This Happy Breed (1947)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Title is surely ironic as the mostly unhappy Gibbons family outlasts its welcome. Despite its dramatic sweep, film is best appreciated as a comedy. Reflects the conventional attitudes of the English lower middle class. At the General Strike the left-leaning son Reg is soon straightened out by his insufferable father while his Socialist friend also sees the error of his ways and settles down to a humdrum middle-class existence that is seen as the ultimate goal. Pity it skirts around the real inter-war issues. It doesn't challenge the conventions. It could have shown the effects of war on that generation but obviously just wants to paint a superficial picture. A cuppa solves everything. This sort of thing would be the fodder of second-rate TV soap-operas. John Mills, Celia Johnson and Stanley Holloway stand out. Richard Burton characterised writer Noel Coward as a lovely man with a "slight mind." That helps me understand the lost opportunity here to put the inter-war years into some sort of real perspective. But it also makes me wonder how the same team a couple of years later produced the masterpiece that is Brief Encounter!

As others have said, the story follows the Gibbons family in Clapham from 1919 to 1939. The central characters (the parents) are played stunningly by Robert Newton and Celia Johnson. Mr Gibbons is a bit like Polonius - always coming out with rather cliché'd advice. But his children hear his warmth and concern and support - which is what really matters. Mrs Gibbons is more acerbic and constantly trying to stop the others rowing.The old mother and widowed aunt are brilliant. Coward gets in some superb satire of both hypochondria and Christian Science (the aunt switches tack halfway through the story).I enjoyed the technicolour, because the clothes are PERFECT. For anyone interested in fashion history, this film has everything. The old mother, like Queen Mary, never updates her look from before WWI, favouring long skirts and "toques" (see Queen Mary's hats). The aunt is always slightly behind the times. Only Kay Walsh is slightly out of period - her Charleston dress has a waist! Tsk, tsk. And she can't quite bring herself to adopt the dated hairstyles that must have seemed frumpy to her. She's brilliant in her part, though, complaining that her family are "common".The left-wing views of the son, Reg, and his friend are sent up, but at the time it was the communists who fought the fascists, and the boys get beaten up in a clash with Mosleyites.Just one point - other reviewers from the States have called the family "middle class". This may be confusing for Brit readers - their classification is different! They are lower-middle-class: hard-working and aspirant. I've forgotten what Mr Gibbon's job is, but somehow it supports a house, three children, two relatives, a cat, and a maid. However, maids were cheap back then, and one woman couldn't have done the work of a house that size.We're told, however, that she gets help from her daughters (though not the parasitic relatives). The maid is a bit caricatured - maids were stock comic characters in 30s plays - but she is treated as one of the family and Mr G even helps her fold the tablecloth.The family don't exactly speak Cockney, just a bit "common". By the way, Noel Coward was not "patrician". Didn't he grow up in a family and house like this? He invented his aristocratic persona and accent. I don't think anybody really talked like thet!

This film is just not as good or generally interesting as the other comments suggest - I doubt if it would even have got made outside the WW2 context.It seems to be an allegory pointing up what Coward saw as the fundamental characteristics of the British - a combination of principle (Ethel) and pragmatism (Frank). The starting and ending with "moving in" and "moving out" is a heavy-handed way of presenting this.Actually, I thought one of the most significant scenes (in addition to the death-news scene mentioned by others) was the wedding - where under tension (car is late) the family group degenerates into a full-scale row - only to dissolve into normality the minute the car arrives. This is obviously meant as a window into the British character.As a story, it just doesn't rate - compare it with Mrs Miniver or Dr Zhivago - both built on similar lines - but reflecting much more momentous and significant ongoing events. The twenties and thirties were changing and significant - definitely not exciting (or not in this film).

Was it nostalgia I asked myself? Brought up in the fifties many of the attitudes seem familiar although the family itself were an idealised vision of how I remember things. All that said I loved it for what it was, a gentle, often funny, film with superb acting and great visual images. A touching and thoroughly enjoyable film that I am sure I will return to at another time. Not a great film and no massive impact, but what a pleasure to watch and what a shame that the British film industry seems to have lost some of the skills and application so evident in this movie. This is one for a quiet afternoon. It won't tax your mind nor overly excite but it will leave you feeling happier for watching it.