Millions Like Us [1943]

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Wikipedia mentions that the movie was a "hit" in the USSR, which was also fighting Hitler. And the reason (to me) is simple: it's about regular people, the plight of the working class. There are few pretensions here (if any). And the filming is unusually tightly framed, by which I mean the compositions fill the frame, almost cramping the space on the screen, and it makes for a pleasure to watch, and makes for a lot to look at in every frame. And then the acting itself, without star power, is so straight forward and believable, even the slower moments make you pay attention. Much of the film is set in an aeroplane factory, where daydreaming Celia ( Patricia Roc) works alongside down-to-earth Gwen ( Megs Jenkins) and snobbish Jennifer ( Anne Crawford), who arrives dressed to the nines and who feels that her new job is beneath her. But their no-nonsense boss Charlie Forbes ( Eric Portman) is adamant that petty class distinctions are no longer relevant during wartime - something the refugee families crowding into trains' first-class compartments would readily agree with. The acting, especially in the home sequences, is low-key in the same manner as Lean's 'This Happy Breed'. A far cry from the stagey histrionics of pre-war British cinema, it anticipates the naturalism of TV drama. There are no big speeches or characters, just commonplace folk muddling through. The interpolation of Naunton and Wayne, whom L&G had made a crosstalk team in 'The Lady Vanishes', is the only concession to a 1930s conception of entertainment. The one performance I did enjoy, was that of Moore Marriott as the father of the family in question. He is mainly in the earlier portion of this movie but he is the one to remember. a b Brown G. Launder and Gilliat, quoted in Programme book for Made in London Early Evening Films at the Museum of London (Museum of London and The National Film Archive), 24th season, 1992.

When you watch a film made in 1943 you realise, they had no idea how things would play out. Or for how long. The constant fear of invasion and the Blitz (the V1 and V2s would soon start landing on the citizens of Britain.) was gone and they had to stay focused and sacrifice and fight for...how long? Amazing people. And this movie gives such a delightful view of the great leveling that took place in both world wars efforts. After the outbreak of war, Launder and Gilliat continued to work apart on various films (all classics in their own right) until their collaboration with Carol Reed on the outbreak-of-war thriller Night Train to Munich in 1941. The result of these films brought them a further offer of work from the Ministry of Information (MoI) to write and direct a full length feature film about life on the home front; this never happened but it did metamorphose into a combination of their previous feature films and their MoI work resulting in the 1943 film Millions Like Us. Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge.

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Roc is best remembered by Americans in her one and only Hollywood film, the western Canyon Passage. And Crawford before she died tragically at the age of 36 made her mark across the pond as Morgan LeFay in Knights of the Round Table with Robert Taylor and Ava Gardner. Anne didn't yield an inch to Ava in the beauty department. During the same period they worked together on several Ministry of Information propaganda shorts in support of the British War effort – Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat shared a directing credit for their debut in that capacity, a film that looks at the effect of World War II on ordinary British people (especially women), where anyone could be called up and pressed into service.

Occasionally, there are flashes of mild interest. Eric Portman and Anne Crawford have a couple of tense sequences together and manage to perk the proceedings somewhat.

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Today's audience will have it driven home just how much danger of invasion the United Kingdom was in when they see the direction signs on roads cut down and painted over. The better for the enemy not to be helped should he land. It was co-written and co-directed by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. [1] According to the British Film Institute database, this film is the first in an "unofficial trilogy", along with Two Thousand Women (1944) and Waterloo Road (1945). A nearby RAF bomber station sends some of its men to a staff dance at the factory, during which Celia meets and falls in love with an equally shy young Scottish flight sergeant Fred Blake. Their relationship encounters a crisis when Fred refuses to tell Celia when he is sent out on his first mission, but soon afterwards they meet and make up, with Fred asking Celia to marry him. After the wedding they spend their honeymoon at the same south coast resort as the Crowsons went to in 1939, finding it much changed with minefields and barbed wire defending against the expected German invasion.

However, the Directors should be applauded for having done a good job in making an enjoyable, informative propaganda film. Yesterday evening Turner Classic Movies previewed "Millions Like Us," so it was the first time I saw the film. It may not be the best British wartime movie, but it is truly a gem in its own way. I was a child during the war, growing up in a small town in the Midwest of the U.S. Although I didn't have knowledge of what Britain was going through, I heard about it and knew how Americans reacted once we were in the war. The family interactions in "Millions Like Us" were totally believable...the family getting ready to go on holiday in the summer of 1939 and later the scene in the kitchen when Celia announces she has been called up. The opening credits show huge crowds of workers going into factories. The narrator begins the film with nostalgic views of crowded beaches and remembering what it was like to eat an orange (unavailable during the war). Fortunataely, the Daily Mail gave a DVD of the film away free in early 2009, so getting hold of a copy should not be too hard for folks in reach of a British charity shop. I don't know if the DVD is region-restricted, so readers in other parts of the world may have greater difficulty getting a copy if this. A film about and for women in the workplace may sound like a step forward from the usual patriarchal portrayal of the female sex. Yet, at its heart this is a deeply conservative film. Ultimately Celia finds fulfillment with and through a man and whilst the companionship of women is important, all the female characters are searching for a husband.On the American home-front, my mother freshly graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in Rochester, worked in the Bausch&Lomb factory, making all kinds of optical lenses for war production as that was all Bausch&Lomb was doing in 1943 when this film was made. Before that she worked after school there part time. Still it was a voluntary thing because she had a brother in the service. It was hardly the regimented lives you see these women leading, moved to far away location with new factories springing up in the country to avoid bombing. There's a reference in the film to Mr. Bevin's manpower needs filled by women and they are referring to Ernest Bevin, trade union leader, Labor MP, and in charge in the wartime Coalition Cabinet of such mobilization.

Anne Crawford's a sexy thing used who's been around. She's not taking to factory work at all, but in spite of herself and in spite of himself, she's taking nicely to factory foreman Eric Portman and he, her. It centres on the long, dull hiatus between the Blitz and invasion scares of 1940 and the forthcoming relief of D-Day in 1944. The propaganda purpose was to rededicate civilians who were becoming bored with the seeming stalemate: Hitler no longer menacing us, we not yet able to take the war to his camp. Women were targeted for morale-boosting. The film aimed to convince these 'millions' that their conscription into factories, often seen as unglamorous by comparison with uniformed service alongside the fighting men, was essential for victory. a b Millions Like Us, In: Programme book for Made in London Early Evening Films at the Museum of London (Museum of London and The National Film Archive), 24th season, 1992. From the Four Corners in 1941 - a 15 minute non-combat film celebrating the contributions made by Commonwealth Allies.This fast paced, light hearted and heartbreaking film about England during WWII starts great and gets better as it goes. The amazing thing, really, is that it was shot during the war and maintains a grim honesty as well as a necessary optimism. Hitler has to be defeated—but the movie makers, and all the actresses in their homespun honesty, did not know he would be. Bigger characters provide a light in which to notice how unassuming Celia and Fred matter to us. Jennifer (Anne Crawford) and Charlie (Eric Portman) play out a side-story, asking what role this war will have in breaking down the classes as the Great War had before it and, with strange prescience, it is the aspiring, salt-of-the-earth Charlie who will not commit to girl-about-town Jenny, foreshadowing the real-world Labour landslide two years later when the have-nots established themselves. While I could mention of any of the supporting players, I shall finish with the low-key comedy of Celia's father Jim (Moore Marriott) and the forever train-travelling double-act of Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, keeping austere Britain from being sombre. FILM CABLE FROM LONDON:". Sunday Times (Perth, WA: 1902 – 1954). Perth, WA: National Library of Australia. 17 March 1946. p.13 Supplement: The Sunday Times MAGAZINE . Retrieved 11 July 2012. The success of Millions Like Us led to two ‘follow-up’ films in 1944 – Two Thousand Women and Waterloo Road. Here is the writer/director pairing of Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder at its best. Their dialogue is wonderfully natural, and they allow their expert cast to play for authenticity, with only as much commotion and comedy as will keep us involved in their characters.