Millions Like Us is a 1943 British propaganda film. The original screenplay is by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, the guys also directed. I like those guys quite a bit so I bought the DVD from Amazon. It appears to be a bootleg of unknown origin but it looks alright. You can see a decent copy on YouTube.
The movie starts in 1939 as we meet the Crowson family, they're heading off to the south of England for a seaside holiday in Hastings. There's plenty of interesting footage of train stations, streets and countryside. When the war breaks out the family helps out with the war effort, dad is in the Home Guard, daughter Phyllis joins the Auxiliary Territorial Service, daughter Celia gets posted to a factory making airplane parts. Everyone has to make due with rationing and other hardships. The German's bomb the area around the factory occasionally and the women have concrete bunkers to hide in, they don't appear that safe, there's a lot of stress. Celia meets a Scottish flight sergeant and they marry. They honeymoon in Hastings, staying at the same B&B that Celia has stayed in since she was a toddler. The town is all sandbagged up and ready for the Nazi invasion from France. The war doesn't go the sergeant's way but Celia carries on at the factory.
Millions Like Us has the fourth and last appearance of Charters and Caldicott, played Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne. They appeared in The Lady Vanishes, Night Train To Munich and Crook's Tour. The two would appear together in other films but as different characters. They add a bit of humor to the hard times. There's some humor as the different classes of citizen rub up against one and other. One of the woman at the factory is pretty posh and she loathes working on a lathe making airplane parts. The foreman is always on her case and they wind up in a relationship.
I enjoyed Millions Like Us and was glad to have added it to my collection. I thought it was worth a look and would recommend it to people who don't mind a war time melodrama. I've seen most of the films by Gilliat and Launder and hardly any of them aren't re-watchable. The Wikipedia says the film was popular in Russia.
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