GB
1956
1hr 29mins
Dir: Roy Baker
Starring: John Gregson and Kathleen Ryan
The struggles of a Belfast family after the father loses his job in the shipyards
Based on the 1954 Catherine Cookson novel A Grand Man, this drama is set on location in Belfast and there are two shots of industrial saddle tanks at work in a shipyard. The problem here is that they are very similar shots to those that appeared in the 1949 film Floodtide (qv), which was set in the Glasgow shipyards on the Clyde. The only shipyard in Northern Ireland that had locos was Harland & Wolff and none of them were steam, nor were there many Andrew Barclay locos in Ireland. Therefore, it can be deduced from this, that the shipyards in the film are those on the Clyde, at least where the railways are concerned. Later, there is a scene with a young Richard O’Sullivan running along a railway line and climbing onto a bridge parapet with a railway carriage behind him. It appears that the bridge is a set with gratuitous shots of railway lines thrown in where appropriate.
