gsimmers

If you want to know what the twentieth century looked like to people in the early thirties, this is the film to watch. Two families - upstairs and downstairs - go through the events of the Boer War, the Edwardian age, the First World War and its aftermath, ending in the "chaos and confusion" of the depression. The film seems to be fairly closely based on the original Drury Lane theatre production (many of the cast are the same). So when Binnie Barnes delivers "Twentieth Century Blues" (excellently) this is presumably how Coward wanted it sung. Noel Coward's clipped dialogue can't always carry the weight of the themes, and the nobility of the upper-class couple gets a bit wearing, but there are fascinating glimpses of a music hall performance and an Edwardian seaside concert party. The film races through thirty eventful years, and one or two of the tragedies are predictable, but the period detail is terrific. The film is well worth catching.

Made a decade after the events it shows, this film clearly makes a painstaking effort towards authenticity. It mixes wartime newsreel with re-enactments, and among its cast were several ex-soldiers who had been part of the fighting in the salient. It gives a clear summary of the three battles of Ypres, and is at pains to show the courage and resilience of the troops involved. Several episodes re-tell the stories of men who won the Victoria Cross. These are offset, though, by a few scenes of broad slapstick comedy, which help to humanise the story. This film will be of interest to anyone who wants to see how the story of the Great War was told in the 1920s, before the orthodoxy set in that the war had been nothing but futility and waste. I saw the film at at a special Remembrance Week matinée at the Imperial War Museum in London. It was accompanied by an excellent pianist, and the whole experience exceeded my expectations.