Documentary News Letter (1942-1943)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1942 STRAND FILMS MAKERS OF DOCUMENTARY FILMS SINCE 1934 THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD. DONALD TAYLOR MANAGING DIRECTOR ALEXANDER SHAW DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION 1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l. NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE Film of the Month In Which We Serve. Production: Two Cities. Sloi\, Production, Direction and Music: Noel Coward. Camera: Ronald Neame. Art Direction: G. I . Calthrop and David Rawnsley. Phis is ; British tc stuff whic ceptionally sincere and deeply It is also a final proof thai ns in British studios can turn out is good as anything n achieve. And it is r made. their Hollywood colleagues one of the best war films e Even alter a second viewing of /// Which We Serve, these points still operate, and it is all the more necessary to try and formulate a straight critical attitude to the mood and purpose of the film. In doing this, one is paying Coward the compliment of treating his film seriously, not merely as an emotional or a patriotic success, but also as a considered attempt at propaganda. So here goes. Firstly, the story in all essentials looks backward from the present. The future, except in terms of the continuance of the Navy and its traditions, doesn't get a look-in at all. In fact t hewhole structure of the film, with its ingenious and surpris ngly successful flashback continuities, depends on an attitude which looks no further than today and accepts no perspectives other than the strictly parochial. This is a lair criticism, and one which Coward would probably not only accept, but would also argue the reasons why he chose these limitations. Secondly— and this arises from our firstly— the social structure of the British community is presented as a fixed and settled structure ; nowhere is there any suggestion that the present war represents a revolution not only in thinking but in class relationships. This point must not be misunderstood, because Coward is one of the first people to put across with truth and realism the character and behaviour of three different income groups. The quarrel between the two women just before the bomb kills them; the conversation between the A.B. and his wife on Plymouth Hoe; the Petty Officer learning of the death of his wife; the Commander's Christmas dinner party; the youthful sailor who has been momentarily a coward — all these scenes are not merely dramatically correct but are recognisable as being about British people. But behind them all is the assumption that the continued existence of the present set-up is not questioned, and that the different "classes" (e.g. "upper", "middle" and "lower") will continue to live together with t'ie acceptance of mutual barriers crossed only by ties of patriotism or of that warm human sentiment which has for years now been the facet of English character least understood abroad, and which partly explains the snail-like pace (hitherto, but not from now on) of our social revolution. Nowhere is this more marked than in one of the best and most realistic sequences of the film— the chance meeting in a railway train between Captain Kinross and his wife, and the A.B. and his bride. By the use of very perceptive dialogue and admirable direction Coward here delineates the inevitable mixture of goodwill and embarrassment, with both sides uneasily trying to do and say the right thing. It was a hundred to one chance against this scene being anything other than offensive, but it comes off triumphantly. In so doing it clinches the attitude already referred