DVD/150: THIS HAPPY BREED (David Lean, 1944)

In 1939, Noel Coward wrote THIS HAPPY BREED about a working-class family; he starred in the play, which played alternate performances with his more debonair comedy PRESENT LAUGHTER, but by the time the film was made, the role went to Robert Newton.

David Lean, who had co-directed the previous year's IN WHICH WE SERVE with Coward, here was sole director for the first time. he also adapted the play with his Cineguild colleagues Anthony Havelock-Allan and Ronald Neame who also was the cinematographer.

In 1919, Frank and Ethel Gibbons move into a Clapham terraced house with their three children Queenie, Reg and Vi, Frank's shrill spinster sister Sylvia and Ethel's opinionated mother Mrs Flint, and over 20 years we follow their happinesses and tragedies against the events that shaped the period.

Frank learns their neighbour is army pal Bob Mitchell whose sailor son Billy soon loves Queenie.

Shelf or charity shop?  A shelfer.  Although Coward's view of his working-class characters has a patronising tone, he knows how to make the main characters 'pop' and while David Lean had concerns about directing actors - on IN WHICH WE SERVE Coward handled the actors while Lean did the action sequences - he needn't have worried with such a talented cast, and he whips the action along at pace. Robert Newton.s performance has not dated well but Celia Johnson is wonderful as the loving but moral Mrs Gibbons, a performance which won her the US National Board of Review award for Best Actress.  While all the characters seem to take turns saying "There'll be trouble and no mistake" or "Well I'm sorry I'm sure!", there are stand-outs from Amy Veness as Celia Johnson's formidable mother, Stanley Holloway is always a delight as salt-of-the-earth neighbour Bob, John Mills gives a better-than-usual performance as sailor Billy - the only cast member from the original play - and Kay Walsh, who was married to Lean at the time, is excellent as the snobbish Queenie, a Clapham Bovary who yearns for a better life.

DVD/150: BRIEF ENCOUNTER (David Lean, 1945)

I didn't think such violent things could happen to ordinary people.

Sometimes only the film that will leave you a sodden mess at the end will do...

The greatest British film ever made?  For me, yes...

Noel Coward's adaptation of his one-act play STILL LIFE also went through Lean's collaborators Anthony Havelock-Allen and Ronald Neame.

Lean's direction is perfection - you can keep LAWRENCE or KWAI, here he shows his genius.

Gloriously shot by Robert Krasker, his images live on in the mind in tandem with Rachmaninoff's music.

Both married with children, a chance encounter between Laura Jesson and Alec Harvey leads to them falling in love, possessed by feelings that neither knew they were capable of or that they can fully acknowledge.

Victims of time, class and circumstance they snatch brief moments of happiness but it's doomed to failure by their own decency. 

Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard (in his first starring role) give two of cinema's great performances.

Shelf or charity shop?  Are you INSANE?  Johnson and Howard have a wonderful supporting cast - Stanley Holloway as Albert Godby the ticket inspector and Joyce Carey as Myrtle Bagot the 'refained' tea-room manageress are delightful as the counterpoint couple to Laura and Alec - where as they have to hide in corners, Albert and Myrtle can be as flirtatious as they like.  There are memorable performances from Everley Gregg, as Laura's garrulous acquaintance Dolly who crashes into Alec and Laura's last moments together, denying them any resolution to their sadness, and Cyril Raymond as Laura's husband Fred who, speaking the last line of the film, destroys me every time and makes me blub uncontrollably.  Anyone who thinks Coward glib need only read Laura's internal monologue to see how wrong they are...

"This can't last. This misery can't last. I must remember that and try to control myself. Nothing lasts really. Neither happiness nor despair. Not even life lasts very long. There'll come a time in the future when I shan't mind about this anymore, when I can look back and say quite peacefully and cheerfully how silly I was. No, no, I don't want that time to come ever. I want to remember every minute, always, always to the end of my days."

DVD/150: BLITHE SPIRIT (David Lean, 1945)

When BLITHE SPIRIT opened in 1941 it was a smash so Noel Coward chose David Lean to direct the 1945 film, their third collaboration after IN WHICH WE SERVE and THIS HAPPY BREED.

Coward hated that Lean and co-adapters Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan changed his play and rewrote the ending but still provided a voice-over introduction.

BLITHE SPIRIT was not financially successful but endures as a classic of High Comedy performance.

Repeating their original stage roles were Kay Hammond and Margaret Rutherford - Hammond is delicious as ghostly Elvira, a soigné but brittle performance of artifice which matches Coward's writing perfectly.

Margaret Rutherford made Madame Arcati her own; the medium who accidentally brings Elvira's glost back during a seance to create havoc with her widower Charles Condomine and his second wife Ruth.

Rex Harrison is delightfully cynical as Charles and Constance Cummings is a no-nonsense Ruth.

Shelf or charity shop? Shelf all the way - remarkably this was David Lean's first screen comedy but he orchistrates his action to perfection without overplaying the undercurrent beneath the froth of regret and loss.  Indeed when viewed often, the most sympathetic character is Rutherford's all-too human Arcati.

DVD/150: GREAT EXPECTATIONS (David Lean, 1946)

There had already been two films of Dickens' novel but David Lean's version has reigned supreme ever since, despite two more screen adaptations and six TV versions.

Lean had only seen a 1939 stage version, written by Alec Guinness who also played Herbert Pockett.  Seven years later, Lean cast him in the same role; he also cast that production's Miss Haversham, the wonderful Martita Hunt.

Lean wrote the film script with his producers Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan, other writers included Cecil McGivern and Lean's actress wife Kay Walsh who wrote the final scene.  It's a text-book adaptation.

Academy Awards deservedly went to Guy Green's cinematography and John Bryan's art direction; they deliver a believable world with a wonderful sense of place, the desolate Kent marshes of Pip's unhappy childhood, the bustling Chancery Lane of his life as a 'gentleman', the gothic decepitude of Miss Haversham's crumbling mansion.

Shelf or charity shop?  A definite keeper - it's a classic for a reason.  Lean's subtle direction works wonders with his wonderous cast: Guinness (in his first major screen role) is delicious as Herbert Pockett while John Forrest is perfect as teenage Herbert, Martita Hunt's magnificent ruin of Miss Haversham, Finlay Currie's scary but dignified Magwitch, Francis L Sullivan's Jaggers, the conceited spite of Jean Simmons' young Estella and Anthony Wager's sad young Pip.  Valerie Hobson is well cast as the brittle older Estella while John Mills - although too old for the role - is a personable Pip.