Think of England – 1940's porno promo at The Greenwich Picture House

Last week a friend and I were given some tickets to see Think of England at The Greenwich Picture House. The movie is about an incentive, said to have been OK'd by Winston Churchill, using sex as a survival carrot to bolster our boys fighting abroad, giving them the notion that when they get back to Blighty their wives will give them a special welcome home.  

Inside the picture house we struggled to work out where we were supposed to be going – should we head upstairs?  Five screens yet no directionals. No information board showing what film was on where.  Other people were also experiencing the same problem and we kept passing each other in the foyer and on the stairs to work out where our films were. There was a lack of staff. Just one girl behind a counter serving drinks etc. 

I spotted another young female member of staff and asked where Think of England was showing. She said downstairs. Really? I asked why there was no board showing that and she said there was. Hmm. No there wasn't. It seems she was referring to a basic parrot stand that I had already seen at the top of the stairs that led to a downstairs screen. But I'd been there ten minutes by now and no one seemed to be using the stairs even though the movie was due to start in five minutes. She told me that the screen number was on my ticket. Nope. My ticket did not show the screen number, it merely said the name of the movie, yet that sign at the top of the stairs did not show the movie's name so how were we supposed to understand that we should go down there? She responded that all the Greenwich Film Festival screenings were shown down there. I said I had no idea that this was part of a film festival. Her attitude was appalling, her responses imparted it a bland dismissive way as we, the customers, were somehow in the wrong. 

So we went down the stairs though some heavy doors that were hard to open and into the auditorium. No one checked our tickets.  There was hardly anyone down there, which was rather strange seeing as there were now only minutes to go. We chose some seats and the movie started. 

The first 40 mins was painful because people around us kept laughing in that OTT 'I get the joke' fashion, except they totally didn't get it at all. There was no joke. At one point, we had just seen that a character was traumatised yet these idiots laughed at the next scene when he is struggling to perform. Oh ha ha ha. I wondered if the movie had been advertised as a black comedy because people often misunderstand what that means. I think we should start using a different term excluding the word comedy. I was quite glad when something truly awful was depicted and they didn't laugh any more.

Also, it was hard to concentrate on the movie when movie people kept coming in and out, crash bang wallop fashion due to those bloody doors. They might have been going to the toilet but I think this was staff. It was really distracting. 

The movie ended. No announcements were made. We were the last people to make our way out and, just as we were about to exit to the street, a staff member said that there was a Q&A and indicated the coffee bar room to the side. Er, but the room was clearly empty. My friend decided at this point to leave but, intrigued, I stayed to find out more. The Q&A consisted of that staff member (I don't remember him introducing himself) talking to Ollie 'the Olive Boy' Maddigan*, one of the actors in the movie. The small audience of thirteen people was, apart from me and perhaps three others, clearly made up mostly of Ollie's friends and family and this explained all the OTT misplaced whoops and guffaws during the screening and the sycophantic questions and observations. Ollie you were amaaazing. Ollie you were so funny. Oh gawd. I snuck out before the Q&A finished. 

So what did I think of the movie?

It's an interesting and thought-provoking subject that I find really interesting, but is it really movie-worthy? What have they actually achieved here? Visually, I found the production and style to be inconsistent. Some scenes are wonderfully filmic, especially those shot outdoors, but the indoor scenes come across as rather amateurish reminding me of Play For Today. There are also some flashbacks and intercut scenes that confused us more than clarified the the narrative. The acting also ranges from brilliantly real to am-dram. It seems to me that the story would have been better told as a 2-part TV drama, episode one telling us more about the rationale behind this initiative with some background about the people involved etc, followed by part two showing the making of the three movies (the same story was shot for our land, air and sea forces) which could have been interspersed with relevant flashbacks which we'd then understand. 

As regards the organisation of GPH's screening, whenever I have been to screenings before there is usually short introduction before the movie, often by the director or producer or whoever has organised it, explaining what we are about to see and highlighting that there will be a Q&A afterwards. This didn't happen.
Having post-event checked the GPH's website it was advertised it as a
'Special feature film screening of the award-winning drama... will include and intro and a Q&A with the cast and crew.'
Instead, there was no intro, just one member of the cast (nice fell tho he was) and no crew. 

I'm gonna give three stars for the actual movie Think of England ***
But I won't be rushing back to the Greenwich Picture House any time soon. 

*a thought – surely Ollie should be cast one day to play Stephen Mangan's son?!