Following some energetic army training, Private Bill Parsons is seen sitting on the grass at the top of a cliff, with his colleagues, exhausted.
However, the action then cuts to him being helped up the cliff.
The Vickers gun used by Brewer and Luke changes from having a smooth barrel casing/water jacket, in the exterior shots, to a corrugated pattern once inside the Cafe Rispoli.
War films produced during WWII are very different to those released in the decades afterwards. Back then, it was an honour and a privilege to fight for one's country, and dying was often an essential part of a soldier's service.
David Niven heads the cast in this engagingly quirky tale that amusingly and poignantly depicts just how the British Army managed to fight during WWII. He is the officer in charge of a collection of men of all ages and from many different backgrounds as they are slowly, but surely, coaxed, cajoled and bullied into a fighting unit that has cohesion, loyalty and friendship.
It's long but it's good. For a British film from 1944 the production values are amazingly high.
I have a big soft spot for movies like this, they have an authenticity that modern films about this era don't have. As someone who is from several generations who served in the Military it's nice to see something that is contemporary of WW2 that is not gritty, just realistic.
This movie essentially begins in England just prior to the beginning of hostilities with the mobilization of young men from all walks of life being called upon to serve in the army. Naturally, having no familiarity with the military, all of these men must first have to endure basic training and this picture showcases a handful of British citizens as they begin this process.
A bunch of whiny old men drafted into the British Army to fight the Jerries. They train.
An excellent production chronicling the adventures of a group of English conscripts, some eager, others dismayed, plucked from their civilian lives and sent through the rigours of basic training, before being sent to fight in the North African campaign. Churchill approached the producers of this film asking them to make the army equivalent to 1942's "In Which We Serve".
The Way Ahead is a really enjoyable and really well disciplined war film covering an array of folk, each with their own separate walks of life, going on to serve not only one another but their country in the process of coming to learn of particular traits to do with responsibility and respect to one's seniors within a field. The nucleus of this 1944 British film is in the depiction of several different people of varying jobs and classes coming together and putting aside differing traits, with one another and their official superiors, to win through but its rawer achievement is when that content is essentially dealt with without necessarily affecting the film's overall quality as such.
Legend has it that Winston Churchill wanted a morale boosting film doing for the British Army what IN WHICH WE SERVE did for the Royal Navy . In short this is a patriotic flag waving patriotic movie that takes no prisoners as to showing what makes Great Britain great is its sense of humour - take that Adolph .
