John Mills Centenary Collection (Volume 1) DVD | Movie Mail UK

Film Description

A collection of eight films starring the great British actor. Features In Which We Serve (Coward & Lean, 1942), We Dive at Dawn (Asquith, 1943), Waterloo Road (Gilliat, 1945), Great Expectations (Lean, 1946), The October Man (Ward Baker, 1947), The History of Mr Polly (Pelissier, 1949), Morning Departure (Ward Baker, 1950) and Flame in the Streets (Ward Baker, 1961).

Great Expectations is the classic film version of Dickens' novel, directed by David Lean, in which orphan Pip befriends an escaped convict before being elevated to higher circles as the companion of mad Miss Havisham and her niece Estella (Jean Simmons), with whom the boy quickly falls in love. When the adult Pip (Mills) discovers a mysterious benefactor has paved the way for him to become a gentleman, he assumes Miss Havisham is responsible.

In The October Man, Mills plays a young man accused of murdering a model. He has to prove his innocence to the police, society and himself, as he has a history of mental disorders that may have made him commit the crime without him realising.

In Morning Departure, based on the play by Kenneth Woollard, the crew of a submarine, led by Lt. Commander Armstrong, is trapped on the sea floor when it sinks. Will they be rescued before they run out of air?

Waterloo Road is a story of ordinary people in wartime that stars Mills as a soldier gone AWOL, and Stewart Granger as the cad out to seduce his wife.

Noel Coward co-directed, wrote and starred in In Which We Serve, a patriotic piece of World War II propaganda about a destroyer, told through flashbacks and the reminiscences of the surviving crew after their beloved ship is torpedoed.

We Dive at Dawn (1943) is a World War 2 drama in which a submarine crew's shore-leave is cancelled when they are ordered to pursue and sink the German battleship Brandenburg.

In Flame in the Streets a Union man has to confront the prejudices of his members when a black foreman is appointed, and the members threaten to strike. When he discovers that his daughter (Sylvia Sims) wants to marry a Jamaican he must confront his own prejudices.

Finally, in The History of Mr Polly, Mills stars as Alfred Polly, who, with money inherited from his father, takes a bicycle tour of the country and sets up a draper's shop in a small town.