This Happy Breed (film)

This article is about the 1944 film. For the play on which it is based, see This Happy Breed.

This Happy Breed
DVD cover
Directed by	David Lean
Written by	David Lean Anthony Havelock-Allan Ronald Neame Based on the play by Noël Coward
Produced by	Noël Coward
Starring	Robert Newton Celia Johnson
Narrated by	Laurence Olivier
Cinematography	Ronald Neame
Edited by	Jack Harris
Music by	Muir Mathieson Clifton Parker
Distributed by	Eagle-Lion Distributors Limited (UK) Universal Pictures (US)
Release dates	June 1, 1944 April 12, 1947
Running time	115 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

This Happy Breed is a 1944 British drama film directed by David Lean. The screenplay by Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan, and Ronald Neame is based on the 1939 play of the same title by Noël Coward. The title, a reference to the English people, is a phrase from John of Gaunt's monologue in Act II, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare's Richard II.

Plot

Opening shortly after World War I, the film focuses on landmark events in the lives of the working class Gibbons family after they settle in a new home in Clapham in South London. The household includes Frank, his wife Ethel, their three children - Reg, Vi, and Queenie - his widowed sister Sylvia, and Ethel's mother. Living next door is Bob Mitchell, who served with Frank in the Army.

Frank finds employment in a travel agency. As the children grow up and the country adapts to peacetime, the family attend a number of events, such as the British Empire Exhibition held at Wembley in 1924.

Reg becomes friendly with Sam, a staunch Socialist, who is attracted to Vi. Queenie is pursued by Bob's sailor son Billy, but she longs to escape the suburbs and lead a more glamorous life elsewhere.

During the General Strike of 1926, Reg is injured in a brawl in Whitechapel Road. Vi blames Sam, who had brought her brother to the area, but eventually her anger dissipates and she agrees to marry him.

In 1928, Charleston dance mania arrives in England, and an enthralled Queenie exhibits her fancy steps at the local dance hall. As all of London is swept up in the Jazz Age, news of new German chancellor Adolf Hitler begins to appear in the newspapers. Reg marries Phyllis and Billy proposes to Queenie yet again, but she confesses she is in love with a married man and soon after runs off with him, to the great distress of her mother, who says she cannot forgive her and never wants to see her again.

As time passes, Aunt Sylvia discovers spiritualism, Reg and Phyllis are killed in a car crash, and Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists, tries to stir up anti-Semitic sentiment in the city. Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister, King George V dies, and Ethel's mother passes away. Billy, home on leave from the Royal Navy, announces he saw Queenie in France. Abandoned by her lover, she opened a tearoom to try to make ends meet, and she deeply regrets having left home. Billy reveals they are married and he has brought her back to London, and she and Ethel are reunited when her mother forgives her for her indiscretion.

With World War II on the horizon, Queenie has a baby, which she leaves in the care of her parents when she joins her husband in Singapore. Frank and Ethel, faced with an empty nest, decide to sell their house and move to a flat.

Production

In 1942, David Lean and Noël Coward had co-directed In Which We Serve. This Happy Breed marked Lean's solo directorial debut. He and Coward later teamed for Brief Encounter and Blithe Spirit.

Coward had played Frank Gibbons on stage, and he wanted to reprise the role on screen. Lean felt the playwright's public persona of witty sophistication was so far removed from his humble lower-class origins that audiences would be unable to accept him as Gibbons, and he initially offered the role to Robert Donat instead.

Lean insisted on filming This Happy Breed on three-strip Technicolor stock, although the film was difficult to acquire in England during the war. At the time, a Technicolor representative was assigned to the set of every film that utilized the process to ensure everything looked right on film. Lean contractually was required to follow strictly the guidelines proposed by the consultant, whose expertise he questioned and who drove him to distraction because of his concentration on the most minute details. The released film barely resembles a standard Technicolor movie, which was Lean's intention. It proved to be the most successful British release of 1944 and the first of many critically-acclaimed films helmed by the director.

Between March 2006 and January 2008, the restoration of This Happy Breed, combining digital and photochemical techniques, was carried out at the British Film Institute's National Archive's Conservation Centre in Berkhamsted and at Cineric, a post-production facility which combines optical printing and photochemical restoration with innovative digital techniques, in New York City. The project included correcting the color and a full digital restoration of the picture and soundtrack. The most time-consuming part of the sound restoration process involved removing background noise that caused dialogue to become muffled when conventional methods of noise reduction were used to remove it. Technicians had to filter the noise between individual words in order to eliminate static. The restored film was screened as part of a major David Lean retrospective at BFI Southbank in mid-2008.

Cast

• Robert Newton ..... Frank Gibbons
• Celia Johnson ..... Ethel Gibbons
• John Mills ..... Billy Mitchell
• Kay Walsh ..... Queenie Gibbons
• Stanley Holloway ..... Bob Mitchell
• Alison Leggatt ..... Aunt Sylvia
• John Blythe ..... Reg
• Eileen Erskine ..... Vi
• Betty Fleetwood ..... Phyliss

Critical reception

TV Guide rated the film four stars and called it "an immensely charming movie, with many tears and many moments of warmth."

Time Out London said, "Though Lean and Coward are less happy here than in the brittle, refined atmosphere of Brief Encounter, their adventurous excursion into suburban Clapham remains endlessly fascinating."

Channel 4 rated it 3½ out of five stars and added, "A toff propagandist's England, of course. But once you've got over its peculiar patrician tones and bitty structure, there's much to enjoy - not least the changing frocks and haircuts and wallpapers."

Awards and nominations

The National Board of Review named Celia Johnson Best Actress for her portrayal of Ethel Gibbons.