DVD/150: IN WHICH WE SERVE (Noel Coward / David Lean, 1942)

When producer Anthony Havelock-Allen approached Noel Coward in 1941 to make a patriotic film, Coward picked the Navy, and a fictionalised account of the recent sinking of his friend Lord Mountbatten's ship HMS Kelly.  Such a blatant propaganda piece shouldn't work - but it does.

Coward's name appears seven times in the opening credits!  He produced and wrote it, starred as the patrician Captain Kinross and composed the unmemorable score.

More importantly, first-time director Coward realised that while he could handle directing actors, he would be - ahem - all at sea with the action sequences so he gave a young editor his first chance at directing, David Lean.

An uncredited Leslie Howard announces at the start "This, is the story of a ship" and we follow the life of the fictitious HMS Torrin from construction to it sinking, watched by it's survivors as they cling to a raft.  As they wait for rescue, strafed by enemy planes, Kinross, Petty Officer Hardy and Seaman 'Shorty' Blake remember their lives back home..

Shelf or charity shop?  A definite shelf.  As I said, Coward and Lean's film stands the test of time and class snobbery to be a genuinely moving look at Briton at war.  Noel Coward won a special Academy Award citation for the film and one can imagine the effect it had on it's audience at the time. Wonderfully photographed by Ronald Neame - getting in soggy training early for his later THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE! - and Lean's editing keeps the film always moving forward.  Although Coward's writing for his working-class characters always verges on the Dickensian, it does lead to some memorable performances: Coward is his ramrod, debonair self which makes for an odd Captain but what a joy to see him in his clipped prime while among the crew, there are three actors who I usually dislike but here all deliver fine performances: John Mills as cheeky chappy 'Shorty', Bernard Miles as the stoic Hardy and the film debut of Richard Attenborough, as a stoker who abandons his post.  Keeping the home fires burning are the luminous Kay Walsh as Freda, 'Shorty's shy young wife, Joyce Carey as Hardy's no-nonsense wife Kath - her last scene is particularly moving, and the sainted Celia Johnson as Kinross' wife Alix.  This was her first feature film and, despite an accent you can etch glass with, she is magnificent, especially in her one-take speech about her acceptance of the third presence in their marriage, the Torrin.