This Happy Breed

This Happy Breed was a successful 1944 feature-film adaptation of a popular stage play by Noel Coward. Directed by David Lean as his first major film, the film follows the fortunes of a lower-middle class Gibbons family in the south London suburbs from 1919 to the outbreak World War II. The title is a well-known phrase from Shakespeare, and it describes the English people. It was the most successful cinema film of 1944, and was shot in colour.

Related Topics:
1944 - Noel Coward - David Lean - London - 1919 - World War II - Shakespeare

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The film very subtly hints at the non-violent ways in which social justice issues might be incorporated into post-war national reconstruction, examines the personal trauma caused by the sudden death of sons and daughters, and also acclimatizes English women to the forthcoming return of their husbands from the war. It is also an intimate portrait of the economy and politics of England in the 1920s and 30s, as well as showing the advances in technology - we see the arrival of primitive crystal radio sets, home gas lights being replaced by electric lights, the arrival of telephones and mass broadcast radio.

Related Topics:
1920s - 30s

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This Happy Breed was an influence on Mike Leigh's Life is Sweet (1990), also an intimate and sympathetic study of a south London family, and in which the This Happy Breed line "Capitalist!" is re-used by the Nicola character and delivered in exactly the same way as in This Happy Breed.

Related Topics:
Mike Leigh - Life is Sweet

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~