South Riding (1938)

Director:

Victor Saville

Writers:

Winifred Holtby (novel)
Ian Dalrymple (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

1 August 1938 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

"Winifred Holtby realised that Local Government is not a dry affair of meetings and memoranda:- but...

Plot Keywords:

Squire | Sanitarium | Headmistress | Estate | Education

Cast

Edna Best	...	Sarah Barton
Ralph Richardson	...	Robert Carne
Edmund Gwenn	...	Alfred Huggins
Ann Todd	...	Madge Carne
Marie Lohr	...	Mrs. Beddows
Milton Rosmer	...	Alderman Snaith
John Clements	...	Joe Astell
Edward Lexy	...	Mr. Holly
Joan Ellum	...	Lydia Holly
Glynis Johns	...	Midge Carne
Josephine Wilson	...	Mrs. Holly
Gus McNaughton	...	Tadman
Herbert Lomas	...	Castle
Peggy Novak	...	Bessie Warbuckle
Lewis Casson	...	Lord Sedgmire

Runtime:

85 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Approved | USA:Passed (National Board of Review) | Finland:S | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Denham Studios, Denham, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company:

London Film Productions

Trivia:

Glynis Johns' movie debut.

Movie Connections:

Version of "South Riding" (1974)

Yorkshire In The Thirties

After watching South Riding, researching Winifred Holtby and learning of her life was even more fascinating than this film version of her novel. She can best be compared in America to Margaret Mitchell whose one epic work assured her reputation.

South Riding is the name of the town in the rural area of Yorkshire where Holtby grew up and from where she drew her characters for this novel. She'd been a newspaper writer for years and during the Twenties developed kidney disease. Knowing she had a limited amount of time left on earth, she wrote this novel as a portrait of the area of the United Kingdom she knew and loved and the people of it.

The lead character in South Riding is Ralph Richardson an aristocrat whose dwindling fortune is used to support daughter Glynis Johns in a posh girl's school and to keep her mentally unstable mother Ann Todd in the best sanitarium pound sterling can buy. Richardson is a man who is aware of his civic responsibility and serves on the area County Council. After initially opposing Edna Best's appointment as schoolteacher, he and Best find out they have a lot more in common than originally supposed.

Another councilor is John Clements who is a socialist and an ill man constantly coughing. That was an aspect of the character not drawn out by the film, I suspect the novel has a lot more to say about it. He's deeply concerned with slum clearance and has devoted himself to ridding South Riding of a row of shacks where the poor live.

Another councilor Milton Rosmer sees a quick shilling or two to be made in making sure he owns the land the houses are to be built on. Rosmer enlists Edmund Gwenn another councilor with a lovely skeleton in his closet in his scheme and they join Clements as 'reform' advocates for slum clearance.

I didn't read about Winnifred Holtby ever visiting America, but what I was watching reminded a whole lot of Chicago rather than Yorkshire.

Alexander Korda produced South Riding and director Victor Saville got great performances out of his whole cast, especially from Ralph Richardson. South Riding was later a television series for the BBC during the Seventies and I can see aspects of it easily adapting to a prime time soap opera type show.

I think Winnifred Holtby who died in 1935, three years before South Riding came to the screen would have been very proud of what Alexander Korda and Victor Saville were able to accomplish with her labor of love. She sounds like a great subject for a film herself.