April 12: In Which We Serve (1942 -- Noel Coward & David Lean)

★★★★
In Which We Serve opens with some of the most self-congratulatory credits I've ever seen.  Staring Noel Coward, written by Noel Coward, art director for Noel Coward, Noel Coward’s music performed by…, and finally directed by Noel Coward, with second credit to David Lean.  And after this orgy of Coward self-promotional credits, In Which We Serve becomes a long, beautiful montage that portrays the construction and launch of the HMS Torrin in a way that  pure cinema, and much in style of Eisenstein.  I wonder if the completely unnecessary line of dialog that introduces this montage – “This is the story of a ship” – was the contribution of the film’s headliner, perhaps anxious that the real director’s mastery of cinema was a threat to the playwright’s presumption.  If so, Coward should indeed have felt threatened because the cinematic in In Which We Serve outshines the actors’ lines.

In Which We Serve is a film of flashbacks, far more than could be achieved on stage, and the skill of Lean is that we don’t get lost in the complicated narrative line. We first watch a disciplined Captain Kinross lead the crew in the HMS Torrin’s naval battle, but the ship is sunk by an aerial bomb, and a group of crew members assemble at a float. This is the film narrative’s base because much of the rest of the movie is flashbacks from three men at the float: Cpt. Kinross, Shorty, and CPO Hardy.  Lean cuts from each several times, each time joining the main character at a different time in his life, and it’s to Lean’s credit that viewers can follow the story.  In only one sequence – when we go from the float to Shorty’s flashback POV to Kinross’ flashback POV to the ship – did I get confused about where I was in the film.  Otherwise, the time and POV are very consistent and very clear.

And In Which We Serve presages how fruitful Lean’s collaboration with cinematographer Ronald Neame would be.  There’s a beautiful few seconds of film as the train with Shorty and Freda barrels from the left of the frame and heads deep into center screen, the low camera angle perfectly capturing the sun reflecting off its windows as the train rushes toward a break in the clouds.  It’s a brief moment is cinematic thrill.  Less serendipity than skill, another moment in the film has Lean and Neame directing a group of men as they leave the Torrin en mass.  As they head down the dock in eager anticipation, they separate and pass the young sailor who regrets his panic in the earlier battle and is sadly walking slower.  As the lights go down, the faster group streams off screen, and the young sailor is left walking alone in silhouette.  It’s another moment of  film beauty.  In another worthwhile moment of cinema, Lean does some flashy editing to give the scene with the wedding photographer punch.  These are moments of pure cinema that make this film worthwhile.

But credit Noel Coward with some of the most effective and unique elements of this propaganda film.  In Which We Serve puts a finger on the British qualities that will help it win this war.  It endorses duty above all, in the enlisted men and officers as well as in their wives.  And faced with hardship at the front and at home, the British suffer, but they endure and they sacrifice.  There’s no sentimental reward for the characters in this film; their reward is that they’re still alive.  It’s hard to imagine a French or American propaganda film that would endorse the values we find in this one.

Another great strength here is the scope of vision in the screenplay.  Not only does it span upper class to lower, but it gives as much weight to the women at home as it does to the men on the ship.  And these women have some complexity and depth.  Cpt. Kinross’ wife repeatedly complains about her husband’s devotion to his ship and his duty, often so strongly that there’s a sense that her humor is masking a genuine unhappiness.  Yet like him, she does her duty and stays with him and their kids.  We also watch Freda leave Shorty at the dock entrance after their honeymoon, and we see her begin to assume the role of Navy wife that Mrs. Kinross and Chief Hardy’s wife have already demonstrated to us.  There is no crying or dramatic expression of emotion here or anyplace else in the film; the British keep their upper lip stiff. 

It’s also through the women that we see that the dangers in the war are as potent at home as they are at sea.  In Which We Serve involves us as much in the lives of Chief Hardy’s wife and mother-in-law as it does in any of the characters, but these two affectionately-quibbling women are suddenly killed in one of the blitzkrieg strikes against London.  It’s a testimony to scope of the screenplay that we experience this as a loss of characters and not as the male character losing an important part of his life.  Such independently important female characters are not common in film of the time, and certainly not in what’s basically a propaganda film.

In Which We Serve is a happy joining of the sure hand of a cineaste to the instincts of a skilled crafter of narrative.  Lean and Coward’s first collaboration surpasses its genre aspirations and moves into a deeper artistic field.