Director: David Lean
Writers: Noel Coward (play), Anthony Havelock-Allan & David Lean (adaptation)
Cast: Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Amy Veness, Alison Leggatt, Stanley Holloway, John Mills, Kay Walsh, Eileen Erskine, John Blythe, Guy Verney, Betty Fleetwood, Merle Tottenham ...
Language: English
Runtime: 105 mins
Description: This Happy Breed was David Lean's first official credit as solo director, and the most successful film of 1944. It was adapted from Noël Coward's hit stage play (the title comes from Shakespeare's Richard II), which had opened at London's Haymarket Theatre in April 1943. The film celebrates the stoicism, humour and resilience of ordinary British people, by focusing on the Gibbons, a normal British family whose story begins right after World War I when Frank comes home from the service and the family moves to a new house. Their story continues until the dawn of World War II. Frank and Ethel Gibbons have three children - Reg, Queenie, and Vi whose stories are also told. Their lives over 20 years encompass weddings, babies, heartbreak, tragedy and death. Laurence Olivier spoke the narration, which is heard over the breathtaking opening sequence, a stunning aerial view of London, from the Thames and across the rooftops, down to the back door of one particular house and right through it to the front door. Landmark events in the lives of the Gibbons family, such as the General Strike, are sketched in effectively but economically. Lean was already employing one of his trademark devices of 'leaking' one scene into another - a new scene begins before the previous one has quite faded away. He especially uses sound to anticipate the next scene, keeping the audience in a constant state of expectation.
IMDb rating: 7.2/10
| http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0037367/ |
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