20th Century Films: 1940 to 1944

The World at War

During World War II film was used to inform, to inspire and for mass propaganda. Movies were tremendously important for sustaining morale on the Home Front; and a certain amount of British production (and, to a far lesser degree, that of Hollywood) was designed to encourage a prevaricating America into the conflict. British theatre provided what came close to a repertory company for cinema; and there was a ready-made body of writers, directors and technical personnel from the British documentary tradition. The influence of documentary was to make itself felt in the choice of comparatively low key subjects and in low key filming techniques.

Foreign Correspondent / Alfred Hitchcock

1940. BW. USA. 120 mins. DVD.

Hitchcock’s early World War II espionage thriller, designed to encourage America’s entry into the conflict. Joel McCrea is the reporter, sent to Europe as the war gathers pace, who stumbles into a Nazi conspiracy . The Hollywood production is closer in atmosphere to Hitchcock’s earlier British films than his efforts of the 195Os. Writers’ credits include James Hilton and Robert Benchley (who has a small acting part). The film’s finale is a news broadcast to America as the bombs are falling on London, with McCrea standing as a composite for such US journalists as Quentin Reynolds and Ed Morrow. For more on Ed Murrow see Good Night, and Good Luck (2005 qv).

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49th Parallel / Powell & Pressburger

1941. BW. UK. 117 mins. DVD.

An anti-Nazi propaganda piece with notable early teamings that were to have a great impact on the British cinema of the future. Written by Emeric Pressburger and directed by Michael Powell, the cinematography is by Freddie Young and the editing by David Lean. A stranded German U-boat crew attempt to escape from Canada into a neutral USA. Eric Portman leads the landing party and the cast includes Anton Walbrook (The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, qv) Laurence Olivier, Raymond Massey, Glynis Johns and Leslie Howard.

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British World War II Compilation

One of Our Aircraft Is Missing / Powell & Pressburger

Spitfire (The First of the Few) / Leslie Howard

We Dive at Dawn / Anthony Asquith

1941/1942/1943. BW. UK. 300 mins. DVD.

Three titles that span the middle years of WWII, all intended as inspirational. In One of Our Aircraft is Missing a grounded British bomber crew is helped by the Dutch resistance. Spitfire was the US title of The First of the Few, directed by and starring Leslie Howard, with David Niven. R J Mitchell anticipates World War II and sets out to design a fighter aircraft; the result is the Spitfire. We Dive at Dawn is the story of a British submarine running low on fuel in the Baltic and features John Mills and Eric Portman. The tense attack sequence and the subsequent hunting of the sub has the feel of authenticity.

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Sergeant York / Howard Hawks

1941. BW. USA. 134 mins. DVD.

A film with a fairly obvious agenda at the time when the USA was still procrastinating over entry into the war. Gary Cooper plays the real-life hard drinking Tennessee sharpshooter who undergoes religious conversion at the hands of Walter Brennan and is then drafted into the World War I US Army. Refused conscientious objector status, the pacifist Alvin York eventually decides in favour of his obligations as a citizen. When his unit is trapped he launches a single-handed attack on the surrounding enemy, killing 25 and capturing 132. Heavily decorated by the Allies, he was the greatest US hero of the Great War. The film was a significant recruiting agent during WWII.

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In Which We Serve / Noel Coward, David Lean

1942. BW. UK. 138 mins. DVD.

Probably the most memorable of British propaganda movies from WWII, written, starring, scored and nominally directed by Noel Coward: it was, in reality, David Lean’s directorial debut. The chronicle of a torpedoed destroyer and her crew is told in flashback as the survivors’ dinghy is strafed by the Luftwaffe. Loosely based on the story of Lord Mountbatten’s HMS Kelly, the use of authentic footage gives a degree of realism. The supporting cast is impressive: John Mills, Bernard Miles, Michael Wilding, Celia Johnson (later to feature in Lean and Coward’s Brief Encounter qv), Kathleen Harrison, with Richard Attenborough in an unbilled role that launched his career.

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Ivan the Terrible / Sergei Eisenstein

1942. BW. Rus. 179 mins. DVD.

The life of the paranoic 16th century Tsar who consolidated and expanded the Russian Empire seemed a sufficiently patriotic subject to gain the approval of the Soviet authorities. Initially intended as a trilogy, Eisenstein shot the first superior part in moody monochrome with his usual genius for the visually dramatic. The second part, subtitled The Boyars Plot, included his first use of colour and roused the antipathy of Stalin because of its depiction of the abuse of power and use of the secret police. The Boyars Plot was banned by Stalin in 1946 and was not released until 1958. Eisenstein was not allowed to finish the trilogy nor to make another film.

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Thunder Rock / Roy Boulting

1942. BW. UK. 110 mins. DVD.

A disillusioned journalist who is prevented from publishing his revelations of fascist Europe retires to a lighthouse on Lake Michigan. There he is haunted by the ghosts of immigrants who were drowned in a storm a century before. His experience persuades him to return to the wider world in the culmination of this screen adaptation of Robert Ardrey’s anti-isolationist stage play. Michael Redgrave stars, with Lilli Palmer, James Mason and Finlay Currie.

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Went The Day Well? / Alberto Cavalcanti

1942. BW. UK. 89 mins. DVD.

German soldiers in the guise of Royal Engineers arrive in the small English village of Bromley End. Their intention, under a cloak of official secrecy, is to set up equipment that will disrupt British radar. When the locals’ suspicions are aroused the Germans seal off the village from the outside world. Attempts to communicate with the authorities are frustrated, not least by a fifth columnist, and dealt with ruthlessly. The climax is the Battle of Bromley End, when the stalwart villagers hold off the invaders as the Home Guard moves in. Based on a short story by Graham Greene and featuring Mervyn Johns, Leslie Banks, Thora Hird, David Farrar and Basil Sydney.

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The Humphrey Jennings Collection / Humphrey Jennings

Listen To Britain

I Was A Fireman (aka Fires Were Started)

Diary For Timothy

1942/1943/1945. BW. UK. 20 mins/80 mins/40 mins. DVD.

Master documentary-maker Humphrey Jennings began his career with the GPO film unit and is best known for a number of films about life on the Home Front. The most celebrated film of this collection is Fires Were Started (here entitled I Was A Fireman) which followed the lives of a London fire crew over a 24 hour period during the Blitz. This is high drama, more than adequately delivered by non-professional actors. Listen to Britain is an impressionistic montage of the sounds and images of a Britain in the throes of conflict, strangely poetic and by no means lacking in beauty. Diary For Timothy takes the form of a film diary for a new born baby. Jennings’s use of the camera, together with his tight framing and disciplined editing, create the almost tangible ambience of a war-weary Britain, as does the narration by Michael Redgrave of a script by EM Forster.

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The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp / Powell & Pressburger

1943. Colour. UK. 182 mins. DVD.

Roger Livesey excels in his portrayal of Clive Candy VC, as Powell & Pressburger add layers of complexity to the elderly hidebound Colonel Blimp of the wartime cartoon strip. On one level a representation of the conflict in attitude between the modern, pragmatic, regular soldier and the outdated rules of honourable warfare of an older generation. On another, the film reprises a major theme from Goodbye Mr. Chips (qv) in its treatment of the lifelong friendship between Candy and a German officer, played by Anton Walbrook. Although the film was clearly intended as wartime propaganda, Churchill objected to the sympathetic portrayal of a German officer and tried to have the film banned. Deborah Kerr plays three key roles at different periods of Candy’s life.

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Millions Like Us / Launder, Gilliat

1943. BW. UK. 103 mins. DVD.

A reasonably accurate representation of the Home Front and the life of an ordinary family. An effective, if somewhat solemn, propaganda vehicle with a cast that includes Patricia Roc, Gordon Jackson, Eric Portman, Anne Grawford, Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne.

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A Canterbury Tale / Powell & Pressburger

1944. BW. UK. 119 mins. DVD.

Powell & Pressburger give a hint of what to expect of them in the future in this curious piece about a group people uprooted by war. A land girl (Sheila Sim), a British soldier (Dennis Price) and an American GI (played by serving US sergeant John Sweet) are drawn into the orbit of a local magistrate with a deep love of England and her history (Eric Portman). The three transients embark on a search for the mysterious ‘Glueman’, who has been disturbing the tranquillity of a Kentish village. In the background is the ancient Pilgrim Road to Canterbury; and the unvarying foreground is a bucolic celebration of a rural England under threat. Underlying all is the slightly propagandist theme of Anglo-American co-operation. At the last the girl and the two soldiers each find personal fulfilment in the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral, on the eve of the Allied invasion of Europe.

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Henry V / Laurence Olivier

1944. Colour. UK. 137 mins. DVD.

A little touch of Larry in the night. Olivier does through cinematic propaganda what Henry V does through oratory at Harfleur and Agincourt in the most rousing screen incarnation of Shakespeare’s great patriotic play . The imaginative screenplay opens with Prologue and early scenes played in a reconstructed Globe Theatre and from there the settings move between stylised backdrops and outdoor locations. The big speeches — ’Once more into the breach’ and ‘St. Crispian’s Day’ — are powerfully delivered and the whole was, and is, immensely stirring. With a strong supporting cast that includes Robert Newton at his most knavish.

Henry V / William Shakespeare

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This Happy Breed / David Lean

1944. Colour. UK. 114 mins. VHS.

Life between the wars for two suburban London families, based on the play by Noel Coward and directed by his collaborator on In Which We Serve (qv). Designed to extol the qualities, values and resilience of ordinary people, the cast includes Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Stanley Holloway and John Mills.

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Waterloo Road / Sidney Gilliat

1944. BW. USA. 76 mins. DVD.

Set in the streets of wartime London, Waterloo Road is a love story that sees John Mills as a soldier who goes AWOL to extricate his wife from an affair with a petty crook. An unpretentious and evocative treatment of a subject, the fidelity or otherwise of the wives of combatants, that would have been taboo at an earlier stage of the war. With Stewart Granger and Joy Shelton.

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Western Approaches / Pat Jackson

1944. Colour. UK. 90 mins. DVD.

Made under the banner of the Crown Film Unit, Western Approaches dramatises and celebrates the contribution of merchant seamen to the war effort. Britain was sustained by the supply of food, raw materials and war materiel by Merchant Navy convoys from the Commonwealth and the US, continually under threat from U-boat packs and surface raiders. The Battle of the Atlantic had not completely eliminated the German menace, but by the time this film was made the supplies necessary for the Allied invasion of Europe were flooding in. For a fictionalised treatment of the Atlantic Convoys, see The Cruel Sea (1952).

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The Rise of the Wordsmith

In the 1940s Hollywood’s dramatic production reached a new level of maturity and was able to deal competently with major themes and social issues. By this time tinsel town had fully recognised the importance of scriptwriters and embarked on a love-hate relationship with writers from across the spectrum of contemporary literature. William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene, Lillian Hellman: all these and more were to find their way to the contract departments of the major studios; and literary works continued as a major resource.

The Grapes of Wrath / John Ford

1940. BW. USA. 129 mins. DVD.

It is perhaps surprising that The Grapes of Wrath was made in a period when much of the US was enmeshed in anti-communist and anti-socialist paranoia, even though John Steinbeck’s hard-hitting novel was moderated for the screen. The Joad family are driven off their land in the Mid-western Dust Bowl as the Depression and crop failures leave them vulnerable to rapacious bankers. The movie follows their trek to California, lured by promises of work. En route they are faced with hunger or the alternative of privately-run labour camps with derisory wages and brutal guards. The film brings to the fore the hidden America of the 1930s which existed despite the efforts of Roosevelt and his New Deal programmes. Henry Fonda is Tom Joad.

The Grapes of Wrath / John Steinbeck

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Rebecca / Alfred Hitchcock

1940. BW. USA. 126 mins. DVD.

Alfred Hitchcock was lured to Hollywood by David O Selznick specifically to make this adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’ novel. Joan Fontaine is the naïve governess who marries Laurence Olivier’s Maxim de Winter, only to be haunted by the presence of his first wife and the malevolence of his housekeeper. The brooding cliff top pile of Manderlay adds more than a little to the Gothic atmosphere.

Rebecca / Daphne du Maurier

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Citizen Kane / Orson Welles

1941. BW. USA. 115 mins. DVD.

Orson Welles hits the screen for the first time with a virtuoso production that has since been studied and analysed almost to destruction. Beginning with the death of Charles Foster Kane the film revolves through a series of flashbacks (including the famous ‘News on the March’ opening sequence) in an unsuccessful quest to discover the essence of the man that is concealed in his dying word, ‘Rosebud’. Welles brought with him his Mercury Theatre company, which included Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Everett Sloane, Agnes Moorehead and George Coulouris. The film was remarkable for its first and influential use of many innovative techniques as it tracked Kane’s odyssey from newspaper proprietor to mogul to recluse by way of a diversion into politics that was ruined by his extra-marital liaison with a second rate singer. Even in production it was known that Kane was based loosely on William Randolph Hearst, who was not amused and tried to prevent the film’s release. From start to finish, Citizen Kane owes a tremendous debt to master cameraman Gregg Toland’s astounding universal focus photography and the movie is still acclaimed by many film buffs as the greatest movie ever made. The two-disc special addition has an hour-long feature by film critic Barry Norman, which includes an examination of the well-known clash over writers’ credits between Welles and Herman J Mankiewitz. Also featured is a complete recording of Welles’s notorious 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds.

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How Green Was My Valley / John Ford

1941. BW. USA. 118 mins. DVD.

Adaptation of Richard Llewellyn’s novel of life in a mining village in the South Wales Valleys. An effectively dramatic tearjerker, with Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara and Roddy McDowall bringing something of a confusion of accents to a period piece with high production values.

How Green Was My Valley / Richard Llewellyn

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The Little Foxes / William Wyler

1941. BW. USA. 116 mins. DVD.

Lillian Hellman transferred her own stage play successfully to the screen, ably assisted by a cast that includes Bette Davis and William Marshall. Greed and corruption drive a scheming family in the post-bellum American South. Davis plays the grasping and treacherous wife, Marshall her upright husband. Theresa Wright is the virtuous daughter who represents the continuity of traditional values in the face of avaricious modernity.

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The Maltese Falcon / John Huston

1941. BW. USA. 99 mins. DVD.

John Huston’s directorial debut lifted Humphrey Bogart to undisputed star status as Dashiell Hamett’s Sam Spade. The convoluted plot is almost incidental to the brilliant characterisation and Hamett’s original dialogue, as Bogart’s antihero threads the labyrinth in search of the statuette of the title. A classic movie from a classic period that pits Bogart against Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet in a classic ensemble. Mary Astor is the duplicitous female interest.

The Maltese Falcon / Dashiell Hamett

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Casablanca / Michael Curtiz

1942. BW. USA. 98 mins. DVD.

You must remember this! Bogart consolidates his cynical antihero persona as the owner of a bar in Casablanca. Rick’s Café Americain is a gathering point for refugees from Nazi Europe hoping to escape to America, and for the hustlers that exploit them. Bogart’s misanthropism eventually evaporates following the arrival of ex-lover Ingrid Bergman with her husband, the resistance leader Victor Lazlo (Paul Heinreid). Sub-plots abound, with Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet following up on the previous year’s Maltese Falcon. Claude Raines is the charmingly corruptible police chief who joins Rick on the path to redemption in the final scene. Full of quotable and much quoted lines, with an immediately recognisable signature tune in ‘As Time Goes By’, sung by Dooley Wilson. The double DVD set gives the film the treatment it deserves.

Casablanca / Soundtrack Album

Format: 1 Disc. 13 Tracks.

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Journey into Fear / Norman Foster, Orson Welles

1942. BW. USA. 71 mins. DVD.

Orson Welles collaborated with Joseph Cotten on the script of this screen version of Eric Ambler’s novel. The result is an impressionistic melodrama that revolves around a munitions expert who is smuggled to safety away from the threat of assassination in Istanbul. Dolores del Rio appears alongside the co-writers.

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The Magnificent Ambersons / Orson Welles

1942. BW. USA. 88 mins. DVD.

Orson Welles’s second major feature follows the fall from eminence of a prosperous family and the passing of an era, from the horse-drawn 19th Century to the automobile age of the 20th. The Magnificent Ambersons is considered by many to be an even greater achievement than Citizen Kane (qv) even though Welles’ production was savaged by the studio. Tim Holt plays George, the spoilt Amberson offspring whose hubristic bullying is at the nub of the decline. Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotton), the former lover of George’s widowed mother Isabel (Dolores Costello), returns as a successful automobile inventor and attempts to rekindle the relationship. George is encouraged by his spinster aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead) to meddle in the affair, while at the same time pursuing Eugene’s daughter Lucy (Anne Baxter). All of this leads to a culminating loss of dignity that was excised by the studio as too down-beat for public sensibility. Welles’ final scenes were replaced by an optimistic bolt-on that, in the director’s view, destroyed the whole point of the production. Although less of a visual showboat than Kane, many of Welles’ innovative cinematographic techniques and plot devices are repeated here and the more subtle directorial style works as least as well in what remains of the original oeuvre.

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For Whom The Bell Tolls / Sam Wood

1943. Colour. USA. 125 mins. DVD.

A somewhat anodine presentation of Ernest Hemingway’s great novel of the Spanish Civil War. Gary Cooper takes the lead as the explosives expert sent to demolish a bridge, against Ingrid Bergman’s crop-haired waif. Treachery rears its head amongst the partisans, but for the most part the original plot and political content are subordinated to a simple minded love story.

For Whom The Bell Tolls / Ernest Hemingway

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Double Indemnity / Billy Wilder

1944. BW. USA. 104 mins. DVD.

Classic film noir co-written by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler — the last surely the perfect choice for the genre. Fred MacMurray conspires with femme fatale Barbara Stanwyk to murder her husband and collect the insurance money. Their plot is untangled by insurance investigator Edward G. Robinson. One of the first uses of villain as hero.

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Farewell My Lovely / Edward Dmytryk

1944. BW. USA. 95 mins. VHS.

Private eye Phillip Marlowe searches for an ex-convict’s missing girl friend and sinks deeper and deeper into the mire. A revolutionary crime film that brought the mean streets of Raymond Chandler’s LA convincingly to the screen. With Dick Powell and Claire Trevor.

Farewell My Lovely / Raymond Chandler

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Laura / Otto Preminger

1944. BW. USA. 85 mins. DVD.

Film noir doesn’t get much more noir than this! Police detective Dana Andrews investigates the murder of a beautiful socialite and develops a dark obsession with the dead woman. An ageing Clifton Webb made his name as Laura’s one time lover and mentor and Vincent Price plays his philandering successor. Laura is a taut psychological murder mystery full of dramatic twists and emotional intensity. Gene Tierney features as the exquisite Laura Hunt, whose haunting portrait becomes the focus of Andrews’s fixation.

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Comedy Moves On

Comedy continued to provide light relief while the war went on. As with drama, Hollywood comedies increased in competence and sophistication.

Fantasia / Walt Disney

1940. Colour. USA. 114 mins. DVD.

Revolutionary use of animation to interpret pieces from eight great classical composers. The spectacular feature is a milestone in cinema history. The many memorable vignettes include Mickey Mouse as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

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The Philadelphia Story / George Cukor

1940. BW. USA. 107 mins. DVD.

High on the list of sparkling Hollywood comedies. A spoilt heiress is about to marry a stuffy social-climbing second husband. Enter unstuffy if irresponsible husband number one and members of the tabloid press. The bride-to-be begins to have second thoughts as the dialogue quickens and the love interests multiply. Katharine Hepburn is the indecisive socialite, Cary Grant the amiable C K Dexter Haven, James Stewart the smitten reporter and Ruth Hussie his photographer. Subsequently remade, with music but without the sparkle, as High Society.

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To Be or Not to Be / Ernst Lubitsch

1942. BW. USA. 99 mins. DVD.

A marvellous and complicated anti-Nazi send up in which a Warsaw theatre company becomes involved in politics and espionage on the eve of the invasion of Poland. Highlights include the rescue of the leading lady from the Gestapo by the troupe, posing as Hitler and an escort of German soldiers. This was Jack Benny’s most effective film performance and, sadly, Carole Lombard’s last movie before her death in a plane crash.

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Arsenic and Old Lace / Frank Capra

1944. BW. USA. 113 mins. DVD.

Two gentle and well-meaning old ladies poison lonely old gentlemen with their elderberry wine. Their helpfully deranged brother buries the corpses in the cellar, believing that they are yellow fever victims. A homicidal nephew turns up with a quack doctor and bodies of his own. His brother, a drama critic played by Cary Grant, uncovers the family secrets on the eve of his wedding. A frenzied black farce with Raymond Massey as the murderous sibling, Peter Lorre as the sinister medic and Jean Adair and Josephine Hull as the batty aunts.

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