Millions Like Us

When World War II breaks out, one working class family (The Crowson's) find themselves playing their part in the war effort. Dad joins the war effort, elder daughter Celia signs up to serve and youngest daughter Elsie is to work in a factory. While the two daughters try to fit in where they are placed, it is Elsie that takes to the working class labour better, even thought some of her colleagues from the upper classes don't fit in as well. Meanwhile, back at home, Dad finds the battle against dishes and housework to be even more of a challenge than the battle against the Hun.

Although it is clearly a propaganda film in essence, this wartime drama is quite interesting for not being as simplistic as some of its peers. In this family drama we don't really have a message pushed that hard but are instead left to draw out own warmth from a narrative that has a surprising amount about class within it. In this regard it does produce some interesting threads although those looking back for sharp comment will not find it because this is still a melodrama with a propaganda edge. As such it is a bit plodding at times but I still quite enjoyed it for what it was although I can understand why some viewers have found it a bit dull and lacking in sharpness.

The cast are pretty good with the material. Roc and Dunn give good if unspectacular turns as the daughters while Marriott provides a working class comic relief to proceedings as the father. Te support cast features good work from Jackson, Crawford and others but the performances are not as good as I would have liked just because the script doesn't cut as deep as it could have – although perhaps understandably so.

Overall then a solid wartime melodrama with the heavy propaganda scaled back to allow for a more natural and convincing story delivered with solid turns. Aside from the touch of class politics there isn't that much to set the screen on fire but it should make good as a matinée on a weekend afternoon sort of thing.

It was not until the invention of photography that we began to know what history was really like. Before that we had to rely on representations through art, writings and imaginings. But with the Crimean and American Civil War we could see the actual people who took part so that their suffering began to take on a poignancy that we never quite experienced from depictions of previous conflicts. Two dimensions were still missing that were to give records of history added immediacy, movement and sound. The first was in place to capture the cataclysmic events of World War I and the second was there to give the period of World War II a vividness that could be grasped by all future historians. As if to back up all that acreage of newsreel footage we have the feature films of the period often shown in the dead offpeak viewing times of morning and afternoon television to give us some idea of what people felt during what is rapidly becoming long ago. Although generally highly fictionalised they gave closeup substance to what in newsreels were extras in crowd scenes. As a boy who grew up in the '40's I feel equipped to vouch for those films of the period that conveyed something of the authenticity of what things were like then. I would rate "Millions Like Us" pretty highly in this respect. As a film it cannot compare with several others such as Carol Reed's "The Way Ahead" or Cavalcanti's "Went the Day Well". It lacks their sense of style, is often clumsy in continuity - the transition from peace to war is none too clearly presented - and has some unconvincing miniature mockups such as the oft repeated shot of a factory roofscape at night with toy searchlights beaming away in the background. Much of the photography has the amateurish look that afflicted much British cinema of the period, that the critic C.A. Lejeune once referred to as "like photographs from a plumbing catalogue". (Someone please let me know if I have got this wrong as I am quoting from vague memory). But in spite of these reservations it gets close to how people looked and spoke in those days, what their homes looked like and how they passed their time. It does it without recourse to caricatures of class stereotypes or sentimentality so that it remains one of the most honest films of its type. I have vivid memories of my mother working part-time in a munitions workshop just along the road from our house in Pinner. It wasn't a vast factory like the one in the film, more like a converted garage. I remember her making a part of a shell just like the ones that Patricia Roc, Anne Crawford and Megs Jenkins made. There was even a foreman figure dressed in the same type of overall as Eric Portman. For me those factory scenes in particular accurately represent a small part of our history.

I almost skipped this movie because I thought it was a documentary. It turned out to be a heartwarming and heartbreaking gem. My parents were kids living in Manhattan when the War broke out and my father turned 18 in 1944 and joined the Navy, telling us that he couldn't wait to get in it. They grew up in a neighborhood where everyone they knew signed up as soon as they became of age. The sacrifices that were given in order to support "our boys over there," rations, no meat and sugar, the joining of the various clubs and church organizations that sprung up to do "their share" were all very much the stories that I grew up hearing; all told without malice, but with a true sense of wanting to help, and proud to do it. "Bundles for Britain" was a saying I first heard from my father-in-law who spent 3 years in Africa with the Army. Seeing this movie gave me a genuine look (as it was filmed in 1943) of what exactly our Greatest Ally was enduring. While the ending was heartbreaking, it expressed, through a young woman's eyes, how the War effected everyone in different ways and how they changed from the beginning, middle and an end which was yet to be seen. A man I worked with told me, "I cannot describe to you the feelings of patriotism that swept through the country during the War." This movie showed the ultimate sacrifices, both willing and non-willing, that were made, and how "carrying on" is an expression that means just as much now as it did then and will serve in every aspect of our lives.

Millions Like Us is one of the few films made during the 2nd World War which deals with women factory workers. When Celia gets her call-up papers she wants to do something glamorous like joining the ATS. Instead she is sent to a munitions factory.

This movie is part love story and part propaganda-flic. The propaganda elements are more subtle than in many 40s films eg 'The Next of Kin'. However the life of the factory girl is glamourized. This is Celia's escape from the domestic drudgery of caring for her elderly father and allows her to find true love. Also the togetherness of the factory girls is emphasised throughout the film. The contrast between shots of Celia demure and alone that we see at the start of the film and the final scene of her as an integral part of the group is marked. Not only is munitions work vital to the war effort, we are being told, but it also provides companionship, an outlet and fulfillment for women.

A film about and for women in the workplace may sound like a step forward from the usual patriarchal portrayal of the female sex. Yet, at its heart this is a deeply conservative film. Ultimately Celia finds fulfillment with and through a man and whilst the companionship of women is important, all the female characters are searching for a husband.

However, the Directors should be applauded for having done a good job in making an enjoyable, informative propaganda film.

By the way, look out for the shots of Patricia Roc's feet when she is talking to her husband. Is this an erotic charge or fear of chilblains? Watch the movie and let us know what you think.

To modern sensibilities the title may sound patronising, but if you're tempted to dismiss this as standard WWII propaganda fare, think again. Set among the female workforce of a heavy engineering factory, this perceptive and thoughtful screenplay explores the disruptive effect of Total War upon family life, established behavioural norms and, crucially, the class distinctions that were still dominating British society at this time. As Time Out critic Nigel Floyd put it: "Raises pertinent questions about what exactly was being fought for: the restoration of the old order, or the foundation of a new one? Intelligent entertainment at its best."

It is also unusual for the era in its unabashed portrayal of young women as actively sexual beings with a healthy, even predatory, interest in men. The sole - and glaring - exception to this model is the central heroine, Celia. Patricia Roc's portrayal of her is so overwhelmingly timid, self-effacing and prudish, it comes as little less than miraculous that she manages to bag Fred: a young Airman in the shape of Gordon Jackson. Mind you, he's no firebrand either: together, they make an infuriatingly ineffectual couple.

Far more interesting is the spiky relationship of social opposites Jennifer (Anne Crawford) - privileged/haughty/indolent - and no-nonsense factory foreman Charlie (Eric Portman). In this pair's uneasy mutual attraction and verbal sparring we see echoes of Shakespeare's Beatrice & Benedick.

N.B.: Watch out for a lovely cameo by Irene Handl as the newlyweds' landlady.