cinefest - Internationales Festival des deutschen Film-Erbes

The Way Ahead (1944)

Inhalt - Synopsis

The Way Ahead ist eine mit größerem Aufwand produzierte Spielfilmversion von The New Lot für das britische Kinopublikum: Nach Kriegsbeginn zieht die britische Armee immer mehr Zivilisten ein. Der Film folgt der Ausbildung von sieben Männern, die in einem legendären Infanterie-Bataillon zusammengesteckt werden. Zunächst haben die Rekruten keine Lust, sich dem harten Training zu unterziehen. Doch dann werden sie immer mehr zu einer Einheit und erkennen, dass ihre Führungsoffiziere – der charismatische Lieutenant Jim Perry und der harte Sergeant Fletcher – sie zu einem effektiven Team ausbilden, das in der Lage ist, an der Front zu bestehen. Auf dem Weg zu ihrem ersten Einsatz wird ihr Schiff beschossen. Schließlich geraten sie in einem Dorf in Tunesien in die erste Kampfsituation. Der Schlusstitel des Films lautet nicht »The End«, sondern »The Beginning«.

The Way Ahead is a feature film version of The New Lot produced for the British cinema audience: After the war begins, more and more civilians are drafted into the army. The film shows the training of seven men from different economic and social classes, who are put into a legendary infantry battalion. At first they are not very eager to undergo the tough training. But soon they find unity in their differences and realize that their leading officers – the charismatic lieutenant Jim Perry and the tough sergeant Fletcher – are teaching them to be an effective team, able to succeed at the front. On the way to their first mission their ship is heavily bombarded. Eventually they get into their first combat situation in a village in Tunisia. The end title of the film does not read “The End” but “The Beginning”.

Zeitgenössische Kritiken:

The recruits of the army it portrays are the successors of the men of Dunkirk; taken from offices, farms, shops and the general preoccupations of private life, they indulge the civilian’s prejudice against the barracks, the drill, the sergeant, and the whole hugger-mugger of army life. They have months, years indeed, to reflect on the war and their part in it. [...] Carol Reed and his scriptwriters, Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov, have admirably caught the qualities of mingled suspicion, irony and readiness to get on with the job which characterise many recruits to the British army. [...] The intention was to present the unwarlike elements which go to make up an ultimately warlike army, to tell the story from scratch of a single assorted platoon; and it would be faulty criticism to complain that the early history of that platoon is not concentrated into a telling sequence or two.
Yet I must admit that, in spite of the lively dialogue of the first half of the film, in spite of the excellent playing of David Niven, Stanley Holloway, Billy Hartnell, Raymond Huntley, Jimmy Hanley, and the rest of the recruits, it was not until the second half, and embarkation for overseas service, that The Way Ahead seemed to me to show its real quality. Carol Reed, though he works successfully in the semi-documentary technique of the early sequences, is at his best when he can use his rare talent for speed, for split-second timing, and for the creation of emotional suspense. There is a passage when the troop carrier, moving towards the North African coast, is torpedoed in the darkness; flames, confusion, orders, equipment tipped overboard, a violent and heroic effort to save the ship. To see Reed’s handling of this moment of action is a true pleasure: the pleasure of watching a man working with certainty and command in a medium of which he is master. Again, the period of waiting in some forgotten village in the Tunisian hills, the tension of inactivity, and the sudden attack – all this is treated with an understanding of the human elements involved and a feeling for the drama of the struggle which makes the closing sequences of the film exceptional in the British cinema.
Dilys Powell: The Way Ahead
Sunday Times, 11.6.1944

A warm and touching tribute to the British Army infantryman – the chap who battered Rommel in the desert behind El Alamein, rolled up the toe of Italy and slogged with Monty onto the heath at Lueneberg – is paid in a splendid picture which comes to us from the British studios, belatedly, indeed, but still in fair time, entitled The Way Ahead. It is belated, of course, because the Tommy has finished the phase for which this picture shows him trained and is garlanded now with the laurels which he won in six years of war. (This picture was released in London precisely on D-day.) But it is still in fair time because the thesis which the picture demonstrates is that the fighting men of Britain have found a bond of comradeship in war, and it is this bond of cooperative spirit which must stay with them in the years ahead. [...]
Essentially this film is a study in personalities, a clean and graphic illustration of the vagaries and natures of men. And, as such, it draws integrity from all sources of its creation. The authors have beautifully outlined a group of intriguing characters, Mr. Reed has disposed them in credible images and all the actors have played them most trenchantly. Mr. Niven is as true as a level in the role of lieutenant of a platoon, the modest, authoritative leader of this group of infantrymen. In one scene, wherein he dresses down the trainees for a disgraceful but human maneuvres fault, he accomplishes a truly heart-disturbing soldier's monologue. And Raymond Huntley, Billy Hartnell, Jimmy Hanley and James Donald play various trainee roles with the absolute characteristics of civilians caught up in the ranks.
It is notable that the picture is much stronger in its earlier parts, representing the training of the soldiers, because herein the tale is personalized. The originality and essence of British character are most fascinating here. In the later and final phases of action on a troopship and at war the nature of the picture tends to heroics of a thoroughly familiar type. Only the final words of the sergeant when the men go forth for their big test bring the latter phase to a high point: »Come on, lads, once more for the day you missed in the exercises.«
It is obvious that the version of the picture prepared for American audiences has been considerably trimmed, which may be helpful. But a fatuous foreword, which Quentin Reynolds speaks, paralleling the British Tommy with our own »Minute Men« and GI Joes, is an insult to human intelligence. The men in this picture speak eloquently for themselves.
Bosley Crowther: The Way Ahead
New York Times, 4.6.1945