La via della gloria

A film that despite being made in 1944, avoids sterotyping British Characters. A story about a group of people, from various civilian jobs, who receive their call-up papers. It shows them progressing through their training and entering action in North Africa.

Having lived in England at the time this movie depicts, I can attest to the absolute authenticity of its content. The characters were those I met every day during those awful years of turmoil. I am also advised by my husband, an ex-paratrooper, that this movie was used as a training film for all recruits, because of its strict adherence to actual army conditions in those days. The main joy for me in watching this film is the group of actors who were so familiar to all of us during those years. From Stanley Holloway (later so famous as Eliza Doolittle's father) to Jimmy Hanley, the handsome, easy-going boy-next door, and all the others in that wonderful ensemble cast - they all appeared in many different movies and were always welcomed as old friends whenever we saw them on the screen.

I really can't understand some of the more negative comments from some reviewers from the USA about this movie. For me, it is far superior to equivalent American wartime propaganda movies (including enjoyable but hardly realistic efforts such as 7 Graves To Cairo and Sahara), and made and acted by a British cast who were serving servicemen as well (unlike a certain J. Wayne or H. Bogart). Carol Reed gives us on the surface a cliche ridden movie but his gritty visual style which would become his trademark plus a script that still gives depth to a by now familiar concept lift this way above other movies made at the time.

The soldiers don't look pristine and for most of the time, don't act heroically until the last 5 minutes. They're not an elite unit (as in Sands of Iwo Jima), they grumble, complain and stagger their way to the front lines but nor are they goofballs, pranksters or loveable rogues. They are ordinary men in difficult times, which was what the film makers wanted to show. They are not all broad stereotypes either; some, like the characters Davenport or Brewer, may on the surface seem like the upper class toff and the cheeky cockney but again, the way they interplay with the rest of the cast, they become more than just representatives of their class.

For an old war movie, I was impressed with the action. Early on, when the two old soldiers are talking about how much better it was in the army in their day, we get a juxtaposed montage of David Niven in training, showing how hard it is. A lot of the burning troop ship shots are done hand held, which adds to the tension. The Tunisia scenes look very authentic and see how Reed indulges in rapid cutting, disorienting explosions and run down and dirty art direction. The only film that comes close to achieving this kind of grittiness in the war years is "Guadalcanal Diary".

The version of The Way Ahead that I have is one that was edited for the American market and has a narration by US war correspondent Quentin Reynolds. It was his narration that sets the stage for a wartime tribute to the civilians who volunteered for king and country at a time of their nation's greatest peril.

When war in Europe was declared David Niven was one of the British stars in America that went back to serve. Since he had been in the army before taking up acting, he was able to secure a commission. For a good deal of the war he was a training officer and really was drilling the men as we see on Salisbury plain. Some of his time was spent in the commandos in missions to Europe. And he was released to make wartime films Spitfire and The Way Ahead.

The script was written by a 21 year old actor/playwright named Peter Ustinov who has a small role in the film. According to a new biography of Niven in order to secure Ustinov's service, enlisted man Ustinov was attached to officer Niven as his orderly.

A whole lot of faces familiar in the British cinema appeared in The Way Ahead, people like Stanley Holloway, Jimmy Hanley, James Donald, Leo Genn, and Trevor Howard. And it was directed in good style by Carol Reed, one of his earliest films.

One big flaw in the film was that the men who trained with officer Niven and sergeant William Hartnell ended up serving with him in North Africa. Not possible in America and not possible in the UK either. But since the idea was to show camaraderie, I guess that Two Cities Films can be forgiven.

The point of the film and of Quentin Reynolds narration is that in time of peril it is the democracies and not those totalitarian countries with a superman philosophy who have the real strength of character. May it ever be so.

Although it may appear simplistic to divide the work of great artists into three distinct periods, there can be no escaping the fact that this tidy and convenient way of classification actually works for the majority. In the case of the most significant British director of the immediate post World War II years, Carol Reed, the chronological view works surprisingly well. There is the fairly anonymous early period up to "The Way Ahead" of 1944, a glorious middle period from "Odd Man Out" to "Outcast of the Islands" - the subsequent "The Man Between" and "A Kid for Two Farthings", although less successful, belong to this period because of their stylistic affinity - and a third period where Reed reverted to anonymity possibly through the pressures of commercialism - how else to explain works as dull as "The Agony and the Ecstasy" and "The Running Man", which do not even look like Reed films. Certainly none of the other films in the first period compare with the sheer enjoyment and confidence of "The Way Ahead". Here the youngish director flexes his muscles, a little parochially perhaps, before taking centre stage with the great directors of that time, De Sica, Rossellini, Welles and Wyler. Technically the film is astonishingly assured. Every shot is lovingly composed with figures always formally balanced within each frame. The editing is nothing short of brilliant. It is only in retrospect and with the advantage of several showings that one realises that the excitement and immediacy of a scene such as the torpedoing of the troopship are entirely achieved by the skill of montage. In every sense "The Way Ahead" is immeasurably superior to the Lean/Coward naval counterpart "In Which We Serve" which parades class distinctions in a way that is positively nauseous. There is nothing patronising in Reed's presentation of a group of men drawn together by the accident of war. Although they come from different social backgrounds, Reed presents them as conditioned by their varied forms of employment rather than being pigeonholed by class. "The Way Ahead" is that very unusual thing, a completely upbeat war film. I suppose it had to be, given its date - 1944. With the scent of victory about to be achieved it had to be an optimistic morale booster. However it goes very much further than any other I know in presenting a completely sanitised war. Not a single character is killed let alone wounded - and this even after the ship carrying the bulk of the cast is blown to smithereens just seconds after the captain leaves. The film ends with the men attaching bayonets to rifles before marching forward into a desert attack. By now we are conditioned into thinking they will all survive although we will never have a way of really knowing. Not that it matters at this stage. So sit back, relax and enjoy as lovely a war as you are ever likely to experience.