A Cry from the Streets

Barbara Murray is a social worker who tries to find good homes for her children. She's frustrated by some of the foster parents, who are uncaring. Her new friend, Max Bygraves, thinks she should be paying more attention to him, but gradually comes to care about the children too.

It's a sympathetic view of lack of support for children, not only by the system, but also in its portraits of the actual parents. I found it to be a good movie, even though the high-pitched piping of the children annoyed me by the end. Bygraves sings one song, "Gotta Have Rain", with accompaniment by Larry Adler. It charted in the UK, and was a hit for Eydie Gormé in the United States.

A fresh-faced young Max Bygraves is charming and appealing in the first of two socially concerned dramas he made (the second being 'Spare the Rod') which touches upon such vexatious contemporary issues as juvenile delinquency, capital punishment and domestic violence. Larry Adler supplies an appropriately wistful harmonica score, and Aussie tyke Colin Petersen surprise, surprise shows a precocious talent for - you guessed it - the harmonica; on which he accompanies Max when he bursts into song in one scene.

Fortunately we don't have hanging anymore, but firearms sadly are hardly the aberration today they're portrayed as here; while it's also a sign of the times that drunken mother Eleanor Summerfield occupies a shabby but extremely spacious London flat that would today be prohibitively expensive for her to live in.

This got a BAFTA nod for Best British Screenplay and you can easily see why. It is a gentle, almost nostalgic, reminder of how different society was in the UK 60 years ago. Barbara Murray ("Ann") is a social worker struggling to look after a collection of kids from a variety of disadvantaged backgrounds. She meets and falls for the kind, gentle, real-life crooner Max Bygraves ("Bill") who has some fairly traumatic baggage of his own, and they both set about trying to bring a little happiness to themselves and to their young charges. This doesn't pull it's punches - not that it is gory, or visually violent - but it does tackle the topics of suicide, child neglect and parental (& official) indifference in quite a forthright (for 1958) fashion. It did remind me a little of my own childhood in Glasgow in the 1970s - kids were packed off "out to play" on spare ground - frequently that bombed out during WWII - on their own for days at a time; surrounded by an environment of cigarettes and alcohol - and although impossible to reconcile with attitudes today; people just didn't know any better and very, very few of us were ever at risk of anything more dangerous than a skint knee. The kids' performances are good as is Mona Washbourne as "Mrs. Daniels".

What a pity that the previous reviewer fails to judge the film in the context of its time ; post war London.

Its very a simplistic view of life in the 1950's that doesn't try to be highbrow or talk down to its audience.

Smoking was incredibly common in those days & the film merely shows life as it was. Children being told to go off & gather flowers on their own is certainly something that would be unusual in 2009, but in my own childhood in the 60's was 100% normal.

Its a fantastic social 'document' showing us where we have come from & perhaps reminding us that our modern predilection for wrapping our children in cotton might not be the best way forward.

What's wonderful film, it's nostalgic look at social work, or should that be rose tinted view of social work ( even in its day) when the film was made. It does pull at the heart strings and it's a gem.