Hope and Glory

War may be hell if you're a grown-up, but it's a wheeze if you're nine years old and living in suburban London during the Blitz. Anyway, that's how it looks to the young hero of director John Boorman's whimsical, funny, nostalgic, semi-autobiographical memoir of family life in the Second World War. Sebastian Rice-Edwards gives an extraordinarily confident performance in the lead role, and he's matched by Geraldine Muir, playing his five-year-old sister. Sammi Davis as their rebellious elder sibling, meanwhile, gives a poignant portrayal of the teenager caught between sexual awakening and the savage truths of the day, especially in the scene when she informs her mother, Sarah Miles, of her intention to sleep with her Canadian soldier boyfriend. "We might all be dead tomorrow; just don't fall in love with him," sighs Miles. "Who said anything about love," snaps back Davis. The film is on the episodic side and Miles and Ian Bannen as the grandfather might both have toned down their eccentric portrayals a notch, but these are minor quibbles about a delightful movie. It was a personal triumph for Boorman: he received Oscar nominations for best film (as producer), best director and best original screenplay, while Philippe Rousselot's cinematography and Anthony Pratt and Joan Woollard's art direction/set decoration were rightly nominated, too.