Hope and Glory

A family story from the time of the London Blitz. Through the eyes of ten-year-old Billy, the German bombing raids in the early years of the Second World War are seen in a completely different light: The strikes turn the city into an adventure playground and when the school is bombed away at the end of the vacations, the boy acknowledges it with an enthusiastic “Thank you, Adolf!”. Boorman's key autobiographical film became a worldwide hit and made him an Oscar candidate (for the second time after Deliverance): He had successfully managed to combine his subversive ingenuity with a moving attention to detail that can only be drawn from his own experience. The relationships in his unusual family - in the film, the Boormans become the Rowans - provide the tragicomic cement for this disarming portrait of the times, with which the “un-British” romantic Boorman revives the best traditions of classic English cinema between David Lean and Ealing comedies. (C.H.)

Photo: © 1987 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved.