Blue Scar

Blue Scar is a 1949 British drama film directed by documentary filmmaker Jill Craigie and starring Emrys Jones and Gwyneth Vaughn.

With Craigie's background in documentary films with a social message, Blue Scar was designed to raise questions about the value of nationalising the coal industry.

She decides to leave her hometown to take up this opportunity, which means being away from Tom Thomas, a local miner who is in love with her.

[2] The film was conceived as a critical commentary on the nationalisation of the coal industry, especially in terms of safety, working conditions and the treatment of miners.

[3] The disused Electric Theatre cinema in the Welsh town of Port Talbot served as a makeshift studio,[5] hired at a charge of £1 per day.

According to Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, the film was met with "excellent reviews and enthusiastic audience response",[2] but Philip Gillett has suggested the opposite.

[7] A reviewer in The Times shared this view, stating that the miners' lives were well-captured, but that the social message was "not very clear" and the film's ending was "just plain silly".

[8] The reviewer was also uncertain about the mix of documentary and fiction elements, feeling that "the blend of romantic story and objective demonstration of the ways of the Welsh mining villages is not always harmonious".