Ha'penny Breeze

Nice film showing bygone life in little boatyard in isolated village up a muddy river. Super acting and excellent filming despite what Wiki critics say! Plot is believable and cast are perfect and natural with none of the affectation of many other postwar British films. Well worth watching to get itchy feet to go seek out the location and have a drink in the little village pub where the landlord draws pints from an oak cask.

A pleasant sub Ealing little film about villagers of a long forgotten fishing village. The hero returns from the second world war with an Aussie pal & extols the virtues of his home village, only to find it run down & virtually deserted. They decide to renovate the old boat but get no help from the locals until a yachting competition comes up. They all rally behind the main character to rebuild a boat & trying to turn it into a race winning yacht. A rare starring role for Edwin Richfield, a familiar face in films & tv shows of the 1950's 60's . The boat builders Harry King & Sons is still there in Pin Mill. This film is regularly shown on Talking Pictures TV.

The River Orwell ran through Ipswich - mentioned occasionally in this film as the big place up river - were my family lived during the late sixties (at the same time as Veronica Lake, I later learned) and early seventies. I remember visiting Pin Mill in 1968, and this charming little sub-Ealing anecdote was already nearly twenty years old even then.

As usual none of the speaking cast even attempt the local accent. But it makes good use of the Orwell foreshore (which my family occasionally drove out to to stroll), and Aussie hero Don Sharp (who shows promise, I wonder what became of him?) is seen reading the local paper 'The Evening Star' in one scene at the local pub selling Cobbald ales (before they merged with Tolly in 1957. My father always preferred Adnams).

I recall seeing this old movie back in the 1950's when I was living in UK. It was particularly interesting at the time since the action takes place at Pin Mill in Suffolk on the River Orwell which is just up the river from where I lived at the time.

As mentioned by the other reviewer, it is b&w and involves yachts and I believe barges are also part of the action. I would love to see a release of this on late night TV or in a collection of B-movies since it has the kind of appeal which so few movies have today.

After a slow and sombre start, this story gradually turned out to be a quite delightful and lovely film.

It seems it is quite a hard film to get hold of, but I do believe that it is now available on DVD.

At first, I started to wonder whether it was a film using "non-actors" or locals from the amateur dramatic society. However, looking at the credits, it seems that the characters were all played by both professional and well-known actors.

I only recognised the actor playing the part of "David King". His name was Edwin Richfield. Although never a big star, his face could be recognised in a variety of films, where he played police inspectors, officers in the Armed Forces and barristers. His most famous role was that of Inspector Mornay in "Interpol Calling", a detective series broadcasted from 1959 to 1960. He played in 33 episodes of this series and was Inspector Duval's (played excellently by Charles Korvin) opposite number in the French Sûreté.

I will make one confession. I missed the uncredited performances of Basil Radford and Michael Gough.

The story was filmed in Pin Mill, a small fishing village in East Anglia. It is ironic that the location played the part of a dispirited community, because Pin Mill has always been quite famous for its venue as a sailing area and was used as a base for Royal Naval Motor Launches during the Second World War. Many Landing Crafts were launched from there during the Normandy Landings. It has also been used for location work on other British films and is mentioned in a few novels, including "Swallows and Amazons".

I will give the film 10 out 10. They should make more films like this to advertise what a lovely country England is.