In Which We Serve Reviews

Noel Coward's patriotic service, high standard, not one yellow fellow but Attenborough who is redeemed by death. Perfect exercise for Lean. Nice lines, best of all, Celia Johnson about ship before woman and family. Nice touches on low and middle classes homes.

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was David Lean’s directing debut, I was really eager to check it out. Indeed, it is very old, more than 70 years old as a matter of fact, and yet it is still pretty good even compared to more current movies. Basically, it follows a British Naval ship and you get to see the tale going from its construction to its sinking during action in World War II and you get to learn the survivors through some flashbacks. It was a rather straighforward approach but I thought it was really effective. Even though the whole thing was a Noel Coward project (he was directing, writing the damned thing and also playing the lead), this movie would be mostly remembered as David Lean's directing debut (Apparently, Coward was nervous about this directing debut and someone suggested him to work with David Lean who was considered at the time as the best editor in the UK) . After this picture, Lean would go on making some of the biggest classics in motion picture history. To conclude, even though it was nothing really amazing, I thought it was still a decent war feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in David Lean’s work.