Tuesday

I am always surprised by the bleakness of some of the early World War II films. I was first shocked many years ago by the Noel Coward movie, starring Richard Attenborough (and co-directed by David Lean), In Which We Serve. To ruin it for you, they all die at the end. Somehow I had grown up thinking war movies finish happily. Perhaps these were the films made a while after the war, but there is definitely a strand of those made during and immediately after which are extremely depressing. I was reminded of this recently with Angels One Five and O.S.S. (which seems as if it might be a precursor to the upcoming The Good Shepherd). And there are of course many more. There is a silent, stoic suffering to them, a necessity of loss, which can be very shocking if you've been watching the other type of war film. You expect the polite, upper-class Englishman to survive, but he doesn't, and there is no compensation for the audience. I think we're slightly afraid of making, and watching, this kind of movie nowadays.