Taglines: “It’s all about dad, dad is this house. You’d think the sun shone out of his ****!”
Spring and Port Wine movie storyline. The Crompton Family live in a house in Bolton. Rafe, a self-educated perfectionist, is an engineer at the cotton mill where his teenage daughter Hilda and his youngest son Wilf both work.
The two elder children, Florence and Harold, work outside the mill. Florence as a school teacher. Daisy Crompton is the heart and soul of the Crompton household, whose only failing is an inability to keep the household accounts straight. The family is essentially happy and united in spite of the young folks’ bantering criticism of their fathers outlook on life.
In complete contrast to the Crompton’s are their neighbours the Duckworth family. Betsy Jane, a feckless but well meaning frump, her slovenly spendthrift husband Ned, and their trendy, good time daughter Betty, Hilda Crompton’s friend who also works at the mill.
One typical Friday evening the family sit down to tea. Hilda refuses to eat her “bonny fresh herring” because she does not “fancy” it. Rafe commands his wife to serve the herring up at every meal until Hilda has eaten it. This unaccustomed friction is interrupted by the arrival of Arthur Gasket, a sheet metal worker who has been promised promotion on condition of marriage. He has long been friendly with Florence and has decided to ask her to marry him, but Arthur’s tender concern over Hilda’s evident distress prompts Florence to leave with Arthur in his car. Arthur assures Florence that his warmth towards Hilda was no more than sympathy and goes on to show his true feelings for Florence.
Meanwhile the herring is produced with monotonous regularity and equally adamant rejection from Hilda at every meal throughout the weekend. Finally, both Rafe and Hilda, unknown to each other, decide to give in over the herring. Just as the Crompton’s sit for their Sunday tea, the cover is taken off Hilda’s plate & to everyone’s surprise, there is no sign of the herring. Although there is little doubt that Wilf has fed the herring to the cat, the family supports him in his denial.
The climax comes when Rafe demands that Wilf swears on the bible that he is telling the truth. Wilf starts to make a halting confession before falling into a dead faint under the duress. Arthur accuses Rafe of being a bully and demands that Florence leaves home immediately to stay with his mother until they are married. Hilda too, runs away from home and stays overnight at the Duckworth’s house.
She returns next morning and tearfully asks her mother (who has by now realised that Hilda’s distaste for the herring is probably an early symptom of pregnancy) if she can lend her the money to go to London and fend for herself. Betsy Jane, to whom Daisy confides her troubles, suggests raiding the Crompton’s family cash-box but Daisy deems it wiser to pawn Rafe’s new overcoat. Hilda, however has already borrowed the money from her sister Florence, so Daisy sends Betsy Jane to retrieve the coat without delay.
Rafe returns from work on Monday and puts the cat among the pigeons when he decides to wear his new coat to a concert. Unable to find his overcoat, he comes downstairs empty-handed, and the house is deserted. Daisy has disappeared leaving a terrified note for him. He leaves the house to look for Daisy, rushing towards the canal towpath, with the worst possible forebodings. Rafe spots Daisy contemplating life under a canal bridge and gathers her in his arms. They talk things through and head into the future with Rafe intent on taking more of a back seat and letting youth have it’s fling.
Spring and Port Wine is a stage play by Bill Naughton which was turned into a film (1970). The story is set in Bolton and concerns the Crompton family, in particular the father, Rafe, and his attempts to assert his authority in the household as his children grow up.
The play was filmed in 1969 – produced, once again, by Michael Medwin – and the result is a valuable time-capsule in that it depicts a Bolton of large, long-gone chimneys. Other parts of the film show street scenes and wide shots of the town as it was at the time of filming. It was filmed as St. Peters Way was being constructed and whilst many of the old industrial buildings remained. The lives depicted are very real for the period and this film captures an industrial town in transformation.
In the film, Rafe was played by James Mason, and Diana Coupland played his wife Daisy. Susan George, Rodney Bewes, Hannah Gordon and Len Jones played the children, with Keith Buckley as Arthur and Frank Windsor, Avril Elgar and Adrienne Posta as their next-door neighbours, and Bernard Smidowicz as the Horsefall & Trott delivery driver. It was directed by Peter Hammond. Naughton himself provided the adaptation, and it was filmed on location in Bolton and at Lee International Studios in Wembley, Middlesex.
Spring and Port Wine (1970)
Directed by: Peter Hammond
Starring: James Mason, Diana Coupland, Hannah Gordon, Susan George, Rodney Bewes, Keith Buckley, Avril Elgar, Adrienne Posta, Frank Windsor, Marjorie Rhodes, Bernard Bresslaw, Christopher Timothy
Screenplay by: Bill Naughton
Production Design by: Reece Pemberton
Cinematography by: Norman Warwick
Film Editing by: Fergus McDonell
Costume Design by: Deirdre Clancy
Makeup Department: Jeanette Freeman, Bunty Phillips
Music by: Douglas Gamley
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors
Release Date: February 19, 1970
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