- Actors: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Edward Rigby, Emlyn Williams, Nancy Price
- Directors: Carol Reed
- Format: Black & White, PAL
- Language English
- Subtitles: English
- Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
- Aspect Ratio: 4:3 - 1.33:1
- Number of discs: 1
- Classification: PG
- Studio: 2 Entertain Video
- DVD Release Date: 30 Jun 2003
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B00009PAXY
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 41,795 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)
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DVD Description
Davey Fenwick leaves his mining village on a university scholarship intent on returning to better support the miners against the owners. But he falls in love with Jenny who gets him to marry her and return home as local schoolteacher before finishing his degree. Davey finds he is ill-at-ease in his role, the more so when he realises Jenny still loves her former boyfriend. When he finds that his father and the other miners are going to have to continue working on a possibly deadly coal seam he decides to act.
Special Features
English
Region 2
Region 2
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Carol Reed's gritty, unrelenting adaptation of A.J. Cronin's novel of the same name is a stark depiction of poverty, hardship, greed and frustrated ambition which has an enduring resonance belying the fact that it was made over sixty years ago.
Michael Redgrave plays Davey Fenwick, an intelligent young man from a poor mining community in the North East of England, who wins a scholarship to study at university in nearby Tynecastle. He dreams of entering politics after graduation and working to end the suffering of the mineworkers and their families, eternal victims of a rampant, compassionless capitalism.
However, his life takes a different turn when he meets and falls in love with Jenny Sunley (played by Margaret Lockwood), a divinely pretty but self-centred, materialistic and manipulative little minx who has just been dumped by her boyfriend, Davey's lifelong friend, the ruthlessly ambitious Joe Gowlan (Emlyn Williams). Davey leaves college, marries Jenny and moves back home to work as a schoolmaster. But things get complicated when trouble at the pit, Jenny's growing restlessness and Joe's reappearance combine to turn Davey's life upside down.
When it was made, this was one of the most expensive films ever produced in Britain and it was money well spent. It cemented Carol Reed's reputation as a first rate director and presented a grimly authentic portrayal of inter-war working class life both to film audiences of the time and to posterity. It also gave its all-star cast a chance to broaden their range in impressive and expressive fashion; Redgrave is superbly believable as the embattled idealist coping stoically with life's vicissitudes, Emlyn Williams is thoroughly nasty as the sharp, callous Joe while Margaret Lockwood, former screen ingenue in her first "bad girl" role, gives one of her best performances as the beautiful, faithless, scheming Jenny.
In sum, this film works brilliantly well as social commentary but, more than that, it is a dark and timeless portrayal of human relationships - of love, life, hope and betrayal. Definitely one to see, both as a lesson in filmmaking and a lesson in life itself. Excellent!
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Having last seen The Stars Look Down about twenty years ago, I am relying on memory here, but this is definitely not Reed's original cut. A clue may be found beneath the credits on the back cover, where is printed "USA 1957" (the movie was made in England in 1939), making this likely a reedited cut for stateside re-release.
The changes are not to the good. The final scene with Nancy Price and Michael Redgrave is gone, replaced by some highfalutin narration from Lionel Barrymore over a shot of storm clouds (he intones as well over the opening shots of the miners, doing similar damage to Reed's conception and the film's tone). Also, though I am not so certain about this, there may have been more scenes involving the Millingtons, a married couple played by Linden Travers and Cecil Parker, with implications of an affair between Mrs. Millington and Joe Gowlan.
The changes are not to the good. The final scene with Nancy Price and Michael Redgrave is gone, replaced by some highfalutin narration from Lionel Barrymore over a shot of storm clouds (he intones as well over the opening shots of the miners, doing similar damage to Reed's conception and the film's tone). Also, though I am not so certain about this, there may have been more scenes involving the Millingtons, a married couple played by Linden Travers and Cecil Parker, with implications of an affair between Mrs. Millington and Joe Gowlan.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
The whole story of this AJ Cronin novel is long and complicated. This film homes in on the miners' struggle and the gamble that the mineowner takes on excavating a potentially dangerous seam, with some zooming in on one character and his way through life (it's disappointing - his life, I mean).
That may seem dispiriting, but I have to say that the treatment is brilliant and very well done. Just one (quite big) niggle - the film/novel is set in the NorthEast(Geordieland) and therefore the actors should have Geordie accents. Sadly, RADA wasn't up to this in the 1950s , so the accents vary from pseudo-Welsh to ppseudo-Northern. Nary a Geordie in hearing! But the treatment is very sympathetic, as you might expect from an early Carol Reed film. Brill.And it's not even very expensive.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
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this film was made partly in the village where i live,all the houses in the film have gone now only the school remains as a private house .it is a very good film of its type. Read more
Published 7 months ago by K. Carruthers
stars look down
The Stars Look Down [DVD] [1939]
The attraction of this film is its two principals, Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Read more
The attraction of this film is its two principals, Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Read more
Published on 20 Jan 2010 by I. F. S. Stafford
Interesting Historical Coalmining Drama
This film follows the stories of several characters from a mining community in the North East of England. Read more
Published on 3 Sep 2009 by Jc Batchelor
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