This Happy Breed is a fictional portrayal of life in working class England from the end of the First World War to the eve of the Second world War. I won’t give any spoiler warnings because it’s not that kind of movie. It’s an intimate look at a family in suburban London between the wars and all of the important and trivial things that make up human life.
Frank Gibbons (played by Robert Newton) returns from war to his family; wife Ethel (played by Celia Johnson), his teenage son Reg, his daughters Vi and Queenie, his mother-in-law Mrs. Flint and his sister Sylvia, all living under his roof. His next-door neighbor Bob Mitchell is a war buddy and becomes Frank’s best friend. And Bob’s son Billy will eventually become Queenie’s boyfriend.
Over the course of the twenty years that the movie covers we watch the children grow up, navigate the troubled economy of Britain between the wars, fall in love, marry and in one case die tragically. Children rebel against their parents’ expectations and mores and come out the other side older and sadder and much like their parents.
The movie is a slice of life in three acts and a total of nine scenes spread across those twenty years. I guess what I liked about the film is the feeling of believability about the characters but at the same time the likeability of most of them. Even though they were Brits and from a time period before I was born, they felt strangely familiar. And I was invested in their stories. You could actually care how things turned out for them because they were decent people trying to muddle through their lives during a period of history when England was still reeling from the loss of a generation of young men in World War I and staggering under the global economic changes that would reduce them to a poorer nation. Frank and Ethel love their family and try their best to steer their children in the right direction.
There are moments of pathos and humor. And the acting is top notch without any flashiness or highbrow dialog. Just simple people living their lives. I’m not sure who I would recommend this movie to. First remember that for Americans the British locale might make it a little strange. But actually, I didn’t think it was off-putting. Events like the death of their king or the 1926 General Strike might seem unfamiliar but not mysterious. If the description I give here doesn’t sound interesting then give this a pass. But I consider it a gem of a film that I’m surprised I never saw before. Highly recommended.