#605: LEAN, David: This Happy Breed (1944)

DAVID LEAN DIRECTS NOËL COWARD {Spine #603}

LEAN, David (United Kingdom)

This Happy Breed [1944]

Spine #605
Blu-ray

David Lean brings to vivid, emotional life Noël Coward's epic chronicle of a working-class family over the course of two decades in a London suburb. Robert Newton and Celia Johnson are surpassingly affecting as Frank and Ethel Gibbons, a couple with three children whose modest household is touched by joy and tragedy from the tail end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second. A quintessential British domestic drama that finds a perfect balance between politics and sentiment, This Happy Breed features subtly expressive Technicolor cinematography by Ronald Neame and a remarkable supporting cast that includes John Mills, Stanley Holloway, and Kay Walsh.

111 minutes
Color

Monaural

1:37:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2012

Director/Writer

From the play by Noël Coward.

Adapted by David Lean, Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan.

Lean was 36 when he directed This Happy Breed.

Other Lean films in the Collection:

#605: Blithe Spirit (1945)
#76: Brief Encounter (1945)
#31: Great Expectations (1946)
#32: Oliver Twist (1948)
#461: Hobson's Choice (1954)

#22: Summertime (1955)

The Film

A domestic drama, as the synopsis says ...

The twenty years (1919-1939) that fly by in 111 minutes, are registered with crystal-clear clarity by Lean and his team. What is even more remarkable is how well we get to know these characters in the same time:

• Frank Gibbons (Robert Newton) seems awfully even-tempered as he returns from the trenches of the First World War. We warm to him as he displays an unwavering devotion to his wife and children — along with his treasured friendship with Bob Mitchell ...
• Ethel Gibbons (Celia Johnson) is the harried but attentive wife and mother. She is always put-together until her daughter, Queenie, commits an unforgivable act of independence ...
• Mrs. Flint (Amy Veness) — mother of Ethel — is a cranky old lady whose greatest joy seems to be arguing with Sylvia ...
• Aunt Sylvia (Alison Leggatt) is the family kvetch. She has nothing better to do than complain — until late in the film when she becomes a spirtualist [see Blithe Spirit!] ...
• Bob Mitchell (Stanley Holloway) is Frank’s best friend, and drinking buddy. Their scenes together are remarkable and natural; occasionally hilarious ...
• Billy Mitchell (John Mills), Bob’s son, is in love with Queenie. His love is unrequited for most of the film — but he never loses faith ...
• Queenie (Kay Walsh) is the outlier of this traditional working-class family. She seems to love Billy, but yearns for a more exciting life, somehow. She chases her dreams, which ultimately chase her right back to her estranged family — and the faithful man who has loved her all along ...
• Vi (Eileen Erskine) is not sketched as completely as most of the characters listed above — but her big moments involve chastising Sam for his provocative politics, then taming him with marriage ...
• Reg (John Blythe) is the son, radiating goodness, with pictures of Chaplin and Fairbanks in his room. He marries Phyllis and their tragedy truly shocks the viewer ...
• Sam Leadbitter (Guy Verney) is a rabid socialist, but is tamed when he married Vi ...

That’s ten characters that are fleshed out with such skill by Coward and Lean that you really feel like you know them. When Queenie — the prodigal daughter — finally returns home to her parents and Billy, it registers with great emotional weight.

The acting is superb (Johnson, Holloway and Walsh, in particular); and Lean’s direction is inspired. A well-made film, put together in what must have been trying circumstances in 1944.

Film Rating (0-60):

54

The Extras

The Booklet

Essay Home Truths by Farrah Smith Nehme.

Good info galore.

For example, this Technicolor film — generally used only in large-scale productions, and normally not available in the middle of a world war — is used by Lean and Neame in a most unusual way. Nehme details from Kevin Brownlow’s Lean biography that the famous Natalie Kalmus, the “color consultant” for nearly every film made with this process, was absent from this particular film, and that her assistant, Joan Bridge, was put in charge.

Kalmus was infamous for her raging arguments with seasoned producers and directors (David O. Selznick and Vincent Minnelli, for example). She might have prevailed over the unseasoned Lean in this case, but in her absence, Lean and Neame produced a color film without any of the garish bright colors associated with the process — with some of the outdoor scenes being exceptions.

She highlights the brilliance of Johnson’s acting with this paragraph:

In the scene where Queenie’s note is discovered ... Frank reacts with shock and grief, but Ethel’s is the face Lean lingers over. As she angrily says she never wants to hear Queenie’s name again, Johnson’s huge eyes seem to recede into her head while her gaze stays miles away, fixed on a future without her youngest child. She sees, as Frank does not, that Queenie hasn’t simply broken sexual conventions. Their daughter has expressed contempt for their entire life, told them that their existence is so mingy and drab that she will grasp at even the most sordid form of escape. When Frank accuses Ethel of not loving Queenie as she did Vi and Reg, Johnson shifts her eyes guiltily in mid-denial, anger at war with self-reproach.

Commentary

None

Interview 1

About the film with Noël Coward scholar Barry Day.

Day is a pleasure to listen to. Very informative.

Interview 2

With cinematographer-screenwriter-producer Neame from 2010.

This is extraordinary. Neame was 99-years-old! He reminisces about all four films in this set; talks about the time 14-year-old Elizabeth and 10-year-old Margaret visited the set of In Which We Serve (Spine #604). Then — more recently — he chuckles, he “broke protocol” by speaking to Queen before he was spoken to, asking Elizabeth II whether she remembered coming to the set.

Of course she did.

He also waxes eloquent about poor Robert Newton, a sad alcoholic, whose pay was contingent on his remaining sober throughout the shoot. Although he technically lost all his pay, they eventually paid him.

He also discusses the hard-to-work-with Rex Harrison (Blithe Spirit), who apparently only wanted one side of his face to be photographed.

Trailers

Extras Rating (0-40):

33

54 + 33 =

87

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