cult film freak: ZENA WALKER & DENNIS WATERMAN IN THE DRAMA 'SNOWBALL'

Zena Walker in SNOWBALL Year: 1960 Rating: ***

A unique British New Wave/Kitchen Sink melodrama involving how fate works... not the first or last... and SNOWBALL is set in some pretty warm weather, so the title's about gossip gaining momentum...

And all because of child actor Dennis Waterman as an English suburban kid who shares to his parents and neighbor how a bus driver dumped him off: having to walk home four miles — the last stretch of that seemingly breezy stride opening the movie with credits shown...

Dennis Waterman and Zena in SNOWBALL

So it's not very difficult for the audience to realize the kid's a liar, making this a melodrama without much mystery: although SNOWBALL has many elements of the latter, including a cub reporter trying to get to the bottom of things — a wishbone between his editors and the bus company...

But the true lead is the kid's mom... lovely British actress Zena Walker in one of many friendly homemaker roles, here married to strict husband/father Gordon Jackson — and the sparse realism into their problematic household both literally and symbolically represents the Kitchen Sink aspect...

Kenneth Griffith and Daphne Anderson in SNOWBALL

Meanwhile on the outskirts (yet technically holding the most significance) is a British character-actor who usually plays troubled, mousy sorts: Yet Kenneth Griffith has a wife as faithful and even similarly down-home-pretty as the central family — all caught within an ironical juxtaposition that's somewhat intriguing...

If only there were more stakes raised for the kid, played by Waterman, who, despite being a great child actor (before becoming an adult who'd never not have a hit TV series), seems to basically care less about pretty much anything and everything all along — yet maybe that's all part of the realism.