This is one of those sweeping intergenerational stories of an upper-middle-class British families in which the children grow up over the course of thirty or so years, with the older and the younger generations each encountering triumph and tragedy. There's a bit of class conflict thrown in when the daughter of the kitchen maid becomes a successful and wealthy singer and the upper-echelon son of the ruling family fall in love with each other. There are some musical interludes, none of the songs written by the author of the play from which this film derives.
That author was Noel Coward. Coward was great in some of his movie appearances, which ranged from the heroic ("In This We Serve") through the comic ("Our Man in Havana") to the somewhat bizarre and slightly menacing ("Bunny Lake Is Missing"). I quite like the guy.
Yet this story seems pointless to me in many ways. A lot of these epic movies about subsequent generations and their adaptation to social change do. I know Noel Coward's work is esteemed, and I know we should all keep a stiff upper lip and hope for the best, but as one New Year celebration follows another, the message gets tiresome. Really, I was saddened by some of the turns taken by events, but didn't much give a damn what happened to any of the characters, all of whom struck me as animated messages rather than living people.
What tragedy. Let me see. In the beginning there is the Boer War. The death of the Old Queen. Then two characters from the household discover they love one another -- on the Titanic. Then there is World War I. That's followed by the Jazz Age with all its threats, and what noisome threats to social stability they are -- drinking is flagrantly shown on the screen, along with homosexuality (that's a laugh, coming from Noel Coward), the threat of yet another war, art moderne, smoking cigarettes (well, we've gotten rid of that filthy nuisance), blues singers, and long fluffy feathers.
At the end, the original father and the original mother, now old and a little bent, toast each other delicately. They turn and look solemnly into the camera and the mother pronounces a long toast to both the past and the future while the viewer pendiculates. Then, arm in arm, the stroll to the balcony and smile at the New Year celebration in the streets below.
I suppose this sort of thing appeals to a good many people. There seems no avoiding these stories. If there IS a way of slipping past them, would someone let me know?
That author was Noel Coward. Coward was great in some of his movie appearances, which ranged from the heroic ("In This We Serve") through the comic ("Our Man in Havana") to the somewhat bizarre and slightly menacing ("Bunny Lake Is Missing"). I quite like the guy.
Yet this story seems pointless to me in many ways. A lot of these epic movies about subsequent generations and their adaptation to social change do. I know Noel Coward's work is esteemed, and I know we should all keep a stiff upper lip and hope for the best, but as one New Year celebration follows another, the message gets tiresome. Really, I was saddened by some of the turns taken by events, but didn't much give a damn what happened to any of the characters, all of whom struck me as animated messages rather than living people.
What tragedy. Let me see. In the beginning there is the Boer War. The death of the Old Queen. Then two characters from the household discover they love one another -- on the Titanic. Then there is World War I. That's followed by the Jazz Age with all its threats, and what noisome threats to social stability they are -- drinking is flagrantly shown on the screen, along with homosexuality (that's a laugh, coming from Noel Coward), the threat of yet another war, art moderne, smoking cigarettes (well, we've gotten rid of that filthy nuisance), blues singers, and long fluffy feathers.
At the end, the original father and the original mother, now old and a little bent, toast each other delicately. They turn and look solemnly into the camera and the mother pronounces a long toast to both the past and the future while the viewer pendiculates. Then, arm in arm, the stroll to the balcony and smile at the New Year celebration in the streets below.
I suppose this sort of thing appeals to a good many people. There seems no avoiding these stories. If there IS a way of slipping past them, would someone let me know?