Made

Rather dated already, MacKenzie's film swerves uneasily between social realism and melodramatic clichés as it follows a girl's attempts to find a way out from her miserable life looking after her illegitimate child and an invalid mother. Salvation is offered by a do-gooding priest and a boring old folksinger (Harper playing himself, quite well actually). It has its moments of acute perception, but much of the time is content with a typically British glamorisation of seedy lives. Ken Loach, one feels, would have handled it far better.