Snowball

Zena Walker is worried, she tells husband Gordon Jackson. Their son, Dennis Waterman, isn't home yet. Jackson says he's probably out with his fiends. When Waterman gets home, he says the driver kicked him off. Miss Walker tells people, and local busybodies get involved, and soon a reporter from the local paper is following the story. The driver says he has no memory of the incident, and insists he would never kick a child off. But the affair starts to snowball.

It's an engaging little movie directed by Pat Jackson from a novel by James Lake, very low key at first, but gradually growing in tension and anguish. Highly recommended.

Waterman died this year at the age of 74.

Very much of its time, this film explores several issues including the power of the press, the damage a simple lie can do and and how an interfering busybody can cause such upset and tragedy. The story is simple on the surface - did an otherwise good boy (Dennis Waterman in an early role) tell a lie to cover up his mis-spending of a sixpence? But events snowball, gossip grows and an innocent man is accused of something of which he has no recollection. Strangely gripping and quite moving in parts.

One shouldn't be surprised that this film should be so good bearing in mind that it was directed by Pay Jackson. A great performance from Kenneth Griffith's,not his usual mannered villain. Three couples all adversely affected by the complaining letter written by an unthinking neighbour.

Like Pat Jackson's earlier film 'The Birthday Present', behind the apparently light-hearted title lies not a fluffy little comedy but a stark drama reminiscent of 'The Children's Hour', 'Le Corbeau', 'Panique' and 'The Wrong Man' which could have been called 'The Tangled Web'.

Sixty years on the tensions between bus drivers and their passengers are still a feature of daily life; as well as the malign influence of the tabloid press. Ironically only two years earlier Kenneth Griffith had already played a fare dodger in 'Chain of Events'; but this time the poacher is the gamekeeper.

A British New Wave/Kitchen Sink drama involving how fate works... not the first or last... and SNOWBALL is set in some pretty nice weather, so the title's about gossip gaining momentum...

And all because of child actor Dennis Waterman as an English suburban kid who shares to his parents and a neighbor how a bus driver dumped him off: having to walk home four miles... the last stretch of that seemingly breezy stride opening the movie with credits shown...

So it's not very difficult for the audience to realize the kid's a liar, making this a melodrama without much mystery: although SNOWBALL has many elements of the latter, including a cub reporter trying to get to the bottom of things, wishboned between his editors and the bus company...

But the true main character is the kid's mom, pretty British actress Zena Walker in one of many friendly mom or wife roles... here she's married to strict husband/father Gordon Williams, and the sparse realism into their seemingly typical household circumstance both literally and symbolically represents the Kitchen Sink aspect...

Meanwhile on the outskirts, yet technically holding the most significance, is a British character-actor who usually plays troubled, mousy sorts: Yet Kenneth Griffith has a wife as faithful and even similarly down-home-pretty as the central family in an ironical juxtaposition that's somewhat intriguing...

If only there were more stakes raised for the kid, played by Waterman, who, despite being a great child actor (before becoming an adult who'd never not have a hit TV series), seems to basically care less about pretty much anything and everything all along.