Anne Keyes disturbingly uncovers a sinister plot without apparent motive in a story told as a flashback in a way that is helpful to its audience.

This is a very British film about guilty pasts, family values and inner strength set around the outbreak of WW2. As with much British mystery drama on screen there is a lavish dedication to quality acting, strong story telling, and brilliant cinematography. It is a compelling watch despite some plot flaws and moments when the story doesn't quite flow as convincingly as it should. But there is tension, intrigue, suspense, and menace in just the right quantities to keep us gripped and interested.

Romola Garai gives us a superbly convincing portrayal of Anne with some great support notably from Jeremy Northam (Balcombe), Sam Kubrick-Finney (young Walter), Hugh Bonnevile (Gilbert) and Juno Temple (Celia). Some familiar faces also provide strong cameos.

My one reservation about the film, and what stops me from awarding more than eight out of ten, is that it is slightly too cold, too austere, too abrupt when, perhaps, we are in need of a little warmth and camaraderie. But this is a story about the outbreak of war and the destruction heaped upon truth, privilege and family values and so it is a matter of subjective judgement. You should go and see it for Romola Garai's performance alone.

Glorious 39, when I first heard of it, ticked all of the boxes for what I would normally like in a film - Romola Garai, David Tennant, Bill Nighy, 1930s setting, war drama, so on and so forth. In what now seems a somewhat exaggerated tidbit of praise, Company called the film "This year's Atonement". As somebody who has both seen and read Atonement in great detail, these are big words that create big expectations, not all of which were met, unfortunately.

Acting-wise, I felt that the cast as a whole worked well with the dialogue and character types that they had been given. Bill Nighy is, as always, a delight to watch, but his dialogue was not so much of a delight. If somebody finished every single sentence to me with "darling", as did their children, I would become suspicious of them long before Anne ever did. However I rather feel that Romola Garai has been, of late, a sort of amorphous mystery woman who is at first playful to the point of annoyance, followed by quivering and tearful, concluded with blankly staring into space. 'Emma', 'Daniel Deronda' and even to an extent 'Atonement' seem to follow this much of the time. As much as I like her as an actress, I never feel that there is any real defining trait (nor intelligence?) to her characters, though perhaps this is because of input other than her own.

Hugh Bonneville and David Tennant were excellent in slightly lesser roles, although their close relationships to the main characters remain the most intriguing mysteries of the film. I found myself repeatedly wishing that they hadn't died, if only to have two likable characters to watch by the end.

My main gripes with the film were the ridiculous framing of the story with modern-day, and of course the ending. The story-telling by the cousins was both unnecessary and implausible, and I would have been content with the 1930s parts on their own, as I gained nothing from the modern day section except that Walter remained a weirdo right up until old age. His character as a whole seemed like a cardboard insert to remind us that yes, we should be scared, and yes, this is a very creepy situation. Did he have parents? Did anybody ever know where he was at any given moment? How did he manage to have his own personal bubble wherever he went? The ending was, undoubtedly, the most pointless attempt at a dramatic ending that I have seen yet. I dislike being so harsh about it, but the Atonement comparison had set me up for a surprise ending that really hits home and makes you see the whole story in a new light. Instead I saw an elderly lady sneering at her cousins, presumably for having been in the same place as some people who did bad things.

To summarise, I guess I must say that Glorious 39 felt like more of a patchwork of filmic ideas (and clichés) than a coherent plot. Very few surprises were actually unexpected - you cannot expect an audience to have the same emotional connections to characters as your lead does, nor their naivety. We will suspect anybody and everybody, more so if they seem good on first appearances. And of course, this applies doubly when we have rented it out because it is a mystery! The film had its good points, naturally - as has been mentioned, it was visually "sumptuous", particularly in regards to costuming. I felt that the subject matter and, to an extent, the characters had potential, but Poliakoff would have done well to approach a few friends with the script and ask "Does this make sense to you guys?".

Sorry Company, but Atonement this most definitely is not.

Though there have been books and other films that deal with the dissidence between the aristocrats and the general populace of England around the topic of WW II, this beautifully executed 'historical thriller' brings many aspects of those discrepancies of opinion to light in a manner not unlike the similar thought processes in Germany at the same time: the gentry of Germany turned a blind eye to the events surrounding them (The Final Solution) in order to believe in what they chose to believe as a promise for stabilization and world importance as a genteel country. Writer/Director Stephen Poliakoff has based his examination of this problem on focusing on the life of one particular character whose fate was the standard of the dispossessed.

The year is 1939 and the aristocratic family of Sir Alexander Keyes (Bill Nighy) and his wife Maud (Jenny Agutter) are living what seems to be an idyllic life with their children Ralph (Eddie Redmayne), Celia (Juno Temple) and the eldest, Anne (Romula Garai) who we soon discover was adopted before the Keyes discovered they could bear children on their own. Anne is a beautiful creative actress who seems to make the family proud. The family is visited by an old friend Hector (David Tennant) who at dinner is very vocal about the fact that Hitler is a threat to England and that England must stop Hitler before he destroys them instead of pursuing a course of appeasement of Hitler that would prevent disturbance of their elegant way of life on the island of England. It is obvious that Sir Alexander is more concerned with his duties as a member of parliament and his maintenance of his family history and wealth, and his responses to Hector as well as to the mysterious Balcombe (Jeremy Northam) from the Foreign Office and the young Lawrence (Charlie Cox), a new member of the Foreign Office who is courting Anne, suggest subterfuge.

The family is visited by the very proper Aunt Elizabeth (Julie Christie) and while the entire family is on picnic, an infant transiently disappears while under Anne's care. From this point the story takes a dark turn: Anne continues filming in London with her close friend, actor Gilbert (Hugh Bonneville), and Anne discovers some phonograph records in the basement of the Keyes home, records that contain not fox trots but instead 'conversations' from meetings. Suspicions about evil derring-do arise when the family learns that Hector has committed suicide soon followed by the suicide of Gilbert and eventually the bizarre discovery of Lawrence's body among the pet animals ordered to be put to death to make the people of England more ready for abrupt changes. War with Germany begins and changes the atmosphere and results in changes in the Keyes family: Anne is imprisoned by the family because 'she is really not one of us' and unravels the harrowing mystery of the Keyes' family involvement in the dark events of the present and the past.

The mood of England of 1939 is beautifully captured by cinematographer Danny Cohen and the musical score by Adrian Johnston illustrates the dichotomy of the free-spirited Anne and the dark underpinnings of the Keyes family. Romola Garai is excellent in her treacherous role as are the other stars. Small roles by Toby Regbo, Christopher Lee, Corin Redgrave and others make this a cast rich in some of the finest British actors of the day. GLORIOUS 39 ('Glorious' is the nickname given Anne) is an enlightening film that addresses many significant issues too infrequently addressed by works of history.

Grady Harp

Reviewers simply don't "get" the underlying tension of the film, which probably relies too much on viewers' understanding that many, many aristocrats/Tories were trying to avoid war with Hitler and often sympathized with him. If you don't know that, then you don't grasp the stakes of the film. Few British people would NOT know this, given that their abdicated king Edward and his wife Wallis Simpson openly admired Hitler, and many other high-borns found him quite right to attack democracy in its heart.

Romula Garai, one of the world's finest new actresses, carries the movie with her endless shading of emotions, her eyes opening to the horror that her family really is despite its large, warm embrace of her. And Bill NIghy is absolutely transcendent as her loving father and Tory MP who is supposed to negotiate American aid to Britain and who lets us know he is fiercely anti-war because of the destruction and death it deals. Is he what he seems, though?

I found this one of the few grounded portrayals of the British upper class attitudes pre-war than anything else I've yet seen.

On its surface, this is an old-fashioned paranoid thriller about a woman who's suddenly afraid to trust anyone, including her nearest and dearest. For window dressing there's a stately country mansion and pre-WWII vintage costumes and cars, plus a top-notch cast of British actors.

But writer-director Stephen Poliakoff is known for off-beat storytelling, and that's not always a good thing. This film is much too unpleasant to serve as an "entertainment" (warning: dead pets!), but has too many lapses in credibility to be taken seriously as a political statement, and way too many plot holes to work as an intellectual puzzler.

There is atmosphere to spare, and some scenes succeed at producing goosebumps...as long as the viewer doesn't actually think about them. Consider the scene where our actress heroine is in a screening room, doing voice-overs, and an actor on the movie screen suddenly breaks character and seems to speak directly to her, from beyond the grave. Goosebumps! But plot-wise, this scene makes no sense at all. Why didn't the actor just speak to her in person when he had the chance? Duh! It's a contrived scene that exists only to produce a transient effect, not to advance the story (or even make sense). There's a lot of this flimflammery in the movie.

The biggest gaff of this sort is the story-within-the-story framing device: how could the two narrators (played by Christopher Lee and Corin Redgrave) possibly know the details of the story that unfolds? One was a child at the time, and the other an infant, and even if they were later told copious intimate details of the goings-on (unlikely), they still could not have known the secret activities and state of mind of our heroine. The frame is there for another reason, so that we won't guess until the final moment that our heroine is still alive; and because the director knows the frame really makes no sense, we never actually hear Lee and Redgrave narrate a word of the story, because at crucial points the viewers would realize that the framing device is nonsensical. This kind of narrative trickery lacks integrity, and it's fatal to a movie with the high moral pretensions of Glorious 39.

This glossy movie is engaging from scene to scene, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts.

I had the privilege of attending the world premiere of this film at the Toronto International Film Festival last night. It tells the story of the aristocratic Keyes family in the days leading up to the outbreak of WWII. The father played superbly by Bill Nighy is an influential MP and an all round "good egg" of a dad to his three children. The oldest daughter Ann, played by Romola Garai is an adopted child but seems to fit in perfectly with her younger siblings and is the life and soul of the family. The film starts as a classic English period piece with lavish settings in Norfolk and London involving picnics and parties. However, as war gets closer, dramatic and strange events involving the family and friends slowly change the mood of the film. Other reviewers have made comparisons to Hitchcock's films and I have to agree with them. I enjoyed the film but there were definitely a few situations that did not ring true. The ending was particularly clumsy and there were some strange scenes that just didn't seem to fit. At 130 minutes it was probably 20 minutes too long. There were good performances by Julie Christie as a batty aunt and Jeremy Northam as a sinister government official. A good watch if you like British mysteries

After finding secret pro-appeasement (for the Nazis) recordings Anne (Garai) becomes involved in a secret, violent conspiracy, set in England in 1939. After one of her friends who speaks out against Hitler is found dead, Anne begins to dig deeper into the reasons for his death. This is a very interesting movie. It is both compelling and slow moving. It is tense but it drags in spots. It kept me watching but my mind did wander a bit. This is overall a good movie but you need to be in the mood for it. You really feel for Anne and the way her life begins to fall apart. I am a fan of historical movies so I really liked that aspect of it. This movie had the feel of a made-for-TV movie, although it would have been an HBO movie with the quality of it. I recommend this but again, it's not for everyone, and you need to be in the mood to watch a movie like this one. I give it a B-.

Would I watch again? - Probably not

Stephen Poliakoff, Britain's own resident television drama genius (both writer and director), has really outdone himself this time with his first feature film in ten years. This film bears all the traditional hallmarks of Poliakoff obsessions: the evocative power of the past, the magic of memory, the mystical bonds of extended family connections, the hidden energies of secrets kept buried for too long, and the shattering consequences of the revelation of truth which has been suppressed. This film is set in 1939 in Britain, and what it reveals is one of the most terrifying of all the untold stories in which the true and secret history of Britain abounds. The British are remarkable for their ostrich qualities, and they have always been experts at not knowing what they do not want to know, and also at thinking the unsustainable. Here Poliakoff partially strips the veneer from the genteel surface, but I wish he had gone further and been more explicit even than this. His subject is the aristocratic Nazi sympathizers of the Neville Chamberlain clique who tried to prevent Britain entering the War, and wished not only to appease Hitler but to submit to him in the fashion of the Vichy Regime. We must never forget that Chamberlain had been a member of the Eugenics Society, and just imagine the fate of the British Jews if these people had succeeded in their aim. What Poliakoff does not state, and perhaps does not even know, is that the more fanatical of the pro-Nazis in Britain were members of the secret society known in Germany as the Vehme (pronounced 'fame-uh'), which carried out ruthless campaigns of assassination of political enemies, such as are shown in this film. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Vehme assassinated more than 6,000 leading members of the political opposition inside Germany, thereby so enfeebling the opposition parties that they had no effective leadership left even before the Reichstag fire which Hitler arranged as his pretext for the Enabling Act which gave him the supra-legal powers to establish his absolute dictatorship and dispense with the opposition altogether by arresting and executing their leaders with the official sanction of the state. A typical Vehme-style execution on the continent was carried out by hanging, and an example of one of those which occurred in London in our own time was the assassination by hanging of Roberto Calvi in 1982 ordered by the P-2 Masons of Italy, who are linked to the Vehme. (It was no accident that Blackfriars Bridge was chosen for the hanging, as the Black Friars are the Dominicans, who were the order who presided over the Inquisition, and Calvi was 'banker to the Vatican' as the newspapers have often called him.) It is interesting that one of the victims of the British Vehme shown in the film is someone we see hanging upside down in a sack. The leading members of the Vehme call themselves the 'Wissende' ('knowing ones'). One of their secret signs of recognition is to turn their knives round at the dinner table so that the points are towards themselves. This harrowing and extremely nail-biting film shows the slow and painful discovery of the British Vehme at work, as perceived by the adopted daughter of one of them, who is a British MP played by Bill Nighy with his usual brilliance and effectiveness. The terrified and totally apolitical adopted daughter who discovers the truth is played with rising levels of hysteria and terror by the amazingly talented Romola Garai. Her eyes get wider and wider with each passing minute of screen time as her fear mounts. Her sinister aunt is played by Julie Christie with menacing effectiveness, and her brother and sister (not adopted, but 'blood family' to Nighy) are played by Juno Temple and Eddie Redmayne. All of them are horrifyingly convincing at being blood-conspirators working for Hitler inside the British Establishment. The scariest of all the cast, as the spy Balcombe, is Jeremy Northam, more sinister and menacing than I have ever seen him before, and that is saying something, as he only has to remove the pillow case from his head when he wakes up every morning in order to frighten the very flies on the wall. The British Foreign Office in 1939 probably contained a proportion of civil servants who might be divided as follows: one third Nazi sympathisers, appeasers, or 'Petainists', one third Soviet agents, and only about one third simply loyal to their country. The Home Office had in proportion fewer communists but more fascists than the Foreign Office. Britain in the 20th century produced traitors of all kinds at such a rate that there was simply no way of keeping track of them all, and few of them have ever been publicly acknowledged. (The handful the public knows about were not necessarily the most important ones anyway.) Just why the anonymity of the fascist traitors is still being protected today is something of a puzzle. This film goes a long way towards ripping the lid off this scandal, but the film is in no way a political film, it is a personal drama in the format of a hyper-tense thriller. Poliakoff was too clever to turn this into a didactic piece, and keeps it very much as a typical Poliakoff-style personal and family drama. The production values are marvellous, the music is good, the locations are absolutely staggering, everyone is brilliant, and the Poliakoff script and direction are the best of all. If anyone is looking for British television drama to rival the American MAD MEN (2007-2010, see my review), Poliakoff's TV series are the answer every time. And for a thriller feature film with real depth and meaning, how much further can anyone go than this one? Poliakoff is the Rembrandt of contemporary British filmed drama, who paints the light magically and miraculously with a uniquely dark and Manichean brush.

One of the weakest parts of this film was that it began (and ended) with a rather pointless visit to the future, introducing a young descendant of the family in the main plot, who is apparently investigating their family history. It is very unlikely on meeting elderly relatives (apparently only for the second time ever) that within a few minutes they would launch into an extremely complex story about an estranged relative. There are not too many teenagers who would be interested and confident enough to approach relatives they don't have a relationship with, about the 'family tree'. The film could stand alone without this subplot.

Also the implausibility of Anne reuniting with her adoptive family in old age and looking relatively pleased about seeing them, ruins the conclusion of the film. The plot did not need this complication. A far more effective ending would have been Anne disappearing in her nightdress (with the audience unsure whether she has lost her mind or whether she has escaped an adoptive family who are poisoning her).

I enjoyed this movie because it took a turn I wasn't expecting when the family started acting strangely. I didn't start to think about the plot holes till it was over--I kept thinking it would all come clear. But I gotta admit it didn't make sense.

(1) Anne was adopted. Then we learn she was a gypsy. The English have always been so class conscious that an upper class person hardly speaks to anyone except those in their circle, so I find it impossible to believe they would take a Roma child into their family as a full member.

(2) Before the war started, England was divided on their opinion of going to war. This is easily documented in any history book about WW 11. Some people wanted the war, some people didn't, some were sympathetic to Hitler (The Duke and Duchess of Windsor), and some just wanted him to go away.

(3) At that time, (like now) the opinions of young women were regarded lightly. What they had to say did not account for much. Especially in politics, they were ignored.

In view of (1) (2)and (3), please someone tell me why the Keyes family went to so much trouble, murder, lies, deception, cruelty to animals, and darn near killing Anne, just because she might hold a different opinion on the war. When her father was explaining it all to her, all he could come up with was she was a Roma (gypsy) and didn't fall in with the families' opinion of the war. It's pretty darn strange and puzzling to me. What did I miss? She wasn't political at all till they started their odd behavior.

I viewed this via DVD in the company of family and friends, and there wasn't one of us who could say we enjoyed it. Such a disappointment. The cast was top drawer - how could such a glut of talent produce not a mediocre, but terrible show? The plot was circuitous, bloated and downright absurd. One of many examples: the trail of map pins at the country vet's leading to the building where the slain lover's body is hanging upside down amongst hundreds of obviously fake pet corpses yet she isn't gagging on what would be an unbelievable stench...puhleease... I asked myself whether better editing would have made enough difference to not regret wanting those couple hours back that I wasted watching this. No, not enough. A believable screenplay was needed, better editing, a less melodramatic/cheesy score. It could have been so much more - I wish I could suggest that the individual performances, working with whatever script was given, were enough to validate watching it, but I can't. See anything else they've done - don't waste your time on this one.

I am a big fan of Poliakoff and this should have been great atmospheric piece but important parts are just off key, most of all the script that seem couple of drafts away from being what it could have been. Now it is just slow and quite unbelievable, things happen because the plot needs them to happen, and you can see the cogs turning. Just tighter editing might have helped at times, like when the first record (oh so conveniently) got broken.

Camera and editing seem a little off too, not as stunning visually as his last work on TV was... Cast are doing their best but somehow hang over nothing - usually Poliakoff manages this miracle, so little happens and is said but the tension and the sense of mystery (of life) underneath is palpable beneath - like puppets in the air, bit uncertain of their moves. Poor David Tennant was particularly badly served, left in our minds just a awkward over acted scream on the gramophone record... Maybe because there now is, in plot terms, a mystery too: what is going on with the records and the Jeremy Northam character and does Bill Nighy know. So the usual Poliakoff treat of sensing the strangeness of life in general doesn't manage to surface from under all this plotting. Also, the main character became at time quite annoying, always whining about not being believed even before anyone said anything...and then, when she realises she's in a nest of asps she keeps talking most unguardedly at places where she's clearly overheard. One thing that thriller's tolarate very badly is a hero/ine who comes across much dummer than the viewer...

What a missed opportunity!!! Just not good enough I'm afraid. Made you feel it was LAZY film making.

From renowned writer and director Stephen Poliakoff, I spotted this film purely because of the actors in the cast, but I was willing to give it a chance because it was rated well also. Basically in present day London, Michael Walton (Toby Regbo) is meeting his older cousins Walter Page (Christopher Lee) and Oliver (Corin Redgrave) to find out more about the sister of his grandmother Celia Keyes (Juno Temple), his great aunt Anne Keyes (Romola Garai). We are taken by flashback to 1939 where Anne is an actress in the beautiful British countryside, and this is at the time when the World War II was beginning. She is in love with Foreign Office official Lawrence (Stardust's Charlie Cox), but after the discovery of some secret recordings on vinyl records, containing conversations of political matter. Soon after hearing and revealing these, and trying to find the origins of the records, the perfect life of Anne starts slowly falling apart, including the death of a good friend, fleeing to London, and being imprisoned by her own father Sir Alexander Keyes (Bill Nighy) and others. The story is a little complicated, because you are not sure if she is going mad, and why it has happening to her, but she is seen alive and elderly by the end of the film in present day. Also starring David Tennant as Hector Haldane MP, Julie Christie as Aunt Elizabeth, Jeremy Northam as Balcombe, Eddie Redmayne as Ralph Keyes, Jenny Agutter as Maud and Notting Hill's Hugh Bonneville as Gilbert. I will admit first that I didn't understand the full story by about halfway through, but the performances by the all British cast, especially Garai, are very good, and there are some memorable moments, so it is certainly not a bad wartime drama. Good!

Glorious 39 has everything necessary for the makings of a great film, but for some unknown reason things got lost in translation and the finished product failed to deliver (and no, this is DEFINITELY not on par with Atonement!)

The film starts slow and the first 20 minutes just don't seem to hit their beats. Then, once the plot begins to engage the viewer a lot of plot holes and unanswered questions begin to arise.

We also get this rather strange attempt (or at least, what appears to be an attempt) to draw parallels between WW2 England and the modern war on terror (most notably the indefinite detention without charge, and the overarching state surveillance). These things just don't make a lot of sense though - were they a poorly executed attempt at commentary on post 9/11 geopolitics? Or were they meant to be plot devices to ramp up the tension and threat to our main protagonist? Either way, neither version of events is executed particularly well.

Then there is the death of Lawrence - an event which should have really mattered to us as an audience, except it didn't, because Lawrence was barely developed as a character and as a result the audience never has a chance to care about him or even connect with him. He just doesn't get anywhere near enough screen time (in a film that has a running time of 2 hours!) and so his death doesn't have any real impact for us.

To top things off, the movie concludes with an ending that is an anti-climax, and makes little real sense (the use of a final shot of young Anne even seems to indicate that at least someone involved in this film was concerned that the execution of the plot may leave some viewers confused about who the elderly woman in the chair was, so they had to spell it out as obviously as they possibly could).

It's a real shame, because the atmosphere, acting and story concept are all top shelf - it's just a shame that the execution was so flawed.

I happen to be a big fan of British period dramas. Of course, when they are done well. Alas, this is a dreadful mess of a movie. Almost nothing makes any sense whatsoever. To begin with the obvious, what in the world possessed the director to film with the drunken, skewed camera lenses. After ten minutes of watching, one feels noxious. Then the characters, randomly walking around, tattling some nonsensical lines, and not a one of them looks real. Next, for example, complete lack of suspense or logic. Pro-Nazi supporters among the British upper classes are a well known fact, but that part of history deserves serious handling. This Gothic, under-thought dribble is a huge disappointment.

I always enjoy watching BBC films, always very well acted and usually an interesting story that makes you think. This one promised quite a lot: a great cast including Jeremy Northam, Bill Nighy and Romola Garay, a plot in the first year of the second world War, it seemed like a recipe for a great movie. Unfortunately may parts of the story seemed to weird to be true and in the end I didn't understand if the girl was simply crazy. Dead bodies all around her, people talking about secrets and dropping dead afterwards without a lot of explanations, her being locked up in a room and drugged, characters that appear without explanation and stare just as if it was a horror film and in the end nothing is quite clarified... Just totally mystifying...

Stephen Polliakoff's work has shown some consistent concerns: two of them are a nostalgic view of the aristocratic past, and an interest in the aftermath of Nazism. These two come together in 'Glorious 39', which one may describe as a '39 Steps' kind of thriller; and in its middle portion, it's briefly gripping, albeit in a style that seems a deliberate pastiche of an earlier style of film. But overall, it's a rum beast, almost a parody of Polliakoff's earlier work. There are lines of incongruous or anachronistic dialogue, and much of the acting is exceedingly flat. Polliakof often casts Bill Nighy, and seems to order him to underact; in my opinion, all of Nighy's performances for this director are awful. The child acting is also exceedingly wooden. Ramola Garai in the lead role is OK, but she really gets almost no help; yet from the overall feel of the piece, it's hard to avoid concluding that this is intentional. The plot is incoherent and hackneyed: the good guys all want to fight the Nazis, the nasty people don't; even the use of an adopted child as the lead character seems to be a cheap way of having a cake and eating it, as it allows the director to revel in the aristocratic excess while simultaneously suggesting there was something terrible about it. The concluding scene, meanwhile, makes something out of nothing, a crescendo of music hiding the fact that there's no real drama in the ending. It's a shame, as for a number of years, Polliakoff's work was consistently interesting; but this is a mess.

What a treat is this dark and serpentine story of conspiracy, betrayal and innocence violated. It is the more powerful, compelling and involving for its subtle and wonderfully gentle understatement.

A very English film, it presents genuine, familiar and engaging period performances from a fine cast headed by the extremely watchable Bill Nigh - who's character oozes honeyed treachery. It resonated strongly with me. The themes and characters are gripping.

Such a pity it was not made fifty years ago so that it could now be watched in authentic black and white. I've not noticed it on general release in the UK. I can't imagine why not - it will become a classic. I watched it without seeing any of the credits first, but recognised it after just a few minutes as the work of Stephen Poliakoff.

Watching this film gave me much pleasure. I commend it highly.

I can only suppose that all those years writing for the BBC led Poliakoff to believe that incinerating pussy cats would be a good metaphor for the Holocaust. The film probably should have had a warning that some viewers might find certain scenes distressing (mainly the ending) and a helpline number at the end. I am sure no Siamese were harmed in the making of this production, sadly few clichés were either. Deep issues were lost in a pervading superciliousness which wasn't all coming from Mr Nighy. (Who managed to drop the nice mask more potently in a Q&A session than he did when allowing the merest minaciousness across his lips on screen.) It's a pity, there was a lot of potential here. It is not a waste of time. However it is not clever or shocking or original or suspenseful. It is pretty, though, in terms of dresses and houses and lighting, if not the actors. A TV piece really, for a winter Sunday evening. Listening to the cast talk about the history, it sounded like they believed that no-one had ever heard about the lengths appeasement might have gone to in England. Anyone who had watched one documentary on Edward VIII seemed to be more au fait with the facts than the purveyors here. The main protagonist had to be adopted into her family for the plot to work, apparently, doubtless as a little identification safety valve for the non-aristocratic audience or because true evil would be too out of place in such a pretty piece. I suppose she had to be a gypsy to take us back to the concentration camps - the English upper class turning on its own gays and gypsies - that artifice had to be worked on the unsophisticated audience as well. The framing in the present was ineffectual - was it a nod to the Schindler's list ending? I hate to even mention that alongside this ending, because it gives the idea that the film will make you feel something profound. It will not. That is the problem. You are aware something very important is being put up on screen and yet, with all the good intentions in the world, the subject matter is debased by the ineffectual little thriller plot that is meant to carry this far greater horror.

I have just watched this film with my wife, 43, my daughters 16, & 19 and my daughter's friend (male, 20). Being interested in history, we were expecting to be intrigued, entertained,thrilled. We were laughing at the absurdity of it my the end and although we stuck it out for 2 hours, we were beginning to not care how it ended. The film had a very poor storyline, was overly dramatic, built tension so many times with so many anticlimaxes it left us feeling like we had just wasted 2 hours of our lives. What a waste. We are not surprised this was a flop and ended up in the bargain bin. If you value your time and your sanity at all, please watch something else. Schindlers List, Charlotte Gray or Black Book all are good examples of entertaining storytelling about our history. Glorious 39 was quite simply, awful. Such a disappointment. Why can't we British make films anymore like we did in the 40s and 50s with John Mills and Richard Attenburgh at the helm.

I first came across the captivating young British actress Romola Garai in the 2004 movie "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights". Since then, most of her work has been for television, but she was back on the large screen in the 2009 film "Glorious 39". The '39' refers to 1939 when Britain was on the edge of war with Germany. 'Glorious' relates to both the nature of that year's summer and the affectionate name for Garai's character Anne, the adopted daughter of the aristocratic Keyes family which is headed by an influential Conservative Member of Parliament who is appalled by the notion of the country going to war for the second time in only a couple of decades.

Written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff as a kind of Hitchcockian thriller, this is a work replete with well-known British character actors spanning the age range from Christopher Lee & Julie Christie through Bill Nighy & Jeremy Northam to David Tennant & Eddie Redmayne. With so much talent available, one has a right to expect more than is actually delivered. The plotting is rather silly and often slow and the characterisation somewhat stilted, while the ending is most unsatisfactory. The locations - mostly in Norfolk - are fine though.

This seemed (from an oft-repeated BBC trailer) a fascinating pre-war thriller worthy of Graham Greene or John le Carre. How wrong I was. The plot takes one absurd turn after another until, three quarters along the way, it had me laughing out loud. The dialog is often wooden or anachronistic. Bill Nighe, who I loved in other productions, says his lines as if he's on sedatives (which he may have started taking after reading the script - I would). I've given this a generous five out of ten for period feeling and the original idea, which certainly had potential.

Just a few of the plot's weaknesses (warning: spoilers): Why would the plotters commit their secret meetings and interrogations to vinyl? Why would they store these in an old shed on the estate without any form of protection? Why would the actor friend hide his discovery in cryptic lines on film rather than talk to her privately? Why would her family ask her to join a party when she has escaped from captivity? The ending seems hurried and sloppy too. What happened to all the plotters? Why did they fail? Why has the main character kept quiet for 70 years?

Plot: On the eve of WWII, an English aristocrat stumbles on a plot involving her family and the appeasement of Hitler.

This is the sort of British film that leaves you in despair as to the state of our film industry. It is long, ponderous, badly written, badly made, badly acted, the plot is risible, and nobody went to the cinema to watch it (with good reason). For a thriller there are no thrills (indeed, it is soporific). Many good British actors (and some rubbish ones) give a very poor showing (and in the case of Christopher Lee, are barely in it). And for a supposedly intelligent story there is very little intelligence: the conspiracy is stupid, nearly everyone gets bumped off without any hue and cry, and the ending is so trite that it's laughable. It is, in short, embarrassing to watch. Essentially it is another left- wing (and tax-payer funded) attack on the British aristocracy and their involvement in appeasement (even though they were quite right that the Second World War meant the end of Britain as a great power). Unsurprisingly, I don't think I've ever seen a film about how British Communists, under orders from Moscow, spent the entirety of 1939-41 actually on the side of the Nazis - but then they meant well, didn't they?...Frankly, this is a vanity project for a writer whose best years are behind him, but who keeps getting money shoved his way by an idiotic (mono)cultural elite. One to avoid like the plague.

This walloping piece of upper class tripe unfolds in 1939 Britain. The rich are enjoying a summer retreat amidst the splendor and ruins of their ill gotten heritage. Then a Bulldog Drummond plot unfolds. Can sturm und drang be far behind? We get both for the price of one! Bill Nighy plays out of his league (stick to dry wit Bill, you do it so well), as an upper class father of three barely adult children. Enter a sinister character played by Jeremy Northam, soon to be followed by the suicide(?) of a ministerial friend who says too much at dinner, namely: there is a faction trying to make peace with Hitler. Apparently appeasement was not only an open government reality but also a secret plot! Secret recordings cunningly camouflaged as Fox trots appear in the father's shed, and are quickly made fun of by the family. All but Glorious(she is not)the adopted daughter who, thanks to gypsy genes soon sniffs out a plot worthy of Geoffery Household in his teens.

It's dreary, boring, and ludicrous pablum.

This film had an excellent opportunity to be an engaging commentary on England before World War II. It starts off with an impassioned speech about all the reasons that Hitler is on the verge of taking over Europe and why Churchill should be the true leader of the UK. The only slightly interesting part of this film.

I won't pretend to know enough about the social, political and economic situations of the British people before the worldwide outbreak of WWII. Still, I was hoping learn about some of the debate surrounding the forthcoming war and be entertained by an interesting plot. I got neither.

Instead, I got a brief glimpse of the ridiculously, wealthy aristocrats living in the beautiful British countryside. This family (the Keyes) pretends to love their adoptive daughter Anne (Romola Garaia) for over twenty years then absolutely despise her because they find out that her parents were Gypsies! The only person in this family that seems to somewhat love her is her self-important father; Sir Alexander Keyes (Bill Nighy). He conveniently pops in to give her multiple pep talks, just as members of their family are plotting to kill her boyfriend and anyone else she tries to reveal their hideous no-war/ pay-off Hitler-secret plans. Her mother is much more interested in her garden than helping her adoptive daughter. Wonderful family!

Throughout the film, mysterious secret service members have decided to make it their mission to follow her everywhere (on bicycles) and harass her into returning a recording of Nazi meeting hidden on a record she found in her father's "study". His study is a house big enough for a posh, elite family of ten. So these two gentlemen kill off all known associates instead of simply killing her and destroy the incriminating record(s). Finally, Anne is forced to run all over the countryside hoping to send the record to someone she can trust which is apparently impossible.

The ending somehow manages to be even more unbelievable than the rest of the film. Ann uses her young grandson to confront the two youngest family members Walter Keyes (Christopher Lee who was a teenager in '39) and his brother (who was an infant!). Walter is made out to be the actual villain in this movie though he's clearly following directions from his evil family members. Anne's grandson manages to get Walter outside to meet with Anne (in a wheelchair) with her daughter. Then Anne blows away Walter with her shotgun hidden behind her wheelchair! No, she doesn't, she smiles wryly at him (fade out). One of the worst endings I've ever seen. Maybe I'm not as aristocratic as I should be.