Film 2014 : The Angry Silence (1960)
Feb. 12th, 2014 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gervase_fenThis is one of those movies which I knew of but have never watched – from clips that I’d seen many years ago I’d anticipated a factory floor drama with Richard Attenborough suffering stoically and heroically. So I was surprised and pleased to see the movie open with Alfred Burke, stepping off a train on to a deserted railway platform. It’s September 1959, and he’s arrived from London at the behest of unseen masters to stir up trouble at the factory in alliance with Connolly, the shop steward.
Guy Green films the factory floor on location (Ipswich) ; I don’t think it’s ever made explicit what the factory manufactures, but there’s heavy machinery, noise, and an accident involving one of the machines in the first ten minutes (this is of course years before the Health and Safety at Work Act). There are some familiar faces on the factory payroll ; as well as Attenborough and his lodger Michael Craig, there’s Oliver Reed, Norman Bird, an excellent Geoffrey Keen as the site manager and (yes!) Laurence Naismith as the complacent owner.
Bernard Lee, an actor who previously I’ve only associated with the role of M, is superb as Connolly, visiting Attenborough’s Curtis in his poky top floor flat after Curtis has been among the handful of men to work on through an unofficial strike. After trying to fix Curtis’ TV for him he explains that now the strike is over he understands Curtis’ actions and that “I’ll be the last person to hold it against you – I wouldn’t come round here and threaten you, or anything like that”.
And so having been non-threateningly threatened in his own home in front of his wife, Curtis works on through the next official stoppage, and is sent to Coventry. I suspect the screenwriters (Oscar nominated – Bryan Forbes, Michael Craig, Richard Gregson) were not above a bit of national stereotyping by giving Curtis a voluble Italian wife (Pier Angeli as Anna, terrific) who tears into Craig when she discovers that he too has been ostracizing her husband.
And then the media take an interest – in 1959 this is the local journalist (Bryan Forbes) and two national ones, playing themselves, Daniel Farson and Alan Whicker. For Connolly did, indeed, fix the TV, and so Curtis can watch Whicker’s powerful Tonight report. (At this point in the movie I did wonder if Alan Whicker re-wrote his own dialogue because his two scenes or so are so Whicker-esque – and show him in the best light possible.)
By now Guy Green has started to cut loose a bit with the film technique – moving on from the medium close ups and two-shots of the boardroom and kitchen sink drama to hand held camera for scenes outside the factory gates, and a classic horror movie 90 degree camera turn at a key moment for Curtis. Attenborough’s righteous fury at his victimisation is never more powerful than in the final canteen scene, when he looks out directly at the cinema audience to chastise them for their complicity.
“The Angry Silence” is part of the Richard Attenborough Screen Icons collection, as is my next Lovefilm despatch:
Next Episode : The Ship That Died of Shame
Guy Green films the factory floor on location (Ipswich) ; I don’t think it’s ever made explicit what the factory manufactures, but there’s heavy machinery, noise, and an accident involving one of the machines in the first ten minutes (this is of course years before the Health and Safety at Work Act). There are some familiar faces on the factory payroll ; as well as Attenborough and his lodger Michael Craig, there’s Oliver Reed, Norman Bird, an excellent Geoffrey Keen as the site manager and (yes!) Laurence Naismith as the complacent owner.
Bernard Lee, an actor who previously I’ve only associated with the role of M, is superb as Connolly, visiting Attenborough’s Curtis in his poky top floor flat after Curtis has been among the handful of men to work on through an unofficial strike. After trying to fix Curtis’ TV for him he explains that now the strike is over he understands Curtis’ actions and that “I’ll be the last person to hold it against you – I wouldn’t come round here and threaten you, or anything like that”.
And so having been non-threateningly threatened in his own home in front of his wife, Curtis works on through the next official stoppage, and is sent to Coventry. I suspect the screenwriters (Oscar nominated – Bryan Forbes, Michael Craig, Richard Gregson) were not above a bit of national stereotyping by giving Curtis a voluble Italian wife (Pier Angeli as Anna, terrific) who tears into Craig when she discovers that he too has been ostracizing her husband.
And then the media take an interest – in 1959 this is the local journalist (Bryan Forbes) and two national ones, playing themselves, Daniel Farson and Alan Whicker. For Connolly did, indeed, fix the TV, and so Curtis can watch Whicker’s powerful Tonight report. (At this point in the movie I did wonder if Alan Whicker re-wrote his own dialogue because his two scenes or so are so Whicker-esque – and show him in the best light possible.)
By now Guy Green has started to cut loose a bit with the film technique – moving on from the medium close ups and two-shots of the boardroom and kitchen sink drama to hand held camera for scenes outside the factory gates, and a classic horror movie 90 degree camera turn at a key moment for Curtis. Attenborough’s righteous fury at his victimisation is never more powerful than in the final canteen scene, when he looks out directly at the cinema audience to chastise them for their complicity.
“The Angry Silence” is part of the Richard Attenborough Screen Icons collection, as is my next Lovefilm despatch:
Next Episode : The Ship That Died of Shame
