Thunder Rock

Thunder Rock is a 1942 British drama film directed by Roy Boulting and starring Michael Redgrave and Barbara Mullen, with James Mason and Lilli Palmer in supporting roles. It was based on Robert Ardrey's 1939 play Thunder Rock. Background The film is based on the 1939 play Thunder Rock by Robert Ardrey, which had originally been a flop when staged in New York folding within three weeks, but proved to be considerably more successful in London where it ran for months in the West End. The film version was opened out considerably from the source text by the addition of a montage sequence to illustrate the protagonist Charleston's back-story, and flashback sequences detailing character histories in Charleston's imagination, in the process serving to give a heightened propagandist tone to the material. Critical opinion of the time in Britain was divided as to whether the additional material brought new depths to the story, or made too explicit things which Ardrey had preferred to leave to the audience's imagination and intelligence. The film was, however, almost universally admired by North American critics and became a success at the box-office. It ran to packed houses in New York for over three months, where the play had folded in less than three weeks. Plot During the late 1930s, David Charleston (Redgrave) is an ambitious campaigning newspaper journalist, a fierce opponent of fascism and the British policy of appeasement. He wishes to alert his readers to the dangers of German rearmament and the folly of ignoring what is going on in Europe, but the reports he submits are censored by the editor of his newspaper. He subsequently quits his job and sets off on a speaking tour around the country under the slogan "Britain, Awake!" The lack of interest and response indicates that Britain is happy to keep slumbering. The final straw comes when Charleston is at the cinema, and the newsreel feature comes on the screen detailing the German occupation of the Sudetenland. The audience show themselves completely uninterested in the newsreel, taking the opportunity to chat among themselves or go in search of refreshments.