The Foreman Went to France **** (1942, Tommy Trinder, Constance Cummings, Clifford Evans, Robert Morley, Gordon Jackson, Ernest Milton, Francis L Sullivan, Mervyn Johns, Thora Hird) – Classic Movie Review 4684

Ealing Studios’s popular 1942 film is an adroit mixture of comedy, wartime adventure, spy story and semi-documentary authenticity, imaginatively realised by director Charles Frend. Informative and morale-boosting as well as entertaining, it was made with the support of the British War Office and the Free French Forces.

Gordon Jackson and Tommy Trinder star as two British Tommies of the 19th Fusillers, ‘Jock’ MacFarlan and Tommy Hoskins, who help Welsh aircraft factory foreman Fred Carrick (Clifford Evans) to smuggle secret machinery out of wartime France under the nose of a fifth columnist mayor, Mayor Coutare of Bivary (Robert Morley), to prevent the Nazis getting hold of the vital equipment. Constance Cummings plays Anne Stafford, an American woman who helps the foreman.

The screenplay by John Dighton, Angus MacPhail, Leslie Arliss, Roger Macdougall and Diana Morgan is based on J B Priestley’s story of the true-life tale of Welsh munitions worker Melbourne Johns, to whom the film is dedicated. He rescued machinery used to make guns for Spitfires and Hurricanes.

Also in the cast are Ernest Milton, Francis L Sullivan (billed as François Sully), Mervyn Johns, Thora Hird, Paul Bonifas, John Williams, Ronald Adam, Charles Victor, Bill Blewitt, John Boxer, Anita Palacine, Madeleine Rive, Irone Kiriloff, Nova Herman, Robert Bendall, Edward Lisle, Michele Forbes-Fraser, Tony Ainley, Eric Maturin, Owen Reynolds and Guy Maas.

The score is written by William Walton, it is shot in black and white by Wilkie Cooper, it is edited by Robert Hamer, designed by Tom Morahan and prduced by Michael Balcon and Alberto Cavalcanti.

It is also known for its US release as Somewhere in France. Jackson and Blewitt appear together again in Nine Men (1943). It is Jackson’s feature debut proper after an uncredited role in One of Our Aircraft Is Missing.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 4684

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