This Happy Breed: David Lean

Before he revolutionized cinema with his big-budget epic films, British director David Lean got his start doing smaller scale dramas. In particular, his first few films were collaborations with famous British playwright Noël Coward. In This Happy Breed, Lean dissects a small working class British family recovering from the end of the First World War. The film tracks their lives right up to the start of World War Two. The family is comprised of a man named Frank, his wife Ethel, their three children (Reg, Vi and Queenie), his widowed sister Sylvia, and Ethel's mother. Living next door to them is Bob Mitchell, who served with Frank in the army during the First World War. We watch their comings and goings, their successes and heartbreaks. The family has an uncanny ability of somehow getting involved with many great historical events. They travel to the British Empire Exhibition held at Wembley in 1924, participate in the General Strike of 1926, and get swept up with the Jazz Age. And, of course, it isn't long before the family begins to hear news broadcasts and disturbing rumors concerning a certain chancellor of Germany. But the real focus is the family dynamics. Lean demonstrates a knack for developing sharp, believable characters that we sympathize and identify with. I believe that it was because of his upbringing as a director of dramas and character studies that he was able to create blockbusters that didn't lose sight of the humans at their centers. This Happy Breed is a warm film, sometimes happy, sometimes tragic...but never artificial.

7/10