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MovieMail's Review
Julian Upton reckons this brisk and gritty wartime adventure from Harry Watt shows that there was more to Ealing than we commonly think.
North African campaign, World War II: After being separated from their convoy, an army patrol of nine men takes refuge in an abandoned hut. As Italian forces close in, the platoon’s leader Sergeant Watson (Jack Lambert) hatches an ingenious plan to make his paltry platoon look forty-strong.
Documentarian Harry Watt’s first feature for Ealing sets the tone for his subsequent work with the studio: brisk, outdoor adventures with a strong line in authenticity and inventive use of locations (in this case, Margam Sands, Port Talbot, standing in rather convincingly for the Libyan desert). With its male banter, regional accents, violence and swear words (“bleedin’”, “ruddy” and “damn,” no less), Nine Men is also somewhat ahead of its time in its depiction of the behaviour of men at war.
An example of the grittier flipside to the stolid, clean-cut heroics of Leslie Howard, John Mills et al, this is vivid but good natured stuff, and serves as a valuable reminder that there was more to Ealing than those quaintly subversive suburban classics of the fifties.
During World War Two, a group of English troops are cut off from their batallion while behind enemy lines in the western desert. Attacked by a German fighter plane and then caught in a sandstorm, the nine men seek refuge in a deserted tomb. However, they soon cross swords with a group of Italian soldiers in a similar situation. While the Italians lay siege to the British unit, the men plan a night-time counter-attack, but it can only be a matter of time before one side buckles under the strain...
Whilst it is true to say that its comedies made Ealing popular, from the early Will Hay and George Formby vehicles to the later classics which are the staple diet of c... more >
Whilst it is true to say that its comedies made Ealing popular, from the early Will Hay and George Formby vehicles to the later classics which are the staple diet of current video releases from this studio, there was much more to Ealing than its comedy output.
From its inception in 1938, the formative years of the company crucially covered the inspired British film period of the Second World War. Familiar themes and projections of the British character had already appeared, and were reworked in later films, but it was with the release of Nine Men in 1943 that Ealing began to galvanize its efforts in a confident and positive way, in tune with the shifting emphasis of the war in favour of the Allies.
Written and directed by Harry Watt, who had worked in the 1930s with the GPO, then Crown Film Unit on such celebrated documentary films as Night Mail (1936) and Target For Tonight (1941), Nine Men clearly conveys the new spirit of democracy, dramatising the actions of a section of British troops in crisis, cut off behind enemy lines in the Western Desert. Driven by a sandstorm to seek refuge in a tomb, they resist being besieged by Italian troops. The film's tense atmosphere, highlighting the imminent danger, is built most effectively, balanced by good humour, whilst its emphasis on the equality and comradeship of all classes, represented among others by Jack Lambert and Gordon Jackson, is a necessary shift from the former focus on higher ranks in films of other studios. Although Went the Day Well, directed in 1942 by Cavalcanti for Ealing, is better known, the rarely seen Nine Men', now released at last on video, is gritty, violent and exciting, and proves highly satisfying in its portrayal of character under duress, an excellent companion piece to the MOIs classic war documentary Desert Victory (1943).
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