The Proud Valley

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The Proud Valley
ABFD
(UK)
Release date
  • 3 March 1940 (1940-03-03) (UK)
[1]
Running time
76 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

The Proud Valley is a 1940

South Wales coalfield, the principal Welsh coal mining
area, the film is about a seaman who joins a mining community. It includes their passion for singing as well as the dangers and precariousness of working in a mine.

Plot

David Goliath is an

gas, causing a fire
, in which many miners perish. Emlyn was not present at the site that morning and rushes into the mine as a rescuer; David carries Dick out of the fire but is unable to save him.

A month later, Dick's choir appears at a competition but only David performs for Dick's memory. The mine has been closed since the disaster and the rest of the miners are reduced to gathering coal from the top of a spoil heap, but they are unable to make the same amount of money that the mine had paid them and many have to claim

pray
and punches Emlyn unconscious, activating the dynamite and breaking through the rock. The other two miners wake up Emlyn, discover David's lifeless body nearby and pray for David's soul. The mine is reopened and the town sing in unison as the coal is transported through the mine.

Cast

Production

From a treatment entitled David Goliath by the married writing team of Herbert Marshall and Fredda Brilliant, friends of Robeson in Highgate and Moscow, The Proud Valley's script was written by Louis Golding with the help of the novelist Jack Jones.[2]

Robeson's role was based on the real-life adventures of a Black miner from West Virginia who drifted to Wales by way of England, searching for work.[3] After two years of refusing offers from major studios, Robeson agreed to appear in this independent British production, seeing (he told The Glasgow Sentinel) an opportunity to "depict the Negro as he really is—not the caricature he is always represented to be on the screen."[4]

Filming was completed in September 1939 but producer Michael Balcon and director Pen Tennyson were forced to re-cut the ending of the film in the new jingoistic atmosphere following the outbreak of war. An ending in which the workers took control of the mine was replaced with a scene in which management agreed to make concessions to the miners.[5]

Release

In December 1939, the film was unofficially previewed in Neath Port Talbot and, according to newspaper articles at the time, was well received by the Welsh audience who commented on the authenticity of background and detail.[1]

The first film to premiere on radio, on 25 February 1940,[6] The Proud Valley was first screened to the trade & cinema bookers on the 9 January 1940 before opening to the public on screens nationwide, including the Birmingham Gaumont and the Middlesbrough Hippodrome, from the 3 March 1940 onwards, and in London at the Leicester Square Theatre on the 8th.[1]

Critical reception

Robeson's criticism of British and French

Lord Beaverbrook, proprietor of the Daily Express.[7]
However, the
Monthly Film Bulletin described the film as a "moving and enthrallingly interesting story of courage, endurance and self-sacrifice," praising it as "an outstanding achievement for all concerned" and singling out Pen Tennyson's "sensitive and skillful" direction and Robeson's "impressive presence" and "glorious voice".[8]

Variety disparaged the film as possessing "not much dramatic wealth" and compared it unfavourably with Carol Reed's The Stars Look Down. The reviewer also complained that Robeson "delivers only two songs and neither solo".[9] The New York Times reviewer criticized the “purple” acting and rambling plot, but praised the authenticity of the atmosphere and the singing: “it has the virtue of sincerity, and it is lyrical when it sings.”[10]

The film critic Matthew Sweet declared in 2005 that if the film had been completed before the outbreak of war "it would have been the most uncompromisingly Marxist picture ever produced in Anglophone cinema".[11]

Significance

In The Proud Valley, Robeson depicts a kind of Black hero rarely seen in Hollywood, one who fuses his political and artistic sensibilities in the image of a Black working man who achieves kinship across boundaries of race and nationality. Years later, Robeson would remark that, of all his films, this was his favorite because it showed workers in a positive light.[1]

The Proud Valley was the first film premiered on radio. An hour long edit of the film was broadcast on the BBC Home Service a week and a half before its London release.[6]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d "The Proud Valley". Art & Hue. 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  2. ^ Boyle, Sheila Tully; Bunie, Andrew (2005). Paul Robeson: the years of promise and achievement. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. p. 412.
  3. ^ Seton, Marie (1958). Paul Robeson. London: Dennis Dobson. p. 120.
  4. ^ Foner, Philip S (1978). Paul Robeson Speaks. New York: Brunner-Mazel. p. 553.
  5. Faber and Faber
    . p. 172.
  6. ^ a b Bourne, Stephen. "Proud Valley, The (1940)". Screenonline. BFI. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
  7. ^ Duberman, Martin Bauml (1989). Paul Robeson. London: The Bodley Head. p. 233.
  8. ^ "The Monthly Film Bulletin". Screenonline. BFI. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
  9. ^ Jolo (31 January 1940). Variety Film Reviews 1938-42 (Bowker ed.).
  10. ^ Crowther, Bosley (17 May 1941). "' Proud Valley,' a Story of Welsh Singing-Miners, at the Little Carnegie". New York Times Time Machine. Retrieved 24 December 2021.
  11. ^ Sweet, Matthew (2005). Shepperton Babylon. Faber and Faber. p. 172.

External links

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