The Weaker Sex

This small scale English movie was beautifully crafted by talented hands behind & before the camera. Notably, cinematographer Erwin Hillier, (whose b & w night scenes were beautifully composed and lit here), and a familiar and likable cast headed by Ursula Jeans and Cecil Parker added to this ironically titled film. Set around the central event of D-Day preparations and the aftermath of all the concentrated activity on the war, it demonstrated the emotional ripples on such events throughout the lives of the characters, centering on the household of Jeans, her children, and the military service personnel who come in and out of their lives as boarders during the war.

While some might dismiss this as a trite movie about inconsequential people in a great turning point in history, the strength of this film is that detailed, largely domestic focus on the wartime anxieties, hard work and, of course, usually stoic British attitudes toward the war. This was heightened by the skilled filmmakers' ability to show the emotional ebbs and tides surging beneath the seemingly placid surface of the characters' lives. One illustration of this was the work of character lead Cecil Parker as a middle aged naval officer and widow Ursula Jeans as they quietly realized that their platonic friendship was deeper than either had fully realized.

A rather inconsequential drama that offers a post-war pat on the back to all the housewives that kept the home fires burning while their menfolk and daughters were off fighting Nazis. Ursula Jeans is the anchor of both the film and the family that faces the typical highs and lows of domestic wartime life. It's watchable enough, but feels awfully rushed and episodic the longer it goes on, and is probably the only film in which Cecil Parker plays the romantic lead...

I found the title of this rather classy wartime drama a bit misleading. Though it is told from the perspective of the widowed "Martha" (Ursula Jeans) and focusses on the stay at home elements of fighting during WWII - there isn't really anything weak about her dedication to her duties; nor of those of her counterparts. She plays her character with poignancy, dealing with the day-to-day trials and tribulations reconciling her work and her home - in which she billets RN commander "Geoffrey" (Cecil Parker) and sailor "Roddy" whilst her own two children are away serving. From a narrative perspective it climaxes with the D-Day landings and, intercut with War Office actuality, conveys a genuine sense of the fraught anticipation of those at home. Once the war has been won, the story rather peters out - a few fun jibes at the pains of rationing, and that most British of all things - the queue; and there is a degree of stoic, stiff upper lip-ness about the attitudes that makes the characterisations plausible and engaging, but it does slip a little into melodrama. There are a few welcome cameos from Thora Hird as their housekeeper (and, briefly, from Bill Owen with whom she starred in "Last of the Summer Wine" some 60-odd years later) and Kynaston Reeves. The story isn't all plain sailing: grim reality raises it's ugly head now and again, but that is handled subtly and isn't dwindled upon - helping the proceedings march along at a decent pace. I expect this went down well with audiences in 1948 - it's good.

Cheap-looking, studio-bound and obviously based on a play, but it looks good and is to be cherished as a very rare film lead for the charming Ursula Jeans.

"The Weaker Sex" is two things. Firstly it is a tribute to the British housewife ("To those who also served, though they were too busy to stand and wait"). Secondly it is a look at contemporary (1948) history through the eyes of a middle-aged housewife.

Though both these goals are admirable, the way they were carried out made a lopsided and rambling film. The first half of the picture, which takes place from D-Day to VE Night, shows a family under the stress of war. The incidents which fill this part of "The Weaker Sex" - air raids, lost and wounded brothers and sons, D-Day landings - are exciting enough to mask the fact that there isn't really any overarching plot, and the characters are going nowhere.

However the second half of the movie, which takes place in the postwar "Age of Austerity" doesn't have this built-in excitement factor. While watching a family coping with peace and the aftermath of war should have been interesting, if only for the novelty value, this half of the picture felt like an epilogue to the real movie. It is possible, even probable, that real life felt like this after the war, but sometimes reality doesn't

Perhaps there was a third purpose behind this movie. On the whole all the characters in "The Weaker Sex" are nice people: decent, doing their duty, law abiding, and not inclined to grumble. Given the era it was made in, it was perhaps intended to boost morale by reminding people how lucky they really were - that though times were hard they had peace, freedom and hope for the future.