Spring and Port Wine

The bully of Bolton, a severe old skinflint of a father cracking the whip on wife and children, gets the sense knocked into him, a child of the Depression.

Naughton’s studies of certain American models pays off in a comic effect, a Lancashire ease of manner (cf. Lean’s Hobson’s Choice) when dealing with volatile material. The institution plainly under consideration is Long Day’s Journey into Night, and there are perhaps others.

The color cinematography and much of the technique has a precedent in John and Ray Boulting’s The Family Way.