5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
wonderful...but not the film described, May 30, 2007
This review is from: South Riding [VHS] (VHS Tape)
I purchased a venerable old VHS copy of this film based on my love of British cinema and the reader's comments above.
Surprise, surprise. "South Riding" is indeed wonderful, but the plot has nothing to do with what the other reviewer described. There is no dog, no beleaguered dog owner, no cruel magistrate and no crusading newspaperman. Ralph Richardson plays a down-on-his-luck member of the gentry who has fallen on hard times due to the prolonged confinement of his mentally disturbed wife at an expensive sanitarium. The bad guy is a local developer who is trying to fraudulently manipulate the town council into gaining development rights on a housing project. Edmund Gwenn makes an appearance as a hypocritical preacher and victim of a blackmail plot. And the very young Glynis Johns plays Richardson's pampered daughter, who must suffer the initial indignity of attending a public high school but who eventually succeeds in growing up. Edna Best is the spunky teacher who supplies Sir Ralph's love interest and the mentoring of her mostly disadvantaged charges.
The movie is a nearly perfect slice of small-town British life, with lovely depictions of the Yorkshire countryside and fox hunts and agricultural fairs that occupy the calendar. It also attempts to say something about local politics, and it does this in an effective way (it's instructive to encounter unscrupulous developers encroaching on the countryside all the way back in 1938.)
Acting is uniformly superb (Gwenn is especially memorable), and this film's only fault is that it's unlikely to ever wind up on digital. Too bad, considering it's Korda and a valuable piece of interwar British film history.
Now if I could only find the film about the unlicensed dog....
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful British film from 1938, December 28, 2003
This review is from: South Riding [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Ralph Richardson shines in this archetypal interwar British drama, which focusses on life in rural South Riding, a hamlet where struggling newsman Richardson winds up, and where he winds up making trouble for the local gentry. The plot revolves around the local political boss's obstinate feud with a poor local woman whose dog, Richardson discovers, has been impounded because she refuses to buy a license, and who is scheduled to be put down as a result. When the woman comes to plead her case with the self-absorbed, pompous MP, he is in the midst of a particularly long-winded interview with the new reporter (Richardson) and meets her frantic pleas with astonishing callousness. Richardson, spurred on by his sense of fair play, slams the MP, and thus the fight is on. A delightful film, defining with crystalline precision the manners and mores of Great Britain at the time, and also packed with fine, generous characterizations and understated performances. Recommended! (Directed by Victor Saville.)
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