Millions Like Us [1943]

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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. 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. 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. 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. Millions Like Us" is an awfully good film because it is so incredibly ordinary and simple. That's because it's goal is to provide a snapshot of what life was like for seemingly ordinary women during WWII. It follows one woman in particular, but you also see quite a bit about the other women and their lives as well--and is an invaluable documentary-like look into the WWII era.

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. 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. Just after returning to the factory, they find furnished rooms nearby to set up house together, but then Fred is killed in a bombing raid over Germany. Celia receives the news while working at the factory and at a mealtime shortly afterwards the band plays Waiting at the Church, without realising it had been played at Celia's wedding reception. About to break down, Celia is comforted by her fellow workers, as bombers from Fred's squadron overfly the factory en route to another raid. I had fairly high hopes for the film "Millions Like Us" as it sounded an interesting idea on paper. Sadly, the final results didn't live up to my expectations. This movie is part love story and part propaganda-flic. The propaganda elements are more subtle than in many 40s films eg 'The Next of Kin'. However the life of the factory girl is glamourized. This is Celia's escape from the domestic drudgery of caring for her elderly father and allows her to find true love. Also the togetherness of the factory girls is emphasised throughout the film. The contrast between shots of Celia demure and alone that we see at the start of the film and the final scene of her as an integral part of the group is marked. Not only is munitions work vital to the war effort, we are being told, but it also provides companionship, an outlet and fulfillment for women.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. During World War II, young Celia is separated from her family when she is called up to work in an aircraft components factory, but finds love in the arms of an RAF pilot. Show full synopsis

A further propaganda message included in the film was to represent the different regions and classes of the British people all working together for the common good of Britain, and therefore included representatives of all nations and all classes rather than the upper middle classes which usually represented the British people in films of the era. Characters included Gwen from Wales, Fred from Glasgow, a Welsh male voice choir, a massed dance to the tune of Loch Lomond. The north of England was represented by Eric Portman playing Charlie Forbes and Terry Randall in her role of Annie Earnshaw – and as northerners they were ‘obviously’ working class and had a degree of comedy about them. Patricia Roc was cast as a working class girl, but being the star of the film came across as more middle class. The upper middle class were represented by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as the army officers Charters and Caldicott.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. 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). 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.