, who comes waltzing into the lives of the Brodricks, playing havoc with the young brothers. "No-one will ever put me in a cage" she declares to one of them, played by Dennis Price, then adding "But I could be caught if I wanted", prodding the hesitant suitor into the proposal she's waiting for. Cecil Parker makes a plausible stovepipe-hatted patriarch, and a teenage Jean Simmons adds much charm as a younger sister, as does Dermot Walsh in his screen debut - but visibly stricken by the family curse.

The scenes down the mine are well-handled, theft of copper being a running theme. The thieves have hollowed-out a secret cavern in which to hide the copper, where Brodricks and Donovans alike are able to take refuge in a sudden flood.

But the high point is a truly poetic mixing of the two families, when the Brodricks bring in one of the Donovans to play the fiddle at a grand ball up at the house, when he gets carried away and sweeps them all into a wild jig outside in the courtyard.

We can't reveal the ending, but it has a lot to with the winding-up of the curse, along with a prayer for peace that some might consider a bit hopeful.

"Hungry Hill," based on a novel by Daphne DuMaurier, concerns a 50-plus year family feud between copper mine owners, the Brodricks, and the people who work for them, the Donovans.

The film stars Margaret Lockwood as Fanny Rosa, who marries Dennis Price, known as "Greyhound John Brodrick" because he breeds greyhounds. His father (Cecil Parker) is Copper John. A very young and lovely Jean Simmons has a small role as Price's sister.

Fanny and Greyhound John have several children, one of whom is Henry (Michael Dennison), who becomes a wild child when he grows up. As someone else mentioned, Dennison is very much like James Mason. We get to see Lockwood as a flirtatious young woman, a settled married one, and finally, an elderly widow.

The film is somewhat slow, but though it is in black and white, you can see the beauty and luxury of the 19th century costumes.

For some reason the characters were hard to connect to, with the possible exception of Lockwood. She is the thread who goes throughout the film, and we see some real character development. It's a very good performance.