Sarah's War

I enjoyed every moment of this excellent film.

The actors deliberately under played their rôles in order to keep the characters believable and realistic.

Much of the drama is maintained by camera angles and suggestion. Scissors to murder. Railway lines recalling Anna Karenina's suicide.

Slightly weak final scene of domestic bliss was the nearest to 'syruppy" that the plot came. It seemed a letdown rather than leaving the ending to the watcher's own interpretation after the kiss and only smile from Sarah!

The Jobsworth was all too realistic and his lack of humanity was typical of the post war prejudices of any perceived breach of the self imposed moral codes of the period.

The filming in black and white evoked the films (Brief Encounter etc.) of the heyday of the late '40s.

The dying scene with the music of Pachelbel's Canon was especially evocative.

A good, immensely watchable film. I thought the story was interesting, clear and believable (and differed in a few respects from the original play), the acting was on the whole very good and many of the scenes were charmingly filmed. The film explores a number of gritty themes, including the loss of loved ones to war, exploitation of women in the workplace, and the harsh attitude of society towards unmarried mothers in the mid 20th century.

I found this Film to be engaging, thoughtful and well paced, although a little slow at the beginning of the film, you start to see that this is the point of it, to be slowly pulled into the unfolding drama of one persons life through the catastrophe of War, showing the ramifications war on innocent individual, whilst being being immersed in the everyday prejudices that occurred for people that were trying to get on with their lives.

As the film progress , the pace picks up and takes us further into the depths of Sarah's turbulent life, surrounded by such idyllic settings, her life spirals out of control..

The film is beautifully shot, with great attention paid to the period look, in terms of set design and costumes, with good cinematography throughout and a strong cast, who all give subtle yet powerful performances.

Of course, our modern age, dominated by mass media entertainment of lots of sex and violence and above all action, would have little understanding for a film like this, reminiscent of the fine nouvelle vague films of France 60 years ago in its total lack of lustre and make believe, in telling bluntly the story of an unmarried mother and her plight after the war when no one could afford to treat such a person gently. It is in style very much like the fine ground-breaking English films of the late 50s of Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz and those fellows in its grey shade of absolute realism in all its naked bleakness, but there is drama in it as well. The first part about the desperate German hijacking a boat for getting out to join a submarine is nothing less than a war thriller, which then jumps three years to follow up the main characters and see what happened to them. The style of the entire film is documentary, these cases did occur, and it is a very fine work to search them out and lift them up. Not everyone is a s bad as they seem, it's a kind of redemption play, and life is not always as quite hopeless as it seems. When Sarah in the end sits by the railway waiting for a train, thinking of throwing herself under it like an Anna Karenina, the prospect is too real to be denied, the last thing you expect is any kind of miracle. That's not what happens, but what happens is at least totally unexpected.

Must have cost just a few quid to make this, in fact ive seen more expensive productions come out of a local school. Acting is woeful, which is a shame because the characters seem likeable. The polystyrene sea mines at least gave me a laugh.Completely unbelievable plot. I continued to watch this film until the end to give it a full chance of redemption. The acting just got worse, in some parts the actors are actually stuttering to find their lines..Watch it for a laugh or as an exercise in how not to make a film.