Noël Coward is at his most unashamedly jingoistic with this triple-Oscar winning depiction of the lives and loves, trials and tribulations of the well-to-do "Marryot" family - "Jane" (Diana Wynyard) and husband "Robert" (Clive Brook) and of the working class "Bridges" - Herbert Mundin ("Fred") and Una O'Connor ("Ellen") and their respective children. This episodically styled melodrama, for that is largely what it is, straddles the periods of British history from the late 1800s, through the fairly seismic death of Queen Victoria, the ensuing gentile Edwardian era until the clouds of war gather in the early 1910s testing everyone's mettle and finally to the aftermath of the Great War. It proves to be quite an interesting observation of deference and class, of aspiration and resentment - and both O'Connor and Wynyard play their parts well. The rest of it is a bit lacklustre, though - it seems little better than a sentimentally written chronology, bedecked with union jacks and rousing Chopin and Strauss to paper over any attempts to look seriously at the pretty profound social changes occurring in Britain, and elsewhere in Europe over this time period. That it beat Cukor's "Lady for a Day" for the trophy in 1934 has always surprised me - but at least it gave Una O'Connor a chance to stop playing the maid!

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