Glorious 39

Film Review

Stephen Poliakoff’s film the Glorious 39 is a suspenseful study of identity, class and paranoia set in the immediate period before the start of the Second World War. Romola Garai plays the adopted but eldest daughter of an aristocratic family whose life unravels as she progressively uncovers their complicity in a plot to dissociate Great Britain from the battle against Nazism unfolding in mainland Europe.

Avoiding the pitfall of presenting a far fetched action thriller, the director underplays the murder and espionage elements of the film to subtly study the deterioration of once secure familial relationships, as well as the suffocation and patronage of the highly cultured and excessively mannered pre war British nobility. Using classic suspenseful cinematic touches, the director heightens the viewer’s sense of the main protagonist’s immediate danger, her escalating isolation and deteriorating mental health, so much so that seemingly innocuous occurrences evoke irrational apprehension and a sense of extreme peril in the audience.

The accidental discovery of an intriguing gramophone recording that she stumbles on in the family’s barn, triggers the disappearance then murder of friends and close associates eventually revealing the full extent of her adoptive family’s involvement in a plot to undermine the war effort. These events are portrayed against the backdrop of palatial family homes the idyllic surrounding countryside and the misleading calm cleverly contrasts the insular life of the privileged rich with the gathering storm poised to engulf Europe.

The beloved daughters increasing alarm is frequently assuaged by her father, played by Bill Nighy a brilliant paragon of calm assurance and unctuous duplicity. Even at her worst moment when his actual evil intent is starkly exposed, he speaks to his daughter in such caring fatherly tones that it is possible to believe that he still harbours genuine concern for her. The erosion of her position as a cherished and beloved daughter culminates in the alienating revelation and discovery of her Romany heritage and the rising tension of her estrangement both grips and horrifies. Her outsider status is manipulated so comprehensively that her sanity becomes unhinged, isolated, desperate and times drugged, her captors undermine and fragment her tenuous hold on reality.

This enthralling film emphasizes the vulnerability of women in the pre war age, their dependence on social status for security and protection, without family and deprived of social connection whilst living in permanent anxiety with mental instability an inevitable outcome.