The Silver Darlings

The small Scots farmers have been driven from the land by the great landowners who have found that sheep were more profitable. Some, like Helen Shingler's husband, turned to fishing; but then he was press-ganged, and now Miss Shingler is in a new place, where Clifford Evans has just been given his own boat to engage in the catching of herring. She is adamant that her son, Murdo Morrison, will not go to sea, for she believes it will be his death. But when the Second Diphtheria Plague strikes, she sends him out under Evans to escape the disease.

It's an interesting bit of history for the ordinary people of Scotland, and it reminds me of the sort of rural drama that Hepworth produced in the 1920s. Changing tastes and the general collapse of the British film industry put an end to Hepworth, but here is another story in that vein. It is sustained, like Hepworth's work, by the beauty of the natural landscape around Caithness, and lovely it is indeed, thanks t the work of cinematographer Francis Carver.