Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

TELL ENGLAND 173 Primarily this film is a story of the mental conflict between two boys, adapted from Ernest Raymond's popular novel of two public school boys who idolize each other in the class-room and on the playing-field, whose mothers are always beautiful with tired eyes, and who glory in boyish sentimentality before they collide with life. We see them first swimming, full of laughter and boyish spirit, Doe and Ray, and Doe's mother, and then having tea on the lawn with a preciosity that is revolting. It is the warm spring and early summer of 19 14. Taking swimming as the thread of continuity, we see the boys at school, Doe winning the swimming cup for Kensingtowe, and again his mother, looking sadder and softer than before, comes too. Then we fade quickly into the War. The boys have received commissions in the same regiment, still with their schoolboy gusto, and even their colonel is an old Kensingtownian. Later they take part in the Gallipoli operations, and we watch the strain of war gradually overcome their nerves until the smallest incident causes their tempers to fray. Eventually Doe is killed in a brave attempt to silence a Turkish trench mortar, which for weeks has worked havoc in their particular section of the line. Unfortunately the film does not end here, but drags on to a sickly death-bed scene in the field hospital when the boys are reunited, and finally ends with Turkish and German officers inspecting the graves after the Peninsula has been evacuated. This is all the story to the film, and it betrays the producers at every sequence. It is sweet and gentlemanly, and it lacks strength : its weakness being shown