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The remembrance's tenor of unsentimental mischief is at once felt—what are patriotic newsreels to a theaterful of kids waiting for Hopalong Cassidy? The auteur's proxy is a boy not yet ten (Sebastian Rice-Edwards), who knows that Chamberlain declaring war on Germany is serious business because every lawnmower falls silent on his London suburb. Dad (David Hayman) enlists and comes back a clerk ("The worst problem I have is getting a new typewriter ribbon"), Mum (Sarah Miles) runs the household while sighing yearningly at what might have been with Uncle (Derrick O'Connor). The lad is impatient for adventure ("Come on, come on," he murmurs while scanning the skies), his teenage sister (Sammi Davis) dances on a garden illuminated by air raid bombings: "Want to see the fireworks?" In John Boorman's Amarcord, the mammoth ocean liner that enchants the townspeople becomes an unmoored barrage balloon that gently bumps on rooftops like a drooping winged whale. A flow of fond and vivid anecdotes, an extraordinary lightness of spirit for the wonders and terrors bridging childhood and adulthood. "Ungrateful little twerps" collecting shrapnel and bribing girls for a glimpse into their bloomers, the rubble is their playground. The Jerry pilot parachutes into a patch of Brussels sprouts and smiles at the boy-crazy lass as he's taken away in a cheeky twist on Mrs. Miniver. (Lean's This Happy Breed, Gilliat's Waterloo Road and Crichton's Hue and Cry are also variously cited.) Barbed wire on the beach gives way to the expansiveness of the countryside, where Boorman's river is as crucial as Renoir's and Grandpa (Ian Bannen) scowls at the electric tower in the woods. "I curse you, Volt, Watt and Amp!" A film crew is briefly seen at work before the beautiful last joke, Churchill announces "the end of the beginning." With Susan Wooldridge, Jean-Marc Barr, Annie Leon, Katrine Boorman, and Geraldine Muir.
--- Fernando F. Croce |