Flick of The Day: Hobson's Choice

Before he became a director of grand epics for the Hollywood studios with films such as Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, David Lean had a long and distinguished career in British cinema, making some of the finest dramas of the golden age of cinema such as Brief Encounter and today's film, Hobson's Choice.

Hobson's Choice - (The Criterion Collection)

Starring the incomparable Charles Laughton as the Hobson of the title, this is a story of one man's inability to deal with the changing times around him. As any learned man will tell you, a "Hobson's Choice" is a contradiction in terms, no choice at all. This is what eventually faces Henry Hobson, a domineering drunk of a boot maker in 1880's Salford. He spends his days lording it over his daughters and his underpaid workers, and his nights drinking away the shop's profits in the local ale house. So it continues until his eldest daughter Maggie, stung by his mocking of her as an old maid, takes it upon herself to wed the boot boy who works in the basement of the shop, setting in train a series of events that leaves Hobson with his choice, his catch-22.

The boot boy, William Mossop is played by John Mills with an air of working class incredulity at the events that unfold around him as his new beau Maggie molds him from a leather worker into a man of business. Laughton dominates every scene he is in, as the overbearing patriarch who can't accept that he can't control the family around him.

Lean did not go onto be a great director when he moved to Hollywood, for he was already a great director. There is a lightness of touch and a light-heartedness to his direction. Henry Hobson is an oaf but he is no monster. This is not a Dickensian tale of the horrors of industrialisation, it is a simple tale of family life told with humour and panache. 

Lawrence of Arabia (Collector's Edition, 2 discs) - DVD

In 1957, Lean would turn his back on making small dramas in the crumbling post war British film industry, and move to Hollywood. In conjunction with producer Sam Spiegel, he made the classic Bridge on The River Kwai. Each film thereafter was bigger and grander then the last, filming on location on multiple continents to box office and critical acclaim. He is remembered today as one of the finest film-makers of all time. Charles Laughton also moved to Hollywood,  continuing to act to great acclaim and even directed a classic of his own, The Night of The Hunter, before his eventual death in 1962.

A very fine film, I would urge you to seek it out, along with many of the other Lean pre-Hollwood classics, many of which have been recently remastered by The British Film Institute.