Bitter Harvest (1963 film)

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Bitter Harvest
Bitter Harvest FilmPoster.jpeg
DVD Cover
Directed by Peter Graham Scott
Written by Ted Willis
Based on 20,000 Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton
Produced by
Starring
Cinematography Ernest Steward
Edited by Russell Lloyd
Music by Laurie Johnson
Production
company
Distributed by J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors
Continental Distributing
Release date
  • 1963 (1963)
Running time
96 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£200,000 [1] or £250,000 [2]

Bitter Harvest is a 1963 British kitchen sink drama film directed by Peter Graham Scott and starring Janet Munro and John Stride. [3] It was written by Ted Willis based on The Siege of Pleasure, the 1932 second volume in the trilogy 20,000 Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton. [4]

Contents

Plot

Jennie Jones is a beautiful woman who returns intoxicated to her London apartment late one night and begins to destroy its contents in a rage, throwing her purse, keys and expensive gowns out into the street. Her story is then told in flashback.

As a young girl, Jennie lives in an economically depressed, former mining town in Wales, where she works in her father's shabby general store and dreams of a more glamorous life. The store is doing poorly, and Jennie is horrified to discover that her father wants her to move to Cardiff and live with her elderly aunts as a companion and caregiver. While walking through Cardiff, Jennie and her friend Violet meet two well-off older men, Andy and Rex. The men take the girls to a fashionable bar and club for drinks and dancing, and Jennie gets drunk and passes out in Andy's car.

She wakes up naked in bed in the men's apartment in London, having lost her virginity while drunk, and estranged herself from her father by staying out all night. She goes to meet Andy at a London pub, but when he fails to show, she is befriended by the kindly barman, Bob Williams, to the chagrin of the barmaid Ella who is attracted to Bob.

Not wanting to return to her home, Jennie says to Bob that she is pregnant and accepts his offer of help. Bob moves her into his flat and supports them both on his wages, planning to marry her soon. However, Jennie quickly becomes bored, and accepts an invitation from Bob's actor neighbour to attend a party in honour of a well-known producer, Karl Denny. Jennie tells Bob she is attending the party to get work as a model or actress, and convinces him to give her a large sum of money to buy a proper party dress.

Denny notices Jennie at the party and asks her to see him the following night, ostensibly about an acting role. After the party, a drunken Jennie creates a disturbance when she goes home to Bob's apartment. The next night, when Jennie fails to return from her appointment with Denny, Bob goes to Denny's apartment to find her and they argue, with Jennie revealing that she is not pregnant, does not love Bob and does not want to marry him. Heartbroken, Bob leaves and Jennie becomes Denny's mistress.

The flashback ends and the film returns to the scene shown at the start. The morning after Jennie's drunken rampage, she is found dead amidst the wreckage of her apartment (including a smashed framed photograph of Denny), having overdosed on pills. The police find her address book full of men's numbers, suggesting she had been promiscuous. The ambulance carrying Jennie's body almost collides with Bob and Ella, now a happy couple oblivious to Jennie's tragic fate.

Cast

Production

It started filming in 10 September 1962 under the title Everything I Have after originally being known as Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, with Peter Cotes directing. [5] [6] That same month Patrick Hamilton died. Cotes was an experienced theatre and television director who had worked several times with Ted Willis, author of the script for Bitter Harvest. He had also made a feature The Young and the Guilty with star Janet Munro. Male star John Stride had recently been in Romeo and Juliet at the Old Vic.

There was some location filming in Cardiff followed by work at Hampstead Heath. [7] Two weeks into filming Cotes was fired by producer Julian Wintle saying he was dissatisfied with the Hamstead Heath footage. Cotes told Wintle "you cannot do this, it will ruin me in films." He was nonetheless let go, paid his fee of £4,000. [1] [8]

According to Cotes, "It was not a happy experience in the preliminary stages, and as a film was poorly adapted from Hamilton’s fine novel. It was eventually made without me." [9] He added, the film "had script trouble and was nearly abandoned before it was scheduled to begin" and "was a bitter experience from every angle." [10]

Reception

According to Peter Cotes "Neither was it, when completed, the most viable film. It was ‘death’ at the box office. In fact, an ‘artistic’ film, faithful to the original story (which is how I set out to direct it before I was stopped), could not have taken less at the box office — and would most likely have made more." [9] Cotes' lawyer in the lawsuit for the film (see below) claims it lost £140,000. [1]

Critical

Variety said: "Another chance for Janet Munro to destroy her 'Disney image' in a well-made but conventional goodtime-girl drama." [11]

The Guardian said the film "would appear to be a further attempt to Italianize the British film industry. The story certainly seems to owe a lot to Fellini", but praised the acting. [12]

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 3/5 stars, saying that it: "lacks the bite of contemporary examples of social realism, but it’s solidly made." [13]

Leslie Halliwell said: "Naive sixties version of the road to ruin, quite well done if you like that kind of thing." [14]

Lawsuit

In 1966 Peter Cotes sued Independent Artists for damages over his sacking, claiming he was wrongly fired and his reputation as a feature director had been ruined. [15] [1] [16] The hearing went for nine days and involved the judge watching the rushes. [17] Julian Wintle was accused of changing the script so that Munro's character died in order to cash in on the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Pat Marlowe; Wintle denied this, saying it was a change made by the new director. [18] Cotes lost his claim and had to pay costs, estimated at £10,000. The judge, Mr Justice McKenna, ruled that Cotes had not breached a term of his contract, but the producers sincerely believed his version of the film would fail. The judge added "I cannot imagine a good film being made of this script by Mr Cotes or anybody else. I think Mr Cotes' film would have been more pleasing to the public than the finished film." Cotes declared he had won a "moral victory". [19]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "A judge takes court to cinema". Western Daily Press. 3 October 1968. p. 2.
  2. ↑ "Disaster for film man". Daily Mirror. 8 March 1966. p. 4.
  3. ↑ "Bitter Harvest". British Film Institute Collections Search. Archived from the original on 10 November 2023. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  4. ↑ Bitter Harvest Monthly Film Bulletin . London Vol. 30, Iss. 348, (Jan 1, 1963): 157.
  5. ↑ "Production report". Variety. October 1962.
  6. ↑ "International soundtrack". Variety. 26 September 1962. p. 15.
  7. ↑ "They brought their own trees to the park". Bucks Free Press. 14 September 1962. p. 4.
  8. ↑ "Film director's big chance 'ended'". The Daily Telegraph. 8 March 1966. p. 23.
  9. 1 2 Cotes, Peter (1993). Thinking aloud : fragments of autobiography. p. 21.
  10. ↑ Cotes p 90
  11. ↑ "Bitter Harvest". Variety . 233 (4): 7. 18 December 1963.
  12. ↑ A newcomer to films makes his mark The Guardian 4 Nov 1963: 4.
  13. ↑ Radio Times Guide to Films (18th ed.). London: Immediate Media Company. 2017. p. 99. ISBN   9780992936440.
  14. ↑ Halliwell, Leslie (1989). Halliwell's Film Guide (7th ed.). London: Paladin. p. 110. ISBN   0-586-08894-6.
  15. ↑ "Film men deny 'cruel' sacking". Daily Mirror. 9 March 1966. p. 17.
  16. ↑ "Film firm". Evening Standard. 8 March 1966. p. 13.
  17. ↑ "Soho film show for judge". Daily Mirror. 5 October 1968. p. 13.
  18. ↑ "Film script cashed in on Marilyn Monroe's suicide". Western Daily Press. 10 October 1968. p. 3.
  19. ↑ "Film director loses claim". Daily Mirror. 27 November 1968. p. 27.
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