Hope and Glory

Dir: John Boorman

1987

*****

I remember watching John Boorman’s Hope & Glory in the late 80s. At the time I was reading The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and the fact that humour could be found in the most unlikely places really appealed to me. I can’t really imagine what it would have been like living in London during the Blitz, we had IRA bombs in the 80s and 90s but it was no way near on the same scale as it was then during the Second World War. I’m not sure whether the film or its humour ever appealed to my grandmother but I remember her commenting on how authentic she thought the film looked and felt. The film is set just before the start of World War II and focuses on the Rohan family that includes Billy, his sisters Sue and Dawn, and his parents Grace and Clive who live in a suburb of London – not far from where I grew up and where my grandparents lived at the time. After the war starts, Clive joins the army, leaving Grace alone to watch over the children. Seen through the eyes of 10-year-old Billy, the "fireworks" provided by the Blitz every night are as exciting as they are terrifying. His family do not see things in quite the same way as the bombs continue to drop, but their will to survive brings them closer together. The nightly raids do not provide the only drama, however, as his older sister, Dawn, falls for a Canadian soldier, becomes pregnant and, finding her life turned upside down, soon discovers the value of her family. The family eventually moves to the Thames-side home of Grace's parents when their house burns down (not in an air raid, but in an ordinary fire). This provides an opportunity for Bill to spend more time with his curmudgeonly grandfather and to contemplate the things children shouldn’t have to. Part of its success and feeling of authenticity come from the fact that this is based on John Boorman’s own experiences of growing up in London during the Blitz, the boy Billy being based on himself. My parents generation have told me tales of playing on bomb sites as Billy and his mates do in the film and I think the film touched many people of a certain generation upon its release. Films made about the war theses days cannot be as authentic as this and are generally made to show a generation of people what it was like. Hope & Glory obviously does this but it also asked a generation to ‘remember when’. I was refreshingly un-epic, dealing with life as it was, rather than as a glossy drama. There was something rather kitchen-sink about it and then something shocking would happen, as it would have been like at the time. The film explored many aspects of life then, such as romances that would pop up while the men were away fighting and the people left behind not able to fight. It was a snap-shot in time, a portrayal of daily life for a London family. The film's great strength is in its characters. Besides Billy, we follow his overzealous father, his sexually-liberated teenage sister, his hilarious grandpa and his gang of far-from-innocent friends. It probably goes without saying but there is something uniquely British about the humour. It’s full of brilliant lines, the sort of thing my grandparents and teachers would say all those years later. One of my favourite lines was given by Billy’s teacher:

Teacher: (Pointing at the map of the world) Pink, Pink, Pink, Pink…What are all the pink bits on the map? Billy?

Billy: They’re ours Miss.

Teacher: Yes, the British Empire, the pink bits represent Britain. What fraction of the earth’s surface is British?

Billy: Don’t know Miss

Teacher: Anyone?

Another Pupil: Two-fifths miss?

Teacher: Yes, two-fifths. That’s what this war is all about. Men are fighting and dying to save all our pink bits, all for you ungrateful little twerps!

I think my grandmother liked most was that the film showed how people tried their best to maintain their normal lives and customs as their world crumbled around them, both literally and figuratively. A 650 feet long suburban street set with seventeen semi-detached houses was constructed for the film and half of it blown up. Because we see everything from a child’s eyes – a child who knows no different – we see the innocents and how it effects the adults, even though our child Billy doesn’t understand any of it. I believe this story could only really be told by someone who went through it for it to be told properly. If this film was made today it would look totally different and would have been largely sensationalized. Here, it explores a point in time that most of us couldn’t ever imagine, even though it didn’t happen that long ago and if like me you grew up in the City, knew people who did go through it. My grandparents spoke of the Blitz but I could never picture it, thanks to Hope & Glory, I had the visuals to their stories and I felt I knew that just that little better. Now that they’ve passed this film means something more to me, it’s a real slice of history, the first port of call for anyone wanting to know more about the real social history of the Blitz.