My war stories

Robert Hutton on Cinema

● “BEFORE THE WAR THE BRITISH cinema had no tradition,” wrote the critic Dilys Powell. Other nations, she said, had found their themes in the 1930s. The French had the underclass. The Russians had revolution. Americans their thrilling, growing nation. “It took a war to compel the British to look at themselves and find themselves interesting.” Writing in 1948, Powell was more right that she could have guessed. Over the next three decades, British cinema would cover many subjects, but it would return, again and again, to one. When people ask why older British generations seem obsessed with a conflict that ended before most of them were born, the answer is that we saw it played out before us again and again on the screen. For most of us these…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2023

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