A. J. Cronin is best known for his Dr Finlay books but is also the author of many social reality books such as How Green was my Valley and this, The Stars Look Down.
All through the film we are aware of the dangers of mining too near a water source. The older miners know about it, our hero's father has even seen plans of the pit, but the owner, Mr Barrass, is adamant that he wouldn't flood his own pit and the union are taken in by this.
As a result the miners go on unnoficial strike for three months and are eventually driven back to work by starvation. Not before Davey Fenwick (our hero)'s father is jailed for his involvement in ransacking a butcher who refuses a meat bone to a miner who's wife has pneumonia. During this ransack our villain, Joe Gowland, hides and helps himself to the contents of the butcher's till, absconding on the next train out of town.
Davey is a bright lad and is working hard towards a scholarship for university which he achieves and moves in the big city to study for his degree. Here he meets up again with Joe who introduces him to Jenny, a rather dim gold-digger whom Joe is trying to unload as he has his ambitious eyes on the wife of a wealthy pit owner (a brief cameo from the excellent Cecil Parker),
Eventually Joe sneaks away from the digs where he has met Jenny while staying with her mother and Jenny decides to get her claws into Davey instead. This is disasterous for our hero how is eventually persuades to ditch his studies and become a schoolmaster. This goes wrong as his employer thinks his teaching methods too unorthodox and sacks him. Davey has to fall back on giving the son of Mr Barrass the pit owner lessons at 10s a week. Not enough for Jenny who eventually hooks up with Joe again.
At the climax of the film the worst comes to worst and the pit is flooded, trapping Davey's father and five others, including Joe's father, behind half a mile of roof collapse. Davey and other miners dig vigorously to try to get them out, helped by Mr Barrass who obviously knows the plans of the old workings despite having denied their existence. The dig proves too hard and takes too long to the trpped men die.
At that stage the film comes to a sad end but there needs to be too levels of context borne in mind. Firstly the censorship laws governing film at the time mean that certain aspects of the story are not filmed, or at least don't appear in the final cut.
One scene in the film that doesn't have the weight it has in the book shows Mr Barrass looking at Joe's contract for coking coal and saying "I don't lie that penalty clause". Joe plays it down. In the event we don't see that the penalty clause is invoked as a result of the tragedy causing the Barrass family to fail to fulfill the contract. Joe is then able to buy the pit at a knockdown price from the bankrupted owners and ends up running the pit. Davey, with no prospects, ends up back working down the pit.
What the film also doesn't show is that Joe gets Jenny pregnant and makes her have an abortion (illegal at the time). Davey eventually finds her in hospital and is at her side when she dies.
This film was made just five years before the 1945 Labour Government nationalised the coal industry so the Joe Gowlans of this world didn' have long to prosper. Having said that he would probably have made a fortune out of the war effort and ended up in a cosy directorship somewhere. Cronin's point is heavily made in the book but in the film we don't see Joe any longer after Davey has sent him packing for cuckholding him.
All through the film we are aware of the dangers of mining too near a water source. The older miners know about it, our hero's father has even seen plans of the pit, but the owner, Mr Barrass, is adamant that he wouldn't flood his own pit and the union are taken in by this.
As a result the miners go on unnoficial strike for three months and are eventually driven back to work by starvation. Not before Davey Fenwick (our hero)'s father is jailed for his involvement in ransacking a butcher who refuses a meat bone to a miner who's wife has pneumonia. During this ransack our villain, Joe Gowland, hides and helps himself to the contents of the butcher's till, absconding on the next train out of town.
Davey is a bright lad and is working hard towards a scholarship for university which he achieves and moves in the big city to study for his degree. Here he meets up again with Joe who introduces him to Jenny, a rather dim gold-digger whom Joe is trying to unload as he has his ambitious eyes on the wife of a wealthy pit owner (a brief cameo from the excellent Cecil Parker),
Eventually Joe sneaks away from the digs where he has met Jenny while staying with her mother and Jenny decides to get her claws into Davey instead. This is disasterous for our hero how is eventually persuades to ditch his studies and become a schoolmaster. This goes wrong as his employer thinks his teaching methods too unorthodox and sacks him. Davey has to fall back on giving the son of Mr Barrass the pit owner lessons at 10s a week. Not enough for Jenny who eventually hooks up with Joe again.
At the climax of the film the worst comes to worst and the pit is flooded, trapping Davey's father and five others, including Joe's father, behind half a mile of roof collapse. Davey and other miners dig vigorously to try to get them out, helped by Mr Barrass who obviously knows the plans of the old workings despite having denied their existence. The dig proves too hard and takes too long to the trpped men die.
At that stage the film comes to a sad end but there needs to be too levels of context borne in mind. Firstly the censorship laws governing film at the time mean that certain aspects of the story are not filmed, or at least don't appear in the final cut.
One scene in the film that doesn't have the weight it has in the book shows Mr Barrass looking at Joe's contract for coking coal and saying "I don't lie that penalty clause". Joe plays it down. In the event we don't see that the penalty clause is invoked as a result of the tragedy causing the Barrass family to fail to fulfill the contract. Joe is then able to buy the pit at a knockdown price from the bankrupted owners and ends up running the pit. Davey, with no prospects, ends up back working down the pit.
What the film also doesn't show is that Joe gets Jenny pregnant and makes her have an abortion (illegal at the time). Davey eventually finds her in hospital and is at her side when she dies.
This film was made just five years before the 1945 Labour Government nationalised the coal industry so the Joe Gowlans of this world didn' have long to prosper. Having said that he would probably have made a fortune out of the war effort and ended up in a cosy directorship somewhere. Cronin's point is heavily made in the book but in the film we don't see Joe any longer after Davey has sent him packing for cuckholding him.