This Is My Street

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This Is My Street
British quad poster by Tom Chantrell
Directed bySidney Hayers
Screenplay byBill MacIlwraith
Based onnovel This Is My Street by Nan Maynard
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyAlan Hume
Edited byRoger Cherrill
Music byEric Rogers
Production
company
Peter Rogers Productions (as Adder Productions)
Distributed byWarner-Pathé Distributors (UK)
Release date
15 January 1964 (London)(UK)
Running time
94 min
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

This Is My Street is a 1964 British black and white kitchen sink drama film directed by Sidney Hayers and starring Ian Hendry,[1]June Ritchie, Avice Landone, John Hurt and Meredith Edwards.[2] The screenplay is by Bill MacIlwraith based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Nan Maynard.

It concerns a bored housewife living in a run-down inner city London house who begins an affair with her mother's lodger, who lives next door.[3]

Plot

On Jubilee Place, a working class area of terraced housing in Battersea, housewife Marge Graham lives a life of drudgery with her unambitious husband Sid and her small daughter, Cindy.

Lodging next door with Marge's mother Lily is Harry, a flashy salesman and nightclub owner who repeatedly attempts to seduce her. In the next house live Kitty and Steve, with their good-time girl daughter Maureen. Maureen works in a cafe with young Charlie, and is having an affair with a rich dentist, Mark. Marge works in a department store selling handbags where manager, Mr Fingus, makes continual advances on her.

One day Cindy goes missing and Harry helps with the search. Finding Cindy in a scrapyard, Marge realises Harry is much more paternal than Sid and she agrees to go for a drink and has a nice afternoon. Meanwhile, Maureen sets her eyes on another rich man, Mr Ransom, while out in a club with Mark.

Marge begins an affair with Harry and they meet regularly at a mews owned by Joe. After an argument at Harry's club, Maureen and Mark are caught in a car crash: Mark is killed and Maureen badly injured, scarring her face. She accepts the offer of a date with Charlie, whose offers had previously received short shrift.

Harry eventually tires of Marge when he meets her younger, educated sister Jinny, who has returned from college. It is clear that he is a man for whom the chase is more interesting than the catch, in this case even more so because Jinny has a boyfriend, hospital doctor Paul; the two men, with their differing class backgrounds, show mutual resentment of each other, with Paul denigrating Harry as a barrow boy. Marge is still infatuated with Harry and jealous of Jinny, and suggests eloping and leaving Cindy behind. When she discovers Harry plans to marry her sister she attempts to kill herself by putting her head in the gas oven. She is saved by a rain shower which leads her mother to bring in the washing, close enough to the house that she smells the gas. She has left a suicide note exposing her affair with Harry, but her mother's chance intervention means an ambulance rushes her to hospital. Lily evicts Harry, and Jinny breaks it off with him. Lily suggests to Sid that he finds another job in "a nice clean area".

Marge recovers and Jinny marries Paul. Harry is left alone, with the final scene showing Marge rejecting his renewed advances before going home to her old street and what appears to be a happier household.

Cast

Critical reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This highly moral tale bears all the hallmarks of a serial from one of the not-so-glossy women's weeklies. Weak on characterisation and over-loaded with sub-plot, it forms a very flimsy base for a screenplay. ... The central situation, of an ill-suited young couple tied together by their own indiscretion, could have been interesting, and June Ritchie and Mike Pratt are quite capable of giving the characters depth. But the effect of their few nicely felt scenes together is dissipated in irrelevant episodes at the shop, and interest is further weakened by continual switches to the absurd activities of a sluttish neighbour who has seduced the local dentist. ... Ian Hendry repeats his Live Now, Pay Later [1962] performance with commendable conviction in view of the part's shaky motivation."[4]

The Radio Times called it "a well-written, nicely shot squalor fest."[5]

Allmovie called it an "unsavory British programmer."[6]

Britmovie noted a "Sixties’ backstreets bedroom drama adapted from Nan Maynard's rather middling novel. Director Sidney Hayers fashions an interesting drama amid the sordid squalor of London and creates a number of genuinely sympathetic characters. Ian Hendry giving a performance of compelling magnetic brilliance as the jack-the-lad charmer capable of turning from seducer to scoundrel and back again in the blink of an eye."[7]

TV Guide wrote, "The even direction smooths over the ugly plot of a mean little womanizer...Hendry and Ritchie exude interesting chemistry together, and the movie spins right along while they are on the screen."[8]

Leslie Halliwell described it as an “unremarkable low-life drama”.[9]

References

  1. ^ "This Is My Street". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 26 February 2024.
  2. ^ "This Is My Street". 3 September 1964 – via IMDb.
  3. ^ "This Is My Street (1963)". Archived from the original on 15 January 2009.
  4. ^ "This Is My Street". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 31 (360): 43. 1 January 1964 – via ProQuest.
  5. ^ "This Is My Street - Film from RadioTimes".
  6. ^ "This Is My Street (1964) - Sidney Hayers - Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related - AllMovie".
  7. ^ "This Is My Street - Britmovie - Home of British Films".
  8. ^ "This Is My Street".
  9. ^ Halliwell, Leslie. (1989). Halliwell's film guide (7th ed.). London: Paladin. ISBN 0-586-08894-6. OCLC 85905547.

External links

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