July 2006

Talking About the Movies: Demanding Movies Part II

By Frank Beaver

Last month I discussed the challenges and complications of creating films that tell stories containing multi-faceted plotlines with the intention of ideological persuasion. My examples were Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) and Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana (2005), both widely admired efforts but motion pictures which many viewers and critics found exasperating in their deluge of characters and plotting details. I cited New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, who maintained that the power of successful “big-issue” films resided in their ability to bring clarity to complex ideas.

My concluding question was: Are there films that can be said to have met this criterion?

One classic immediately comes to mind. It is the Noel Coward-David Lean film In Which We Serve (1942). With Britain in its fourth year of World War II, enduring air strikes at home and battles abroad, Coward set about scripting a film that he hoped would raise morale, create a dual sense of home front and military commitment, and reveal the sacrifices of Brits among every class. He hoped to tell a story that would convey the pervasiveness of a war that was leaving no British citizen untouched.

This was no small task, but it was one which Coward, surprisingly, would meet. Previously an acclaimed theater writer-performer of musicals and upper-class drawing-room comedies, Coward not only wrote a brilliant script, he co-directed the film with David Lean, portrayed the leading character, and composed the musical score.

The script for In Which We Serve was developed from a true story of a British naval destroyer sunk in 1941 during the Battle of Crete. The story was recounted to Coward by his good friend Louis Mountbatten, based on Mountbatten’s own experiences as a destroyer captain and commander of a flotilla of naval ships. 

Several distinctive qualities gave the screenplay its authority and dramatic power. First was the documentary-like treatment of military life at sea. With the assistance of naval advisers, Coward created authentic dialogue within scenes that accurately conveyed the duties and protocol of dedicated seamen at war.

The dramatic power of the script resided in its “representative” set of characters, ranging across class lines from Ordinary (“Able”) Seaman Shorty Blake (John Mills) to the destroyer’s upper-class captain Edward “D” Kinross (Noel Coward). The dramatis personae of In Which We Serve delivered a microcosm of British life in the 1940’s. Lower, middle-, and upper-class characters were given important positions aboard the ship. Of equal importance was the script’s innovative structure that would bring into narrative and ideological play British women and children.

When the destroyer, the HMS Torrin, is dive-bombed and sinks off Crete, the survivors must cling to wreckage and flotation devices as they await rescue. In the interval, amid further strafing from German bombers, flashback scenes are intercut of the various protagonists to depict their domestic lives on British soil—falling in love, marrying, interacting with one another at family and holiday events. (David Lean was responsible for the film’s brilliant post-production editing of the flashback sequences.)

Shorty Blake courts and weds Freda Lewis (Kay Walsh), and in time they become the parents of a baby girl (Juliet Mills). The birth occurs as Mrs. Blake and other Torrin wives are experiencing a blitz from the skies above their homes in Plymouth.

Captain Kinross and his wife Alix are shown with their children at a family picnic on the Plymouth coast, and in another scene hosting a Christmas party for Torrin officers. In the latter scene Alix stands to offer a toast to the naval men. Her toast turns into a poignant, nearly melancholic expression of her understanding that she has “lost” her husband to the rivalry of a war ship.

The domestic scenes humanize the navy men and show the courage and sacrifices of those on the home front—all without undue nostalgia or sentiment. Not all the seamen’s wives will live to be reunited with their husbands, and not all the men aboard the Torrin are unfailing in their assigned tasks. One midshipman, “Snotty” (Richard Attenborough, in his film debut), abandons his post as a stoker in a moment of panic and is held chargeable for his traitorous action. At the film’s conclusion the destroyer’s survivors gather in a pier cargo shed to be commended as heroes by their commander. In a gesture of benevolence, Captain Kinross frees the stoker—who clearly will live in shame as a result of his cowardice in the heat of battle. It is one final, unambiguous statement about the film’s nationalistic intentions.

In Which We Serve was the best film made about World War II, and to this day many will argue that it has no equal in its all-encompassing view of war’s consequences. In his autobiography Up In the Clouds, Gentlemen Please, actor John Mills attributes the success of the film to Noel Coward’s “perfect script” and his unerring sense of its potential, a sense so keen that prior to production every member of the creative team was required to read the screenplay—from electricians to cameramen.

After his retirement from the New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote The Great Films  (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967), a book in which he singled out In Which We Serve as one of the greatest. He wrote, “As a drama, this film is really a story of devotion to this ship by all the men who sail her, and the devotion of their families to them and thus to the vessel in which they so dutifully serve. And since their motive for their devotion is the compound of all they are—their love of country, their sense of duty, their pride and respect for their jobs—it is a comprehension of the impulse of loyalty that binds a people together and makes them strong….So much is expressed so simply.”

I am very much interested in hearing what other readers regard as films that they have found to have been especially effective in presenting complex, persuasive ideas with clarity and force.

Film historian and critic Frank Beaver is professor of film and video studies and professor of communication.