The Master of Bankdam

The life and times of a Yorkshire mill owner and his family.

Tom Walls plays Simeon Crowther who owns Bankdam Mill.

His two sons, Joshua, played by Dennis Price, and Zebediah, played by Stephen Murray, clash over the running of the mill. Zebediah's reckless attitude causes the death of his brother in an accident at the mill. Joshua's son, played by Jimmy Hanley, sets out to prove his father was killed by his Uncle Zebediah.

As you would expect, he triumphs and gets to run the mill his way.

A potboiler of a story with a lot of mutton chop whiskers and thee and thy dialogue. Likable all the same. Look out for a young Nicholas Parsons in a minor role.

Veteran West End farceur Tom Walls in the title role adopts enormous sidewhiskers and a northern accent in this departure also uncharacteristic of it's director Walter Forde (another comedy veteran), based on the bestselling historical novel by Thomas Armstrong.

A sort of nineteenth century 'Power Game' shot in the twentieth and, alas, still relevant to the twentieth-first in it's critique of the sheer incomprehension and indifference of the 1% to the way their activities impact upon the lives of the 99%; their venal corner-cutting leading to catastrophe. (The impact on the mill of the McKinley Tariff of 1890 also highlights the continued vulnerability of the British economy to decisions taken in Washington.)

Tortoise Dennis Price and hare Stephen Murray are eventually succeeded by the young Tommy Handley, whose own son ironically became a Tory M.P.

Walter Forde's penultimate movie is a long, rambling, immaculately produced tale of the rise and fall of a family of Yorkshire mill owners. It has gorgeous black-and-white camerawork by Basil Emmott, a cast distinguished by Tom Walls in a very late movie, Nicholas Parsons in his first, as well as Dennis Price, Linden Travers, Jimmy Hanley, Anne Crawford... well, enough talent in front of and behind the camera to make a great movie.

Unfortunately, it's one of those movies about in-fighting, led by Stephen Murray, who longs to be the big kahuna, and is willing to use fair means and foul. I've seen this sort of drama, both in real life and the movies far too often to be impressed by it any more.

Having lived all my life in the area the novel and film is set in I was eager to see this film and found it mostly very good and realistic with good characterisations and most quite acceptable Broad Yorkshire speech. Broad Yorkshire having its glottal stop 't' and its silent 'h' roots in the Hebrew language spoken by the wandering Israelites that became the Anglo-Saxon-Jute-Viking that populated the Yorkshire area before and after the Roman period. One jarring exception was the scene where the mill owner's son confronts father of pregnant girlfriend and the father speak quite posh English and the son Broad Yorkshire! Few scenes in the mill apart from the long one concerning the 'milling' of new woollen cloth needing longer time in the milling machine. The woollen milling machine being driven by belts off a steam engine and having two wide cogs close together through which the cloth was fed in order to make the fibres mat together to give strength and smoothness. Helmshore Musuem has similar machine. The scene of the mill collapsing due to the urge to install extra looms is good and seems to have been filmed in a genuine mill being demolished. The following scene of mayor and millowner's son colluding in covering up the reason for the collapse shows how business was and is done in small town business. The patriarch with his apparent Broad Yorkshire was played by Tom Walls who being born in Northamtonshire spoke a close version of Yorkshire's Anglo-Saxon and was therefore well able to stop his glottal and silence any aitches in his dialogue. It's well worth a watch to see real acting and a disappeared way of life.