Please note: This was screened in July 2024
J. Lee Thompson's film is a superb, yet overlooked, example of British kitchen sink realism.
Told in a flashback from the vantage point of new high-rise blocks in the 1950s, No Trees in the Street stars Slyvia Syms as Hetty, a young woman in the slum tenements of 1930s London, caught between her future and her family. Her younger brother Tommy (Melvyn Hayes) is drifting into a life of crime, overseen by local thug Wilkie (Herbert Lom), who rules over the neighbourhood with an iron fist.
Meanwhile, Hetty’s mother Jess (Joan Miller) is herself encouraging Hetty to marry Wilkie as a way out of poverty. Torn between trying to get away from crime and looking after her family, worlds begin to collide for Hetty.
Pitched between a crime thriller and the stark realism that would come to define much of the classic British cinema of the 1960s, No Trees in the Street is an overlooked high point in the career of Bristol’s own J. Lee Thompson and Sylvia Syms, one of the post-war cinema’s greatest stars.
A new 4K restoration c/o StudioCanal presented with Film Noir UK. No Trees in the Street will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on Mon 5 Aug as part of StudioCanal’s Vintage Classics Collection.
