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Film Description
A vivid evocation of 1950s dockside life, when cops were respected and kids didn't fear strangers. Hayley Mills is outstanding as a streetwise urchin who inadvertently witnesses a murder and desperately strives to shield the young sailor involved. He repays her devotion with an unselfish and terrible act of sacrifice.
Contemporaneous with The 400 Blows, this offers an interesting take on similar themes. Namely the loss of innocence and how a child sees the world. The location shooti... more >
Contemporaneous with The 400 Blows, this offers an interesting take on similar themes. Namely the loss of innocence and how a child sees the world. The location shooting gives a fascinating glimpse of Cardiff in the late fifties, with gloomy tenement blocks, children playing out in the street and newly arrived immigrants from the Caribbean. There's a delightful scene when Ginnie (Hayley Mills) watches a wedding party spilling out of a terraced house on to the street, moving her body to the calypso the revellers are singing. She beams, taking a simple delight.
The relationship between her and the Polish sailor who finds himself drawn into a situation of ambiguity is well developed. She serves to offer the prospect of redemption. The two characters share a night together as friends, the Bucholz character treating her as an equal. Her tomboyishness, her jeans, T-shirt and androgynous features serve to elide any eroticism.
The film is about imagination, how adults and children perceive the world differently and about how growing up means seeing the world in a particular way. Not the way you perhaps want to see things. Its about truth, what we mean by truth.
Serious themes, nonetheless addressed with humour. A delight for fans of British cinema and surely one of the best child performances on film from the then thirteen year old Hayley Mills. < less
