St Ann's

The St Ann's district of Nottingham has two cinematic associations. In 1899 it was the birthplace of Alma Reville, future writer and wife of Alfred Hitchcock; and almost a lifetime later, after the place had become a sodden, peeling slum and its narrow Toytown streets were being demolished brick by brick, Stephen Frears, leading-British-director-to-be, then the merest tyro, showed up to record an anomaly, as it seems in retrospect - the poverty-stricken '30s still persisting alongside the swinging '60s. Frears' directorial tone (lucid, unsentimental, unassertive) is displayed here already fully formed, ensuring that the piece has hardly dated at all, except for the style of deprivation being recorded.