Millions Like Us [1943]

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Does anyone know if there is a good book covering the BRITWAR films (for want of a better name) including the Michael Powell, etc. films. From the Four Corners in 1941 - a 15 minute non-combat film celebrating the contributions made by Commonwealth Allies. 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).

Today's audience will have it driven home just how much danger of invasion the United Kingdom was in when they see the direction signs on roads cut down and painted over. The better for the enemy not to be helped should he land. During the same period they worked together on several Ministry of Information propaganda shorts in support of the British War effort – The acting, especially in the home sequences, is low-key in the same manner as Lean's 'This Happy Breed'. A far cry from the stagey histrionics of pre-war British cinema, it anticipates the naturalism of TV drama. There are no big speeches or characters, just commonplace folk muddling through. The interpolation of Naunton and Wayne, whom L&G had made a crosstalk team in 'The Lady Vanishes', is the only concession to a 1930s conception of entertainment. Rumours of war on the wireless are exchanged for dance music on the other channel. Patriotism does not visibly improve among the younger generation once hostilities begin. One daughter is man-mad, entertaining the troops not wisely but too well; another whose husband is serving in the Western Desert is a lazy, grumbling, neglectful mother. The old dad (Moore Marriott, gruff and unrecognisable as the antic dotard of the Will Hay classics) does his bit in the Home Guard but moans inconsolably about being 'deserted' by his daughters when the country whisks them away. I don't think of this as a true "propaganda" film for some simple reasons (all of which make me like the movie more). Foremost, it's not a government sponsored or requested movie—it's not technically in service to some greater force (as propaganda really has to be). It does of course support the home cause, the war against Hitler, and it does so in a way that the audience will pay to see. That's the bottom line here—this is a really compelling romance about real people in a real contemporary world that the audience knows very well. There are countless people to relate to, and details to recognize. The love story aspects are not developed very well, but they are overflowing with sincerity.a b Brown G. Launder and Gilliat, quoted in Programme book for Made in London Early Evening Films at the Museum of London (Museum of London and The National Film Archive), 24th season, 1992. Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. So much for the uplift. Rarely has a pill been so deftly sugared, however. The scene-setting in the widower's house is an index of the film's almost obsessive determination to avoid overt uplift. 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 plays 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 result of these films brought them a further offer of work from the Ministry of Information (MoI) to write and direct a full length feature film about life on the home front; this never happened but it did metamorphose into a combination of their previous feature films and their MoI work resulting in the 1943 film Millions Like Us.

One of the many war effort films Britain churned out between 1940 and 1945, this one attempted to get women recruited into industry. We watch Celia as she gets her call-up and has to leave her family to work in a factory and stay in a hostel. There she meets college graduate Gwen, flighty Sloane Jenny, and common as brass Annie, amongst others. She grows to like her job, and also finds love with a Scots flyer, Fred Blake. But this being a semi-documentary war film, things don't end up as happily as you'd hope. a b Millions Like Us, In: Programme book for Made in London Early Evening Films at the Museum of London (Museum of London and The National Film Archive), 24th season, 1992. 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. Ditto 'Millions Like Us' by another talented duo. Launder and Gilliat, well established as scriptwriters, ventured into feature direction (the only time they took a joint credit) with this episodic and fascinating study of life on the home front. 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. [2] [3] [4]The one performance I did enjoy, was that of Moore Marriott as the father of the family in question. He is mainly in the earlier portion of this movie but he is the one to remember. Jim Crowson (played by Moore Marriott joins the Home Guard. One of his daughters, Phyllis, joins the Auxillary Territorial Service whilst his other daughter Celia (played by Patricia Roc) is encouraged by her father to stay at home and look after him. She fears her father’s disapproval if she moves away from home but has desires on joining one of the more glamorous service options; instead she is called up to work in an aircraft factory. Initially disappointed, she soon enjoys the camaraderie, meets people from all walks of life and makes new friends. There will be a propagandist's agenda behind any film made in and concerning WWII Britain but, where others use a shovel, 'Millions Like Us' lays it on with a velvet glove. It finds no need to make a hero of everyone in British uniform or to chest-thump over every patriotic act. Instead, it warms us to real and ordinary people – people like "us" in the factories, dance halls and Dad's Army – each playing his or her usually unremarked role during the siege of Britain.

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). When you watch a film made in 1943 you realise, they had no idea how things would play out. Or for how long. The constant fear of invasion and the Blitz (the V1 and V2s would soon start landing on the citizens of Britain.) was gone and they had to stay focused and sacrifice and fight for...how long? Amazing people. And this movie gives such a delightful view of the great leveling that took place in both world wars efforts. This fast paced, light hearted and heartbreaking film about England during WWII starts great and gets better as it goes. The amazing thing, really, is that it was shot during the war and maintains a grim honesty as well as a necessary optimism. Hitler has to be defeated—but the movie makers, and all the actresses in their homespun honesty, did not know he would be.Much of the film is set in an aeroplane factory, where daydreaming Celia ( Patricia Roc) works alongside down-to-earth Gwen ( Megs Jenkins) and snobbish Jennifer ( Anne Crawford), who arrives dressed to the nines and who feels that her new job is beneath her. But their no-nonsense boss Charlie Forbes ( Eric Portman) is adamant that petty class distinctions are no longer relevant during wartime - something the refugee families crowding into trains' first-class compartments would readily agree with. Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat shared a directing credit for their debut in that capacity, a film that looks at the effect of World War II on ordinary British people (especially women), where anyone could be called up and pressed into service. Bigger characters provide a light in which to notice how unassuming Celia and Fred matter to us. Jennifer (Anne Crawford) and Charlie (Eric Portman) play out a side-story, asking what role this war will have in breaking down the classes as the Great War had before it and, with strange prescience, it is the aspiring, salt-of-the-earth Charlie who will not commit to girl-about-town Jenny, foreshadowing the real-world Labour landslide two years later when the have-nots established themselves. While I could mention of any of the supporting players, I shall finish with the low-key comedy of Celia's father Jim (Moore Marriott) and the forever train-travelling double-act of Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, keeping austere Britain from being sombre. Yesterday evening Turner Classic Movies previewed "Millions Like Us," so it was the first time I saw the film. It may not be the best British wartime movie, but it is truly a gem in its own way. I was a child during the war, growing up in a small town in the Midwest of the U.S. Although I didn't have knowledge of what Britain was going through, I heard about it and knew how Americans reacted once we were in the war. The family interactions in "Millions Like Us" were totally believable...the family getting ready to go on holiday in the summer of 1939 and later the scene in the kitchen when Celia announces she has been called up. 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.