Valley of Song DVD Review
National cinema in Great Britain is normally split between that of Wales and Scotland. In England this tends to be the kind of cinema known as heritage cinema. There is less these days than there had been traditionally and there was certainly a resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s with the likes of Gregory’s Girl (1980) and Local Hero (1983) (both Scotland) or Twin Town (1997) with Rhys Ifans and Human Traffic (1999) (both Wales). There have even been a handful of films filmed in the Welsh language. Older films though were directly drawing on the local national character in tone and the little seen Valley of Song (1953) released on 18th February by Studiocanal is one of those films. This of course is not the case with predecessors such as John Ford’s Hollywood classic, How Green Was My Valley (1942). This Hollywood film draws on a romantic and sentimental image of Wales re-created in a Hollywood studio. This is not to say that Valley of Song is not sentimental or romantic in tone but it is directly appealing to a national home audience.
The film’s opening title sequence shows a train journeying its way through the wild landscapes of Wales and her valleys played to a very national Welsh barbershop song (this sequence was filmed on the rail journey between Camarthan to Cardigan in South Wales). When the train pulls into the fictitious town of Cwmpant a young man called Gerwaint Llewellyn (Clifford Evans) steps off the train where he is greeted by the station master and welcomed back to the village of his childhood. He has been away from Cwmpant for 5 years after a spell in London. He has returned to take over the role of choirmaster from the deceased incumbent choirmaster. Immediately he sets about casting for a local production of Handel’s ‘Messiah’. He unwittingly divides the community when he goes against the grain and hires a Mrs. Davies (Betty Cooper) for the contralto over Mrs. Lloyd (Rachel Thomas) who has sung this part for the past 12 years. This immediately creates enmities between the Lloyd and Davies families which affects the entire village. The feud even threatens to break apart two lovers in the village, Cliff (John Fraser) and Olwen (Maureen Swanson).
The plot is a simple one and the film too is rather simplistic; it does draw on the usual clichés, including miners and singing – where else would you get miners bursting into song in the middle of the street. Despite its charm it is a very dated film today and looks even older than 1953. There are a couple of standout features to the film including very early performances from Desmond Llewellyn who would later go onto playing Q in most of the James Bond films but here plays a schoolmaster and an early performance by future Carry On star Kenneth Williams who is on screen here for just a few seconds. But the most impressive debut is by Rachel Roberts as the local gossip and milk lady. She pretty much steals every scene she’s in and her talents as an actress are clear (she would later go on to be the ‘other woman’ in Saturday Night, Sunday Morning). It’s hard to see who the market for this film is other than British film historians but it is always good to find a lost gem even if it’s not a very shiny one.
This is a rare film and to my knowledge is rarely shown on TV while this is also the first time the film has been released on DVD. Sadly there are no contextualizing extras on the DVD, not even a trailer.
Chris Hick