Although British by birth, John Boorman is perhaps best known as a Hollywood director, responsible for, among other things, that fine drama "Deliverance". "Hope and Glory", however, is a quintessentially British film, based on his own childhood experiences of wartime London. The film tells the story of the Rohans, a typical middle-class suburban London family between 1939 and 1942. The family consists of parents Clive and Grace, daughters Dawn and Sue and 10-year-old son Billy, through whose eyes the action is seen.
The film does not have a strongly defined plot, but rather tells of how Grace and her children get on with the business of living after Clive goes off to join the army. Dawn falls in love with a Canadian soldier and gets pregnant by him. The family home burns down and they are forced to move in with Grace's parents who live outside London. A theme running throughout is how, in the midst of death and suffering, people manage to find joy in the small pleasures of life. For the teenaged Dawn this means letting her hair down at the local dancehall. For Billy and his friends this means exploring bomb sites to add to their growing collections of German bullets and shrapnel. And, even more importantly for the cricket-mad boy, it means learning how to bowl a googly. For a film about the war, this one contains a surprising amount of comedy.
The title, of course, derives from the well-known patriotic song "Land of Hope and Glory". In some ways the film is critical of some of the less attractive aspects of British patriotism, such as Billy's terrifying headmaster calling upon God to rain down destruction on the Germans or his teacher who explains to her class that the war is being waged to keep as much of the world map as possible coloured pink. Yet in other ways Boorman celebrates what might be called the "patriotic myth of the Blitz", the idea that when confronted by hardship and a ruthless enemy the British people reacted with solidarity and stoicism, taking in their stride things which at one time might have seemed like major disasters. Before the war, an unmarried teenaged girl who found herself pregnant might well have been disowned by an outraged family, but Grace and Clive only treat Dawn with love. The family's loss of their home becomes easier to bear because they have already seen several of their neighbours lose theirs. When a German pilot is forced to bail out into the middle of the people he has just been bombing, they gaze at him in curiosity rather than hatred (although they have plenty of reason to hate him) and make no attempt to harm him before he is led away by a policeman.
Four acting performances stand out. There is young Sebastian Rice-Edwards who makes Billy a most engaging hero, a rather less scruffy version of Just William. There is Sammi Davis as Dawn, older than her brother and therefore more acutely aware that war is something real and deadly dangerous rather than an exciting adventure; her desperate search for love and pleasure can be attributed to this sudden recognition of her own mortality and to a desire to enjoy life while she can. (Davis seemed to be one of the rising young stars of the British cinema in the late eighties, but little has been heard of her recently). Then there is Sarah Miles, not always my favourite actress but here excellent as Grace, a woman trying to cope with the task of raising her family while her husband is away, and also trying to cope with her own emotions. (We learn that the real love of Grace's life was not Clive but his friend Mac, still a civilian and unexpectedly single after being abandoned by his own wife). And finally there is Ian Bannen as the family's difficult and eccentric old grandfather.
The film was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing. It didn't win in any of these categories, but it is a tribute to Boorman's skills as a film-maker that it received so many nominations, because it was not a film particularly calculated to appeal to the American market. It deals with the British war effort during a period when America was still neutral. It deals with the lives of ordinary people rather than a recognisable figure like Churchill. It does not star any big-name American actors; making a character in a British war movie Canadian is normally a device to create a role for a major Hollywood star, but not here. It does not even have any internationally known British stars apart from Miles. And, worst of all, it requires a certain knowledge of cricket, a sport which has about the same following in America that baseball does over here.
Despite the Britishness of his subject-matter, however, Boorman was able to make a film which reflects universal values- love, the family, the struggle for survival, determination, humour in the face of adversity. It is the emotional power generated by this combination of the particular and local with the universal which makes "Hope and Glory" one of the best British films of the 1980s, a decade when our national film industry experienced a remarkable revival following its nadir in the 1970s. It is perhaps the best film ever made about the wartime Home Front. 9/10
The film does not have a strongly defined plot, but rather tells of how Grace and her children get on with the business of living after Clive goes off to join the army. Dawn falls in love with a Canadian soldier and gets pregnant by him. The family home burns down and they are forced to move in with Grace's parents who live outside London. A theme running throughout is how, in the midst of death and suffering, people manage to find joy in the small pleasures of life. For the teenaged Dawn this means letting her hair down at the local dancehall. For Billy and his friends this means exploring bomb sites to add to their growing collections of German bullets and shrapnel. And, even more importantly for the cricket-mad boy, it means learning how to bowl a googly. For a film about the war, this one contains a surprising amount of comedy.
The title, of course, derives from the well-known patriotic song "Land of Hope and Glory". In some ways the film is critical of some of the less attractive aspects of British patriotism, such as Billy's terrifying headmaster calling upon God to rain down destruction on the Germans or his teacher who explains to her class that the war is being waged to keep as much of the world map as possible coloured pink. Yet in other ways Boorman celebrates what might be called the "patriotic myth of the Blitz", the idea that when confronted by hardship and a ruthless enemy the British people reacted with solidarity and stoicism, taking in their stride things which at one time might have seemed like major disasters. Before the war, an unmarried teenaged girl who found herself pregnant might well have been disowned by an outraged family, but Grace and Clive only treat Dawn with love. The family's loss of their home becomes easier to bear because they have already seen several of their neighbours lose theirs. When a German pilot is forced to bail out into the middle of the people he has just been bombing, they gaze at him in curiosity rather than hatred (although they have plenty of reason to hate him) and make no attempt to harm him before he is led away by a policeman.
Four acting performances stand out. There is young Sebastian Rice-Edwards who makes Billy a most engaging hero, a rather less scruffy version of Just William. There is Sammi Davis as Dawn, older than her brother and therefore more acutely aware that war is something real and deadly dangerous rather than an exciting adventure; her desperate search for love and pleasure can be attributed to this sudden recognition of her own mortality and to a desire to enjoy life while she can. (Davis seemed to be one of the rising young stars of the British cinema in the late eighties, but little has been heard of her recently). Then there is Sarah Miles, not always my favourite actress but here excellent as Grace, a woman trying to cope with the task of raising her family while her husband is away, and also trying to cope with her own emotions. (We learn that the real love of Grace's life was not Clive but his friend Mac, still a civilian and unexpectedly single after being abandoned by his own wife). And finally there is Ian Bannen as the family's difficult and eccentric old grandfather.
The film was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing. It didn't win in any of these categories, but it is a tribute to Boorman's skills as a film-maker that it received so many nominations, because it was not a film particularly calculated to appeal to the American market. It deals with the British war effort during a period when America was still neutral. It deals with the lives of ordinary people rather than a recognisable figure like Churchill. It does not star any big-name American actors; making a character in a British war movie Canadian is normally a device to create a role for a major Hollywood star, but not here. It does not even have any internationally known British stars apart from Miles. And, worst of all, it requires a certain knowledge of cricket, a sport which has about the same following in America that baseball does over here.
Despite the Britishness of his subject-matter, however, Boorman was able to make a film which reflects universal values- love, the family, the struggle for survival, determination, humour in the face of adversity. It is the emotional power generated by this combination of the particular and local with the universal which makes "Hope and Glory" one of the best British films of the 1980s, a decade when our national film industry experienced a remarkable revival following its nadir in the 1970s. It is perhaps the best film ever made about the wartime Home Front. 9/10