The Gentle Sex

Read a review that said women will enjoy it better than men. Rubbish it's a nice story and a good watch. Just a story about people and their experiences. You warm to the ladies and there worries and fears and successes. I've watch it a few times, it's a great afternoon film. Spotting young versions of actors that you've seen as old men growing up, like the odd Dads Army actor looking very youthful.

So give it a try, good characters and enjoy a story from a simpler and more naive time. It will warm the cockles of your heart. I always enjoy an old black and white film, they're from a different world.

The trick in this movie is keeping track of the seven girls - seven dual main characters. All are very different young ladies who, by chance, manage to travel in the same train compartment off to their base. What makes this extra fun is the commentary by Leslie Howard throughout - he spies on the bustling station and selects six candidates, so is it any coincidence that these six strangers end up together? (The seventh, Gwen, almost misses the train and is the last addition to the group)

The easiest four to keep track of are the lorry drivers. Beautiful blonde Anne who loses a loved one in the war, foreigner Erna who is desperate for revenge on the Nazis that destroyed her family, chirpy Scots lass Maggie, who always has a sweet and a smile, and no-nonsense Joan, who comes across as bossy and stand-offish, hiding the fact that she's just as shy and lonely as the rest.

Then we have the remaining three - good time girl Dot, Gwen who "won't be left behind any more" and the little half-pint, Miller, who "finally gets her gun". She's the baby of the group, and is the hardest to keep track of because she is practically Lilli Palmer's twin - it's only when they speak that one can tell the difference!

If you enjoyed films like "Millions Like Us" and "2000 Women" then you'll love this one. An easy 10/10!

A mixed lot of young ladies put their differences aside and do their bit for the war effort.

This film is more than competently made mid- WWII, both produced and narrated by Leslie Howard. Obviously the film has a strong element of propaganda to it, but this isn't laid on with a trowel and doesn't dominate proceedings.

Some reviewers complain that there is a lack of plot. Well, this is meant to be a slice of life for average folk in wartime; there isn't meant to be 'a plot' for most protagonists, because mostly they are just following orders and not asking questions. You could argue 'nothing happens' because at the start of the film the war is on and at the end of the film the war is still on.

However to argue 'nothing happens' is to lose sight of the changes in the circumstances and internal make-up of each of the seven ladies; they all change and develop in their own way, and each is a little more revealed as a person by the end of the film; by the end we see that they are perhaps more disparate than we thought at the start, but for different reasons.

Given the film only runs for 90 minutes and there are seven ladies, the character development is arguably somewhat subtly done. A good number of their trials and tribulations were ones which, at the time, a good fraction of the audience would have been able to relate to. Particularly revealing is the reaction of the ladies to successful ack-ack gunnery late on in the film.

It would have been very easy to dwell exclusively on the matter in hand but this film also discusses the future, eg how society might change in future years. All this at a time when it was by no means clear what the outcome of the war might be.

If you watch this film you might conclude that you would be able to see where you were going by the light of blackout-specification headlamps. Well this is a piece of cinematic licence; the amount of light projected through the usual two tiny slits was barely enough to be seen by let alone see by. Accident rates on wartime roads in the UK skyrocketed; some believe that the loss of life so incurred was greater than if the headlights had been left unmodified (and visible to enemy aircraft).

This film is particularly bittersweet because it was Leslie Howard's last film. Just weeks after it was released, he was lost; the Luftwaffe shot down a scheduled BOAC flight over the bay of Biscay which had only civilians on board. A great loss to cinema; we only have films like this to stand tribute to him, and the recently made (and rather good) 'The Man Who Gave a Damn' documentary.

Given the sort of film this is and when it was made, I'm giving it eight out of ten.

This film follows the experiences of seven women who find themselves together in the Auxillary Territorial Services during the war. The film begins at a train station where the narrator picks out six young women at random. These six ladies - charming but indistinguishable to me - end up in the same carriage of a train on their way to their base. The seventh, Gwen Hayden, joins the others as the train is about to depart. It's a promising start - we eagerly anticipate what will happen to these seven ladies throughout the course of the war. We assume that they'll all end up going their separate ways, but will perhaps reunite at the end of the war, having each been through some unique and fascinating experiences.

Unfortunately, nothing much happens to any of them. They arrive at their base, engage in some vacuous conversation, and then it's on with the mundane duties of the Auxillary Territorial Services. The first fifteen minutes or so after they arrive is basically a montage of footage showing the ladies and their colleagues being regimented by their superiors, during marching practise and so on, and contains very little entertainment value, except for a couple of attempted visual jokes, including one lady soldier who turns the wrong way and ends up marching away from all the others.

Perhaps the problem with the rest of the film is that it's a little too honest. There's no drama and there are no complications - just a group of ladies fulfilling the mundane duties of lorry driving, drilling and manning ack-ack batteries, and prattling on in between. The almost complete lack of male characters makes the conversation even more intolerable. Occasionally the characters ponder the purpose of the war and what they're really fighting for, but their discourse fails to scale any great philosophical heights. There's a melodramatic spiel by a French woman in the middle of the film, in which she tells some of our British ladies about what the Nazis did to her father and brother, but it fails to stir us amidst the jollility of life in the Services. Rather, it seems like a contrived attempt by the scriptwriters to provide some semblance of drama.

The only other drama that occurs - in fact, one of the few events that occurs in this basically plotless film - happens towards the end of the film, but unfortunately it is too little too late. This film is nothing more than a slice of British life during the war. None of the seven ladies embark on any great adventures, they never experience the hardships of war and since the film only scratches the surface of its seven main characters, at the end one is left feeling as though we hardly know them any better than we did when we first met them at the train station. Women will probably enjoy this film more than men, but there is really nothing in it to make it worthy of recommendation.

This film should be watched with an understanding of its intentions, which was to bolster morale and pay tribute to the ordinary British women serving in the ATS, as well as encourage recruitment. There were many propaganda films made around this time, some better than others, but they all had a huge impact on helping the war effort. These were not career soldiers, remember. They'd been called up from offices, shops and factories from all over Britain and did a fantastic job. Practically every British family had at least one female member serving in the ATS during the second world war. We're reminded over and over again, that these women were doing the kind of work normally reserved for men and more important were valued for it! Every so often, a bystander will remark on how hard they work. The film lost no opportunity to remind a tired and increasingly demoralised British public what the war was about and why it was important not to give in.