Fame Is the Spur

Before they started sending up British institutions The Boulting Brothers actually took them seriously so that while, in the late fifties they might have been satirising British politics, in 1947 they were looking at politics with a very straight face. "Fame is the Spur" was their screen version of Howard Spring's novel about an ambitious Labour politician who grows increasingly more right-wing as he moves up the political ladder. It begins in the late 19th century and ends somewhere around the middle of the 20th. It's a reasonably powerful film and a somewhat dark one and it's certainly not without the Boultings' customary cynicism.

As the vainglorious Labour MP, Michael Redgrave is superb and he is ably backed up by the likes of Rosamund John as his suffragette wife as well as the great Bernard Miles, Hugh Burden and Marjorie Fielding. Of course, the actual premiss of the picture is a bit far-fetched and today it would be the stuff of soap-opera but you have to consider when it was made and the audience it must have been aimed at and even at its most melodramatic, you can't say the Boultings weren't afraid to take a chance. Not the best thing they ever did but also sadly neglected.