During the Depression in England, a young lady from Lancashire decides to be a rich bookmaker's mistress, just to help the rest of her unemployed family.During the Depression in England, a young lady from Lancashire decides to be a rich bookmaker's mistress, just to help the rest of her unemployed family.During the Depression in England, a young lady from Lancashire decides to be a rich bookmaker's mistress, just to help the rest of her unemployed family.
- Awards
- 1 nomination
Sebastian Cabot
- Man in Crowd at Betting Payout
- (uncredited)
Terry Conlin
- Ted Munter
- (uncredited)
A. Bromley Davenport
- Pawnbroker
- (uncredited)
Peter Gawthorne
- Police Supt
- (uncredited)
Muriel George
- Landlady
- (uncredited)
Philip Godfrey
- Charlie - Sam Grundy's Assistant
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThere was considerable difficulty getting the film released in the US. The Production Code Administration found "insufficient compensating moral values for illicit sex", and objected to the profanity and use of vulgar expressions, and even favourable reviews in the Irish Catholic press failed to sway their opinion. In 1945, Anglo-American agreed to record additional dialogue suggesting that Sally and Grundy were married, cut eighteen pages of the script and the scene where Mrs Hardcastle bathes her husband.
- GoofsUnlike many of the other characters, Deborah Kerr does not have a Lancashire accent.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Empire of the Censors (1995)
Featured review
This is a gloomy chronicle of a family in a perpetual poverty cycle, where the older folks remember better times, but things get steadily worse as the years roll on. The townsfolk are mean and ragged, their houses are dark and shabby, and as employment disappears, and then their dole gets cut and eliminated, all their illusions about decency and respectibility are shattered.
A hero of sorts shows up, a clean cut, soft-spoken Labour agitator. He gives street corner sermons of socialism and wins the girl's heart before a martyr's fade-out. The one bright spot is a short holiday to Blackpool, before we come to a crisis of daughter's morals. It's like a leftist "Hindle Wakes."
This is the sort of angst-choked melodrama that lead to the "Kitchen Sink" dramas of the next two decades. Bathetic, unhappy stories of lower class life can always be palmed off as "realistic", and if you can get in some censorship controversy, it's a success!
It seems to me that this film, about mass unemployment, would seem ill-timed when the nation at war was so worker starved that women were being drafted, but it is likely intended to raise support for the Beveridge plan, as a reminder of what might come again, post-war, if the government doesn't step in.
- WesternOne1
- Oct 9, 2019
- Permalink
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- De stängda portarna
- Filming locations
- Blackpool, Lancashire, England, UK(Pleasure Beach/illuminated trams)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 38 minutes
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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