We recommend John Boorman’s funny, affectionate account of a wartime childhood, chiefly for the children themselves. The nostalgia sometimes softens things too much, but their pleasure in the disruption is both convincing and quietly troubling.
John Boorman’s Hope and Glory is a warm, funny film about a child enjoying circumstances that ought to frighten him. Bill, played by Sebastian Rice-Edwards, sees the Blitz as an interruption of ordinary life with several advantages. Boorman writes and directs from his own childhood memories, and he allows the boy an awkward amount of pleasure. There is no attempt to give him the solemn appreciation of history that adults tend to want from children in war films.
Rice-Edwards makes Bill’s curiosity convincing without asking us to find him adorable. Geraldine Muir’s Sue is equally unforced, and the children’s interest in what is happening around them can be cheerfully heedless of anyone else’s distress. We laughed at their pleasure in treating bomb damage as a playground. Then we felt ashamed of how readily we had joined them. Boorman gets that response by staying close to what the children enjoy, long enough for us to forget what their new freedom has cost.
Anthony Pratt’s production design makes the suburban streets feel lived in, and that matters when they become places for children to explore. The period detail works because it gives Bill somewhere credible to play. Philippe Rousselot’s photography encourages us to share his fascination with the changed surroundings. We can understand why the boy keeps looking, even when the fondness of the images threatens to make the damage too inviting.
Sarah Miles gives Grace enough strength to keep the domestic scenes from being swallowed by Bill’s adventures. Miles makes carrying on seem tiring, even within this affectionate account of family life. Sammi Davis’s Dawn also helps sustain our interest in the family beyond the boy. These performances matter because the film is fond enough of almost everyone to risk making their troubles seem more manageable than they are.
The weakness is the way the anecdotes accumulate. Ian Crafford’s editing gives the individual episodes room to settle, but the joins between them sometimes feel loose. At 113 minutes, the film has stretches in which another colourful recollection adds little to what we already know about Bill. Some of the eccentric behaviour also seems included because it was remembered fondly, without telling us much about the person involved.
Peter Martin’s music suits the affectionate mood, although it leaves us wishing for something less reassuring in the cosier passages. That is the larger reservation too: Boorman sometimes seems so pleased to revisit this childhood that adult suffering is acknowledged and then hurried past. A child’s limited understanding is a sound reason for leaving things out. Even so, a little more fear would give the pleasures more weight, without requiring a catalogue of wartime horrors.
War films often ask children to make adult suffering easier to grasp. Here, the child’s failure to grasp it is allowed to be funny, even a little cruel. That willingness to leave Bill with feelings we might disapprove of gives the film more life than its occasional quaintness suggests. Choose it for that unruly childhood, with a warning that Boorman sometimes remembers the grown-ups rather too kindly.
