Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Before Kind Hearts and Coronets made his name, Robert Hamer (1911-1963) directed this noirish melodrama of 24 hours in the life of an East End neighbourhood.
The year is 1947, the place Bethnal Green, the weather incorrigible – rain all day. Hamer catches the postwar mood quite superbly, a world of rationing, bombsites and depression: that Blitz spirit has vanished.
The multi-stranded story centres on a woman (Googie Withers) whose disaffection with her husband is sharpened when an old lover (John McCallum) turns up, escaped from prison and in need of shelter. Without telling anyone, she hides him in her bedroom while her stepchildren hover dangerously below.
Meanwhile the drab Sunday ambles on in street markets, music shops, dancehalls, the pub, where a copper (Jack Warner) might run into three local crooks trying to fence a load of roller-skates.
In its alternation of the humdrum and the melodramatic the film looks forward to the familiarities of EastEnders, though in its portrayal of working-class routine it looks back as far as Sickert and his brown studies of domestic unease.
In the lead, Withers conveys a poignant sense of trappedness, her face a stiff mask of thwarted desire. The film is showing in the Dark Ealing season at the BFI.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments