We'll Meet Again

You always knew there was going to be a war on when there were confirmed sightings of Vera Lynn gargling her throat.

That joke still works because Dame Vera was still alive and going strong at the age of 103 in April 2020.

When there is a worldwide pandemic going on, get into the blitz spirit with We'll Meet Again. I am sure even during World War 2, some spiv was buying up all the toilet rolls hoping to sell it on for 10 times the price.

Lynn plays Peggy, a dancer with a good singing voice but she is reluctant to sing in public. With the help of a composer friend, Peggy ends up singing on a demo when the singer fails to show up.

Peggy quickly becomes a star when the record is a hit on the radio.

The film has Vera's signature song at the end. It is a simple story, quickly made as a moral booster for the troops.

It is not a great film, the antics with the BBC secretary and her boss is tiresome.

Vera Lynn's film debut is the only one of her three wartime starring vehicles in which she actually sings her most famous song - and only briefly at the very end. Barely recognisable as the handsome woman she later became, Dame Vera is here harshly made up and dressed, ungainly in front of the camera and plainly no actress. (Compare her here with her guest appearance twenty years later as herself - which can be viewed on YouTube - looking ravishing in colour and in fine voice singing 'Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye' in the 1962 Danish wartime comedy-drama 'Venus fra Vestø'.)

The film is in places strangely disjointed. One character is barely introduced before being abruptly killed off offscreen in an air raid; and in a superbly photographed sequence worthy of Dreyer the uncredited child actor who is presumably her son is comforted by Vera before being packed off to the countryside. In an attempt to create some sort of narrative Vera is introduced as a dancer (although perhaps wisely we're not shown her dancing) and her initial disinclination to switch professions and become a singer is rather laboured for the next few reels while throwing in the usual clichés about her persuading a songwriting friend to "come out of the clouds", stop writing music for "stuffy old critics" and get With It until Vera then has to abruptly fill in for a workmate who fails to show up at Broadcasting House when the result is due to be recorded.

Quicker than you can say 'Forces' Sweetheart' she now has her own radio show and is rubbing shoulders with the likes of Alvar Lidell; but in acknowledgement of her then rather homely appearance we next get the other old cliché about her nursing an unrequited passion for rugged Scots Guardsman Donald Gray (who was given leave from the army to make this film, lost his left arm in France in 1944 and consequently became famous on TV as the one-armed detective Mark Saber during the late fifties).

In the mind's eye, George Formby's credit as Associate Producer conjures up an entirely different film in its own right, probably with Formby in the process wrecking studio chief Peter Gawthorne's office...!

The nightly Blitz begins shortly before the end of the show. While it continues, the theater's management invites the audience to stay while the bombing goes on, and the cast will entertain them. Vera Lynn is called on to sing, and she wows everyone. She doesn't believe in her voice, but she believes in the song that Ronald Ward has written. So when the singer who is to record it for a BBC audition doesn't show it, she sings it. It's played accidentally on air, and everyone goes wild for her. She gets a performing contract, and insists that they also take Ward as a songwriter.

Miss Lynn -- she would not become Dame Vera for another quarter of a century -- starred in three Quota Quickies for Columbia around this time, based on her popularity in Britain. She's called upon to sing some songs and be a pal to everyone. The humor is carried by Frederick Leister as the BBC executive who signs her, and Betty Jardine as his neurotic secretary; heartwarming moments are provided by others. The audience is left waiting for the title song until the very end, although its instantly recognizable melody pops up in the background music. It's certainly not a great movie, but it offers its star in a patriotic and sympathetic role. With Patricia Roc and Peter Gawthorne.

Vera Lynn was a wonderful singer with a beautiful voice, with some great songs under her belt, her most famous being "We'll Meet Again". Named after that song, 'We'll Meet Again' is her film debut in her first of her five films.

While not a great film, it is worth seeing for fans of Lynn. 'We'll Meet Again' is not the most visually or technically accomplished film, and the story structurally and sometimes momentum wise isn't the best, occasionally a little heavy-handed.

It is however well worth watching for Lynn, essentially playing herself but doing so with enormous charm. She is well supported by irreverent turns from Frederick Leister and Betty Jardine and a moving one from Brefni O'Rorke.

The music is lovely and makes great use of Lynn's wonderful voice. The script is fun, sweet and charming and some of the pacing is sprightly enough, the film assuredly directed.

Overall, a nice film. 8/10 Bethany Cox