The Angry Silence

Tom Curtis is a factory worker with a wife and children. A strike is called after agitation brought in from outside, and Tom refuses to join it. His reason is not political; he does not think the grounds for the strike are right. That one stand puts him against everybody at once. First they stop speaking to him, then they leave him alone in the street, then it goes further. Richard Attenborough both stars and is one of the producers; Bryan Forbes wrote the screenplay and the two of them set up their own company to make this film. Guy Green directed. When it was shown it met a hard response from union circles in Britain; it was accused of smearing the labour movement. The film's defence was that its target was not the union but the pressure a crowd puts on a single person. The argument still stands in the same place today. Ninety-five minutes.