(David Lean, UK 1944, 111 min., 35mm nitrate, sound, three-color Technicolor)
Print source: British Film Institute, London, UK; Library of Congress, Culpeper, VA
Though best known for epics such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), David Lean was equally skilled at directing films on a far more intimate scale.
Lean made his debut co-directing In Which We Serve (1942) with the playwright Noël Coward, who wrote the original screenplay, composed the score, and starred. Though Coward would never again direct a motion picture, he was pleased with the outcome and suggested the film’s creative team adapt several of his plays for the screen.
Written in 1939 but not staged until 1942 due to the outbreak of World War II, Coward’s play This Happy Breed focuses on the lower middle-class Gibbons family during the interwar years, and is one of the few works by the playwright set outside his typical upper-class milieu. The play toured in September 1942 with Coward starring as patriarch Frank Gibbons, before opening in London on April 30, 1943. Two weeks later, the film version began production.
Lean bookends the film with panoramic views of London. Starting with a left-to-right pan narrated by an uncredited Laurence Olivier, the camera moves toward the window of the Gibbons family’s new home. The film concludes with the family leaving the house and the camera poignantly passing through the now-empty rooms and out the window. The shot then reverses its original movement, panning back across the city while “London Pride,” Coward’s patriotic and sentimental anthem to Blitz-ravaged London, plays.
To give the film a modern touch, Lean chose to shoot in Technicolor, which cinematographer Ronald Neame then adapted to the setting of the story. “In order to make Technicolor less glorious,” Neame later wrote, “we exaggerated the age and shabbiness of everything; tidemarks round the bath, stains on the walls. With shades of gray and brown to ‘dirty down’ the sets and costumes, I was able to light the picture so that everything looked drabber than normal.”
This copyright deposit print from the Library of Congress is on 1947 stock. It exhibits a moderate amount of scratching and a low shrinkage between 0.45% and 0.55%. However, 86 splices in reel 9 not only indicate a substantial amount of missing footage but also make the reel difficult to project. A replacement reel was provided by the British Film Institute. It is also on 1947 stock and is in good condition, with shrinkage measuring 0.9%.
– Anthony L’Abbate
This screening is free for passholders of the sold-out 10th Nitrate Picture Show. A limited number of single-screening tickets may be available for purchase in person at the Dryden Theatre box office on a rush-line basis. Rush tickets will be sold only if seats remain after the film’s spoken introduction has begun.