The Hop-Pickers

The sort of earnest, chirrupy workers' frolic that one might expect of a 'communist musical' (see the documentary East Side Story for details), this features the strapping young men and women of a hop-picking enterprise engaged in full-throated paeans to collective labour ('Never fear, never fear/We're doing it for beer'). But it has some sophistication too. The most stereotypical exhortation to higher yields, turning on the notion that carousing couples make the most assiduous workers, turns out to be the fanciful dream of its starry-eyed protagonist, Philip. More interesting is the film's sympathy for the quixotic borderline kleptomaniac loner - an 'obnoxious individualist', in the words of his treacherous rival.