This Happy Breed

Director: David Lean
Year Released: 1944
Rating: 2.0

Takes place between the first two World Wars in a single house and measures the change in that family (and its close associates); the bad thing is, a lot happened in those years, and Lean and Sir Noël Coward graze over them too quickly, condensing space where elaboration is necessary. A perceptive critic from Dublin, Darragh O'Donoghue, commented on Coward's questionable world view that sees nothing better than frill-free contentment in the middle class: striving to be better is reprehensible and worrying about the poor - as shown by the one son, a strident Communist until he has a head injury (where those 'bad thoughts' were apparently 'knocked-out') - is equally unnecessary. One of the 'shocking' incidents in the picture - the deaths of two characters - failed to have an impact on me, considering that it took me a good deal of time to figure out who those characters were (Coward takes on the Herculean task of trying to flesh out a dozen characters in a very small period of time; even Altman knows you need three or so hours to do that).