Rent Millions Like Us (1943)

Home Front (spoiler). - Millions Like Us review by Steve

The best film about the home front in WWII, and one of the greatest social realist films ever made in the UK. It is a tribute to the women who kept industry switched on, and the sacrifices that usually slip under the radar. Patricia Roc plays a shy shopgirl from a working class community, who leaves home to serve in a munitions factory.

She meets people of different classes and intellects, and performs a small task in a larger chain of national importance. She marries an RAF pilot (Gordon Jackson) who dies over Germany. And it becomes apparent that, rather than solely fighting the Nazis, these people are now building a new Britain, which must be a fairer than before the war.

Much of the political idealism is voiced by Eric Portman as the bluff factory foreman. One of film's delights is his growing relationship with a cosseted mannequin (Anne Crawford) ill equipped for manual work. Unexpectedly, the mismatched actors share a potent chemistry which lights up the later scenes. But it's Roc's film and she breaks your heart.

This is an extraordinarily moving tribute to the female factory workers who provided the men at the front with the means to fight. It was commissioned as morale boosting propaganda, but it is more realistic and honest than this suggests. Credit to Launder and Gilliat for understanding the territory. And they give us Charters and Caldicott in uniform too!