A great film that I first saw fifty years ago and have watched and enjoyed as many times since. An England now vanished with its sense of nationhood and humour that no longer exists.
Having grown up in S. London in the years just after WW2, this great film brings back memories of how families were - all generations living together under one roof. It is so evocative. Less than 2 hours long and it was a lifetime. They certainly don't make 'em like that anymore.
My paternal grandparents were married in London on Christmas Day, 1928. They had my Dad in 1940. He married my mother in 1964 and they immigrated to New Zealand in 1965. I was born in 1973 and didn't visit my grandmother until 1992. Seeing the buildings and people in this movie gives me a window into life for my grandparents generation in earlier life.
A very similar story for me, my grandparents (both sides) married in 30s England, both parents born in the 40s, they moved to Canada in the late 60s and had us kids in the mid-late 70s. We spent many summers in the UK when I was a child and I have such feelings for the place.
@@Lucysmom26 Hi, Lucy. Nice to read that you have fond memories of England / U.K. It has changed a lot since you were here...we have a huge problem with illegal imiigration, and quite a lot of angry members of "The religion of Peace". 10,000 of them, including supporters, maybe, blocked roads / had demonstrations / did chanting (hate and demands for Gaza ceacefire, etc... Our health service is not functioning well...too many demands... Our obesity rate ? 2nd worst in the world...after USA, presumably... Fast food addicts are ruining their health...as in USA ..... There are a lot of very nice people still here, but I don't think we are a happy country any more.😢.. Some scenery (that hasn't been "developed" yet), is left, and there are some very nice places... Anyway, thanks again for your message. Best Wishes from England. P.S., I "love" your Dr. Jordan Peterson...🌈🙂🌎🌿🌲🦉💙🐕🙂
I loved this movie. These old English classics are just lovely. Even though I'm American I identify so strongly with the ethos and culture of England. Thanks for posting!
So did I .I used to be a great buff of America as a French teenager .As a retired man I now feel a lot closer to England , although it's been undergoing great changes. I'm hooked by English Culture and language as never before.
YES, YES, YES! One of the finest films ever made. I love every minute, the wonderful opening, following the camera on the stairs, to that closing following the camera back down the stairs and out the door again. . . it's the old circle of life, and sadly, a bygone era. I watch it over and over and never tire. ❤❤❤
@@sallybutton6237 Yes, those older houses are still there in their thousands,( look on Google Earth, Street View) but insides probably stripped all out, and made into "Minimalist" style, where it looks as if no-one actually lives there ! 😊. Merry Christmas🎄 all ! 🇬🇧🎄😊🎄😊💙🎄 😊💙🎄🦉🎄😊🇬🇧
A wonderful, very moving and sad film. Queenie going to Singapore was worrying to say the least for when the Japanese invaded in 1942, they took women to concentration camps and treated them most horrendously. I think now how amazing is it many people are fortunate to even get a flat in half the size of their house! Beautifully acted. Thank you. Xxx
1:41:14 I remember watching the scene for the first time and wondering how many people recognized the allusion to the Invasion of Singapore 🇸🇬 by the Japanese 🇯🇵.
This is a lovely movie, a classic period piece. Loved the attention to detail in the movie. The colours, and the little things they said. You know those little one liners, my mum used to talk like that. The cups of tea and the piano, loved every bit of this movie. Will have to watch again. Thanks for that recommendation Sean.
This is the brilliance of Noel Coward. He can make us care deeply for this middle class family yet their dialogue is exactly the same as his witty yet hateful society parables. He’ll have the viper-tongued dames, the women who’ve done wrong sexually, people who battle one class over another to see who wins, etc. Coward knows people.
The Absolute Funniest part of this movie-aside from her “Buttering” his paws is when she says “He’s up to no good I shouldn’t wonder” & “ We should have had him “Arranged”!!😂😂Gotta Love the English!!
Yes. Despite the wars, those born in even modest circumstances in parts of England in the early to mid 20th century often had the chance of a decent life: high employment, stronger, multi-generational communities, a sound education (even if it finished before advanced or tertiary level), good amenities. My father and his peers spoke of a carefree social life. He said everything changed with the news of Hiroshima. Though aspects of the previous joie de vivre continued (and I remember this through the 1980s), he must have seen a foreshadowing of the Cold War and enhanced security. Facial recognition of Dad's youth, and to a lesser extent mine, meant recognising someone you knew, not being scanned by surveillance equipment in the street or elsewhere.
What an absolutely wonderful film. I was riveted from the very beginning! Very atmospheric and it actually made me cry for the ‘way things were’.. For all those long gone but who have left such a rich tapestry of memories behind. Thank you for uploading this! ❤❤❤
That's correct. I remember the coupons. Funnily enough they were great times, despite the scarcity and rationing. We all knew each others families and helped each other, when we could.🏴👍
I asked my old mum (94) what happened directly after hearing war being declared on the radio ? She said "well it was a Sunday so all the men went back out and finished cutting the lawns"
Great film thanks for sharing, my family are from Tottenham my grandparents moved out to Hertfordshire in the late 50s. This was when England was English!
Oh yes yes I found it by accident I love this movie it's one of my most favorite movies and I didn't have a copy of it and I didn't know where to find it and I just found it I am so happy if you could see me I was smiling a great great great great great great movie with great great 😃
"I brought 'em here to see the wonders of The Empire, and all they want to see is the Dodge-Ems." Thank you for uploading this... and a splendid print, too.
Only trouble with this film is there is no way that John Mills passes for 22, he looks close to 42 and Queenie too looks the same age as her mum in the film Celia Johnson.
This film, A Canterbury Tale, Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House and Basil Rathbone's The Hound of the Baskervilles......my four best films of all time
First time I've seen this all the way through. I wonder how many working class folk from that period would or could afford to employ a "cha". Great to see all these British stars in one film.
I personally like it (for the nostalgia) but my mother who was a teenager during the war says most of her contemporaries didn't at the time. Early Kitchen Sink drama wasn't overly popular as many liked escapist fayre (American films) rather than be reminded of realities of everyday life.
How could patrician Noel Coward ever come up with a script that has the common touch so faithfully portrayed ? A lost world when we understood each other before the country was given away to the third world. Brenda
How movies used to be made with actors, storyline and directors top notch recording of life in that period, I suppose “This England” is how it is today.
thank you very much for showing this wonderful film. A a German I love to see how it was in England so many years ago - and even in color. Otherwise I would never get to see a movie like this. Love the actors, the setting, the speaking, the story, the furniture, the culture, the time🌺🌹💐💝
I feel exactly the same , I have never seen this picture before here in France .I'm most thankful for having watched this great film which is in itself a beautiful summing -up of family life in Britain over a twenty year span.This is the kind of classic England I've become fond of since I started learning English .This is quintessentially old England .I do like John Mills whom I have already seen in various films here on YT.
My mum is British and now is 98 still living in her own home and taking of herself. She lived through the bombing of London and married my dad in 1944, and American. My grandparents in England and my mother told me what it was like growing up for all her years in that Second WW, it was awful. This was a good movie, it was a good presentation and great actors. Thank you for sharing.
Live hearing that about your mum in her 90s , my mum was 7 y age when the war was on , bit in autrail , she pass long ago , nice ti see your mum,s all good and you still have her ,❤ I wish I had mine she died of elssimer desees not nice thing to get ❤
Love Robert Newton, and for a change basically playing "himself" here. Here as Mr. Gibbons, and also when he played the vicious ragged Bill Sikes in "Oliver Twist" four years later, were his greatest roles for me. Kay Walsh, here playing his daughter Queenie, was Nancy, whom he brutally murdered in "Oliver..." . Absolutely perfect cast, gorgeous original 1944 Technicolor, brilliant music score - Noel Coward's "London Pride". John Mills as the boy next door, Stanley Holloway as his comical Dad, Celia Johnson as the careworn wife and mother, and John Blythe - real-life son of Edwardian stage actress Dorothy Monkman, as the rebellious son. A true gem. Classic British films don't get better than this.
Yes, I do agree, Robert Newton gave us his wonderful version of Long John Silver, to which everyone who's ever dressed up as a pirate has him to thank his west country accent we all try to copy marvellous actor one of the British greats
Gone are the days when a cuppa would solve everything. My family as I grew drank enough morning to evening. The blue lined china they have, I inherited form my Grandma.
I am 71 and a Canadian but I love the English sense of humour and solidarity now completely vanished. This is a glimpse of a world now completely vanished. I met Celia Johnson in the 1970's at the back door of a London play, and she was terribly nice and gave me her autograph on the back of a playbill program, which I still have.
I don't think we've lost our humour,you have to be able to have a laugh to live in the UK!🤭I live in a small village in England and everyone I've ever known has had this same sense of humour,, so, it's still here with the silent majority , just buried under the vast nonsense of the very vocal minority.👍🇬🇧❤️❤️❤️🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊
@@DianaSheward I can understand your comments but as you say, you live in a small village in England where vestiges of the old English persist. Have a great 2024 and thanks for your intelligent response.
@@DavidJohnson-rj8zu I. Boarded at a school in Coventry in the 1980s,and the humour was still there, even though it wasn't totally white kids,but,yes,I can understand that where it isn't majority white folk from Britain,the same humour isn't going to be there.Our "betters"🙄must know what they're doing,not having any border controls WHATEVER 🤬🤬🤬!Let's hope this 2024 they'll see the light and actually DO something about it.We can but hope.......👍🇬🇧❤️❤️❤️🐊🐊🐊
Yeah, is it because I’m American that I had a hard time understanding their fast speech? Some dialogue I never could decipher, and the closed captioning I couldn’t read and digest fast enough to keep up. But it’s a wonderful film in all other aspects. Each time I watch it I understand more.Thank you for this priceless presentation.
A glimpse of another time when people were so different and values more stable and aspirational. Drugs had not corrupted the nation, violence was not the norm, and society was more caring. Yes, there were some downsides and heartbreaks too, but they were far outweighed by the positives. Then things began to collapse and look what we’ve become today… how very sad…
Drugs hadn't corrupted the nation, but were not illegal either. Booze was everywhere in vast quantities. Drugs were huge in the army: 'marching powder,' my grandfather said they called it in North Africa. I detest puritans.
What a gem. Amazingly it's old, but not dated. It feels like watching a piece of social history. It's so much more interesting to see history through the eyes of regular people and the way they lived, rather than simply learning about dates and famous people. In 1913 my grandfather, of blessed memory, fled pogroms in the Ukraine (then it was 'the'), and found refuge in the UK. He arrived alone at the age of 12. He would have been 18 at the start of this film, so it was interesting for me in a personal way to see the world that he would have been living in.
Although I'm not 'that' old, I do feel like I know all of the people in THB. These people became the older & elderly people I grew up with, and who have only recently all just died out. I know their habits, their sayings, their ways of doing things, it's all so familiar & cosy, and sadly dying out with these people. Change is inevitable, but I try to keep much of this alive on a daily basis, not only as a comfort, but as some things are just the right way, the best way, the greatest generation!
Most enjoyable stay with a family of very human characters held together by honest chatter about their annoyances and the love of a couple whose real affection for each other takes second place to their support for all in the tired and commonly unthankful noise of their big welcoming household. A real treasure that even started to explore the real causes of war and the shallow talk of peace without a price.
Only just managed to watch this all the way through. What a great film? I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, in London; my grandparents would have lived like this, so much of the ‘feel ‘ of these times were still around when I was a kid. Brought a tear to me eye guvnor !
I have seen this before : it was jolly well done. Celia Johnson is just right as the organised, practical lady of the house. The house is a similar layout as the "semi " we had at Heston ,the first home I remember.. And the same layout as my Auntie Bay's place at Dunchurch, near Rugby. Must have been thousands just the same.🙂🏡 Appreciate Celia's skill here, a down -to - earth lady, with appropriate accent. Compare it to the wistful wife in "Brief Encounter ", another Classic. The point about buttering the 😻cat's paws : my mother told me that it was quite true: the cat cleans its paws , and in so doing, it feels "at home".🏡👍😻 Thank you for this film, I haven't seen any modern ones with the same sort of "true " atmosphere..😊🇬🇧 The modern 📽️efforts are so full of stress, violence, etc., I only have to see the trailers, and know what to expect ! So I steer clear of them ! Ah well...😊 Merry Christmas. all, if possible, with the sad state of the world .... 🇬🇧😊🎄🦉🌹🌈🎼😊
windy. It was a common practise in those days. Cats were known for disliking new surroundings, and had often run away to find their old place. The butter was thought to comfort them in their new surroundings so they would not decamp. It was nothing to do with finding their way anywhere.
A film that has a place for everything and everything in it's place. As my gran would say who grew up in the times portrayed in this masterpiece of movie art.
...oh my... never seen or heard of this before... watched it in black & white alone tonight... wow... reaches all the corners of our quietly hidden sentiments... simply stated... movingly terrific! Thank you for posting!
