'Margaret Lockwood is luminous in this epic tale of love and greed...' The Times

'A rousing melodrama that will have du Maurier fans swooning!' Photoplay

Daphne Du Maurier herself helped write the script of this adaptation of her best-selling novel. A full-blooded historical romance in the grand tradition of du Maurier's Rebecca. Hungry Hill provides a plum role for Margaret Lockwood, who became one of the biggest stars of British films of the 1940s.

Set in Ireland in 1840, the storyline tells of how the beautiful Lockwood marries into a feuding Irish family and gets caught up in a violent struggle for ownership of a copper mine. After her husband dies and her spoiled older son rejects her, she falls upon hard times, moving to London and turning to gambling and drug addiction. But a violent confrontation with the past lurks just around the corner...

Hungry Hill gives early screen chances to a number of promising screen players, including Siobhan McKenna (in her screen debut) Michael Denison, Dermot Walsh, Dan O'Herlihy and Jean Simmons.

Starring: Margaret Lockwood, Dennis Price, Cecil Parker, Michael Denison, F.J. McCormick, Jean Simmons, Dermot Walsh, Eileen Crowe, Peter Murray and Siobhan McKenna

In April 1951 Brian wrote to John Ford about Siobhan McKenna – was the enquiry about a possible lead in The Quiet Man that was about to be made?  Whilst Brian provides a glowing reference for Belfast born Siobhan he is candid in his opinion of Hungry Hill.  We writes “There must be a copy of a rather indifferent film I made of Daphne du Maurier’s even more indifferent story “Hungry Hill”.  You could get hold of this through Eagle-Lion, but don’t inflict the whole of the picture on yourself.  Just see about the first four reels because she doesn’t come in to then”.  The letter can be found in the archive section of this site.

Brian on the set of Hungry Hill - Courtesy of the BFI