Lindsay Anderson directs a stage play adapted by writer David Storey.
It is set in a Derbyshire mining town as Mr and Mrs Shaw (Bill Owen and Constance Chapman) celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary and their three sons have come to join in with the celebrations.
Mr Shaw is a miner, he plans to complete his 50th year in the mine pit which is next year and retire. His sons want him to retire now. Mrs Shaw seems to have come from a well to do family, she might had become pregnant by her husband hence she married beneath him yet she does not come across as too bright but seems to have been a dutiful wife and mother.
Tensions emerge once all the sons come around and there seems to be memories of the eldest child who died as a boy which no one is sure of why which seems to be the catalyst.
Andrew (Alan Bates) is the eldest and the most fractious. He is a solicitor who has gone on to become a drifter and a artist off sorts.
Colin (James Bolam) seems to have been left wing rebel now a negotiator for his company, a well off executive with a company car but unmarried. Again Andrew pulls his leg by questioning his sexuality.
Steven (Brian Cox) the youngest is a writer but has stopped writing. He is married with children but seems to be haunted by the past.
Periodically their neighbour Mrs Burnett drops in.
The film is a series of tensions that come on and off the boil interspersed with humour. The trouble is it looks too much of a stage play which has not been opened up. It is nicely acted but some of it was hard to understand as well. It actually does not feel like a feature film but more like a BBC Play for Today.
