Flame in the Streets

Considering this was made over 60 years ago it still packs a powerful punch, not least because of the use of extreme racial language which is not considered PC today.

The sound and vision is amazing. It could have been made last week.

Sylvia Syms and John Mills give stellar performances.

I wonder how it would be received today by the snowflake generation.

The fights at the end, possibly inspired by the 1958 Notting Hill Riots, somewhat distracted from the real issues within the film. These were about relationships and prejudice, non more so than Brenda de Banzie's shameful character.

Historically this is a very interesting and important film.

This film is a very enjoyable and courageous film about racism in London in the early 1960s. Apparently, there was a lot of negative feeling towards West Indians living there--and it's all quite similar to the feelings in much of the US at the same time.

The first portion of the film involves workers and their union. A major problem is that a lot of white workers are resentful of blacks--especially when they are placed in positions of authority. One of the union reps, Jacko Palmer (John Mills), believes in promoting people according to their merits--and goes to bat for these people.

Ironically, at the same time this is happening, Jocko's daughter is dating a Jamaican man. She is uneasy about how people will treat her but she loves the man and wants to marry him. When she tells her 'liberal-minded family', they show themselves to by hypocritical butt-heads--and the mother is truly vile in the way she talks about blacks and shows herself to be a shameful mother. How is all this to work out by the end of the film?

I liked the film and appreciate that it didn't pull its punches. I love "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" but at times it did seem a bit too sanitary and 'nice'. In contrast, this British film used extremely disturbing and graphic language--and better showed the ugliness of racism. Well worth seeing.

UK drama has working class Brits simmering under racial tensions: in the warehouses, the factories, even at the public pool--the catalyst being a hard-working black man who gets a coveted factory promotion over the petty, envious whites (wasn't this the same situation in "Black Legion" from 1937?). John Mills plays a union organizer who tries bringing peace to the locals but is confounded by the unexpected romance between his white daughter and a black teacher from the West Indies. Ted Willis adapted his play "Hot Summer Night", forgetting that screen material needs to be less theatrical, more subtle and sensitive. Each character spouts off with such pedagogic fervor, vigorously puffed up with their own righteous anger, that the main theme of tolerance is diffused (with that faux-calypso music playing, you'd think there would be more dancing than feuding!). OK melodrama, it beat "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?" to the screen by several years, and a few of the performances are thoughtfully rendered. Color film released by the The Rank Organisation was distributed to the States by Atlantic Pictures in black-and-white. ** from ****

Coming six years before "guess who's coming to dinner " , "flame on the streets ' is much more convincing ;here one does not meet a bourgeois family whose daughter wants to marry a future Nobel Prize ;it takes place in the British low middle-class ; it all happens in one day ,on Guy Fawkes '.

The fifth of November is a judicious choice: it's time for celabration,merrymakings in the streets , but it also means alcohol, violence,interracial resentment which has been building up for years. Kathy Palmer's plan does not bode well in that context : to marry an educated black schoolteacher (Peter Lincoln ,check the surname) in the early sixties is a thing her mom -who blames her husband for not climbing up the social scale- would never accept ,in a month of Sundays . The dad 's attitude is more ambiguous : in the meeting , superbly played by John Mills , he delivers a liberal speech, urging the men from the union to stand together , and championing the promotion as a foreman of a colored man ;but when confronted to his daughter's plan , without being so openly racist as his wife , his finer feelings have vanished into thin air and he tells the young schoolmistress what she should "ideally " do.

In the streets , meanwhile ,hatred is simmering , the riot is brewing : not only the angry young white louts ,but also the colored girls , or the gossip ladies who "warn " Kathy's mom , nobody is prepared to accept peace,love and understanding .So Kathy 's predicament is mirrored by this town on fire ; given the hostile milieu ,the denouement cannot ,by any means,considered a happy end .There was still a hard road to hoe.

This film is more of a social document than an entertaining piece of film making.It was made just 3 years after the infamous Notting Hill Riots.This was at a time when immigrants were just starting to settle in the Uk and met some resistance from the local population.I would add that prejudice was still rife in the population at the time.Both myself at school and my father in public office suffered anti semitism.So this country was good for a good shake up.I doubt that this film did much to advance the cause.It is just so dull at times i am sure that it would not have done that well commercially at the time.It is odd to note that John mills here plays Sylvia Sims father when a couple of years earlier in "Ice Cold In Alex" he portrayed her potential lover.