This Happy Breed

Beautifully cast and superbly performed comedy drama is that rarest of films that functions as an exquisite period piece of its own period, without ever feeling starchy or dated. Johnson as matriarch, Mills as naïve innocent, and Holloway as jolly, blokey neighbour are all fine, but Newton steals the film as the indomitable patriarch. Lean eschews bold directorial choices, but still leaves a mark - note the chilling silence and longshot used upon the delivery of some bad news.

An episodic film from Lean that is bounded by one family's 20 years spent in a particular house. Some years are passed by without notable comment, others focused upon much more closely. Lean (via Coward's play) attends to the future of the family in parents watching children grow up and make ways for themselves in the world. A few moments are standouts, as Lean uses exquisite expressiveness (with little dialogue) to communicate loss, brokenness, and forgiveness.

Elegant take, on one family out of many, with some brilliant scenes and a few rather clumsy ones. Newton and Johnson are great.

A pleasant story of a British family during the tween-war years. Hardly anything revolutionary, but the writings of Noël Coward, David Lean, Ronald Neame & Anthony Havelock-Allan digs up enough drama and reflections to make it feel like a rewarding viewing. Stylized with Technicolor adds to it's prestige.

86.50

Its "this is why we fight" messaging is laid on only a little too thick in a couple of patriarchal monologues, but this generational saga is affectionate in its warm humanism, charting the passage of time with such an easy-going ebb and flow that it might rightly be half an hour longer.

Incredibly charming and quite touching family saga. The moral of the "Father knows best"-variety and feels quite dated but that's part of the package when watching this type of wartime melodrama. The acting is tremendous, the entire thing has a very particular genuine feel and I will never not love this type of Technicolor look.

86.500

watched: 2013, 2021

Charming drama covering twenty years of changes within a middle-class British family in-between World Wars. Never really does anything special, and the dialogue can get a tad too expository at times, but I enjoyed it a fair amount and Robert Newton was great.

84.750

Watchable in a Coronation Street kind of way.

It's intelligently written, very well acted and nicely shot, but ultimately a rather boring melodrama. It has a few ups and downs, several scenes shine, other times it slumps into sermons exalting the lofty values of the salt-of-the-earth middle class, but most of the time it's just flat.

An experience not unlike Larkin's An Arundel Tomb. I last watched it while doing the ironing. I was dancing and crying and ironing all at the same time.

Classic.