Waterloo Road

An agreeably told story of the domestic upheavals on the home front during the second world war. The cast is a good one: Stewart Granger, as the war dodging Romeo who makes a play for a neglected soldier's wife (Joy Shelton); Alastair Sim as the local g.p. on hand to offer his sage advice; George Carney as the lodger, trying to dodge the warring females in the household and happiest when he's with his pigeons; Beatrice Varley as the worried mother trying desperately to make ends meet and do right by her family; Alison Leggatt as the interfering sister-in-law and Vera Francis as the nosey sister. John Mills and Shelton hold the piece together as Mr and Mrs Ordinary Man and Woman, and there is a nice comic turn from Wylie Watson as a Tattooist. Best of all we have Jean Kent, wisecracking her way through the war as Toni, the discarded girlfriend of Granger, who's done very nicely thank you, having been set up in her own hairdressing business.

An interesting and watchable British feature which provides interesting insights into the wartime lifestyles and attitudes of the working class. John Mills is the soldier who goes AWOL during the Blitz to return home to check up on his pretty young wife Joy Shelton after his nosey sister sends him a letter accusing her of having an affair in his absence with Stewart Granger's spivvy draft-dodger.

That's about all the plot there is, apart from a little padding which sees Alastair Sim's G. P. act as the moral conscience of the film, subtly guiding Mills to his wife's whereabouts on the arm of the scheming Granger and even on how to defend himself in the anticipated fisticuffs with his rival.

There's also an encounter between Mills and a U. S. counterpart although significantly the Yank has only gone missing because he wants to see some fighting action, as if American soldiers never committed adultery, especially when in old Blighty!

It's interesting to witness the conflicting treatment of two able-bodied males of the time and almost see the film as part of a recruitment drive for the British forces whilst shaming shirkers like Granger's character. We see this in the way that Mills's character benefits from the pursuing military police almost looking the other way as he tries to sort out his domestic situation and are even given to believe that little Johnny can win a bare-knuckle fight with the much bigger Granger who we're told is a champion boxer.

The contemporary attitude towards women is also interesting to observe as we see Shelton's fading resistance to Granger's charms almost excused by not only the obvious device of his wining and dining her but more pertinently demonstrating some understanding of the sense of loneliness and physical and emotional needs of a young woman deprived of her husband's company for long periods of time.

Naturally it all ends up as it should with the married couple reconciled and the bounder getting a thick ear, but it was nevertheless interesting to view this less than rosy picture of marital life during the war.

Sydney Gilliat, this time without the aid of his long-time associate Frank Launder, wrote the screenplay and directed the action. Just over 70 minutes long, even then it feels slightly padded as Mills and his American army pal try to avoid detection, but nevertheless it doesn't gild the lily in painting its true to life family portrait. There's one particularly fine shot early in the film when Sim's character introduces the extended flashback as we see the present-day part-flattened Waterloo Road restored to completion to begin the story and the film elsewhere makes good use of actual physical locations.

Not the kind of feature normally associated with the Gainsborough studio but definitely a welcome change from its more usual overripe costume melodramas.

"Waterloo Road" deserves to be better known than it is. If, like me, you were born after the war, it is a fascinating glimpse of a time gone by, but don't watch it for that alone. It is a story about ordinary people in wartime, without heroics and melodrama, but with an abundance of character and incident. The characters struck me as being true to life, and I didn't find a jarring line of dialogue or a scene which dragged. John Mills gave a fine performance as a soldier gone AWOL, and Stewart Granger as the cad out to seduce his wife. All in all, a wonderful little film.

A young English soldier early in World War II (John Mills), learning his wife is stepping out with a spiv (Stewart Grainger, in a different sort of role) goes AWOL to have it out with the wife-stealer.

For Americans it's an eye-opening peek into wartime London. It wasn't all sing-songs in the Underground. It was also people dodging the army with phony certificates, homebodies romancing the wives of men at the front and illicit sales on the black market.

The slang may be difficult for Americans who aren't Anglophiles.

The best parts are when Alistair Sim pops in as the kindly doctor and (infrequent) narrator.

It has nicely comic touches to relieve the melodrama and plenty of odd British characters. Thank goodness. And at the end Sim has a curious explanation for Hitler.

When John Mills gets a letter from his sister that his wife, Joy Shelton, is carrying on with local sporting man Stewart Granger, he goes AWOL back to his home to track them down and deal with the situation.

I've passed up numerous chances to see this movie before I realized that it had John Mills in it. "Huh! Is there a third movie version of WATERLOO BRIDGE?" No, it's a domestic drama directed and co-written by Sidney Gilliat, so it has a good, rough sense of humor, abetted by Alastair Sim as the local doctor, and one of every three characters who recognize local boy Mills. This being released before the end of the War, it also has a morale-boosting bit of propaganda at the end, enlarging Sim's role a bit.

There are lots of faces familiar to movie fans, including Jean Kent, Wallace Lupino, Ben Williams, and Kathleen Harrison. It's not a very deep or important film, but it will interest and amuse fans of the talented cast and crew.