The Way Ahead **** (1944, David Niven, Stanley Holloway, James Donald) – Classic Movie Review 1806

Director Carol Reed’s 1944 World War Two morale-boosting drama The Way Ahead is adapted from Eric Ambler’s story in an excellent, rousing screenplay by himself and future two-time Oscar-winning actor Peter Ustinov (Spartacus, Topkapi).

Reed served in the British Royal Army Ordnance Corps from 1942 and was made captain and put into the Army Film Unit and then the Directorate of Army Psychiatry. For them, Reed directed an army training film called The New Lot in 1943, recounting the experiences of five new recruits. The script was by Ambler, Ustinov and Reed, and it was produced by Thorold Dickinson.

They decided to remake it as the 1944 cinema feature film The Way Ahead, a spirited movie about a mixed band of new infantry recruits in the British Army, conscripts who are undergoing basic training before being sent into action in North Africa. David Niven (a lieutenant-colonel in the British Army himself) stars as Jim Perry, the lieutenant who trains them. William Hartnell is cast, as ever, as the sergeant. He is of course the sergeant in Carry On Sergeant.

They appear a useless lot at the start but their lieutenant and sergeant know how to mould them into a strong team of fighting men. The story then follows the recruits on into action over in North Africa, where they discover how they have profited from their training.

The movie’s down-to-earth plot and simple message are given depth and heart by Reed’s eye for human behaviour and the writers’ efforts to build realistic characters rather than trade on cardboard cut-outs.

Reed draws excellent performances from the fine cast of British worthies. Stanley Holloway, James Donald, John Laurie, Raymond Huntley, Leslie Dwyer, Hugh Burden and Jimmy Hanley are the struggling new privates. Ustinov has an acting role too as Rispoli, the cafe owner. ENSA Entertainer Tessie O’Shea appears as herself. Renée Asherson can also be seen in a small early role as Marjorie Gillingham.

The result is a rich, satisfying wartime movie, which did an effective job as an entertainment as well as morale booster in 1944 and now gives us an authentic picture of life in those dark days of the war. It was still being used for officer training in Australia in 1983.

In 1953 Reed became only the second British film director to be knighted for film-making. Michael Powell said that Reed ‘could put a film together like a watchmaker puts together a watch.’ Graham Greene said that Reed is ‘the only director I know with that particular warmth of human sympathy, the extraordinary feeling for the right face in the right part, the exactitude of cutting and the power of sympathising with an author’s worries and an ability to guide him.’

London-born Renée Asherson (aka Dorothy Renée Ascherson) died on October 30 2014 at the grand old age of 99. She was last seen on the big screen in Richard Attenborough’s Grey Owl (1999) and in Alejandro Amenábar’s supernatural chiller The Others (2001), starring Nicole Kidman.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1806

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