Millions Like Us | |
---|---|
Directed by | Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder |
Written by | Sidney Gilliat Frank Launder |
Produced by | Edward Black |
Starring | Patricia Roc Gordon Jackson Anne Crawford Eric Portman Basil Radford Naunton Wayne Moore Marriott |
Cinematography | Jack Cox Roy Fogwell |
Edited by | R. E. Dearing |
Music by | Louis Levy [1] |
Distributed by | Gainsborough Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 103 min |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Millions Like Us is a 1943 British propaganda film, showing life in a wartime aircraft factory in documentary detail. It stars Patricia Roc, Gordon Jackson, Anne Crawford, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, Moore Marriott and Eric Portman.
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).
Radford and Wayne reprise their roles of Charters and Caldicott from The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Night Train to Munich (1941), both scripted by Launder and Gilliat and produced by Edward Black. [2]
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).
Celia Crowson and her family go on holiday to the south coast of England in the summer of 1939, staying in the guest house they visit every year. Soon afterwards, the Second World War breaks out and Celia's father joins what was to become the Home Guard. Her more confident sister Phyllis joins the Auxiliary Territorial Service.
Fearing her father's disapproval if she moves away from home, Celia hesitates about joining up but eventually her call-up papers arrive. Hoping to join the WAAF or one of the other services, Celia instead gets posted to a factory making aircraft components, where she meets her co-workers, including her Welsh room-mate Gwen Price and the vain upper middle-class Jennifer Knowles. Knowles dislikes the work they have to do at the factory, causing friction with their supervisor Charlie Forbes which eventually blossoms into a verbally combative romance.
The stock footage clips shown early on in the film of the "factory" where the aircraft is being made show a four engine Short Stirling bomber leaving the assembly hall and then taking off. During its real life wartime manufacture that plane would be produced at twenty various locations in the United Kingdom.
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.
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 play 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.
The film was originally intended as a documentary for the Ministry of Information but then their film division suggested it be done as a fictional movie and the project was produced at Gainsborough Studios. Screenwriters Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat decided to share direction, both recording their debuts in that capacity. They afterwards felt that having two directors had often confused the actors. They continued to collaborate on scriptwriting and production but directed individually. [3] [4] [5]
Roger Burford had suggested to the producers that they create a film covering the entire British war effort on the Home Front. The directors decided the task was too big and that the subject needed a fictional story to tie the material together. They focused on women working in an aircraft factory to show the effect of the war on ordinary people from a variety of backgrounds. [6] The directors originally wanted to call the film The Mobile Woman. The dance hall scene involved real serving soldiers, airmen and firemen. [6]
Gilliat later recalled:
Anne Crawford was brought in to replace Sheila Bell, a lovely girl with a sad story. Eric Portman didn't want to play in the film and went to Halifax and got drunk, but was threatened by Ted Black and ended by being co-operative with us. It was very demanding, being both writers and directors on the film, and the Ostrers thought the whole project ludicrous. Ted Black didn't get on with Maurice and Bill Ostrer, who wanted to take creative credit. [7]
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is used liberally in the soundtrack. Gilliat says "we were not responsible for the terrible assault of Beethoven. [8]
Naunton Wayne, was a Welsh character actor, born in Pontypridd, Glamorgan, Wales. He was educated at Clifton College. His name was changed by deed poll in 1933.
Sidney Gilliat was an English film director, producer and writer.
Frank Launder was a British writer, film director and producer, who made more than 40 films, many of them in collaboration with Sidney Gilliat.
Arthur Basil Radford was an English character actor who featured in many British films of the 1930s and 1940s.
Night Train to Munich is a 1940 British thriller film directed by Carol Reed and starring Margaret Lockwood and Rex Harrison. Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the 1939 short story Report on a Fugitive by Gordon Wellesley, the film is about an inventor and his daughter who are kidnapped by the Gestapo after the Nazis march into Prague in the prelude to the Second World War. A British secret service agent follows them, disguised as a senior German army officer pretending to woo the daughter over to the Nazi cause.
The Happiest Days of Your Life is a 1950 British comedy film directed by Frank Launder, based on the 1947 play of the same name by John Dighton. The two men also wrote the screenplay. It is one of a stable of classic British film comedies produced by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat for British Lion Film Corporation. The film was made on location in Liss and at Riverside Studios, London. In several respects, including some common casting, it was a precursor of the St. Trinian's films of the 1950s and 1960s.
Waterloo Road is a 1945 British film directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring John Mills, Stewart Granger, and Alastair Sim. It is based on the Waterloo area of South London. According to the British Film Institute database, it is the third in an "unofficial trilogy" by Gilliat, preceded by Millions Like Us (1943) and Two Thousand Women (1944).
The Rake's Progress is a 1945 British comedy-drama film. In the United States, the title was changed to Notorious Gentleman. The film caused controversy with U.S. censors of the time, who trimmed scenes for what was considered graphic amoral and sexual content.
London Belongs to Me is a British film released in 1948, directed by Sidney Gilliat, and starring Richard Attenborough and Alastair Sim. It was based on the novel London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins, which was also the basis for a seven-part series made by Thames Television shown in 1977.
Wilkie Cooper BSC was a British cinematographer.
Joy Winstanley Shelton was an English actress who performed in films, radio and television.
The Lady Vanishes is a 1938 British mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White, the film is about an English tourist travelling by train in continental Europe who discovers that her elderly travelling companion seems to have disappeared from the train. After her fellow passengers deny ever having seen the elderly lady, the young woman is helped by a young musicologist, the two proceeding to search the train for clues to the old lady's disappearance.
Charters and Caldicott started out as two supporting characters in the 1938 Alfred Hitchcock film The Lady Vanishes. The pair of cricket-obsessed characters were played by Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford. The characters were created by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. The duo became very popular and were used as recurring characters in subsequent films and in BBC Radio productions. Charters and Caldicott have also been played by other actors, and they eventually had their own BBC television series.
The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan is a 1953 British musical drama film dramatisation of the collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan. Librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, portrayed by Robert Morley and Maurice Evans, co-wrote fourteen extraordinarily successful comic operas, later referred to as the Savoy Operas, which continue to be popular today.
I See a Dark Stranger is a 1946 British World War II spy comedy film directed by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat and starred Deborah Kerr and Trevor Howard.
Edward Black was a British film producer, best known for being head of production at Gainsborough Studios in the late 1930s and early 1940s, during which time he oversaw production of the Gainsborough melodramas. He also produced such classic films as The Lady Vanishes (1938).
The Constant Husband is a 1955 British comedy film, directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Rex Harrison, Margaret Leighton, Kay Kendall, Cecil Parker, George Cole and Raymond Huntley. The story was written by Gilliat together with Val Valentine, and the film was produced by Individual Pictures, Gilliat's and Frank Launder's joint production company. Because the film got caught up in the 1954 bankruptcy of British Lion Film Corporation, it was not released until more than seven months after it had been finished and reviewed by the British Board of Film Censors.
Two Thousand Women is a 1944 British comedy-drama war film about a German internment camp in Occupied France which holds British women who have been resident in the country. Three RAF aircrewmen, whose bomber has been shot down, enter the camp and are hidden by the women from the Germans.
Fortune Is a Woman is a 1957 black and white British-American film noir crime film directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Jack Hawkins and Arlene Dahl. The screenplay was by Gilliat and Frank Launder, from an adaptation by Val Valentine of the 1952 novel Fortune is a Woman by Winston Graham. Its plot concerns an attempted insurance fraud that goes badly wrong.
A Girl in a Million is a 1946 British comedy film. It is notable for featuring Joan Greenwood in an early starring role; and Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne in their comedy double act as two cricket-obsessed Englishmen, this time called Fotheringham and Prendergast.