Private Information

The storyline of a crusading middle class woman exposing the shoddy housing work carried out by the council, which in turn leads to serious public health issues, sounds like a promising foundation for a compelling, citizen versus local bureaucracy film. Sadly, it's far from compelling, as the actors are so frightfully nice, polite and well mannered that you drown in gentility! The ingredients of tension, confrontation and cynicism are absent, as the actors go through the motions of what feels like a dreary radio play. If this film had been made in the US, it would have been an emotional roller coaster, with a top actress being given ample room to display her full range of feelings, instead Jill Esmond gives a muted, one note performance, and thus the film never gets beyond the level of mediocrity.

Jill Esmond is a parson's widow. Her daughter, Carol Marsh, is an aspiring writer with a fine collection of rejection slips. Her son, Jack Watling, works for the surveyor's office. He has just prepared a report on the project they live in, saying the construction is bad and the pipes are worse. He asks her to put it away while he goes to London to take a test. Instead, she reads it. Then she goes to a town council meeting, where she complains about the rattling, jerry-built houses and suggests that someone's bank account is fat because of it. Under threat of eviction, the loss of her son's job, and lawsuit for slander, she agrees to publicly retract the statement.... until ex-doctor and current local newspaper publisher Gerard heinz talks to her. She tears up the statement publicly, and the council decides they must sue.

Then typhoid hits the council houses.

It's a remarkably powerful story of commonplace corruption in a small town where everyone knows everyone else. The mayor is her brother-in-law; her son is engaged to to the surveyor's daughter; everyone is on the take, with varying degrees of deniability -- that magic word. Miss Esmond looks worn and weary and vague. It's not brilliantly shot, but the good script and calm, warm performances make this a must-see movie.

A distinctly British thriller, this, in which sub-standard work by a local council leads to public health issues. It's hardly the kind of plot that makes for excitement, but PRIVATE INFORMATION is about as good as it could be given the obvious constraints of the narrative and budget. It was filmed at Nettlefold Studios in Walton-on-Thames, as were so many during this era, which gives it a cheap look.

I suppose if you were being kind you could say that PRIVATE INFORMATION is a precursor to the later likes of ERIN BROCKOVICH or maybe the government conspiracy films of the 1970s and the like. Certainly the story of a crusading figure battling against oppressive bureaucracy is an engaging one, which is why it's a pity the drama is so small-scale here, the climax aside. It's more like a TV than a cinematic film.

The main actress, Jill Esmond, had previously essayed the role of the queen's mother in THE BANDIT OF SHERWOOD FOREST. Jack Watling, who plays her son, had a long and varied career in everything from A NIGHT TO REMEMBER to DR WHO. Carol Marsh appears in support and is best known for her turn as Lucy in Hammer's Dracula. The director of this piece, Fergus McDonell, only made short films for the rest of his career. On the plus side, PRIVATE INFORMATION is mercifully short, so doesn't have a chance to become too dull.

How lovely to see a story-line that goes on all the time, except for the ending, and is rarely shown in cinema. The acting is very good and the it moves at pace. The stuffiness of Council meetings hasn't changed much over the 34 years I have been attending and people still find it hard to make a point, Entertaining film.

In one of her last performances, Jill Esmond does an excellent job in both the domestic drama aspect of this movie, and in the borough council scenes at the center of the "social problem" aspect. Of these two, there is nothing surprising or unpredictable about the former, but the latter is well done. The writer is clearly more interested in the psychology of the pompous and entitled officials and providing both an anatomy of public corruption, and a view of how it can be countered. As a result, the film is didactic but enjoyable.