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THIS HAPPY BREED

Network DVD / Released 26 January 2009

Featuring Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Stanley Holloway, John Mills

David Lean is quite rightly regarded as one of the foremost of British directors from the golden age of cinema, an editor who made his name as co-director with Noel Coward on the wartime epic In Which We Serve. This Happy Breed, released this month in a two disc set by Network, was his first film as a solo director and unlike his later films which tagged him as a auteur of epic proportions.

This Happy Breed, which was based on a play by Noel Coward and was a major success on original release, is the between the wars story of the Gibbons family as they cope with the changing of the times. The family, who lived at Number 17, Sycamore Road in London's Clapham Common area was headed by father Frank (a wonderfully and unusually subdued performance from Robert Newton) and mum Ethel (Celia Johnson, something of a favourite of both Lean and Coward, does her best to play down as the working-middle class mother) and also involved are the brilliant Stanley Holloway and rising star John Mills as neighbour Billy Mitchell who is due to marry the Gibbons daughter Phyllis but she has other ideas. What makes the film so special is the unusual for the time depiction of everyday life, the stuff of every soap these days, it can now be seen as something of a precursor to the revolution that would shake British cinema in the late forties and fifties.

No expense has been spared on this release either, the brand new restoration job ensures that is has never looked this good! The two disc set also includes a very indepth and excellent edition of The South Bank Show focusing on the career of Lean, there is also a very impressive gallery of images, the original press book as a PDF file, the original trailer and an informative booklet by noted film historian David Rolinson.

A fine example of classic British cinema, This Happy Breed is a must for fans of the golden age of cinema.

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