This, the top British film of 1944, was the first of David Lean’s great successes as a director. It was based on a play by Noel Coward, which was first performed in 1942, having had its planned opening postponed by the outbreak of war.The main characters are Frank and Ethel Gibbons, settling into a new home into suburban Clapham after the First World War. Frank, who served in the army, has set himself up as a travel agent, so the Gibbonses are also joining the lower middle classes as the film opens. The film ends on the eve of the Second World War, as the couple prepare to retire to the country.
Robert Newton as the down-to-earth, deeply conservative husband, and Celia Johnson as his constantly tired, rather humourless wife (“Don’t talk so daft, Frank”) give two of the finest screen acting performances I’ve ever seen (even if their lower-class accents are occasionally dodgy). The direction is quite brilliant (as you’d expect). Coward’s script is a masterpiece.
If you’ve never felt nostalgic for a lost England, or if you intuitively despise “small” people like Frank and Ethel, or if you’re of a radical left-wing disposition, give it a miss. If you’re none of these things and you fancy a good laugh and a good cry and won’t be too upset at being reminded of what a wonderful country this used to be, I can’t recommend it strongly enough. For English picture-goers in 1944, it must have been like gazing into a benign but largely realistic mirror.
Those idiots at Chanel 4, naturally, get it completely wrong: “a toff propagandist’s England.” Noel Coward, of course, was born into the lower middle classes: “I was a suburban boy, born and bred in the suburbs of London, which I've always loved and always will.” His knowledge of and his love and regard for people like Frank and Ethel Gibbons gives this film enormous emotional impact (unless, of course, you work for the Guardian, Channel 4 or Time Out, in which case the lower classes are only of interest when they achieve victim status).
The story covers all the great events and innovations of the period – the Empire Exhibition, the General Strike, Munich, mass broadcasting, mass tourism, the rise of the motor car (two of the main characters die in a car crash – Lean’s brilliance ensures that the scene in which we hear the news is one of the most mutedly heart-rending in all cinema). As a social document, it is fascinating.
For those who assume that all Noel Coward ever wrote was dialogue for brittle upper-class twits prattling on about the flatness of Norfolk, the script will be a revelation. There’s a wonderful scene in which Frank (“Frenk” as it’s pronounced throughout) lays into his wife’s loopy sister for accusing him of being a warmonger because he isn’t celebrating the Munich Agreement. He says the sight of people – “English people, mark you” – shouting and cheering with relief earlier that day made him sick to his stomach.
The scene where Frank clashes with his son, who is on the opposite side during the general strike (socialist Reg get involved in a dust-up, while his dad is out helping to defeat the strikers) is particularly fine. Here’s what Frank tells his son, after they’ve agreed to differ:
“I belong to a generation of men most of whom aren’t here any more. We all did the same thing for the same reason, no matter what we thought about politics. Well, that’s all over and done with, and we’re carrying on as best we can, as though nothing happened. But in fact several things happened, and one of them was this country suddenly got tired. She’s tired now. But the old girl’s got stamina, don’t you make any mistake about that, and it’s up to us ordinary people to keep things steady. Now, that’s your job. And just you remember it!”
Wonderful thought, that – whatever idiocy the political class gets up to, it’s up to the rest of us keep things going. Sounds like a definition of small “c” conservatism to me. And it sets my bottom lip all aquiver every time.
The funniest lines in the film – and there are many – come in an early scene, when Frank and Ethel’s children are celebrating Christmas, 1925, with some friends, including junior Marxist, Sam Leadbetter:
SAM
Ladies, gentlemen, comrades…
QUEENIE
Well, make up your mind
SAM
Comrades. In thanking you for your hospitality on this festive
day, I would like to say it is both a pleasure and a privilege to
be here…
QUEENIE
’Ere, ‘ere!
SAM
Though, as you know, holding the views I do, it is really
against my principles to hobnob to any great extent with the
bourgeoisie…
VI:
What’s that?
QUEENIE
I think it means “common” in a nice way.
VI
Oh.
SAM
I cannot help but feel that today, what with being Christmas
and one thing and another, it would be right and proper to
put aside all prejudice and class hatred…
QUEENIE
Very nice of you, I’m sure.
SAM
But as you well know there are millions and millions of
homes today where Christmas is naught but a mockery,
where there is neither warmth, nor food, nor even the bare
necessities of life, where little children, old before their time,
huddle round a fireless grate…
QUEENIE
Well, they’d be just as well off if they stayed in the middle of
the room then, wouldn’t they?
SAM
That sort of remark, Queenie, springs from complacency,
arrogance, and a full stomach!
As a means of deflating the emetic rhetoric of ersatz compassion, the line about the kids staying in the middle of the room is simply perfect.
The final chunk of dialogue involves Frank and Ethel, who’ve escaped to the back room to avoid Aunt Sylvia’s terrible singing.
ETHEL
I don’t think much of that Sam Leadbetter. Taken all round, he
seems a bit soft to me.
FRANK
I wouldn’t call him soft, exactly. But he’ll grow out of it.
ETHEL
But it’s wrong, isn’t it, all this “down with everything”
business?
FRANK
Well there’s something to be said for it. There’s always
something to be said for everything. But where they go wrong
is trying to get things done too quickly, and we don’t like
doing things quickly in this country. It’s like gardening.
Somebody once said we was a nation of gardeners. And they
weren’t far wrong. We like planting things and watching them
grow, looking out for changes in the weather.
ETHEL
You and your gardening
FRANK
What works in other countries wont work in this one. We got
our own way of settling things. It may be a bit slow, and it
may be a bit dull, but it suits us all right. And always will.
You’re either sneering or wiping a tear from your eye at this point. This is still a nation of gardeners - but we’re ruled by spivs and PR merchants and lawyers and lecturers and professional politicians who’ve never fought for their country and never done a proper job in their lives.
So, you can dismiss This Happy Breed as so much sentimental nonsense, harking back to an England that never existed, written by a social-climbing reactionary of limited talent who transcended his upbringing, and needed to pay homage to it to assuage his guilt at managing to escape.
Or you can accept it as the portrait of the ordinary members of an admirable, unique race possessing an identifiable national culture and traits which were at the same time romantic and commonsensical. One thing’s for sure – the people of these islands have been subjected to decades of relentless social engineering designed to breed out the very characteristics which made it so gloriously unique in the first place. On the whole, I don’t think the agents of change for change’s sake have quite succeeded in their aim – but they might, in time.
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