THE GORBALS STORY is a cheap slice of social realism, shining a light on those living in poverty in one of Glasgow's most notorious slums. Seen today it's quite hard work to watch, purely because it's depressing more than anything else. The narrative feels long-winded despite the short running time and the events depicted are strictly pedestrian. The plots that take place fail to raise the interest and the film seems to be stuck in a humdrum place from which it never rises.

A relentless tale of poverty driving people mad featuring the Glasgow Unity Players set almost entirely in a cheerless tenement that anticipates Bo Widerberg's 'Raven's End' just over a dozen years later.

Both films make their bleak content tolerable by letting us know it all happened a long time ago, and 'The Gorbals Story' sugars it's pill by first showing us the young hero as a successful artist who eventually escaped this teeming hellhole; thus reassuring us that his story, at least, had a happy ending.

Young leading actor Russell Hunter later became famous on TV as "Lonely" in 'Callan'. Other faces in supporting roles that later became familiar belong to a young Roddy McMillan, Archie Duncan and Andrew Keir.

Although it will be of almost no interest to anyone, this piece of social realism based on a 1946 play by a left-wing Glasgow theatre group is still a curiosity. It's a shame that probably we'll never know why such a parochial drama by an unknown playwright was deemed worthy of filming. A lot of people live cheek by jowl in a tenement apartment. It seems likely that many of the cast (never heard of again) were repeating their stage roles. They're not awfully good and generally they speak nice drama school Scots rather than the raw Glaswegian we'd expect. There's a fair amount of theatrical make-up on show. The house-mates include an Indian (who appears to be played by a Jew with an accent that wanders too regularly into Welsh) and inevitably a struggling artist desperate to escape the Gorbals squalor. There's much talk of poverty but the drama only comes to life when an irate father finds his daughter sitting on the artist's lap. The mediocre writing is a very long way from Steinbeck or Miller. Apart from establishing shots, the entire film was shot at London's Merton Park Studios. This robs the film of any hope of realism.