Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 13 February 1931
Mr. Hanmer’s “Toilers”
London Critic’s Praise.
Mr. John Grierson, the cinema correspondent of the “Clarion,” has some interesting comments upon Mr. Charles Hanmer’s mining film, “The Toilers.”
Hemmer, he says, knows the pits inside with the men who work in them, and along his single track of knowledge the most enthusiastic and sincere man I have seen in Wardour Street say for many a day. Hanmer, I should say shortly, has not the Kine eye , and his film would not excite the highbrows at all. And yet so clear is Hanmer about what he wants to say that the film is, on the whole, a better job than ‘The Man with the Movie Camera.’
The movie camera is this case is not a good camera, but the man behind it, by the weight of his authority and singleness of his purpose, does in a strange surprising way leave you with a new insight into the industry.
I have been down pits a few times and thought they made a pretty good not show. Hanmer and his photography do not permit of any reaction so sophisticated, nor, for that matter, so ineffective. It is the bowels of the earth or nothing with him, and that is the right point of view.”