“AN ENGLISHMAN’S HOME”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 August 1940, Page 9

“AN ENGLISHMAN’S HOME”

A TOPICAL PICTURE. A topical picture, which is typically English, is “An Englishman's Home." It retells on the screen and in modern terms, the story of the famous play by Col. Guy du Maurier, which startled England 30 years ago. It is the story of a lightning invasion of England by a well prepared, enemy, guided by an espionage system so efficient that it has dug its tentacles right into the heart of “An Englishman’s Home." The invasion is carried out by armed parachutists dropped from enemy 'planes which are guided by a radio beam worked from the house of Tom Brown, a very typical Englishman. The English national characteristic of “psychological unpreparedness” is extraordinarily well depicted in Brown’s refusal to believe “all this foolish wartalk,” and business about “getting ready.” “Who would want to invade us?” he asks. Equally his concern that his daughter Betty, should be entangling herself with a foreigner reveals a core of insularity which, as it happens, is in this case more than justified. Capt. Victor Brandt may appear to be all that Betty desires, but first and foremost he is an enemy agent, using her affections and the Browns’ friendship for his own ends. There is evidence in Victor of a real conflict between love and duty, a particularly unpleasant duty! The enemy’s iron discipline crushes the man or at least the more tender and generous instincts in

the man, and when “the day” arrives there is little left of him but a brutally efficient instrument of his country’s plans. Inevitably at this stage Peter, whom Betty was about to desert for Victor, comes into his own, and as the picture works up to its terrific climax —surely the most realistic aerial battles ever depicted—she simply and naturally turns to him for protection, and as simply and naturally he gives it.