Innocent Sinners | |
---|---|
Directed by | Philip Leacock |
Screenplay by | Neil Paterson Rumer Godden |
Based on | novel An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden |
Produced by | Hugh Stewart |
Starring | Flora Robson David Kossoff Susan Beaumont |
Cinematography | Harry Waxman |
Edited by | John D. Guthridge |
Music by | Philip Green |
Production company | |
Distributed by | J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors (UK) |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 95 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Innocent Sinners is a 1958 British black and white film directed by Philip Leacock and starring Flora Robson, David Kossoff and Barbara Mullen. [1]
It was based on the 1955 novel An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden. [2]
Olivia Chesney is too ill to leave her home in a post-war London square, but waves out of her window to various neighbours. These include Lovejoy, who is a neglected young girl who finds solace in the secret garden which she creates on a bomb site. Lovejoy buys grass seed using borrowed money, and steals a net from a baby's pram to use to protect the seed growing. She also steals money from the candle box in the church in order to buy a garden fork.
Lovejoy is being looked after by the Vincents. Mr Vincent is the waiter in his own posh restaurant and is very kind to Lovejoy. Her mother is an actress away on tour, and seems to have a dubious lifestyle when she visits Lovejoy; she has "male callers" such as Colonel Baldcock who Lovejoy is asked to address as "Uncle Francis". Mr Vincent is unhappy with her lifestyle and asks her to leave.
A gang of young boys destroy Lovejoy's garden. One boy, Tip, returns her garden fork to her and suggests a better site: a bombed out church. They become friends. He makes her pay "penance" for stealing money from the church.
Mr Vincent buys two special plates to serve dessert on, but his wife chastises him, as they have bills to pay.
Meanwhile a wealthy couple have plans for the bombed church. The woman gives Lovejoy a shilling in the church and is impressed when she puts it straight into the candle box as part of her penance. The couple go to Vincent's restaurant to eat. They give Lovejoy a ride in their car and give her a miniature rose to plant in her garden.
An old man gives Lovejoy some seedlings as it is too late to plant seeds. Tip steals earth from the local private garden square, much to the annoyance of the adults.
On a rainy night Tip brings Lovejoy and a small boy, Sparkey, to the park to steal more earth. Lovejoy gets arrested with the boys. The police are aware that Lovejoy's mother is not around; in fact, she has gone to Canada and got married but has no plans for Lovejoy to follow her.
The Vincents get into serious financial trouble and have to give Lovejoy away to the Home of Compassion care home. Lovejoy appeals to Olivia to help. Olivia regrets having made little use of her life, and decides to write a will setting up a trust to open a new restaurant in the West End, to be run by the Vincents, on condition they look after Lovejoy.
The bombed church is pulled down, and Lovejoy leaves the care home to rescue her rose. Olivia dies before signing the will, so that her sister Angela would inherit her money. Lovejoy leaves her rose at Olivia's house to be looked after by her, not knowing of her death. Angela is deeply moved, and decides to proceed with her sister's wishes for the trust. Loveday goes to live with Vincents, and they start preparing for the new restaurant.
Hugh Stewart, the producer, said he made the film because "I loved the story' although he had to change the title because "the studio wouldn’t have a project with a title like that." Neil Paterson wrote the script, which Hugh Stewart said "was very difficult because Rumer Godden’s story was very gossamer, and I was trying to get some bones in it. She hated what Neil did." He was "very pleased" with Philip Leacock as director. [3]
Leacock had made a number of films featuring children including The Kidnappers and The Spanish Garden. He used amateurs to play the children rather than actors, saying "untrained children are not always suitable for a film but for this particular story I felt it was essential to have absolutely ordinary children." [4]
Philip Leacock later said "I don't know why they changed the title... it hurt it because it was a well known novel, you know. And the Rank Organisation didn't think 'Episode of Sparrows' would mean anything and in those days - well they still are - they're so ridiculous about titles. But I think it hurt the picture. " [5]
Stewart said "It was the one film I made that got universally good notices, it got prizes, and yet it died a death — the biggest disaster I ever had... The critics, like Paul Dehn, went overboard for it: it really got under their skin." [3]
Sight and Sound called it "a well-meaning, uneven and somewhat meandering film" where "a string of sub-plots, although relevant, never quite come coherently together." The critic felt "the children’s scenes are by far the firmest, well played... and directed with delicate care. The adults... stand oddly apart and their playing, by contrast, appears not a little confected. The weakest aspect of the film, though, is its inability to bring to life its background—the dirty, overcrowded London suburb, where busy working-class streets adjoin an upper-class area of tree-lined walks and squares. A weird mixture of location material (Battersea and Victoria) hardly helps here. Despite these flaws, though, Innocent Sinners has a kind of awkward sincerity about it: it is a film whose intentions go beyond its achievement." [6]
Rich. of Variety said it was "a half-hearted stab at being a tearjerker, but it barely tugs at the emotions. With no real star value in its work-manlike cast, chances of survival in the boxoffice jungle are slim." [7]
The Evening Standard called it "fresh, funny and moving." [8]
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is a 1957 American CinemaScope war film directed by John Huston. It stars Deborah Kerr as an Irish nun and Robert Mitchum as a U.S. Marine, both stranded on a Japanese-occupied island in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.
Margaret Rumer Godden was a British author of more than 60 fiction and non-fiction books. Nine of her works have been made into films, most notably Black Narcissus in 1947 and The River in 1951.
Philip David Charles Leacock was an English television and film director and producer. His brother was documentary filmmaker Richard Leacock.
David Kossoff was a British actor. In 1954 he won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles for his appearance as Geza Szobek in The Young Lovers. He played Alf Larkin in TV sitcom The Larkins and Professor Kokintz in The Mouse that Roared (1959) and its sequel The Mouse on the Moon (1963).
Basil Dignam was an English character actor.
"Bart's Girlfriend" is the seventh episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on November 6, 1994. The plot of the episode follows the secret romance of Bart and Reverend Lovejoy's daughter Jessica, who makes her debut in this episode. Bart tries to end the romance when he discovers that, behind her innocent façade as a preacher's kid, she is an even bigger troublemaker than he is. Jessica steals the money from the church collection plate, leaving Bart to take the blame until Lisa exposes the truth.
Catherine Lacey was an English actress of stage and screen.
Follow That Camel is a 1967 British comedy film directed by Gerald Thomas. It is the 14th in the series of 31 Carry On films (1958–1992). Like its predecessor Carry On Don't Lose Your Head, it does not have the words "Carry On" in its original title. It parodies the much-filmed 1924 book Beau Geste, by PC Wren, and other French Foreign Legion films. This film was producer Peter Rogers's attempt to break into the American market; Phil Silvers is heavily featured in a Sergeant Bilko-esque role. He appears alongside Carry On regulars Kenneth Williams, Jim Dale, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Peter Butterworth and Bernard Bresslaw. Angela Douglas makes the third of her four Carry On appearances. Anita Harris makes the first of her two Carry On appearances. The film was followed by Carry On Doctor 1967.
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll is a 1960 British horror film directed by Terence Fisher and starring Paul Massie, Dawn Addams, Christopher Lee and David Kossoff. It was produced by Michael Carreras for Hammer Film Productions. The screenplay was by Wolf Mankowitz, based on the 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Hello, Dolly! is a 1969 American musical romantic comedy film based on the 1964 Broadway production of the same name, which was based on Thornton Wilder's play The Matchmaker. Directed by Gene Kelly and written and produced by Ernest Lehman, the film stars Barbra Streisand, Walter Matthau, Michael Crawford, Danny Lockin, Tommy Tune, Fritz Feld, Marianne McAndrew, E. J. Peaker and Louis Armstrong.
John Antony Townley, known professionally as Toke Townley, was an English actor.
Vanda Godsell was an English actress. Hal Erickson writes in Allmovie, "Vanda Godsell specialised in playing disheveled housewives, busybody landladies and blowsy domestics." She appeared as Mrs Weaver in This Sporting Life (1963), Mrs Pitt in Bitter Harvest (1965), and Mrs Goodge in The Wrong Box (1967).
Grace Arnold was an English actress.
Marianne Stone was an English character actress. She performed in films from the early 1940s to the late 1980s, typically playing working class parts such as barmaids, secretaries and landladies. Stone appeared in nine of the Carry On films, and took part in an episode of the Carry On Laughing television series. She also had supporting roles with comedian Norman Wisdom.
An Episode of Sparrows is a novel written in 1955 by Rumer Godden. It was re-issued in 2016 in The New York Review Children's Collection.
Ellinor Vanderveer was an American actress.
Sailor Beware! is a 1956 British comedy film directed by Gordon Parry and starring Peggy Mount, Shirley Eaton and Ronald Lewis. It was written by Philip King and Falkland Cary adapted from their 1955 stage play of the same name. It was released in the United States by Distributors Corporation of America in 1957 as Panic in the Parlor.
Mary Field was an American film actress who primarily appeared in supporting roles.
Hilda Lilian Fenemore was an English actress with a prolific career in film and television from the 1940s to the 1990s. Fenemore played mainly supporting roles which were characterised in her obituary in The Stage as "friends, neighbours, mothers and passers-by"; however, her many credits meant that she fell into the category of actresses who a majority of film and TV viewers would have been unable to name, yet whose face was instantly recognisable. Her longest-running role was recurring character Jennie Wren in TV series Dixon of Dock Green, who she played for six series between 1960 and 1965.
John Rae was a Scottish actor.