South Riding (1938) User Reviews

Overly compressed story saved by sterling cast

[TimesSquareAngel · 6/10 · 14 April 2008]

Basically this is a small town soap opera about the drama in the lives of various members of the town council of a small Yorkshire town. Much of this drama is engineered by the hiring of Sarah Burton, an idealistic new head schoolmistress from a working class background.

Superb acting by Ralph Richardson and Edna Best with strong supporting turns by John Clements and Edmund Gwenn. An adolescent Glynis Johns already has that distinctive voice as Ralph Richardson's high-strung young daughter. Wait for a gorgeous young Ann Todd as Sir Ralph's unstable wife in a flashback sequence. Everyone is quite young here and in good form.

The nuanced characterizations help flesh out a story that ends up being formulaic because a long novel has been compressed into a 84 minute programmer. Because of the compression, characters go from despising each other to being in love in a matter of minutes. Lots of plot lines are tied up and passed by in a pat way. Still quite enjoyable anyway though it could have been more with better writing and direction. I am quite interested in the 1974 miniseries with Dorothy Tutin - the extra time would give the characters more depth and more convincing development.

It may not be an ideal adaptation of the book, but it is a decent film in its own right

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 9 February 2014]

As an adaptation of a wonderful book(for me on first reading three years ago it was a perfect remedy when recovering from major back surgery), it is far from ideal, and the 2011 BBC adaptation- not yet seen the 1974 series- apart from the rushed final episode did do a better job telling the story. However any adaptation of the book does deserve to be judged fairly in its own way, and on its own terms this film is decent. It definitely could have had a longer length, as a result of being too short some of the situations and storytelling felt on the jumpy and hastily-told side, so some parts weren't as cohesive as they could have been, and the character of Joe Astell was under-characterised and like a caricature. And while the first half is sumptuous and gritty too much of the latter half is caked in over-sentimentality, and has a slightly late 30s melodrama feel, the themes of the book are all there but not fully expanded. However, the film does look lovely, lovingly shot and with production values true to period, and the Yorkshire sights and sounds are deftly realised. Richard Adinsell's score is as sweeping and hauntingly beautiful as is characteristic of the composer, and the script is literate with some evidence of Winifred Holtby's prose. Victor Ssville directs admirably, and the performances are very good. Ralph Richardson's performance in particular is sensitive and nuanced. Ann Todd touches the soul even as a woman going/gone to madness, Glynis Johns is a charmer and Edna Best is similarly sympathetic. Edmund Gwenn doesn't have a lot to do but is not disappointing either and John Clements does what he can with how Astell is written, giving him elements of sleazy charm. Overall, a decent film on its own but will leave "purists"(sorry, I'll try and think of a better word that sounds less scornful) left wanting. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Interesting Insight Into Local Government In The Thirties

[malcolmgsw · 7/10 · 13 March 2010]

I thought that i would review this film as both the previous reviews come from the States.The first point i would make is that South Riding is that there is no such area as South Riding.East West and North yes,but South no.The most interesting aspect of the film for me was its insight into Local Government of that era.My late father was a councillor in London in the 50s and 60s and was fully aware of and fought against the corruption within local government as highlighted in this film.The backhanders and insider dealing were rampant.The Government finally had to act after the Poulson affair.To me the most interesting aspect of the film is the ambiguity in the characters.Richardson is clearly a Conservative with a capital C.Clements is clearly a Socialist.However in the end both act as if they belonged to the opposite party.I have not seen this film for well over 20years and i have to say i was surprised at just how good it was.I could not believe my eyes when is aw at the end that Richardsons daughter was played by none other than a very young Glynis Johns.

Very Powerful and Worthy Retelling of Holtby's Novel

[kidboots · 9/10 · 13 February 2019]

Born into a prosperous farming family Winifred Holtby was able to earn a good living writing for journals, newspapers, books and magazines (including "Time and Tide"). Being diagnosed with Bright's Disease in 1931 she put all her energy into the book that would bring her her greatest fame "South Riding", a sprawling book about the machinations of a local council, a subject that Winifred had first hand knowledge of, her family being involved in local village affairs.

Ralph Richardson and Edna Best make a grand team even though both were seen as British cinema stalwarts. Best had n't been seen since "The Man Who Knew Too Much" a couple of years previously and Richardson was better known for his oddball character roles ("Things to Come") - this was their best feature to date.

As the sweeping titles show the panoramic vista, the characters are introduced stating the council views - grand old Marie Lohr as Alderman Beddows standing for good administration, Ralph Richardson as Councillor Carnes, wanting people to stand on their own two feet, John Clements as the reformer and Edna Best as the new headmistress, feeling children are the future.

Councillor Carne is resigning his place on the council. He is broke and is relying on the sale of his best hunter Trixie to not only send his increasingly unruly daughter to the best school in the county but also to pay the outstanding debt to keep his wife in the mental health facility that she has been consigned to. A hunting accident forces him to send Midge to the local county school where he meets the new headmistress Sarah Burton. Sarah has radical ideas - she sees in Lydia Holly, a girl from "the shacks" area, someone who can do great things if only she has the opportunity and fights to give her a boarding scholarship. She also encourages Lydia to befriend the disruptive Midge, convincing the girl that even though poor she is rich in friendships, family and love while Midge has none of those. It would have been nice to see the friendship develop but after a scene shows them embracing both drop out of the movie.

Meanwhile there is skullduggery afoot - holier than thou Councillor Huggins (Edmund Gwen in another super performance) is being blackmailed by local girl Bessie to the tune of 500 pounds - if he doesn't come across, she'll have to reveal him as the father of her child. So he does a deal with another corrupt councillor Snaith, to buy up cheap land which can then be sold at a profit when it is needed to build a new housing estate for "the shack" people who are now living in old trams and buses. Caught up innocently in the proceedings is the reformer who when he realises what is happening resigns - he also has feelings for Sarah but she is drawn to Carne.

Richardson has his big scene at the end as he denounces both Snaith and Huggin's shifty dealings (Sarah overhears both Bessie and Huggins in the local shop, puts two and two together and is able to bring her evidence to a relieved Carne). Just before the denoument, there is a poignant scene where Sarah heads off Carne in a potential suicide attempt, both Richardson and Best play with great poignancy.

Fourteen year old Glynnis Johns is terrific in her debut role as the hysterical Midge. She dominated all her scenes.

Very Recommended.

Earthquake hits Rudston: author spinning in her grave

[DrMMGilchrist · 3/10 · 10 April 2011]

This adaptation of Winifred Holtby's Holderness-set novel opens with a dedication to the author, who had died tragically young: "To her memory, this pictorial impression of her book is respectfully and gratefully dedicated". Well, the scriptwriters' idea of respect and gratitude is not mine. Winifred was probably spinning like a peerie in her grave, and in danger of toppling the Rudston monolith!

If the 2011 BBC adaptation was over-condensed at 3 hours, this 85 minute film is a caricature. It's sentimental and politically neutered: the book is neither. This is an alternative-universe 'South Riding', primarily for hard-core Sarah/Robert shippers. *Spoilers ahoy, comparing the novel and TV versions.*

The actors work hard, despite the inadequate script. Edna Best is engaging enough, if too beautiful, as Sarah. Marie Lohr, as Emma Beddows, is middle-aged and glamorous, not elderly and matriarchal. Robert Carne (Ralph Richardson) has lost his moroseness and bulky, Mussolini-esque looks to become a more conventional 'romantic hero'. The displaced Clydeside Red, Joe Astell (John Clements), is now English, fairly posh, and surprisingly extrovert – even flirtatious – in comparison with his adorably earnest and awkward book incarnation. However, he is canonically both "pretty" (the otherwise faithful 1974 adaptation failed abysmally on this, casting-wise!) and consumptive, with a hacking cough (omitted in the 2011 version). He also has some witty lines. Although his heroic background (organising Black South African miners – based on Winifred's friend William Ballinger (1894-1974)) is ignored, he steals the film for any viewer with a hurt/comfort complex.

Sarah's shift of affections appears extremely abrupt. One scene, she and Joe are having a fun day out, with lots of flirting and humour; then, all it takes is the birth of the calf on her way home, and eyes meeting under a hideous chocolate-box portrait of Mrs Carne, for her to fixate on the squire. Tsk! Well, if *she* doesn't want Joe, I can think of worse ways to spend an evening than applying his chest-rub... (Ahem! 'Anderby Wold' joke!)

Nuance is sacrificed to melodrama in Muriel's storyline. The deliberate nods to 'Jane Eyre', handled with irony in the book, are played straight here. Ann Todd (renamed Madge, instead of Muriel) is a high camp cliché: riding a horse upstairs, and dramatically dying (yes, really!) at an opportune moment psychically linked to Robert. In the flashbacks, her costumes and hairstyles are extremely odd, considering they represent styles of the recent past. And I'm sure that even in an expensive psychiatric institution, marabou-trimmed satin nightwear was considered impractical for patients…

The Holly family storyline is handled superficially. The cause of Annie's death is puzzling: she does not die in childbirth, as in the book; she appears to have a heart problem (borrowed from Robert, who is healthy in this adaptation?); but she dies just before a surgeon can operate (is this derived from Gertie, or has Annie has replaced Lily Sawdon as a cancer sufferer?). Lydia is underwritten and obsequious, far more attention being paid to Midge (Glynis Johns), whose maliciousness is reduced. Essentially, Lydia's role here is to demonstrate Sarah's benevolence, not as a character in her own right. Incidentally, the Hollys' home has an upstairs in this adaptation, being a double-decker bus or tram, not a railway carriage.

There are no real villains in the novel, but in the film, moralising censorship casts its shadow. Snaith is presented as an out-and-out crook, who has to be punished: in the book, he is a more ambiguous figure, damaged by childhood sexual abuse, working for his own advantage and yet *also* a genuine benefactor. Huggins appears to be a widower, so his liaison with Bessie can be treated more comically (although the blackmail and corruption are serious). Sarah and Robert's Manchester tryst is interrupted, not by an attack of angina, but by news about Muriel/Madge, before they get to the bedroom. Sarah later saves him from suicide by shotgun at the moment his wife keels over in Harrogate, thus removing all shadows of adultery and obstacles to the pairing. Part of the point in the novel is that he embodies the doomed, feudal past, so his survival is a bad plot-change.

The ending is literally flag-waving, saccharine National Government propaganda. Snaith's corrupt land deals are exposed, thanks to Sarah overhearing Bessie and Huggins. Robert steps in to save Joe's planned housing scheme and his career. Never mind 'Tullochgorum''s "Let Whig and Tory a' agree" – here Socialists, Liberals, High Tories et al. unite to sing 'Land of Hope and Glory' for the coronation. Midge and Lydia become best friends. Sarah sits between Robert and Joe. Given book-Sarah's racy past, I wouldn't put a ménage-à-trois past her, but it's implied here that she and Robert will pair off, while the far more adorable Joe remains her platonic best friend. He needed rescuing (politically) by Robert, therefore cannot be 'romantic hero' material. This nonsense reflects a popular stereotype of disabled or chronically ill characters as desexualised: men, especially, are portrayed as emasculated by illness, because it makes them fragile, vulnerable and dependent – stereotypically 'feminine' or 'childlike' qualities. By contrast, the novel's ending at the Silver Jubilee is bittersweet with mingled loss and triumph, hope and fear, with hints that Sarah may finally have come to her senses romantically, as she cherishes a heartbreaking letter in her handbag… (Usually, she methodically organises her mail into baskets, so this is suspicious!)

All told, the film is disappointing and dishonest. The Cinegram magazine claims that "Readers of the book will recall the story, which, although changed in places – there is a happy ending, for example – still conveys the burning sincerity of its author… This intense realism will come as a refreshing tonic to audiences over the world". No: this is a 'South Riding' with teeth drawn and claws blunted. As a "respectful" memorial to the author, a feminist and socialist, it is insulting.

Yorkshire In The Thirties

[bkoganbing · 9/10 · 15 February 2009]

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.