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Saturday, January 9, 2021

(A.J. Cronin's) HATTER'S CASTLE (1942)

Best known for social-issue tales from British coal country (THE CITADEL/’38; THE STARS LOOK DOWN/’40), here A.J. Cronin serves up ripsnorting melodrama with Gothic trimmings charting the comeuppance of small town hatter James Brodie, a loathsome tyrant on the order of Edward Moulton-Barrett of Wimpole Street.*  A terror to wife, son & daughter (an early lead for Deborah Kerr), he’s an equally bad influence on the town’s businessmen in spite of running his shop (the only hatter in town) into ruinous debt, made worse when modern competition opens next door.  Ignoring medical attention for his cancer stricken wife from new doc James Mason (also in an early lead), goading his boy into trouble at school, bringing his barmaid mistress home to run the ‘castle,’ his rage even responsible for getting Kerr knocked up by opportunistic/two-timing lover Emlyn Williams since she’s too scared of her father to scream for help.  Raging storms, train disasters, bankruptcy, suicide, attempted patricide, a very full plate of sin & sorrow.  Megged without much flair by Lance Comfort, yet with flashes of technical brilliance that stand out in relief next to the rest.  All of it, held in terrified thrall to Robert Newton's large scale work as the tyrannical father.  Never one to be accused of underplaying, Newton could be shockingly effective in the right role (making flesh creep as Bill Sykes in the David Lean version of Dickens’ OLIVER TWIST/’48), here he sometimes loses focus with his villainy too generally applied, but more often reaching a heaven-storming evil thrill.  And it’s nice to see a British film made without stiff upper-lip reserve, even if it occasionally swings for the fences and misses.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *As mentioned, above, THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET/'34. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-barretts-of-wimpole-street-1934.html

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