"The Secret Place" - David MacCallum (1957)

This is an excellent film which works well as a simple crime drama, unless you look beneath the surface. Then it becomes so much more.

Melinda, a 20 something year old newsstand operator who is engaged to a shady petty criminal, finally realises she has lost the true friendship of 14 year old Freddie; who is really a man at heart; and traded it for the false love of her fiancee, Gerry; a wannabe gangster who is really just a little boy playing at being a man.

A tightly woven script, excellently directed, this film is a great example of British cinema in the post war era. At the time, theaters in Britain were required to show a film made there for every American movie shown. This was done in an effort to revitalize their domestic film industry. David Lean, Richard Attenborough and Alec Guiness, and many others, all got their start as a result in this era. 

Conversely, it also provided for many American actors and directors to make films in Britain. 

This was only David MacCallum's third film, but he plays an important supporting role to Melinda, who is his sister. His performance as a confused and desperate young man is a very different role for him, and he carries his part off well.

"Sons and Lovers" - (1960) Trevor Howard, Wendy Hiller, Dean Stockwell

 

Use this link. https://youtu.be/qVtPAVtucjY?si=ZwAwNceh19ZGKa3Q

Written in 1912 by D.H. Lawrence,  "Sons and Lovers" was controversial when first published. It explores the conflict which exists between the relationships of mothers and sons. One clings, while the other seeks a new love of its own.

I remember vaguely the controversy the film elicited when it was released in 1960. I recall discussions between my parents and their friends about it, though I had no idea what they were talking about. As a teenager I tried to read it, but I was too young to really understand the book to its full extent.

The film has never been remade. I don't think it ever will be. It could never, in my mind, equal the stark reality created here. And though our views of morality and desire have changed drastically in the 65 years since its release, there are still some truths which are eternal. The film is as relevant now as it was then.

Trevor Howard and Dean Stockwell are riveting in their performances as father and son, and both are equalled by their counterparts, Wendy Hiller as the mother, and Mary Ure, as the married woman with whom Dean Stockwell has an affair, and Heather Sears as the girl he once loved.

April Fool - "The Hangover" (Painting by Peter Baumgartner)

He'd been the life of the party,
everyone had said he was cool.
But when the party came to an end;
he was only an April Fool......

"The Hangover"
Painting by by Peter Baumgartner

Verse by me.