The son of a working-class British mining family has dreams of pursuing an art career, but when he strikes up an affair with an older, married woman from the town it enrages his kind but possessive mother.
Cinematography
Jack Cardiff's painterly black-and-white makes miners look like Caravaggio subjects.
Acting
Wendy Hiller's mother: suffocating, magnificent, impossible to look away from.
Costume
Edwardian repression never looked this visually suffocating.
Director
Jack Cardiff
Mary Ure
Clara Dawes
Trevor Howard
Walter Morel
Dean Stockwell
Paul Morel
Wendy Hiller
Gertrude Morel
Heather Sears
Miriam Leivers
William Lucas
William Morel
Conrad Phillips
Baxter Dawes
Ernest Thesiger
Mr. Hadlock
Donald Pleasence
Mr. Pappleworth
Rosalie Crutchley
Mrs. Leivers
Sean Barrett
Arthur Morel
Ruth Kettlewell
Mrs Bonner
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Freddie Francis shot the cinematography and won an Oscar, though Jack Cardiff directed—Cardiff was himself a legendary cinematographer (Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes).
The 1960 release sparked censorship battles for its 'mature themes'— tame by today's standards, but the Oedipal undertones genuinely scandalized postwar audiences.
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