In Which We Serve (1942)

Based on the true story of Lord Mountbatten's destroyer, In Which We Serve is one of the most memorable British films made during World War II. Unfolding in flashback as survivors cling to a dinghy, the film interweaves the history of HMS Torrin with the onshore lives of its crew. The 1942 film was the inspiration of Noel Coward, who desperately wanted to do something for the war effort, and he produced, wrote the screenplay, composed the stirring score, and starred as Captain Edward Kinross. Coward also officially codirected, though he handed the reigns to David Lean (in his directorial debut). There is fine support from Celia Johnson and John Mills, as well as a star-making debut from an uncredited Richard Attenborough. The use of real navy and army personnel as extras, together with lavish studio production and authentic shipboard location footage, lends the film an unusual sense of realism. A landmark in the careers of many of the most important names in British film, this moving and occasionally harrowing classic has a vital place in the development of British cinema. --Gary S. Dalkin Amazon.com

H.M.S. Torrin

This WWII movie has Noel Coward written all over it. He acts in it, co-directs it with David Lean, and produced it. This movie goes into a great deal of detail about the life of the destroyer, her majesty's ship Torrin, and the crew on her. There is some action during fights with airplanes and ships, but most of the movie is centered on reflecting back on times aboard ship and on shore with families after the ship is sunk. These memories occur while they are trying to survive in a lifeboat while being strafed by German bombers. You genuinely feel you know what it was like for British Naval families when the movie is over. The level of detail is incredible. You will feel like you are right there with them. This seems a little bit like a documentary story but it does have live action throughout. You will see numerous familiar faces if you are a fan of classic British cinema. As some others mentioned the only negative is overly stiff acting by Coward even for playing a ships Captain. The rest the cast played their parts beautifully. I recommend it. July 19, 2007

In Which We Serve

With Britain in the pit of the Second War, playwright Coward was desperate to do a morale-boosting film, and "Serve" was the inspired result. The normally effete Coward is appropriately "stiff upper lip" as Kinross, and a young Mills stands out in a first rate ensemble cast which also includes Bernard Miles and Celia Johnson as Coward's wife. (Also look fast for a young Richard Attenborough!) With Coward at the helm as writer, star, and even score composer, David Lean handling most of the directing (and all the editing), and future director Ronald Neame the cinematography, the result is one of Britain's very finest war films, which accomplished everything Coward set out to do for his country. June 25, 2007

Island Race

How did he have the time to write such a picture, to co-direct it, to act in it and after everything else to write its score? Noel Coward's energies, always remarkable, were redoubled during the second World War, and it must have seemed like another excuse to show off his patriotism, which he wore like a second skin despite his slummy upbringing. IN WHICH WE SERVE is still worth watching, but it's nowhere as appealing as either CAVALCADE or THIS HAPPY BREED, and its focus on the "life and death of a ship" (the HMS Torrin) is strangely monomaniacal, almost constructivist. Over and over you see unattributed bare arms hammmering away, symbols of brute strength like something from a Soviet film. The ship goes up. The ship goes down. A new ship rises out of the water. And in between Coward tries his hardest to keep you interested in the lives of the men clinging to the lifeboat, till our interest settles on three--Bernard Miles as Hardy, with his striking, long, hatchet face and the deep voice that goes with it--he should have played Ichabod Crane--John Mills as Blake, a tiny little pipsqueak who's feisty in the standard Mickey Rooney-Jimmy Cagney manner, and Noel Coward himself as Captain Kinross, tranquil with class privilege and, in the background, his glamorous marriage to the ineffable Celia Johnson (so beautiful till she opens her mouth and those bits of teeth wobble around on her gums).

Hitchcok's LIFEBOAT had the same concentration on a handful of downed and wet actors playing nautical, but without Coward's complicated flashback structure. Coward stalwarts Joyce Carey and Kay Walsh show up as the love interests for Miles and Mills respectively--Carey, in this movie and in BRIEF ENCOUNTER as well, treated very unusually for the 1940s as a woman not in her first youth, nor good-looking in any way, who's given nevertheless a fullblooded and physical romantic interest. She must have kissed the ground every time Noel Coward walked on it. Who else would have written such roles for her?

The movie is trying indeed when it goes "serious," and yet that's half the fun of it, seeing how often Coward plays the "race" card--"we are an island race" indeed. I teared up, of course I did, during the Blitz as the V-1 rockets drop bomb after bomb on London households, leading to the death of several favorite characters, and again when Coward leads his naval boys into Dunkirk and out of it again with a panoply of half-nude British soldiers sipping tea or what looks like an enormous vat of Kool-Aid. Outside of these scenes, however, the movie is marred by its agitprop and by David Lean's tiresomeness, in showing everything at such a glacial pace.

PS, the film was shot by Ronald Neame who later became a director himself and whose "masterpiece," THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, sometimes seems like a shot by shot remake of the disaster sequences of IN WHICH WE SERVE. April 1, 2007

Stiff Upper Lip British War Film

David Lean had a hand in directing this Noel Coward film and it shows in the documentary quality of the film. The movie is "The story of a ship" as we are told right off. I find the flashback technique to tell that story contrived and by now a hopeless cliché. When the picture gets bleary for one more recalled memory, you may struggle to suppress a laugh or a groan--but, darn it, the movie works. The ship emerges from the Scottish ship yard, goes to sea as war breaks out, and suffers casualties at sea, and, shockingly, ashore. It takes a pretty hard heart not to shed a tear when Noel Coward says goodbye to his crew. Made during wartime the film features fine performances by the young John Mills and the very young Richard Attenborough. You recognize other British character actors. Celia Johnson and Noel Coward persevere with the stiffest of upper lips. February 24, 2007

Heart and will.. Beauty and truth!

David Lean's directorial debut was made with Noël Coward with a version of the playwright's "In Which We Serve"... The film's success led the pair to work together on three further films: "This Happy Breed," "Blithe Spirit," and "Brief Encounter."

English filmmakers had a prevailing direction to be more sensitive to the interplay of roles in wartime action...

Heroism was not the privilege of one man... With a common social understanding, working together, as the title of Noël Coward's and David Lean's "In Which We Serve" suggests...

The film, one of the finest wartime dramas to come out of Britain, tells the story of an English destroyer HMS Torrin, sunk in the Mediterranean Sea by the Germans, during the Battle of Crete...

As commander and crew keep close to the life raft, the screen fades gradually to take us back in active to the commission of the ship...

By concentrating on each member of the crew a different memory is relieved, and each flashback advances the story of the life of the ship and the men who served on her...

It is a magnificent film about courage and dedication, devotion and sacrifice... It is a tribute to the spirit of the western democracies but also to the spirit of the British people who would not admit defeat...

A last but one powerful moving scene is the farewell on Alexandria's dock of the Torrin's Captain (Noël Coward) to the few remaining seaman survivors...

January 2, 2007

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