This Happy Breed (1944)

★ 7.1 1h 51m IMDb

A chronicle of the lives of the Gibbons family, from shortly after the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second.

This Happy Breed

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Cast

Robert Newton
Robert Newton as Frank Gibbons Died 1956 · Shaftesbury, Dorset, England, UK Robert Newton was one of the great character actors -- and great characters -- of the British cinema, best remembered today for playing Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1950) and its sequel in 195...
Celia Johnson
Celia Johnson as Ethel Gibbons Died 1982 · Richmond, Surrey, England, UK Dame Celia Elizabeth Johnson DBE (18 December 1908 – 25 April 1982) was a British actress. She began her stage acting career in 1928, and subsequently achieved success in West End and Broadway product...
Amy Veness
Amy Veness as Mrs. Flint Died 1960 · Aldeburgh, Suffolk, UK From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Amy Veness (26 February 1876 – 22 September 1960) was a British film actress. She played the role of Grandma Huggett in The Huggetts Trilogy. Description above...
Alison Leggatt
Alison Leggatt as Aunt Sylvia Died 1990 · Kensington, London, England, UK From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Alison Leggatt (7 February 1904 - 15 July 1990) was an English character actress. Description above from the Wikipedia article Alison Leggatt, licensed under C...
Stanley Holloway
Stanley Holloway as Bob Mitchell Died 1982 · Manor Park, London, England, UK Stanley Augustus Holloway, OBE (1 October 1890 – 30 January 1982) was an English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist. He was famous for his comic and character roles on stage a...
John Mills
John Mills as Billy Mitchell Died 2005 · The Watts Naval Training College, North Elmham, Norfolk, England, UK Sir John Mills, CBE (born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills; 22 February 1908 – 23 April 2005) was an English actor who appeared in more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades. On screen, he often p...

Audience Reviews

CinemaSerf 7/10 Jun 30, 2022
This gently entertaining film follows the trials and tribulations of the "Gibbons" family - mum, "Ethel" (Celia Johnson), dad "Frank" (Robert Newton), daughters "Queenie" (Kay Walsh), "Vi" (Eileen Erskine) and their son "Reg" (John Blythe) alongside her mother "Mrs. Flint" (Amy Veness), who not untypically lodged with them too. There's is a simple enough life, contentedly living in a newly built suburbia with a garden, whilst their children grow to adulthood - going through the daily motions and routines familiar to all. To a large extent, that's what gives the film much of to charming potency. Each character has a storyline of their own, and the episodic nature of their evolution takes them through the stages of their developing lives succinctly. Tragedy strikes as often as happiness, but David Lean doesn't allow the stories to dwell on these incidents, nor to linger on any aftermath. Each chapter is effectively closed (or paused) and the timeline moves on - it's almost as if it's constructed in the way one might write it in a daily journal. The screenplay keeps a comedic theme at the film's heart - well aided by the likes of Stanley Holloway as next door neighbour "Bob" and Alison Leggatt as Johnson's histrionics prone sister "Sylvia"- as it offers us a social commentary of a time when the traditional British ways of life were adapting, or not, to post WWI necessity - and changing political attitudes. It starts with a celebration of the end of the Great war, with all the soldiers from the victorious nations parading through London, via the death of King George V through to the rumblings of WWII and the journey is poignant, at times profound and engaging. The personalities - especially Newton and Walsh mature wonderfully, if not exactly "maturely", and one cannot help but empathise with Johnson's stoic realism throughout the twenty years or so of their lives depicted here. The story is pedestrian in nature - and by design mimics day-to-day live in an authentic (they go from gas lamps to electricity, they even get a gramophone) fashion that exudes an honest validity. Slow at times, but never dull - a lovely, film to watch. The closing scene did make me wonder if they ought to have wallpapered a bit more often, though...

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