Millions Like Us

Launder and Gilliat's portrait of a family at war is remarkable not only for its breadth of social detail - Dad joins the Home Guard, Mum goes back to her old job as a telephonist, daughter joins the ATS, and son is sent overseas to fight - but also for its perceptive observation of the youngest daughter's experiences as a factory worker. Patricia Roc's life on the factory floor, and her relationships with the girls who share the dormitory accommodation, don't shy away - as many other films of the period did - from the class conflicts which still riddled wartime English society. The ending, too, with the working class foreman (Portman) rejecting the rich society girl (Crawford) who has fallen for him, and looking forward instead to a new kind of society (one with a Labour government), raises pertinent questions about what exactly is being fought for. Is it the restoration of the old order, or the foundation of a new one? Intelligent entertainment at its best.