the stars look down (1940)

"If these men drown in Scupper flats no one can accuse you of murder. You'll say you were not a party to it. But what will your conscience say?"
Davey (Michael Redgrave) is a miner, from a long line of miners, who gets a scholarship to university. He's determined to graduate in order to campaign for better mine working conditions. Unfortunately he gets sidetracked by gold digger Jenny (Margaret Lockwood), and ends up back in his pit village as a school teacher humiliated. But things come to a head when he learns that an unsafe seam may be being reopened by the unscrupulous mine owner...
A campaigning drama, full of vitriol, demanding the nationalisation of the coal mines. Its lack of sophistication in the script is more than made up for in the cinematography when in the mines themselves, with its grim realism, and unhappy ending.