WORLD WAR Homefront II Movie Review

World War II: The Homefront on Screen

Homefront stories are the calm center of World War II films. They tend to emphasize romance and tranquility, and they idealize domestic activities to an absolutely shameless degree. In that regard, William Wyler set a high standard with Mrs. Miniver. Seen today, it's a sincere soap opera that has nothing to do with reality. But to 1942 audiences, it touched a heartfelt emotional chord. People loved the story of a British family's quiet courage in the face of Nazi aggression. It set records at the boxoffice and at the Academy Awards.

Both Since You Went Away and David O. Selznick's White Cliffs of Dover are pitched at the same noble level. In White Cliffs, an American woman (Irene Dunne) marries into an English family and carries on bravely through two wars. Claudette Colbert does much the same in producer Selznick's ornate variation on the story. No sacrifice is too great for her and her daughters—and their dog!—to make while Dad is off doing his duty. The three films are notable for the polished sheen of their black-and-white cinematography, costumes, and sets.

When filmmakers turned their attention to the subject decades later, they took a different approach.

Steven Spielberg re-creates the glossy look in candy-bright neon colors for 1941. That's the only similarity his raucous comedy has to the older homefront epics. In John Boorman's autobiographical Hope and Glory, the domestic upheaval of war is seen through the eyes of a child. Boorman brings a bracing sense of discovery to the story. The war transforms a boring British suburb into a magical realm of imagination and adventure. His sense of humor is bawdier and rougher than Spielberg's.

Anne Wheeler's Bye Bye Blues is about a young wife and mother (Rebecca Jenkins) who must deal with a husband who's missing in action and an unexpected career opportunity as a jazz singer in provincial Canada. The characters, their situation and, just as importantly, the setting are treated realistically and without the gushing sentiment of the 1940s.

Though The Land Girls can claim a basis in reality—young English women did go to work on farms to replace men who entered the service—director David Leland casts three glamorous actresses (Catherine McCormack, Rachel Weisz, and Anna Friel) in the leads. He also makes the rural locations as idyllic as the confections of the war years. And why not? If filmmakers are going to lionize warriors, shouldn't the quiet front receive some of the same idealized treatment? They also serve who only stand and wait.