This Happy Breed
by David Lean
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alison Leggatt, Amy Veness, Celia Johnson, Robert Newton, Stanley HollowayDirector: David Lean
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of This Happy Breed
Movie Review: A Family Finds Entertainment
Summary: 5 Stars
In a way this is nothing more than a Technicolor remake of CAVALCADE, and not as good, so save yourself the agony and see CAVALCADE instead; but on the other hand if you haven't seen the previous Noel Coward pageant play, this one is tasty indeed, not least because of the glorious color effects, so that every scene looks like it's being projected on the softest of apple blossoms. The stage set (a suburban London kitchen and family room) is lovingly installed in act one, and we never really leave it until the young couple at the beginning (Robert Newton and Celia Johnson) get old and gray by the end. It feels like a play, like David Lean hasn't even tried to open it up, but it may be that he was still under the iron rule of Noel Coward who hated having cinematic imagination applied to his masterworks.
Some people can't stand Coward when he goes all lower class and shows us the little people nobler than their betters. For others, that's exactly the Coward we love! You;ll have to make up your own mind on this one. Is Celia Johnson remotely believable as a woman of the lower middleclass? Not for the first couple of hours, then when the plot kicks in where her errant daughter, Queenie (played ineptly by Kay Walsh) leaves the family to go off with a married rotter, Johnson suddenly springs to life and gets cold, withdrawn and bitter as all get out. The ending should have you in tears. I'm still crying, in some ways it's more affecting than BRIEF ENCOUNTER's repressed passions.
Robert Newton is the heart and soul of the movie and you can see everything through his eyes--Celia Johnson's like a beautiful curiosity, but not really a "subject" the way Newton is. The calamities he incurs would test the patience of Job and yet he just keeps keeping on--the famous British stiff upper lip I guess. His sister, Sylvia, is crazily devilish with her complete and utter self-centeredness. She makes everyone around her, even the selfish, seem like they care about others. Question, how did they get those shots of the main actors payign respects to the coffin of King George V? And where did they get Technicolor footage of Neville Chamberlain waving a white handkerchief from the window of 10 Downing Street on the eve of his appeasement victory?
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