The New Lot

Made by the Army Kinetographic Service, this training film was aimed at conscripts. This short film takes five different raw recruits and shows how, during basic training, they gradually come to terms with both their new role in the Army and the need for them to fight.

The Director, Captain Carol Reed, and the writers, Lieutenant Eric Ambler and Private Peter Ustinov, of this film were later released by the War Office to direct and write "The Way Ahead" (1944) starring David Niven. This feature film was modelled on "The New Lot", though it included officers as well as conscripts, and was intended to do for the Army what "In Which We Serve" had done for the Royal Navy.

Quite neatly done, "The New Lot" starts with the recruits each in their last days in their very different civilian environments. They all embark a train - pulled by the Southern Railway's Lord Nelson Class locomotive "Sir Walter Raleigh" (BR No. 30852 - built 1928 and withdrawn from service in 1962) - where they begin to get to know each other en route for the training barracks.

It's propaganda, of course, and not very exciting but it will raise a smile here and there. It will certainly be of interest to those who know classic British cinema and TV from the 1940s to the 1980s. Look out for some famous names and well-known faces.

This short was released on a region-free DVD called "The Next of Kin" by DD Home Entertainment in the UK in 2005, as part of the Imperial War Museum official collection.

The Army Kinematograph Service was set up mainly to provide film screenings for the troops.Arranging for them to see the latest films via mobile 16mm units and shows at Garrison Theatres.They made only a handful of films.The first being Next Of Kin.This was made in cooperation with Ealing Studios.This was to warn troops against careless talk.It was so good that it was decided to release this in cinemas.So this promotion film for army recruiting was so successful that it was made into The Way Ahead.A number of the actors in this film also appeared in the feature.The cameo of Robert Donat as the film hero is truly hilarious.

Five draftees (Philip Godfrey, Raymond Huntley, John Laurie, Bernard Miles and Peter Ustinov) go through basic training. At first they are surly, but eventually they come to recognize they have a job of work and they're the ones to do it.

This was a film to be shown soldiers, and it's "supervised by an officer approved by the General Staff" -- actually, it's Carol Reed, and I doubt if the General Staff spent much time on the matter. There is no one credited by name in this movie. Undoubtedly that's intended to make them seem more anonymous, so the soldier watching it could identify with the individuals.

Ustinov co-wrote this with Eric Ambler. They later expanded it to make THE WAY AHEAD.

I love these propaganda movies - eg Millions Like Us, which does much the same for a bunch of girls making aeroplane parts in a factory. (Is there a government unit filming heroic lorry drivers as I type?)

A disparate group of men are called up: barrack-room lawyer Bernard Miles, fish out of water Raymond Huntley (such a good actor), mother's boy Peter Ustinov, token Scot John Laurie... The weed among them turns out to be worrying about his children, there's a heartless corporal trying to lick them into shape, they spend a lot of time cleaning their boots. Huntley, the desk wallah, types many letters to the Ministry of Labour complaining about their "mistake", but eventually finds a berth in Signals.

It was remade as The Way Ahead, which I remember as less gung-ho, and then, surely, again as Carry On Sergeant?

This pretty good 43-minute Allied short (the copy of which I acquired bafflingly boasts no credits, despite the involvement of several notables!) about the training of civilians for active war duty would eventually be reworked and expanded into a full-length feature – the excellent THE WAY AHEAD (1944) – by the same director. Among the titular components (a veritable microcosm of British society of the time) are Raymond Huntley (a Ministerial executive who, through a bureaucratic mix-up, gets not only by-passed for the desk job he had requested but even drafted into the army!), John Laurie (as the quintessential big-hearted Scot), Bernard Miles (as a brick-layer, the epitome of the working-class man) and Peter Ustinov (as the youngest, he has the hardest time adjusting to the handling of weaponry and, by extension, the necessity for killing). A young Geoffrey Keen is the obligatory D.I. (though he predictably reveals a heart of gold underneath his tough-as-nails exterior), while Robert Donat basically does a spoof(!) "Guest Star" cameo (interestingly, he only appears – atypically – as a reckless gung-ho hero in a film the raw recruits take some time off to check out and promptly dismiss for lack of realism!). The climax sees the group being sent on a trial mission in which they manage to outsmart their superiors via some unorthodox but undeniably nifty sneak-attack tactics! Somewhat optimistically, the epilogue states that if the British soldier will prevail over the current enemy, it is going to be thanks to the country's unique policy of instilling a military discipline in their men prior to undertaking official service.