Jacqueline (1956) Online

I stumbled across this film on television quite by accident today, whilst flicking through channels for something to watch. What began as a quick 30 second appraisal of plot and the setting had me glued to the screen for the entire movie. I was quickly and thoroughly hooked by the engaging characters and the, at times, rather sombre storyline.

Set in Ireland, the film centres around Mike McNeil (John Gregson) and his relationship with his family during difficult times. Mike is a gifted but out-of-work farm hand, forced to relocate his family to a coastal town to find work at a shipyard. He takes the only job he can find, working on precarious tower at the nearby shipyard despite a morbid fear of heights that often renders him physically ill. To cope, he quickly resorts to drinking, often consuming much of his wages, placing additional pressures on himself, his relationship with his wife and even affecting his son's chances to pass his school exam. Of course Mrs Flannagan, the very snipish local gossip, and her daughter live next door to the McNeils and they gleeful take every opportunity to add insult to the McNeils' injuries.

Only McNeil's daughter, Jacqueline (of the film's title), seems to accept her father unconditionally, entirely unwilling to accept what others in town have to say about him. Her stance provides some entertaining exchanges between her and Mrs Flannagan's spiteful little girl, Sara.

Considering the fairly depressing nature of Mike McNeil's situation - a talented worker forced into the wrong job to make ends meet, turning to drink and placing his entire family under financial and emotional strain as a result, a disapproving and interfering mother-in-law determined to break up their marriage (and an old admirer of McNeil's wife, Elizabeth, more than willing to lend a hand) - and the film's being shot in rather harsh B&W tones, you might be forgiven for thinking this would be a depressing film.

It's not. While there is more than an occasional light-hearted moment, it does get quite serious at times as McNeil fails time and again to live up to everyone else's expectations of him (and him of himself), but there is a much more positive side to this story that prevents it venturing into maudlin.

You see, young Jacqueline (Jacqueline Ryan) - a right little liar by nature, but with a good heart - even in the face of damning evidence, refuses to see her father as anything less than the noble figure she believes he could be ("My dad doesn't drink - not a drop. Mr Owen even said so") and it is she who develops the most influential, if somewhat incongruous, relationships in the film with diverse characters as Owen (the local priest), the finger-pointing Sara Flannagan and even Mr Lord, her father's employer.

John Gregson, playing Mike McNeil, excels in this film. In fact, I enjoyed him in this film so much that, though not normally a fan of the genre, I shall be keeping an eye out for more of his films from now on.

Not at all the film I expected at all from those first 30 seconds. Despite the emotional weight of some of the subject matter, I found this a very heart-warming film (and one I will watch again if it ever reappears on TV or DVD).

The title character of this film is a girl who looks about 8 years-old and and lives in Northern Ireland. While this region was famous for "the troubles" in the 1970s, there is no sign of this in the movie and everyone in the film seems proud to be part of the UK--even celebrating Elizabeth's coronation.

The main dilemma in the film is Jacqueline's father. He is a binge drinker and this seems to be an attempt to cope with his vertigo (which is a problem, since he works up high at a shipyard) as well as to avoid dealing with his tough life. While I am not excusing his binges, things are made much worse by a horrible neighbor who berates him and calls him a drunk, a mother-in-law who actively encourages her daughter to leave him and a wife who loves him BUT also doesn't stand up to her mother's interference nor tell her old boyfriend to back off (he pays WAY too much attention to her and seems to be waiting for her to leave her husband).

Fortunately, despite all these depressing elements, the film is magical and sweet. Sure, there are many tough scenes, but unlike many other films about problem drinkers, this one isn't cut and dry AND there is a strong sense of hope. It also comes to life because there are so many wonderful characters and side stories that make the whole town and its people come to life. I really liked the minister, as he was so atypical and human compared to other clergymen in films. I also liked the Flannagans--the final scene between the husband and wife was wonderful. If it weren't for the fact that the movie started a bit slowly, the film might have even merited a 9 due to a great script and direction. A little find indeed.

By the way, this film reminds me of the American film A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, as both films are about young girls and how they cope with a loving father who has a drinking problem. While I loved JACQUELINE, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN was such a terrific film that few films from the era can come close to matching its brilliance and simplicity. My advice is see BOTH films. They are different enough that there is plenty of reason to see both.

NOTE: This isn't the easiest film for people like me to watch. I have been rapidly losing my hearing in recent years and when I see films where there are British and Irish accents, I have a hard time following the film unless there are closed captions. Sadly, JACQUELINE is not captioned and so it was a struggle to watch the film and understand exactly what was being said. While the main characters were all pretty understandable, some of the supporting cast had stronger accents and it was hard to follow. I assume similar problems must exist for hard of hearing Brits as they watch American films with strong accents and no captioning. So older people and younger people with hearing losses might find this film a tad frustrating.

(Screened on TCM, May 29, 2008)

It's another hard day on the job for Mike McNeil, who sways unsteadily as he fits a mast high in the air above a shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The shipyard owner, Mr. Lord, takes notice and upbraids the luckless lad, blaming booze for his troubles. Sure enough, when the whistle blows to end his shift, Mike heads straight to the pub, downs two double shots of whiskey -- and orders two more.

These are not happy times for Mike and the same goes for his wife, Elizabeth, and children, Michael and Jacqueline, in the family melodrama "Jacqueline." Mike's life is bearable thanks to the apple of his eye. He dotes lavish love and attention on Jacqueline and she returns it in spades. She stands up to the neighborhood kids who gather around Mike to jeer and taunt him when he staggers home after from the pub. At school, she's spurned by classmates when she spins improbably tall tales, not the least of which is that her Daddy never touches a drop. From the perspective of half a century later, we would say she's over-compensating to boost her self-esteem.

In the end, she proves she can stick to Daddy's side through thick and thin and clears the way for his redemption. She even takes a pledge of her own -- to stop stretching the truth. Mike's obstacles are the bane of many a family man – at least every Irish family man: he's tempted to drink at risk of job and family. Audiences will have little doubt all these pitfalls await poor Mike before he and daughter manage to work things out.

In "Jacqueline," Roy Don Baker, the noted British director, works with a marvelous cast but somehow can't wring much of an emotional punch from the script by the credited group of writers. Scenes that unfold around celebrations marking the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II neatly time-stamp this as a slice of everyday working-class life in Belfast in 1953; instructive, but as an effort to capture the universal human condition, this movie falls sadly short.

Robert Osborne's brief commentary after a recent airing on TCM indicated that even Baker wasn't very happy with this picture because he had to step in for another director late in the game, and apparently there was a problem getting the largely Catholic cast to portray Protestant characters. For whatever reason, the crises that develop in "Jacqueline" are too thinly sketched.

We learn that Mike (John Gregson) is unhappy in the city because he's a good cattleman but jobs on the farm are scarce. Alas, who wouldn't be driven to drink because he'd rather muck stalls and deliver calves than punch a clock and struggle with dangerous ship-rigging? Aside from that powerful thirst, Mike's chief antagonist is his mother-in-law, Mrs. McMullen (Josephine Fitzgerald), who not only encourages her daughter to leave her husband, but also tries to set her up with the well-off bachelor who used to be sweet on the girl. In Ireland, all's fair in love, war and motherly meddling.

But the great problem here is that the characters don't seem to be under much great tension. Alas, great tension requires comic relief and there's little of that too.

One of the main subplots is son Michael's ambition to get into prep school, and Mike's actions make him seem almost callously indifferent toward the boy. At the same time, we see that the family is three weeks behind the rent and a good chunk of the budget goes to support Mr. McNeil's weakness, but there's still enough in the sugar bowl to provide Jacqueline with a closet full of pretty, fashionable frocks.

The title character is Jacqueline Ryan, the daughter in real life of actress Kathleen Ryan, who plays the Mom, Elizabeth. Kathleen is a very attractive woman and here she infuses effervescence into her role that doesn't quite match the tone audiences might expect. As for Jacqueline-the-actress in her only film credit on this website, she was certainly a cute 9- or 10-year-old in her blonde Buster Brown-style cut, but she doesn't bring much poise to Jacqueline-the-character. In a pivotal scene in which she has to sweet-talk the stern Mr. Lord (the era's ubiquitous Liam Redmond) into giving Daddy a break, little Jackie literally keeps dropping her drawers to bring in the subtext that she's using her feminine wiles to bend the old man to her will. Angela Cartwright would have done the job with a wink, a wiggle and a coo.

Still, the movie is worth watching on many levels. Film students can imagine how the script and production could have been beefed up to endow this with a stronger spine and make it vastly more rewarding. And then there's the cultural setting: This reviewer's wife is an Irish girl (folks from Clare and Tipperary) and he thinks anybody who enjoys watching cute Irish girls and their family dynamics will get a lot out of "Jacqueline."

SYNOPSIS: A little Protestant girl in Belfast is devoted to her dad, even though he occasionally brings disgrace to his slum family because of his drinking.

NOTES: Jacqueline Ryan's only theatrical movie. She appeared in three TV movies in 1965. She is not the real-life daughter of Kathleen Ryan, but of Irish actress, Phyliss Ryan, who made a total of 14 theatrical and TV movies between 1938 and 2007.

COMMENT: Definitely a rather odd and highly unusual assignment for director Roy Ward Baker (Tiger in the Smoke, Don't Bother To Knock, Quartermass and the Pit), but very capably, indeed charmingly done. Despite all apprehensions — the presence of Tony Wright, whom Baker used so memorably in Tiger in the Smoke, turns out to be quite bland — Baker handles his players and the domestic situations of the script with ease. Admittedly, he seems more at home with the few action spots (the young boy's flight at night) but he has drawn a likable performance from John Gregson and an inspired one from young Jacqueline Ryan who plays this well-rounded little girl — shrewd, defensive, engagingly self-willed — with absolute conviction and sincerity.

In the presence of this young lass, the adult players seem a bit out- classed. Nonetheless there are memorable portraits from Noel Purcell, Maire Kean, Cyril Cusack, Maureen Delany and the ever-reliable Liam Redmond. The heroine of Odd Man Out, Kathleen Ryan, is almost unrecognizable here as Jacqueline's harassed mum, and we also liked Barry Keegan's realistic study of her rejected suitor.

The dialogue has plenty of Irish bite and asperity in a fast-moving story that gives plenty of weight to Protestant working-class virtues.