The Way Ahead (1944)

"I wonder what we'll look like in 1970, ."

I write this on the seventy-fifth anniversary of VE Day, in 2020. It's a weird anniversary, during the Great Plague and in the midst of lockdown. But oddly enough spirits seem to be raised. I took Little Miss Llamastrangler out on her scooter this afternoon and lots of people have decorated their front gardens and are socialising from a distance. A decent amount of alcohol, I hope, has been consumed. I'm doing my bit. The anniversary of Nazi rule being crushed is well worth celebrating, and can perhaps give us hope.

So what better to blog than a wartime propaganda film from 1944, when things were looking up but victory was uncertain? Prpaganda this may be, but crude it isn't. Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov (also appearing as a pied-noir cafe owner in occupied Algeria) have given us a very human script full of individuals who ring true today, let alone in 1944. Lloyd (I recognise the actor from The Great Escape) is an unscrupulous landlord turned courageous soldier, while Parsons is a victim of such types. There's mention of the Beveridge Report. For much of the class consciousness and difference which is the main thing which ages social mores in this film, there's a real solidarity that demands a Welfare State along with victory.

There may be better way films than this, but it does a fine job of showing ordinary blokes slowly being turned into soldiers, with lots of action at the very end. David Niven is excellent and charismatic, Stanley Holloway is brilliantly comedic, but a young William Hartnell perhaps gives the best performance as the sergeant. It’s also clear that this was a huge influence on Carry On Sergeant in terms of plot, and not just Hartnell. Then again, a young John Laurie may as well be playing a younger Private Fraser from Dad’s Army, and the Chelsea Pensioners acting as Greek Chorus probably contain the seeds of a certain other character who was wont to mention fuzzy wuzzies. Very much worth seeing. And happy VE Day. Stay safe.

The Third Man (1949)

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Yes, it had to be that quote. Predictable but necessary.

This film is, essentially, superb. It tends to suffer somewhat from the overly high expectations one tends to have for films as critically acclaimed as this, but I won't discriminate against it for that. The film didn't choose to be so hyped. In truth, this film may not be quite amongst the best ever made but it is, nonetheless, utterly superb.

I won't recount the intriguing plot with its twists and turns and the gradual reveal of the story of Harry Lime, played with splendid charisma by the great Orson Welles. But the script paints as dark a picture of human nature as one would expect from the typewriter of Graham Greene. Vienna is made to look awesome by Carol Reed in its monochrome splendour, and the cast is superb. This is a Vienna still under occupation by the four powers, where even minor aristocrats resort to the black market to survive. This once-great imperial city has fallen very far indeed, with its grandiose Habsburg architecture seeming to mock it. 

Above all this film has atmosphere, pervaded as it is by a sense of doom and pessimism. And above it all floats that zither tune. This is a film that everyone should see.