Great Day

As the film opens, we see a group of women gathering to discuss something of GREAT importance. It turns out the town will have a famous visitor, and they are determined to have everything go just right.

Lady Mott ( Isabel Jeans ) is leading up the group to spiff up the village, and to make everything perfect, and is turning everyone upside down. She is rude to everyone, and when they call her on it, all hell breaks loose. There's one scene about 20 minutes in, where she is speaking to someone outside on a country road, and you can hear quite the echo, showing that it was clearly filmed on a sound stage. The main story revolves around the Ellis family, who all have their troubles. Meg Ellis (Sheila Sim) must choose between the two men in her life. Her father has a hobby which is discovered and frowned upon by the authorities. Supporting roles for Eric Portman and Flora Robson It's all quite entertaining, for a WWII film. IMDb lists the runtime as 62 minutes for the U.S. version, but TCM must be showing the British version at 80 minutes.

This British RKO film is directed by Lance Comfort; it took another year to make it over to the U.S. after the war had ended.

The ladies of the English village of Denley are called to a meeting. Eleanor Roosevelt is coming for a secret visit. Everybody is excited to prepare for the privilege. The Ellis family has their internal dramas.

This was released in London on April 13 1945 and after the war in the States. President Roosevelt happened to die on April 12, 1945. It must have been quite a dark emotional premier if they even had one. I can also see why this was a box office failure. As a movie, this drama is a bit of Our Town at war. The small town affair doesn't mean a whole lot to me, but there are interesting war discussions. It's British. It's based on a play. It failed.

"Great Day" couldn't be described as a great film by any stretch but it has enough of the incidental pleasures present in so many English movies (for me anyway) to be worth seeing.

First of all Eric Portman is outstanding as the pathetic WW1 Captain whose time has passed. He reminded me a little of David Niven in "Separate Tables". Flora Robson as his supportive wife is also excellent, no surprises there. It struck me looking at the familiar faces in the cast that so many of these actors always seem to have been middle-aged, was there a young Irene Handl or John Laurie, was there ever a teenage Kathleen Harrison, Marjorie Rhodes or Patricia Hayes? I can't recall them.

While it's fascinating to see the Women's Institute in action in Village England "Great Day" is very studio-bound with too obvious back-projection and the dialogue tends to the stilted. (I did like one line about a dinner invitation "Kill the fatted spam") And was Britain always drenched in sunshine?

"Great Day" is well worth one look.

The above user's review was quite succinct but I awarded him a useful star as I agreed with his every word.I too considered that the producer of "A Canterbury Tale" (1944) had a success with the pairing of Eric Portman and Sheila Sim in that film so it was decided to pair them again this time as father and daughter in "The Great Day"(1945) the following year.They had a poignant scene together where Sheila suspects her failed father is about to commit suicide but uses artful applied psychology to induce him to return to their family home and to his wife played by the great Dame Peggy Ashcroft.

I suppose it was too much to expect to see Eleanor Rooseveldt in person but I lived in hope when it was announced that America's first lady would visit the English village.I suppose had we seen her she would have just become a widow seeing as how Franklin Delano Rooseveldt died the year this film was made and just before the war ended.There was a veritable cornucopia of well known (to me) actors in the cast list which included cameos by Patricia Hayes (Mrs Cravatte in her later career in "Hancock's half hour") a fine comic and dramatic actress, Ivor Barnard, Irene Handl, Beatrice Varley, and the ubiquitous actor who played private Fraser in "Dads Army, John Laurie.

Being an aficionado of 1940s movies, especially British produced, I was surprised this 71 year old had not seen it before and I rated it with 7/10 as enjoyable.Please upload more of these gems!

In a small English village, everyone is excited because Mrs. Roosevelt is going to visit the town.

Not that this forms much more than a background to the subplots that are going on. Much time is devoted to retired captain Eric Portman, who is nearly broke but has been putting on a front for a long time; his long-suffering wife, Flora Robson; and their daughter, Sheila Sim. Miss Sim is carrying on a love affair with a young soldier, while proposing to marry a well-to-do older man for security.

It's all very well performed, but the way the script is talking about how Mrs. Roosevelt is coming not as the First Lady, but as a wife and mother one moment, and Portman is caught stealing ten bob the next makes it difficult to maintain more coherence.

Eleanor Roosevelt was known for turning up in the most unexpected places. There's an old New Yorker cartoon of two coal miners deep underground; one of them announces "Why, it's Mrs. Roosevelt!"