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: 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. 

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.

PRESENT LAUGHTER at the Old Vic - Coward's 1940s Fizz in New Bottles...

This production of Noel Coward's PRESENT LAUGHTER marks my 45th production seen at the Old Vic Theatre.  Constant Reader, this occurred to me when faced with the frustrating front-of-house building work that the Vic is currently doing during this sold-out run and made me realize that it is a theatre that I have never felt comfortable in.  There is always *something* to irk me about the experience of seeing plays there - oh I have enjoyed productions - it's just the constant tsouris while inter-acting with the theatre.  Was it this awful even during Olivier's National Theatre days? 

The main foyer has been configured again and again and it still feels unwelcoming.  The Dress Circle is always like the Black Hole of Waterloo - and now they have crammed tables and chairs into the central space, while the basement area is given over to a bar/restaurant space that's open to all - of course an earner for the Vic - but again, the audience for the actual show is left with no space due to the non-theatre-going table-hoggers... and of course there is the notorious lack of loos for patrons.

But now the Old Vic is addressing this latter issue by rebuilding the basement while the run of PRESENT LAUGHTER is happening.  Couldn't they wait until a gap in their season?  Temporary portaloos are in the road next to the theatre while the balcony loos are also closed - so the 1,000+ patrons all have to use these, mostly during a 20 minute interval.  At the end of the show, we were only allowed to leave down the back stairs... which of course took forever because the exit doors lead out - you guessed - straight into the queue for the toilets.

Believe me, it would have to be an exceptional production that managed to transcend this frustrating visit.  Luckily it was.

Noel Coward wrote the play in 1939 but it's premiere was cancelled at the outbreak of WWII so it waited until 1942 before being staged with Coward in the blazing star role of Garry Essendine, an unashamedly self-centered West End leading man.  Over the years it has been revived frequently with actors who have lent towards the showy - O'Toole, Sinden, Callow, McKellen, Kline - and I first saw it played by Alex Jennings in the National Theatre's 2008 production.  Although Jennings was fine as Garry it wasn't a production that particularly grabbed me.  So I leapt at the opportunity to see it again and also to see how it worked with a younger than usual actor in the lead.

Director Matthew Warchus says that he had shied away from taking on a Noel Coward play before but when he and star Andrew Scott hit upon the idea that, by changing the genders of a married couple in the play, it could open the play up in a vibrant new way while keeping the shape and, more importantly, the essence of Coward's vision intact.

Another morning in West End star Garry Essendine's Mayfair apartment and his staff - secretary Monica, valet Fred and cleaner Miss Erikson - go quietly about their duties while their temperamental employer sleeps off his hangover - and as usual, there is a 'guest' who has stayed the night having somehow 'forgotten their latch-key'.  This time it's gushing starlet Daphne who Garry - when he eventually wakes up - has to quote his most romantic Shelley verse to before he can get rid of her.  Garry's hope for a quiet day to prepare for an overseas tour is interrupted by appearances from his closest associates - his manager Morris, his producer Helen and his estranged wife Liz - who, along with Monica, is the only one that Garry feels he can fully trust.

Liz is worried however: she has heard that Helen's husband Joe is having an affair with Morris - who vehemently protests his innocence - but Liz knows that if Helen finds out, Garry's protective bubble will be broken.  Added to all this, there is a forgotten appointment with young Roland Maule, a new playwright who has asked for Garry's opinion of his play.  They clash when Maule reacts badly to Garry's criticisms and he belittles the shallow West End star vehicles the actor appears in - before confessing that he actually adores Garry and wrote the play just to meet his hero.

Later that night, finally alone in his apartment, Garry is visited by the suave Joe who appears to have "forgotten his latch-key".  Garry tells his unwanted visitor exactly what they all think of him and warns that gold-digger Joe will be cast out of the golden circle if he keeps seeing Morris - but Joe has his eye on a bigger prize than Morris... needless to say, the narcissist in Garry cannot refuse the offer of more adoration and they spend the night together.

Warchus has done his gender-flip on the characters of Joe and Helen - as written by Coward the characters are predatory actress Joanne married to manager Henry.  But the change works wonderfully well, staying true to Coward the writer and more importantly, Coward the man.  It also works well within the plot: having seen Garry ruling all around him as a spoiled star, here he is confronted with someone who refuses to be cowed by his imperious manner; Joe knows Garry's Achilles heel and he strikes...

Once again Garry's staff quietly go through their morning chores only now they have the boastful presence of Joe to contend with rather than some airhead starlet.  Garry has to finally face up to his actions but not before all the characters descend on the apartment and end up being thrown in kitchens, spare rooms and bathrooms as Garry finds himself in the middle of a French farce situation.

Warchus has saved another change for the end of the play - echoing the end of the first half - where Garry is alone in the apartment with someone close to him calling his bluff.  The original has a more obvious curtain-line and business, but Warchus has the play end on a more uncertain note, playing up the feeling of sadness and ambiguity that runs beneath the surface of what has gone before.

Matthew Warchus handles the material wonderfully, letting both the verbal wit and physical comedy shine but always keeping that undercurrent of Garry's loneliness flowing just below the surface.  If there is a problem with the show it's that some of the supporting performances fail to rise - the characters of Morris and Helen are particularly ill-served.

But there are several which contribute wonderfully to the show's success: Enzo Cilenti has just the right air of calculating brazenness for the character of Joe and his big scene at the end of the first act was very well-handled, seductive and menacing at the same time.  Luke Thallon was great fun as Roland Maule the writer in love with Garry's glamour and I particularly loved Joshua Hil's laconic, deadpan valet Fred, indifferent to the artistic temperaments exploding around him.

Sophie Thompson was in delicious form as Monica, the seen-it-all Scottish secretary who is always one step ahead of Garry's demands and who keeps a big sister-like eye on him for his own good; her knowing one-liners were delivered to perfection.  I also liked Indira Varma as Liz, the poised and cool ex-wife might not be a particular stretch for her but she made an excellent counterpoint to the shenanigans around her and she hit the right sensible tone throughout.

PRESENT LAUGHTER cannot work without an actor who can be the outrageous temperamental star and also suggest the emptiness behind the glittering mask and Andrew Scott was sheer perfection.  Watching him soar in this role, it dawned on me that here finally is an actor who comes close to the quicksilver quality that the late Ian Charleson brought to his theatre performances: the same graceful physicality, effortless charisma and the ability to hold a moment between comedy and despair, revealing all you need to know about his character that is hidden underneath the lines he is saying.  He was that good.

The run is now sold out but NT Live are filming it for a November screening - click on the picture below to book your seats - just think, you probably won't have to queue for a portaloo at the cinema...