Nosso Barco, Nossa Alma

A flag waver for the British navy (‘the story of a ship') in which we meet rough representatives of the three classes (upper, middle, working) brought together by circumstance and service.

The working classes are represented by John Mills and Kay Walsh, who marry quietly during a leave and go to their honeymoon on a train. Mills plays a good sort, reliable, the usual depiction of the honest working Joe. Slightly above them in class (with a garden and refined accents) are Bernard Miles and Joyce Carey, both very fine performances. The top of the scale is naturally Noel Coward (who wrote, co-directed, and produced this) and Celia Johnson, with their luncheon parties and their two affected children (one is the actor Daniel Massey, then a little child).

By weaving the stories of all three together we do go some way to understanding the (fictional) mind-set of the man at war, his worries, his triumphs and preoccupations. And as a morale-booster for our chaps at sea it must have done its job very well - it remains fairly touching all these years on.

Naval men watch their ship sink as they cling to a raft and remember the lives they left in "In Which We Serve," a 1942 film starring Noel Coward, John Mills, Celia Johnson, and Bernard Miles. The story takes place in World War II and shows how the war affected the British soldiers and their loved ones. Noel Coward also wrote and co-directed this film with David Lean. Like Coward's Brief Encounter, there are no glamorous movie star types. This is the story of the common man bound together by war and by their ship. Coward is Captain Kinross, who has a wife (Celia Johnson) and two children. John Mills is "Shorty," a seaman who falls in love while on leave, gets married and has a short honeymoon. Bernard Miles is Walter Hardy, a happily married man whose wife hates having him go away. Each man reflects on his story in flashback.

The impact of "In Which We Serve" must have been very powerful when it was first released. The announcement of war by the Prime Minister which comes over the radio is met with a chilling silence that the audience feels along with the men. The devastation of a blackout, the impact of the bombs at sea are very real.

"In Which We Serve" is the story of a ship, the HMS Torrin, but we learn quickly that a ship is about its people, united in one cause and who share a special camaraderie. The captain's final speech to his men is highly emotional, all the more so because it is so restrained.

All of the acting is top-notch. Someone commented that Coward seemed stiff. I think his role called for a certain formality. Hard to believe John Mills was ever that young. Celia Johnson, in her first film role, is wonderful. Coward obviously had no problems attracting the best actors to the film, as every person fits his or her role perfectly.

Like many classics, despite changes in film technique, the core story remains compelling, especially today with so many soldiers in Iraq. In one scene, the camera falls on some of the seamen as they go to their stations to do battle. Each man was carefully chosen to show his extreme youth. It was a terrible time for the world, but somehow the film is strangely uplifting. A no-miss.

In Which We Serve (1942)

A curiously different and really moving film about World War II, directed by two top British talents, Noel Coward and David Lean. It's filmed in the thick of the actual naval war and so might be unofficially called a propaganda film. (Though not made by the government, there was a lot of influence and assistance.). It clearly has a sense of presenting the British war effort at its best. But it's also complicated, filled with sadness alongside heroism and, perhaps most of all, selflessness. Both by soldiers and by their women left behind. The war in 1942 was not looking great for the Brits.

Coward co-directs but also is the leading man, and he's an established actor from both film and stage at this point. Lean, whose huge career as a director is all ahead of him, is in charge of the action sequences and this is his first attempt at directing--for which he won awards. If there is a sentimental side to some of the Coward directed scenes it's partly because of when it was shot. Try to imagine the audience suffering from bombings and having their loved ones in battle. We see it now with very different eyes.

In fact, it is hard to imagine how a wife or mother could watch this at all. The basic structure is that the ship goes out to sea with a bunch of men and then disaster strikes, and the rest of the movie is a series of flashbacks to the home lives of the men, and to the women who are dreading seeing their men go off to sea. It's actually about the very sadness of the people sitting in the audience.

The filming is rather different between the two directors. Coward understands a traditional kind of culture well, with conversation and interpersonal nuance. Lean captures a more direct emotional energy, and lots of vivid action. Normally two directors means problems, but here it's divided naturally.

Eventually the movie wears its formula, back and forth with flashbacks, pretty hard. But it's so well done you don't much mind. An emotional, finely seen movie, and surprisingly valid even now.

"In Which We Serve" is not only a wonderful pastiche of British society during the second world war, but a complex, yet correct statement of a very simple theme -namely the duty of a country's citizens to defend the system it believes in. The simplicity of the story is one of the movie's key strengths, but the most appealing aspect of the film is, for me at least, the way in which each scene reflects the preceding and suggests the subsequent one. The motivation behind this may have been to demonstrate the unifying elements of the various different characters and their individual stories, but the skill with which this is done makes for a wonderfully satisfying experience. The film is excellently crafted, moving from a semi-documentary style that would have been instantly recognizable to cinema audiences of the forties, with the then common weekly news reviews; and then moving into everything from light-comedy to exciting action and pure drama. It is a film that for many will seem old-fashioned, but only in some of its sentiments, never its techniques or its wisdom. And the "old-fashionedness" of some of it -such as the love scene between John Mills and his girlfriend on the bench by the water- has a poignancy that is nevertheless almost painful in its innocence. Above all the film expresses one immensely important concern: dignity. It is reflected in the words and actions of all the characters, and shines through the film with the immense pride the film-makers (Noel Coward especially) put into making this film. It is an important film not least because it is not afraid of expressing loss -for many the thought of a film about a sinking British ship was a shocking risk to take in a time of war. And it is an entertaining film as well, in the best tradition of British cinema. Like the other main Coward/Lean masterpiece "Brief Encounter" this film can be enjoyed on so many levels that it demands multiple viewings. And like "Brief Encounter" you will discover new subtleties each time...

"In Which We Serve" is more than a story told for propaganda effect about naval heroism and based on Mountbatten's wartime experiences. As the English film critic Barry Norman has put it: "Aboard Coward's fictional HMS Torrin there existed forties British society in microcosm. Here everybody knew his place... The one thing they all had in common was the knowledge that each of them, high or low, was expected to show unswerving loyalty and devotion to duty". The relationships between the men on HMS Torrin and the lives they lead at sea and at home (told through flashbacks) portray a wartime society ordered by class and intentionally defined by the traditional British virtues of duty and sacrifice. It is a society in which understatement and the stiff upper lip reign supreme. Emotions go largely unspoken. They simmer under the surface of the screen in the silences and in the flickering effort of concealment on the faces of the major characters. Personal suffering is borne with quiet forbearance, in the knowledge that it is borne in the service of a higher cause and that to bear it stoically is to set the right example to others. When the ship's chief petty officer is told of the death of his wife and mother in law in the blitz he first congratulates the sailor who brings him the news for becoming a father before going up on deck to bear his grief alone. The clipped style of speech of Captain Kinross played by Coward himself and the slightly shrill upper class accent of his wife played by Celia Johnson heighten the sense of feelings being stripped away from the words. Their conversation is a caricature of communication - the protagonists performing their dialogue in a choreographed ritual. Real communication is only hinted at - the underlying pain understood but never expressed. In "In Which We Serve" the captain and his wife are the models to which other men and women must aspire - in monologues they define the notions of duty and sacrifice to which each sex is bound. Both put duty before the pursuit of personal happiness (a theme David Lean and Coward return to in Brief Encounter). When the Captain talks of the need for a happy ship he is not referring to the right of individuals expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Here happiness is a collective duty in the interests of efficiency.

For the men and women in Coward's vision HMS Torrin is much more than a ship - it is personified as the object of their devotion and jealousy. Above all it is a powerful symbol of the qualities and traditions that unite and must protect their vulnerable island at war. Outdated though this vision may be - part of a world left far behind through post-war socio-economic development and emancipation - it is nevertheless a compelling and entirely consistent vision which ensures the film retains a certain appeal to audiences even today and is a major reason why it can still be so highly rated as a piece of British cinema history.