Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

VividSimon Simply Perfect

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

clanciai This is an oddity among James Hilton's novels, the closest he got to a social and Dickensian novel with perhaps the only crook he ever produced, and she is more stealthily disguised as such than any villain in Shakespeare or Dickens. This is a psychological drama charting the psyche of a very dangerous woman - she is born rich and powerful and can never do without that as a kind of birthright, and when she is thwarted she is destroyed. Until she is thwarted she destroys all her men including her children.This is a thriller in disguise. James Hilton was the most gentlemanly author in England's 20'th century together with John Galsworthy, and also this Bleak House drama is told very suavely with a gentleman's kind politeness all the way. You have to love Olivia Channing as much as John Mills does, until he has to face the facts when almost everything is too late.To see this novel realized on screen I experienced as a miracle. I knew it existed and searched for it for years, and suddenly it was there - with even James Hilton himself as speaker, with his gentle and perfectly clear Cambridge diction. I always enjoyed James Hilton almost more than any other English author of that century for his always musical language, which even that is fully realized in the film.A few years later Edward Dmytryk, exiled from Hollywood, made his masterpiece "Give Us This Day" about Italian immigrant workers in New York 1929 completely filmed in London (with New York recreated in studios), another important milestone of social realism (see my review). This is less dramatic and pathetic and tells a less upsetting story but is instead more convincing. Trevor Howard had just made his "Brief Encounter" perfect gentleman of a doctor, while he here is hard on the bottle from the beginning to end, although John Mills after twenty years only has to carry him home from the pub twice a week.Martha Scott finally is perfect as Olivia, beautiful, charming and mysterious, giving from the beginning quite a good impression of herself as a beauty of mysteries that could be dangerous not only for your peace of mind.

Richard Chatten Produced and directed by two of the Hollywood Ten, with a score by Brecht's regular collaborator Hanns Eisler, one might have expected something juicier, but 'So Well Remembered' lives up to its rather twee title by serving up soap opera rather than agit-prop. Nevertheless, it's one of a number of politically engaged films at that time to reflect the new broom sweeping British politics during the premiership of Clement Attlee.Based on a 1945 novel by James Hilton (who also narrates), it compares interestingly with the Boulting Brothers' adaptation of Howard Spring's 'Fame is the Spur', released a couple of months later, in which as Hamer Shawcross, Michael Redgrave as the film progresses is made up more and more to resemble Ramsey MacDonald as he ditches his early revolutionary principles to rise to the top. George Boswell (played John Mills) by comparison, despite pressure from his self-centred, patrician wife, remains true to his youthful idealism, resigns from his parliamentary seat and is content to settle for becoming Mayor of the fictional Lancashire mill town of Browdley (actually shot in Macclesfield).The film's cynicism about the compromises required to get on in Westminster are sadly as relevant today as ever; as is attested to by the public support Tony Blair's New Labour received from lifelong Tory voter John Mills in the 2001 General Election.

cleftref The film was the big cinematic claim to fame of my home town of Macclesfield, Cheshire, England where the exteriors were shot.It portrays the often grim reality of life in a northern mill town when poverty and disease tool a grim toll and a Doctor (played by Trevor Howard) could be a really vital link between life and death contrasted with the ambitious figure of Mills as the would be Mayor. The film starts with him as Mayor looking back on his life, so a lot of it is therefore a flash back.I won't spoil the story. The acting shows the young and developing talents of both Mills and Howard before they were the legends they were to become.Following its rediscovery it has been released on video. I don't think it has yet been released on DVD.

mrpentax One man's quest to change the environment of the slum he grew up in, against all odds. Unthinkably, the woman he used to love becomes an almost insurmountable obstacle. A great film with plenty of great characters carefully and skillfully intertwined to tell a powerful story. Not so predictable you'll be bored, and great settings in spite of being shot in B&W. Try it. You'll like it.