We continue the ill-fated and resurrected journey of watching each of the British Film Institute’s 100 best films of the 20th Century. Starting at 100 and working my way to Orson Welles’ The Third Man at number 1. This week, a war movie directed by Noël Coward and David Lean, In Which We Serve. I’ll try to keep these short updates relatively spoiler-free and consider them only a small record of moving through this series.
In Which We Serve was a surprise. Historically, I’m not much of a fan of war movies, and certainly not first or second world war films. Since moving to Poland, I’ve noticed here there is an abundance of them here too. Nevertheless, watching Noël Coward, who wrote, scored, and co-directed the movie, as Captain Kinross leading his men, including Sir John Mills as Shorty Blake, on the Battleship HMS Torrin, was an unexpectedly stirring and moving experience. The movie, which was released in the midst of World War II had, in fact, full support from the British Ministry of Information and its patriotic imagery could certainly be described as propaganda. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the film and it carried me along with the trials and tribulations of the crew of the Torrin.