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.\u00a0 I won\u2019t give any spoiler warnings because it\u2019s not that kind of movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 His next-door neighbor Bob Mitchell is a war buddy and becomes Frank\u2019s best friend.\u00a0 And Bob\u2019s son Billy will eventually become Queenie\u2019s boyfriend.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Children rebel against their parents\u2019 expectations and mores and come out the other side older and sadder and much like their parents.<\/p>\n
The movie is a slice of life in three acts and a total of nine scenes spread across those twenty years.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Even though they were Brits and from a time period before I was born, they felt strangely familiar.\u00a0 And I was invested in their stories.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Frank and Ethel love their family and try their best to steer their children in the right direction.<\/p>\n
There are moments of pathos and humor.\u00a0 And the acting is top notch without any flashiness or highbrow dialog.\u00a0 Just simple people living their lives.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure who I would recommend this movie to.\u00a0 First remember that for Americans the British locale might make it a little strange.\u00a0 But actually, I didn\u2019t think it was off-putting.\u00a0 Events like the death of their king or the 1926 General Strike might seem unfamiliar but not mysterious.\u00a0 If the description I give here doesn\u2019t sound interesting then give this a pass.\u00a0 But I consider it a gem of a film that I\u2019m surprised I never saw before.\u00a0 Highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[3166,4875,747,43,38,1355,4876],"class_list":["post-32992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-british-cinema","tag-celia-johnson","tag-england","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-robert-newton"],"yoast_head":"\n