The Last Days Of Dolwyn Review

• 11th Feb 2013

The story opens with a lake surrounded by mountains and what appears to be a lone church spire sticking out of the lake. When the camera pans back we see a monument telling us that the fictitious village of Dolwyn was flooded with the loss of 2 lives with only one body having been recovered. We are then transported back to 1892 and the arrival in the town of a man who had spent the past years in London and is now back to the village of his birth. He appears to be bothered by not understanding the local language and after a while it turns out he holds a grudge against the locals for their ill treatment of him as a boy. He has come back to the village representing an energy company who are offering to give the residents of Dolwyn new homes in a suburb of Liverpool but naturally they are upset at this and protest wishing to protect their traditions and ways without being displaced.

This little film was perhaps most notable for being the first film with Richard Burton who plays a brooding local lad, an early indication of the type of character that he would go on to play in many a film. Other players include the distinctive Hugh Griffith, here playing the local minister preaching from the altar and would later go on to play such characters as the Lord of the manor in Tom Jones (1963) with the other notable of course being the director and writer Emlyn Williams himself as the villain of the piece. Williams, a very professional craftsman in all three jobs on the film is a little stilted and old fashioned as an actor but never the less makes a particularly sneering Harry Flashman type of villain.

There is a very Capraesque message about the little society here, not the big one that David Cameron espouses but a local society pulling together in a unified calm voice against big business and a bully. In one scene a son tells his mother of his time in Liverpool and how people live in houses with 7 windows, all on top of each other; or how everyone is a stranger, to which the mother replies, “I’d have to get to know everyone.” “Yo’d gave trouble doing that in Liverpool” replies the son. The point is of course compared to other cities such as London, Liverpool is a relatively short distance away, but probably felt a whole world away for these communities.

There is something akin to a Powell/Pressburger film here, yet lacks the magic of a Powell/Pressburger production that would give Dolwyn that extra edge. It does portray the image of this idyllic Welsh village in the mountainous valley as a bucolic environment and like many of these national films not the realities of hardship, yet its message is sincere. Like another release by Studiocanal, also released on 18th February, Valley of Song it is a curious piece that is rarely seen these days and has, until now been something of a rarity. Sadly the sound quality of the film is very poor and it’s hard in places to make out whether the cast are speaking Welsh or English while the frame is taken to the full border of the print, shown here in 1.33:1 original aspect ratio. There are no extras other than scene selection.

Chris Hick