The Gentle Sex
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Gentle Sex |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1942 |
| length | 92 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Leslie Howard |
| script | Moie Charles |
| production | Derrick de Marney |
| music | John Greenwood |
| camera | Robert Krasker |
| cut | Charles Saunders |
| occupation | |
| |
The Gentle Sex is a 1942 British World War I drama drama with military tendencies. Directed by Leslie Howard , Jean Gillie , Joan Greenwood , Joyce Howard , Rosamund John, and German exiles Lilli Palmer and John Justin star .
action
Great Britain in World War II. Seven women of different origins, who do not know each other, meet in a train compartment on the way to a training camp of the Auxiliary Territorial Service , the women's division of the British Army. When they get to know each other, they experience the early stages of their new military existence: gathering food in the canteen, keeping equipment together and putting on uniform, marching, military drill and theoretical training. Shortly before going to sleep, the young women still have some time for private communication. The trainees get to know the backgrounds and origins, circumstances and aspirations of each other. Maggie Fraser, for example, is a lively and upbeat Scottish woman, Joan Simpson once worked as a dance teacher, Anne Lawrence came from an English officer's family, Gwen Hayden was a waitress at a Cockney café waitress, Dot volunteered to quit her job in a beauty salon, and Betty did only little life experience as an only child. Czech Erna Debruski, who fled to England, faced the most interesting and probably the most difficult fate: When the Nazis invaded her home country in 1939, her fiancé, her father and her brother were killed by the German occupiers in quick succession.
After completing the basic training, the young recruits are informed about their new tasks. Erna, Maggie, Anne and Joan are to be used as drivers and Dot and Betty are to be stationed at an anti-aircraft battery. Gwen will stay at the training camp and work in the canteen. The next day, Anne, Maggie, Erna and Joan learn that they will be part of a women's convoy driving trucks loaded with electrical components for an unspecified mission. Before they leave, the women attend a dance event where Maggie Corporal meets Alexander Balfour, a kilt- stricken Scottish soldier. Anne, in turn, falls in love with David, a young pilot who is celebrating his last vacation days. Before returning to his camp, he asks his mother to befriend Anne, as he is beginning to care a lot about Anne. The four women begin their mission and, after the full day's journey, stop at a café on the way before they go to sleep. However, a traveling messenger brings the news that the secret mission has been brought forward by a day and that they will have to drive through the whole night. Finally you reach the goal. Overtired and exhausted like all of them, there is a brief but violent dispute between Joan, who, annoyed by the fact that a lot is not working out here, begins to rave about German efficiency, and Erna, who, due to her own family tragedy, has a completely different picture of “The Germans” and their efficiency.
In the meantime, Dot and Betty arrive at their position, the gun battery, where they learn to use searchlights and operate the guns to fight enemy planes. Shortly thereafter, Gwen began working as a telephone operator. That same evening, Dot reads in a newspaper that her husband was seriously injured while on duty. Joan, who is promoted to corporal, alienates herself from her colleagues by her too brash and bossy manner and hears Anne, Erna and Maggie gossip about their change of character in unflattering words. The following day, Anne takes Erna and Maggie to tea with David's mother. Anne says this is the first war in which women fight side by side with men and that once peace reigns, it will make a huge difference to women's status. David's mother shares her experiences during the First World War. As an ambulance driver, she was injured in the shoulder from shrapnel. While she was recovering, she met her husband, who was also injured. The next day, Anne found out that she too should become an ambulance driver. That night, the growing tensions between Anne and the others flare up and threaten to degenerate into open hostility. Suddenly the air raid siren sounds and the women are supposed to drive the ambulances to the battery where Dot, Betty and Gwen are stationed because they are being attacked by enemy aircraft. Just as they are about to leave, Anne receives a telegram informing her that David is missing in battle and believed to have been killed. On the way to their destination, Erna and Anne talk about feelings of loss. During the night, the women crash an enemy plane. It is her first successful war mission.
Production notes
The Gentle Sex was written in 1942 and premiered in London on April 15, 1943. The strip was never seen in Germany.
Paul Sheriff and Carmen Dillon designed the film structures. Muir Mathieson conducted John Greenwood's composition with the support of the London Symphony Orchestra .
Like all of his other films in which Howard had worked as an actor or as a director or as a producer during World War II, The Gentle Sex also conveyed clearly patriotic and propaganda messages.
Reviews
The British Film Institute judged: “In order to honor the real representatives of the film characters, the film is designed in a semi-documentary style, starring character actresses leading roles and casting real military personnel for the extras. The story also offers much discussion about how a post-war future should be built. "
Halliwell's Film Guide characterized the film as follows: "Unobtrusive war propaganda, quite pleasantly implemented and historically very interesting".
The TV Guide read: "Some clear and funny moments in a production that was capable and intelligent at the time."
Individual evidence
- ^ Criticism on BFI Screenonline
- ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 394
- ↑ Review on tvguide.com
Web links
- The Gentle Sex on BFI Screenonline
- The Gentle Sex in the Internet Movie Database (English)