Note: the poster above bears no relationship to the film!



DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS

UK, 1948, 79 minutes, Black and white.
Anne Crawford, Maxwell Reed, Siobhan Mc Kenna, Honor Blackman.
Directed by Lance Comfort.

The title sounds more sinister than the film actually is. However, the character of the title is a young Irish woman, servant in a parish, disliked by the gossiping biddies of the parish, who put pressure on the parish priest to send her away. One of the criticisms is that men are attracted to her.

In many ways, the servant, Emily, with a film credit introducing Siobhan Mc Kenna, seems very diffident, especially when she goes to the fair, encounters a dashing young boxer, Maxwell Reed, who encourages her and then molests her, she clawing at his face. In the meantime, the parish priest arranges for her to go to Yorkshire to work on a farm.

The family welcome her, she seems at home, competent in her work. Again, she attracts men who presume on her flirting. She is resistant – even meeting the boxer again, resisting him and killing him. Two other men are killed. The lady of the house, played by Anne Crawford, dislikes Emily while the other woman in the house, played by a very young Honor Blackman, is welcoming.

There are also a mysterious sounds of organ playing coming from the church – although the audience has seen Emily playing the organ in Ireland. There are storms. There is a fire destroying the barn.

Eventually, there is a confrontation but also the presence of the boxer’s hound who snarls at Emily – and then savagely attacks her.

The film is not very well known, emerged from the immediate post-war British film industry, offers a fairly sympathetic picture of the parish priest, Liam Redmond, the harshness of Irish bitter Catholics – contrasting with the Anglicans in Yorkshire.