Coda - Two Cities Films and “the Spirit of Britain”

Summary

In this coda, I demonstrate how the model of British national identity associated with Shakespeare could jar with other wartime configurations of national collectivity. I situate Laurence Olivier’s Henry V alongside two films made by the same studio— Nöel Coward and David Lean’s In Which We Serve and Carol Reed’s The Way Ahead—that develop their own models of national collectivity and social reform. From there, I show how the apparent ur-text of national unity, Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, jars with the late-war collectivist ethos in ways that Olivier has to compensate for through formal means. If, as the wartime politician and future prime minister Anthony Eden said, we see “our history … enacted” in Shakespeare, that history proves to be at odds with the visions of the postwar future on display in both In Which We Serve and The Way Ahead