Hungry Hill ** (1947, Margaret Lockwood, Dennis Price, Cecil Parker, Michael Denison, Dermot Walsh, Jean Simmons, Eileen Herlie, Siobhan McKenna) – Classic Movie Review 11,858

Director Brian Desmond Hurst’s 1947 British film Hungry Hill [The Stranger Between] is based on the 1943 bestseller novel by Daphne du Maurier, and stars Margaret Lockwood, Dennis Price, Cecil Parker, Michael Denison, Dermot Walsh, Jean Simmons, Eileen Herlie, and Siobhan McKenna.

Although she co-wrote the screenplay (with Terence Young), Daphne du Maurier was disappointed by this moderate adaptation of her best-selling bodice-ripping novel about a 19th-century Irish family, the Brodricks, feuding with rivals whom they had dispossessed 200 years earlier. Lockwood, though, is on good form as her usual wicked lady, Fanny Rosa, who marries into the family and gets embroiled in a bitter struggle for the ownership of a copper mine sunk on Hungry Hill that had once belonged to the Donovans.

After her husband Greyhound John Brodrick (Price) dies of typhoid and her spoiled older son, Johnnie (Walsh), rejects her, she falls on hard times, moving to London, where she turns to gambling and drugs.

Lacklustre direction and a lack of focus and wit in a jittery script are mainly to blame for the disappointment. But the cast is more than competent, there is a lavish production and there are good moments in this rambling epic of a historical romance melodrama.

It was decided to film on location in Ireland and background filming began in County Wicklow in September 1945. Studio filming began in March 1946 in Denham.

The débuts of Herlie and McKenna.

It is Denison’s third film, after a six-year gap through war service.

Lockwood’s daughter plays her daughter.

The music by John Greenwood is played by the London Symphony Orchestra, directed by Muir Mathieson.

Other notable big-budget Rank films include Daybreak, Odd Man Out and Green for Danger.

The cast are Margaret Lockwood as Fanny Rosa, Dennis Price as Greyhound John Brodrick, Cecil Parker as Copper John Brodrick, Michael Denison as Henry Brodrick, F.J. McCormick as Old Tim, Arthur Sinclair as Morty Donovan, Jean Simmons as Jane Brodrick, Eileen Crowe as Bridget, Eileen Herlie as Katherine, Barbara Waring as Barbara Brodrick, Michael Golden as Sam Donovan, Siobhán McKenna as Kate Donovan, Dan O’Herlihy as Harry Brodrick, Henry Mollison as Dr. Armstrong, Dermot Walsh as Wild Johnnie Brodrick and Eddie Byrne as Hennessy.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,858

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