- Actors: Richard Attenborough, Sheila Sim, Bernard Miles, Cecil Trouncer, Robert Flemyng
- Directors: Roy Boulting
- Classification: U
- Studio: Carlton
- VHS Release Date: 19 Mar 2001
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B00004R6OG
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,901 in Video (See Top 100 in Video)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
Made in 1948, this film illustrates well the preoccupation with class and the re-ordering of a better society that exercised the Post-War years. It is hard not to smile at the cut-glass accents and the failure even of that sterling West-Country boy Bernard Miles, who plays the young Attenbrough's father, to produce a plausible working-class accent. But there hangs over the film the sadness of those who died in battle and determination, even amongst the dinosaurs, to honour them by building a better tomorrow. The film charts the conversion of an idealistic but hidebound housemaster to a view of the world that accepts that the new role of the ruling class is to play midwife to a new order in which the doors of opportunity (and social advancement - aye, there's the rub, as if it were a self-evident good thing) are thrown open to the talented and energetic wherever they come from. The 'Tom Brown's schooldays' moments are watered down, though it is impossible to hide the inbred ghastliness of the public school ethos, and the end of the film ends with the baton being handed on to a younger, more progressive housemaster amidst a welter of 'Mister Chips' moments complete with syrupy music. But technically the film is so well done and so generous to all it portrays that it is hard to sneer at the crudeness of the premise of the plot and the manners of a very different kind of society which some of us still remember as yesterday.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
This 1948 film is one of those very British movies made by Roy Boulting and follows the very young Richard Attenborough as the son of a NE London tobacconist who is sent to a famous public school ("Saintbury") as part of a social experiment. Very much of its time, the film is closer in ethos to Goodbye Mr Chips of 1939 than to the anarchic fantasyland of If (1969), the latter being, I think, closer to at least the psychological reality of my own schooldays of the early 1970's.
In a sense, one could look upon the film as showing Saintbury as a metaphor for England itself in 1948: still stuck in World War Two (the action starts during that war, despite having been made three years after the end of WW2); the idea that society should be opened up in terms of "equality of opportunity" but within the existing system rather than a radical remaking of that system; a one-nation idea which seems impossible now, with Britain (esp. England) deeply divided not only on the class lines of this film, but on racial, ethno-cultural and other bases.
The idea that the highest aim of any school student is to attend Oxford or (as in the film) Cambridge is still a pervasive idea today, as when Gordon Brown famously lambasted an Oxbridge college for rejecting a girl from the North East despite her having a number of (needless to say, these days, not worth much) "A" grades etc. Another reason the UK falls behind, this Oxbridge obsession.
The sentimentality of the ending is warming, yes, but also patently something which mirrors the way British people of 1948 wanted to think about their country: one which had come through the War honourably, to a decent society which was basically unchanged from 1939 but fairer...a world away from 2010...
Worth seeing.
In a sense, one could look upon the film as showing Saintbury as a metaphor for England itself in 1948: still stuck in World War Two (the action starts during that war, despite having been made three years after the end of WW2); the idea that society should be opened up in terms of "equality of opportunity" but within the existing system rather than a radical remaking of that system; a one-nation idea which seems impossible now, with Britain (esp. England) deeply divided not only on the class lines of this film, but on racial, ethno-cultural and other bases.
The idea that the highest aim of any school student is to attend Oxford or (as in the film) Cambridge is still a pervasive idea today, as when Gordon Brown famously lambasted an Oxbridge college for rejecting a girl from the North East despite her having a number of (needless to say, these days, not worth much) "A" grades etc. Another reason the UK falls behind, this Oxbridge obsession.
The sentimentality of the ending is warming, yes, but also patently something which mirrors the way British people of 1948 wanted to think about their country: one which had come through the War honourably, to a decent society which was basically unchanged from 1939 but fairer...a world away from 2010...
Worth seeing.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
Touching and 'human' story of a young boy who's given the chance of advanced education rarely available to children of his class.
A sensitive portrayal of this kid of story that can be expected with stars such as Richard Attenborough and Robert Flemyng in the lead roles - the latter displaying all that is good in men.
Also stars Anthony Nicholls and Joan Hickson.
A sensitive portrayal of this kid of story that can be expected with stars such as Richard Attenborough and Robert Flemyng in the lead roles - the latter displaying all that is good in men.
Also stars Anthony Nicholls and Joan Hickson.
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