British Films

One day in the library in Cardiff some years back, I came across a friend of mine who held a rather large book in his hands. He had a great, cynical sort of grin on his face. "Look at this," he said in a way that could have meant ''Have you ever seen anything like this?'. He showed me the title: "Masterpieces of the British Cinema". I had to laugh. Neither of us believed there was such a thing never mind more than one. We had, I suppose, been brought up on American films: Bogart, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Edward G. Robinson films. Gangster films, westerns, musicals. We considered British films to be inferior and I think we were right. Though in retrospect I think we, or I anyway, weren't used to the kind of film the British studios were producing.
Simon Heffer is giving a series of talks this week on Radio 3 (at 11 pm every night, a time when most of us are in bed - well done BBC!) on, maybe not actual masterpieces of the British cinema but quality films that were made during the war and which were reflecting on our island's way of life before the war and wondering what it would be like afterwards. Films that were essentially revolutionary in content and intent (most studios were, he said, full of socialists).
The first film he highlighted was "Went the day Well". He didn't say so but I have the feeling the idea came from Graham Greene, maybe a short story? A troup of soldiers arrives at an archetypal English country town and wishes to have help from the villagers in a project that they have in mind. However, they are not English at all though they seem to be: they are Germans there to disrupt communications - or some such thing. They are brutal and start to take over the village, killing some, threatening to kill schoolchildren - in short carry out what we believed were typically German atrocities.
I saw this film some years ago and thought it a real thriller. I have to say that I was amazed to find that here was a British film that, while keeping that special quality of Englishness - the local yokels were there, the vicar was there (the first to be shot), the grand lady was there - all the stereotypes were there, it painted a picture of a Britain in which all pulled together, one society working together, class barriers pulled down and so on.
OK, it never happened but to a degree it did: the Atlee government brought in reforms the like of which the country had never seen, a National Health Service came into being, children from all kinds of homes were educated to a higher level than ever before, people went to universities from quite ordinary backgounds and so on.
The next film he talked about was "A Canterbury Tale" which I did not like when I saw it years ago. He called it a masterpiece - maybe there was one after all then! It flopped at the box office. After Heffer's talk I'd like to see it again; seems there was more in it that met the eye.