This Happy Breed

This paean of praise to the British spirit came out at the height of the Second World War and could be seen as a rallying cry for the War Effort even though it takes place during the years of peace between 1919 and 1939. The writer, Noel Coward, as the self-appointed guardian of all things British, for that read the morale of the working and middle classes, although he himself mingled in very upper-class circles and this is a mish-mash of accents and attitudes that by today's standards is highly patronizing. Not a great deal happens. Coward's interest is in the minutiae of the ordinary, everyday aspects of life where the dramatic and the banal are equally important and while the characters are reasonably well delineated and played by the stock British cast, (John Mills comes off best), and the film very well directed in its way by David Lean, (there is one great scene involving the announcement of a death), it never engages you on the kind of emotional level that the later "Brief Encounter" does. What gives the film its resonance is hindsight. The Gibbons family sail inexorably into the Second World War. As Coward said, 'bad times are just around the corner' and the sadness comes from our knowledge might just be waiting for all of them. Lean also chose to film it in colour which certainly brightens things up and you can't say it's not handsome to look at. The kitchen sink is in there, alright but Kitchen Sink drama it certainly ain't.

source: This Happy Breed

London between the wars, as seen by a couple of old soldier comrades from 1914-18. Robert Newton is one of them, married to an odd-accented Celia Johnson, with troublesome kids and a spinster relation to support. Stanley Holloway is the other and somehow is the father of the ubiquitous John Mills. Noel Coward and David Lean worked together to bring their saga into our hearts and minds, as we rejoice in the good times and empathise with the bad ones. It may be hokum, but some of it works. The best scenes are the quiet ones - especially the scene without dialogue where mum and dad react to bad news. Newton and Johnson also have considerable rapport in their scenes which works well.

An outstanding David Lean film examining England between the World Wars. It deals with the Gibbons family and their lives during this tumultuous time. Robert Newton and Celia Johnson are absolutely fabulous as the couple with 3 children. A stellar supporting cast enables this picture to be even better. We experience happiness, tragedy, the Charleston, general strikes hitting an endearing British people. We see a family in crisis. The mother is quite a character, and even with her morbid ways, we can chuckle as this is what occurs as our seniors get older. A strong family structure committed to family values is terribly hurt by the actions of the youngest daughter, but in life there is redemption, and that is admirably shown in this film. Life goes on. The question of what happens when we leave our homes and new occupants come in, is there some sort of link between the old and new? This is a fascinating question and this period piece, shot in bright textures, well answers this. Yes, we keep up that stiff upper lip.

The movie narrates the happenings of a British family since the first world war (1914-18) until the end second world war (1939-45) . The parents (Robert Newton and Celia Johnson) , the troubled and rebel daughter (Kay Walsh) , the friendly neighbor (Stanley Holloway) , the seaman son (John Mills) and others . Meanwhile , being reflected the course of time and are succeeding various historic deeds , thus : the first and second world wars , the soldiers recruitment , death of the king George , the jolly reception to Minister Chamberlain after the useless Munich Convention with Hitler , the trenches digging in preventing the bombing over London by the Germans . The movie is interpreted by the greatest English actors with important careers . Robert Newton (Treasure island) , Celia Johnson (Brief encounter) , John Mills (Daughter of Ryan), Kay Walsh (Oliver Twist), Stanley Holloway (My fair lady) . Colorful and glittering cinematography by Ronald Neame , a future director with many successes (Adventure of the Poseidon) . Musical conducting by Muir Mathieson , habitual of English classic films , as he was director of symphonic orchestra of London . The picture begins and finishes with a camera travelling from exterior and interior home what it subsequently would be copied in a lot of films (for example : The Family by the director Ettore Scola) . The motion picture was perfectly directed by David Lean considered the greatest British filmmaker . Rating : Awesome . Above average.

One of the best films made in the 40's. One of those films you can watch over and over and still laugh, although there is a serious side to the plot, which works well. I especially I liked the digs between the grandmother (Mrs Flint) and the Aunt Silvia. Brilliant dialogue and acting by all concerned. Great...

Noel Coward is rightly remembered today for his glittering personality, the odd sparkling play, the crazy audacity of Brief Encounter, and an imperishable song repertoire, which navigated the comic and melancholy with something approaching genius. But in his day, he was more celebrated for pompous pageants like this, which elevated British ordinariness, mediocrity and respectability, patronisingly epitomised by the lower middle classes. Utilising a framework of great events to focus on the domestic realm is a worthy project, but Coward rejects the critical apparatus of the great film melodramatists. Extremes have no place in these works, and it is extremes - tragedy, pain, madness, fear, humiliation etc. - which are often the essence of great cinema. One should expect parochial conservatism, cheap patriotism verging on xenophobia (it is hard to credit the jingoism of a man who escaped to the Caribbean to avoid taxes), mundane truisms, contrived vignettes, patronising accents, stilted dialogue, and embarrassingly theatrical acting from Coward in 'serious' mode. But what of David Lean, an artist whose great theme was the breaking out of convention, society, history, mediocrity, and the embracing, however self-destructive, of passion, love, greatness, individuality? Lean has been damning of the sterile Little England mentality, which strives so hard to be normal that it borders on the insane, as in the famous case of Colonel Nicholson in Bridge On The River Kwai. How does this Lean transcend the dullness of his material? With great difficulty. One divines his desire to follow Queenie, the wayward daughter, who spurns the stifling nature of conventionality, and flees. However, he is stuck within the stagy confines of the good old home, discreetly emphasising its slow-burning repressiveness with a rudimentary use of the techniques Sirk, Ray etc. would later master in evoking confinement and waste. The characters are too stereotypical or complacent to care about, the blatant ideology is offensive, and the colour is ugly; but there is one remarkable sequence, one of the greatest in all cinema, when a death is announced, and Lean reveals, through camera movement alone, the poverty of Coward's vision. This house is seen by both Coward and Lean as a symbol of Britain, but in different ways - for the one it is faded, but sturdy and reliable; for the other, it is a prison to escape. Thus the double-edged poignancy of the closing 'London Pride' depends on which view you sympathise with, although, either way, the film ends with a brave lack of certainty (it was filmed during the height of the Second World War). It should be remembered that the film is contemporaneous with, and covers the same period as, Brideshead Revisited; and the comparison with Waugh only shows up Coward's inadequacies in terms of artistic width, human understanding, and historical acuity (whatever Waugh's defects as a human being). History in This Happy Breed is shown as something that can be weathered, even ignored, by good old common sense. This might be admirable advice, but it makes for tedious drama. Waugh knows that history is a human tragedy, diminishing both the individual and collective endeavour; that stability is impossible no matter what stand you make; and that a recourse to the spiritual, while conferring a sad grandeur and nobility to inevitable human failure, is a poor substitute for life.

The Gibbons family is "This Happy Breed," a 1944 film starring Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Sterling Holloway, John Mills and Kay Walsh. The story begins with the end of World War I in 1919 with the return of Frank Gibbons (Newton) to his family - wife Ethel (Johnson), son Reg (John Blythe) and daughters Queenie (Kay Walsh) and Vi (Eileen Erskine) as they begin their life in a new home. The next 20 years bring weddings, births, tragedy, and death, as it does to all of us. Queenie is being courted by a sailor, Bill (Mills) who wants to marry her, but she wants to better her class and says she can't be happy with him; Vi falls in love and marries, as does Reg. Frank becomes a travel agent after the war and finds that one of his service friends (Holloway) lives next door. They become best buddies and provide the film's humor as they attempt to drink in secret. Ethel meanwhile has to cope with two somewhat difficult characters: the hypochondriacal Aunt Sylvia (Alison Leggatt) and Ethel's mother (Amy Veness) who live with them. One thing interesting about British films that deal with the war - "In Which We Serve," "The 49th Parallel," and this one, for instance - one is made aware of the hardships, loss, sacrifice and sadness, while American films have a much more romantic quality to them. Though "This Happy Breed" ends just at the dawn of World War II, there is discussion of the European situation, fascism, and a general fear of another war in light of what they all went through in the last one. "This Happy Breed" is another triumph, though an unsung one, for two wonderful artists - David Lean and Noel Coward, who worked together in this film, "Blithe Spirit" and "In Which We Serve" and had so many brilliant accomplishments on their own. The Gibbons feel like a real family, with a no-nonsense, hard-working matriarch, her more relaxed, emotional husband, and three children who go their separate ways in life and meet turmoil, normalcy, or tragedy. The most touching scene in the movie for me was the talk that Frank has with Reg before his wedding. "Always put your wife first," Frank says after he finally gets Reg to stop kidding around and listen to him. I wasn't expecting this slice of life to be a tear-jerker, but it was, due to the beautiful acting of Celia Johnson and Robert Newton especially. They are the rocks of the film, providing its center. When Queenie runs off with a married man, she is shunned and disowned by Ethel, yet one can tell just by her movements that she is as heartbroken and worried as she is angry. Frank seems to accept what she says, yet once he's alone, he breaks down and sobs. "This Happy Breed" sneaks up on you; before you know it, you're involved with the Gibbons. They're the stuff Britain is made of, the stuff that gets the country through its darkest times. A little gem; don't miss it. Oh, and I knew that was Laurence Olivier's voice in the beginning.

This film is set between the wars and spans roughly 20 years. WWI has just ended when the film begins. The man of the house is back from fighting and the family is moving into a new home. Soon, you start to realize that this 'typical' English family is darned annoying! Now I know this is considered to a very good film and has a very respectable overall score, but listening to the grandmother and aunt prattle on and on and on throughout the film grated on me--and was hoping that someone would toss them out or hit them! And, as the teenagers grew into adulthood, they, too, often became annoying brats. And it made me wonder...was the supposed to be a film to bolster the spirit of the Brits or make you sympathize for the enemy?! After all, aside from the nice but ineffectual mother and father, they were a pack of jerks! And, as the film inexorably moves through the next decades, some of the folks don't improve--the granny and aunt are STILL obnoxious. The idiot kids (especially the one daughter) eventually turn things around...but it sure takes too much of the film! Heck, I could see the Axis using this film to show the German people to persuade them how weak and annoying the Brits were (which they are NOT--but the film sure makes it seem that way). While I KNOW that David Lean is one of the gods in the film world, I really think this one is a huge disappointment due to characters who seem more like broad caricatures instead of real folks and a story that bounces through so many years that you rarely feel connected to the characters. I think that Mr. and Mrs. Gibbons (the parents) were wonderfully written and the idea of a story of the working class on the outbreak of WWII is great--but something is missing from this one. Episodic and tough to believe at times, you don't expect a Lean film (and his first color one to boot) to be this mediocre.

This film by David Lean takes us on a journey from 1919 after the First World war towards into WW2. But focuses not on the fighting, but on the home front, and the effects of a changing world. I love this films ability to take you along with the day to day routine of a large, close knit family. Youre there with their smiles and tears then then in an instant you feel the heartache of their tragedy. Robert Newton has never been better - a truly mesmerising performance. Forget Long John Silver (although another very fine performance). The rest of the cast are a brilliant complement to Robert Newton. John Mills is on top form in a cameo performance. Did David Lean ever make a bad film? The only down side to the film is you see how great the British Film Industry once was, and now its virtually gone.