1958-08-12
N/A
99 min
Bittersweet story about London's unwanted children and the good people trying to help them. Ann is a social worker, while Bill is an electrician whose contract with the local care home introduces him to the children and Ann. Events start to escalate out of control when a child takes possession of a loaded gun.
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".
