Millions Like Us (1943)

"Millions Like Us" is an awfully good film because it is so incredibly ordinary and simple. That's because it's goal is to provide a snapshot of what life was like for seemingly ordinary women during WWII. It follows one woman in particular, but you also see quite a bit about the other women and their lives as well--and is an invaluable documentary-like look into the WWII era.The film begins just before WWII. Celia (Patricia Roc) and her family are living a relatively mundane and occasionally annoying lives. You don't really feel particularly connected to them or care about these folks at this portion of the film. However, after the war begins, Celia is called up for service--which she is eager to do, as she hates her mundane life with her parents. Unfortunately, she is NOT called up to the women's military service but is sent across the country to work in a war production plant. While she is very disappointed, this is a great thing to focus on, since this is the sort of job MOST British (and American) working women did during the war. I could say a lot more about what occurs to Celia, but it's better you just see it for yourself. Very well done, high on realism, charming as well as sad--well worth seeing. Plus, I loved the fact that repeatedly the film COULD have been jingoistic, extraordinary and ultra-nationalistic but chose instead the more subtle and realistic route instead.

At the time this must have been easy to file as painless propaganda; Launder and Gilliat start off as if attempting to emulate Noel Coward's classic This Happy Breed, we are introduced to a cut-rate Gibbons family and in particular two daughters, one a flighty Queenie clone this time called Elsie (Joy Shelton) and a more grounded Phyllis, now called Cecilia (Patricia Roc) but very soon and perhaps wisely the team realise that even the two of them are light years short of one Noel Coward so they veer off into Rosie The Riveter mode and give us a picture of Women At War which is not unpalatable by any means. There are two romances both slightly improbable, Patricia Roc snags a hopelessly inept Gordon Jackson whilst second female lead Ann Crawford winds up with Eric Portman. Seen today for the first time it failed to bore or embarrass though the England depicted is on the far side of the galaxy compared to what Blair has made of it.

Millions Like Us is a tribute film to the women of the United Kingdom who were the Rosie the Riveteers of the Blessed Isle. With a much less population base to draw from, Great Britain relied far more than the United States to keep the war production running so the men could do the fighting. And being under aerial attack by the Nazis, they endured a lot more than American factory workers of any sex did.On the American home-front, my mother freshly graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in Rochester, worked in the Bausch&Lomb factory, making all kinds of optical lenses for war production as that was all Bausch&Lomb was doing in 1943 when this film was made. Before that she worked after school there part time. Still it was a voluntary thing because she had a brother in the service. It was hardly the regimented lives you see these women leading, moved to far away location with new factories springing up in the country to avoid bombing. There's a reference in the film to Mr. Bevin's manpower needs filled by women and they are referring to Ernest Bevin, trade union leader, Labor MP, and in charge in the wartime Coalition Cabinet of such mobilization.The film centers primarily around two women, Patricia Roc and Anne Crawford, two of the loveliest beauties ever to grace the screen for the UK. Both are transplanted from the city, Roc is one of three sisters living with their widowed father Moore Marriott who's a member of the Home Guard. She has a bittersweet romance with RAF sergeant young Gordon Jackson in his first role of notice.Anne Crawford's a sexy thing used who's been around. She's not taking to factory work at all, but in spite of herself and in spite of himself, she's taking nicely to factory foreman Eric Portman and he, her. Roc is best remembered by Americans in her one and only Hollywood film, the western Canyon Passage. And Crawford before she died tragically at the age of 36 made her mark across the pond as Morgan LeFay in Knights of the Round Table with Robert Taylor and Ava Gardner. Anne didn't yield an inch to Ava in the beauty department.Today's audience will have it driven home just how much danger of invasion the United Kingdom was in when they see the direction signs on roads cut down and painted over. The better for the enemy not to be helped should he land.This film is a historic classic, a must for today's audience to learn what and how much a free people might endure to stay free. Women like Roc and Crawford and the Millions Like {Us} them kept the men in the fight, kept Great Britain free and ultimately kept us all free.

When World War II breaks out, one working class family (The Crowson's) find themselves playing their part in the war effort. Dad joins the war effort, elder daughter Celia signs up to serve and youngest daughter Elsie is to work in a factory. While the two daughters try to fit in where they are placed, it is Elsie that takes to the working class labour better, even thought some of her colleagues from the upper classes don't fit in as well. Meanwhile, back at home, Dad finds the battle against dishes and housework to be even more of a challenge than the battle against the Hun.Although it is clearly a propaganda film in essence, this wartime drama is quite interesting for not being as simplistic as some of its peers. In this family drama we don't really have a message pushed that hard but are instead left to draw out own warmth from a narrative that has a surprising amount about class within it. In this regard it does produce some interesting threads although those looking back for sharp comment will not find it because this is still a melodrama with a propaganda edge. As such it is a bit plodding at times but I still quite enjoyed it for what it was although I can understand why some viewers have found it a bit dull and lacking in sharpness.The cast are pretty good with the material. Roc and Dunn give good if unspectacular turns as the daughters while Marriott provides a working class comic relief to proceedings as the father. Te support cast features good work from Jackson, Crawford and others but the performances are not as good as I would have liked just because the script doesn't cut as deep as it could have – although perhaps understandably so.Overall then a solid wartime melodrama with the heavy propaganda scaled back to allow for a more natural and convincing story delivered with solid turns. Aside from the touch of class politics there isn't that much to set the screen on fire but it should make good as a matinée on a weekend afternoon sort of thing.