MILLIONS LIKE US (1943)

A British propaganda film for the uplifting of the WWII homefront, presented as domestic melodrama. In the relatively carefree summer of 1939, we see the Crowson family, typical working-class Britons, set off on vacation to a coastal resort: parents Jim and Elise, son Tom, and daughters Celia and Phyllis. We hear news of Hitler on the radio but the family tries to ignore it. Phyllis is attractive and popular with the men, while the plainer but pleasant Celia winds up spending time with the doofuses. Back home, once war is declared, all do their part. Jim joins the Home Guard; Phyllis joins the ATS, the women’s branch of the Army, working as a mechanic, against the wishes of her dad; Tom joins the Army and is sent off to war; Celia wants to join the Women's Air Force but winds up working on an assembly line to produce needed parts for airplanes. Trials, tribulations and tragedies ensue. Some are minor, as when Celia and her co-workers have to put up with Jennifer, with a snooty upper-class girl who makes trouble on the assembly line, but also starts to fall for Charlie, her foreman. Some are more important, as when Celia falls for and marries Fred, a young flier who gets a brief honeymoon at the same resort where the movie started before he has to head back to battle. Ultimately, the stiff-upper-lip messages here are delivered fairly lightly, as the characters are fleshed out enough for us to become invested in their fates. Patricia Roc as Celia has the lion's share of narrative incident, and a very young Gordon Jackson (Mr. Hudson from the original Upstairs Downstairs, pictured) makes a solid impression as Fred. Anne Crawford is fine as Jennifer, as is Eric Portman as Charlie. Though the film rarely gets gloomy, there is comic relief from Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as the sweet but clueless Charters and Caldicott, characters they originated in Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES, and played a few more times through the 1940s. I always love seeing them pop up, though here they only get a couple of brief scenes. Directed and written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, who co-wrote The Lady Vanishes. Not a particularly compelling movie, but watchable and of historical interest. [TCM]