Source: Some information on this page may have been sourced as part of the 2023 Wikimedia Australia Partnership Projects grant, with the purpose of improving and expanding the use of Wikidata on our website. Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. Read more about this project here.
This affectionate tribute to the ordinary man is a panoramic story of the life of a London family during the two World Wars. Based on Noel Coward’s successful play (he also wrote the musical score), the film chronicles the Gibbons family from 1919 to 1939, and was released during the Second World War as part of the British film industry’s war effort. Robert Newton and Celia Johnson are Frank and Ethel Gibbons who, with their daughters Queenie (Kay Walsh) and Phyllis (Betty Fleetwood), face the day to day crises of ordinary life to survive as both individuals and as a family. Stanley Holloway and a very young John Mills star in this production along with narrator Laurence Olivier.
Content notification
Our collection comprises over 40,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued between the 1940s and early 2000s. As a result, some items may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions. ACMI is working to identify and redress such usages.
Learn more about our collection and our collection policy here. If you come across harmful content on our website that you would like to report, let us know.
How to watch
Collection
In ACMI's collection
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
310810
Language
English
Audience classification
G
Subject categories
Armed Forces, Military, War & Weapons → War and society
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Middle classes
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Working class in motion pictures
Feature films → Feature films - Great Britain
Literature → English literature - Film and video adaptations
Sound/audio
Sound
Colour
Colour
Holdings
VHS; Access Print (Section 1)