Love on the Dole (1940) - Deborah Kerr and Clifford Evans

 

What an extraordinary film. Britain during the height of the Depression. The Hardcastle family struggles to survive. Even before the economic crisis things were hard, but when the layoffs begin and the "means testing" of the overloaded social safety net system begins, famiies are ruined and hard choices need to be faced.

This was only Deborah Kerr's third film, and it ranks as one of her best. She is perhaps the main character in the story, but the rest of the cast all shine in this pristinely restored film from 1940. Set in a worknig class town the story is intense and offers an insight into the hard times between the wars.

There is a finely restored colorized version of this film which does it even more justice, which is unavailable at the moment. But this black and white version serves the story of the Hardcastle family equally well.

Although the captioning may come on automatically at the beginning, it can easily be switched off. Either way, I hope you will take the time to view it.

The title beneath the film labels it as a "banned" film, but that is slightly misleading. When the making of the film was first proposed in 1935 the Review Board turned it down as being "too sordid". By 1940, with the Second World War and the Battle of Britain waging in full, the Review Board seemed to have a change of heart. Perhaps they realized that, with the coming of the war, the people needed to look back on the hardships they had survived in order to cope with the hardships which lay ahead.