The New Lot

Among the wartime films produced in Britain during the height of World War II, The New Lot (1943) occupies a distinctive and often overlooked position. Not quite a piece of straightforward propaganda, not fully a fictional drama, and certainly not a typical training film, it resides somewhere in the fertile interstice between institutional cinema and humanist micro-history. Commissioned by the British Army Kinematograph Service and co-written by collaborators who would later rework its structure into The Way Ahead (1944), the film carries an unmistakable pedagogical intent-yet what emerges from its tightly woven fabric is a portrayal of military induction that, despite its constraints, contains a level of psychological granularity rare for its function.

Shot during a time when Britain was slowly regaining strategic initiative but remained deep in national anxiety, the film's tone reflects a society attempting to construct a cohesive military identity from its class-fractured civilian base. This imperative-to forge unity from disparity-is not simply thematic but built into the bones of the film's mise-en-scène. The visual language is utilitarian but not crude. There is no indulgence in dramatic stylization; instead, it favors tight, workmanlike framing and subdued lighting that borders on documentary realism. The barracks, the uniforms, the bleak transport depots-all are rendered without embellishment. This is not a war of glory or heroism, but of procedures, disorientation, and gradual adjustment. That refusal to aestheticize aligns the film more closely with titles like Nine Men (1943), which similarly locate drama in camaraderie and endurance rather than battle spectacle. Yet where Nine Men constructs its narrative around an external enemy and combat stress, The New Lot turns resolutely inward, mapping out the social tensions and class anxieties fermenting beneath the surface of newly issued khaki.

The performances, though modest in screen time and largely ensemble-based, strike a carefully calibrated tone between archetype and authenticity. Each recruit represents a social category-the urban clerk, the rural laborer, the middle-class teacher, the emotionally guarded intellectual-but they are not reduced to slogans or caricatures. Their interactions, especially in early scenes of unease and miscommunication, are given space to breathe. Dialogue flows naturally, avoiding the clipped, declamatory rhythms so common in wartime morale films. This subtle realism allows the viewer to engage not only with characters but with the mechanisms by which they are drawn together, fractured, and reconstituted into a functioning military unit.

What's most impressive is the film's ability to hold ideological purpose and dramatic subtlety in suspension. It does not shy away from its role in shaping a narrative of the "new British soldier," but it does so with a delicacy that avoids the heavy-handedness found in more overtly propagandistic contemporaries. Unlike Tomorrow We Live (1943), where ideological alignment is practically shouted, The New Lot whispers its convictions, relying on accumulated gesture and interaction rather than speechifying. Still, its institutional purpose is clear: to show that the army can absorb and refashion civilians into something cohesive, productive, and psychologically sound. In that sense, the film functions as a kind of cinematic manual, not just for military procedure, but for national integration under crisis.

The editing is spare and direct, its rhythm aligned with the instructional goals of the film. Transitions between training episodes are brisk, but not rushed. The sound design is equally minimal: ambient noise, shouted orders, footsteps on gravel. Music is used only where strictly necessary, reinforcing a mood rather than commanding it. The cinematography avoids flourish, preferring flat, even lighting and compositions that reinforce uniformity-visually echoing the very discipline the narrative seeks to instill.

Within this carefully controlled structure, however, there is a remarkable footnote that merits special attention: the early screen appearance of a very young Dustin Hoffman. Though his role is minor, almost fleeting, it is one of the first recorded instances of his presence in film. He appears as one of the recruits in a transitional scene, likely uncredited and unnoticed by contemporary viewers. But what is striking-even in this embryonic stage of his craft-is the undercurrent of internalization he brings. Unlike the rest of the cast, largely composed of British actors delivering controlled, externally oriented performances in service to the ensemble, Hoffman's energy, however subtle, seems to move inward. There's a twitch of uncertainty in his posture, a flicker of internal conflict, which-viewed retrospectively-suggests the psychological depth he would later bring to defining roles in The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy. It is a historical curiosity, yes, but also a fascinating point of contact between two acting traditions: the British wartime ensemble and the emerging American method, still gestating in the background.

Moreover, his presence-however marginal-adds another layer of resonance to the film's quiet tension between the institutional and the individual. The project is, after all, meant to flatten difference, to mold variance into homogeneity. Yet here, by historical accident or quiet subversion, the camera captures someone whose very career would come to represent resistance to that process: the rise of the dissonant, fragile, psychologically fragmented man of the postwar American screen. It is tempting to see this moment, however small, as symbolic-a brief rupture in the film's cohesion, through which a different future leaks.

The New Lot ultimately reveals more than it likely intended. Conceived as a tool of wartime instruction, it also captures, with quiet precision, the social and emotional labor of militarization. In doing so, it becomes something richer: not just an ideological artifact of 1943 Britain, but a textured reflection on the slow, deliberate reprogramming of the civilian mind. And in its background, almost ghostlike, stands the unlikely figure of a young actor whose presence reminds us that even in the most controlled cinematic environments, the future is always lurking.

This pretty good 43-minute Allied short (the copy of which I acquired bafflingly boasts no credits, despite the involvement of several notables!) about the training of civilians for active war duty would eventually be reworked and expanded into a full-length feature – the excellent THE WAY AHEAD (1944) – by the same director. Among the titular components (a veritable microcosm of British society of the time) are Raymond Huntley (a Ministerial executive who, through a bureaucratic mix-up, gets not only by-passed for the desk job he had requested but even drafted into the army!), John Laurie (as the quintessential big-hearted Scot), Bernard Miles (as a brick-layer, the epitome of the working-class man) and Peter Ustinov (as the youngest, he has the hardest time adjusting to the handling of weaponry and, by extension, the necessity for killing). A young Geoffrey Keen is the obligatory D.I. (though he predictably reveals a heart of gold underneath his tough-as-nails exterior), while Robert Donat basically does a spoof(!) "Guest Star" cameo (interestingly, he only appears – atypically – as a reckless gung-ho hero in a film the raw recruits take some time off to check out and promptly dismiss for lack of realism!). The climax sees the group being sent on a trial mission in which they manage to outsmart their superiors via some unorthodox but undeniably nifty sneak-attack tactics! Somewhat optimistically, the epilogue states that if the British soldier will prevail over the current enemy, it is going to be thanks to the country's unique policy of instilling a military discipline in their men prior to undertaking official service.

Five draftees (Philip Godfrey, Raymond Huntley, John Laurie, Bernard Miles and Peter Ustinov) go through basic training. At first they are surly, but eventually they come to recognize they have a job of work and they're the ones to do it.

This was a film to be shown soldiers, and it's "supervised by an officer approved by the General Staff" -- actually, it's Carol Reed, and I doubt if the General Staff spent much time on the matter. There is no one credited by name in this movie. Undoubtedly that's intended to make them seem more anonymous, so the soldier watching it could identify with the individuals.

Ustinov co-wrote this with Eric Ambler. They later expanded it to make THE WAY AHEAD.

The Army Kinematograph Service was set up mainly to provide film screenings for the troops.Arranging for them to see the latest films via mobile 16mm units and shows at Garrison Theatres.They made only a handful of films.The first being Next Of Kin.This was made in cooperation with Ealing Studios.This was to warn troops against careless talk.It was so good that it was decided to release this in cinemas.So this promotion film for army recruiting was so successful that it was made into The Way Ahead.A number of the actors in this film also appeared in the feature.The cameo of Robert Donat as the film hero is truly hilarious.

I love these propaganda movies - eg Millions Like Us, which does much the same for a bunch of girls making aeroplane parts in a factory. (Is there a government unit filming heroic lorry drivers as I type?)

A disparate group of men are called up: barrack-room lawyer Bernard Miles, fish out of water Raymond Huntley (such a good actor), mother's boy Peter Ustinov, token Scot John Laurie... The weed among them turns out to be worrying about his children, there's a heartless corporal trying to lick them into shape, they spend a lot of time cleaning their boots. Huntley, the desk wallah, types many letters to the Ministry of Labour complaining about their "mistake", but eventually finds a berth in Signals.

It was remade as The Way Ahead, which I remember as less gung-ho, and then, surely, again as Carry On Sergeant?