This isn't one of the most highly regarded Gainsborough melodramas - I think it was a bit of a fizzer, though I'm not sure - but it is entertaining. There's plenty of story and good motivated central character played by Phyllis Calvert - perhaps not entirely happily cast as a northern girl who is sick of being poor and decides to make a lot of money instead.
She starts off by suing the man who was going to marry her for breach of promise - he dumped her to marry a young Hazel Court. She becomes a grocer, then moves into the oil business. John McCallum is the boy next door who always loved her; Michael Rennie the suave type who gets her into oil.
There's a definite feminist subtext here because the film is full of men telling Calvert that money isn't everything - McCallum the poor but honest farmer, her father, her drip fiance, the fiance's father, the idiot farmer whose land she buys not knowing it's got oil on it. But McCallum does support her grocery career (he goes to work for her), the grocer she takes out of business is clearly an idiot. The only bloke to champion her ambition is Michael Rennie who she loves - but who is married. But she gets her revenge on him by kicking him out of the business, and McCallum goes and beats him up.
This lacks some of the fun of the earlier trashier Gainsborough melodramas - there's no good girl/bad girl contrast; Calvert never really cuts loose as a bad girl. She's quite sympathetic - smart, upfront and fair. Which is good feminism, I suppose but a little dull - I guess I was hoping for her to seduce people, and commit murder and sleep around, Scarlett O'Hara style. It's too sensible and fair.
I found this a lot about the later Gainsborough melodramas like Hungry Hill and Jassy - the filmmakers didn't go for it; they didn't put their feet to the accelerator the way they did in Madonna of the Seven Moons and Fanny by Gaslight. I think if you've got to make this sort of movie you've got to go for it. There's a scene where Rennie calls Calvert (not to her face) a "slut" which gave me a jolt - I think the film needs more moments like this.
The handbrake is on too often. Rennie is married but we never meet his wife - and he really loves Calvert. Rennie and McCallum fight and the fight just ends as a draw. The climax involves her office being burnt down - when really it should have been her house. There is some life and death danger but only because they run into a building to save some kids. It lacks sex - in part because Calvert isn't very sexy but no one has sex. And there's no elaborate costumes or sets.
Hubert Gregg is very wet as the bloke Calvert is engaged to but Michael Rennie and John McCallum are strong support. McCallum is very good as the star - handsome, virile, can act. I'm surprised he didn't become a bigger star in Britain. Rennie is quite good too. Solid support from the crusty old Northern types. Clavert is okay - pretty, can act, all that. But I feel if they couldn't have gotten Margaret Lockwood they would've been better off with Pat Roc or Jean Kent - they both had a touch of the minx about them.
Random idea... how I would have "fixed" the film (a useless exercise I know but this is for fun):
- I would have set in the past so they could have had interesting costumes from some period (maybe the 1920s?)
- give Calvert's character more drive... have her family's poverty result in her dad dying (he doesn't serve much purpose being alive).... maybe also have her pregnant to the fiance, and have her lose the baby
- use her sister more... poverty can send her sister off the rails... running around with men, drinking etc - if Calvert is using her desire to get money for a reason I feel it would make her more empathetic, like Mildred Pierce - she can constantly be bailing her sister out of trouble - the sister can maybe die, or reform, depending on what we feel
- have her marry the grocer instead of turning him down - he can still die.... it's great revenge
- use her old fiancee and his new wife more - they're set up in the beginning but then disappear - they should come back at the end - the new wife should be a villain
- use Rennie's character more - he just sort of gets in a brawl then leaves - Calvert should try to kill him, or he tries to kill her... he could team up with the new wife... I feel he should have been more evil and killed.
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