Opportunities to see Noel Coward recite Noel Coward were necessarily inhibited by his death, but he has left among his filmed artifacts this stunning little achievement, perhaps the quietest war film, probably the most British. To be sure, it veers maudlin once or twice, and the whole production is suffused with the blood of righteousness - but not self-righteousness. This is the kind of movie that makes me want to join the Navy, I who get seasick in the bath.
How does a middle-aged homosexual song-and-dance man support the war effort? By producing a bang-up answer to Wyler and Ford, a vivid recruitment poster for the side of decency and respect. Brutal, tender, horrible, and full of hope, IN WHICH WE SERVE sings the victory song of both shellfire and home fire without mention of glory or distinction. Noel Coward's acting is a marvel of disinterested conviction. Nobody could speak faster, or with more precision, and that with the stiffest of upper lips.
No one wrote dialog at once so arch and comfortable, either, except maybe Kipling. Coward celebrates the most sophisticated level of civilization, the blithe, eloquent man of society who has managed not to become jaded. He embraces his England with a respectfully familiar pinch on the cheek, and he kisses her with the most restrained of passions in front of the children. But he also loves with all his heart the simple proletarian bedrock, and he allows the working classes to display as much humanity and emotion as he denies his own character.
There is much stage-like, not to say stagey, in the production, which shouldn't be very surprising given its principal antecedents. The film is sometimes expressionistic in design, the angles and sets a terrifying collage of unsettling, theatrical images in contrast to the reassuring tea cozy and the ramrod-straight captain on the quarterdeck. The symbols are profoundly simple and the effect is disarmingly true.
As Coward says over a drink, "Perfect; it's not a bit too sweet." Well, it is rather, but mix another pitcher of Bovril and sherry and don't complain, there's a good chap.
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