This Happy Breed (Rank-Universal) is Noel Coward's proud and loving tribute to the unbreakable British backbone. It tells the story of the lower-middle-class Gibbons family between Wars I & II. The film opens and ends with a fine Technicolor shot of the roofs of London. In the closing shot the roofs lie defenseless to the hell that is soon to crack them open. But by then, Coward has made clear how ready the people under the roofs are to endure the worst and to prevail against it. He shows this never through flat heroics, but through the quiet, immense courage, patience, kindliness and common sense which give structure, and a certain majesty, to 20 years of one family's life.
The plot is simple. It shows the family life of Frank Gibbons (Robert Newton), his wife Ethel (Celia Johnson) and their three children. Vi (Eileen Erskine), a docile creature, gives little trouble. She marries a young pinko, but quickly domesticates him. Reg (John Blythe), a charming, rather irresponsible boy, messes about on the left side of the general strike but marries and turns out well in the end. Then he is killed in an auto wreck. Queenie (Kay Walsh) is the real problem. A spirited, rebellious girl, with ideas above her class, she runs off with a married man and suffers the consequences. It is years before she is reunited with her gentle, sailor sweetheart (John Mills).
That is about all there is to the story. Comic relief and pathos are added by an acidulous grandma, a neurasthenic maiden aunt and an old wartime friend of Frank's (Sterling Holloway). But the real meat of This Happy Breed is in the many plotless little human studies which Coward writes with such relish—Frank's advice to his bridegroom son, delivered in the privacy of the bathroom, just before the wedding; snappish, jagged family quarrels; a touching drunk scene between the two aging ex-soldiers; Ethel's silent, terrible way of absorbing bitter news. The real hero of the film is time, as designated on the face of every player, in the growth, bloom and final bleakness of a fruit tree in the backyard, and by the deathly resonance of the empty house as the family leaves it.
If the film has any serious fault (occasional jerkiness and slowness of episodes are minor ones), it lies close to the heart of Noel Coward's particular kind of talent. His deep affection and respect for his subject cannot be questioned, nor can his deep knowledge of it (he came from just such a background). But he is an extremely clever man, with a great flair and fondness for theatrical trick and design, which, at their worst, can use emotions as if they were stage properties. When clever men try to write with complete sincerity and, at the same time, to apply their sophistication to simple matters, the result is sometimes specious and sentimental. There are ways of insisting that a character is the salt of the earth which are essentially patronizing. For example, the noble character of Frank (extremely well played by Mr. Newton) is often hurt by this unconscious patronage.