Cheap Hope and Glory (DVD) (John Boorman) Price

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Customer Reviews of Hope and Glory

Life and growing-up in wartime Britain (Great WWII film for adult sensibilities)
Typically wartime films focus on the soldier, encampments, transport, combat and the like with but the occasional homefront scene to provide context. Such juxtapositioning, however, rarely does justice to the trials of life experienced by civilians as battles take place far afield. That's why Hope & Glory is such a unique piece of moviemaking. In it we are taken along bombed streets; to charitable shops for clothing; into air raid shelters; to the cinema to escape the war; to neighbors homes to embrace a sense of community. Hope & Glory is a "wartime" film wherein we see almost none of war's fare; as we are made to feel a part of it as viewers, knowing---from history---what is happening further afield without having to see any of it ourselves. Life is indomitable & goes on as surely during difficult times as carefree ones. It is the "Hope" in Hope & Glory and this film's accomplishment is its effectiveness in conveying such. If you want to feel something of the time that was wartime as Hitlerite Germany ran amok in Europe then do view this fine film. Along with "The Gathering Storm" starring Albert Finney & "Life is Beautiful", "Hope & Glory" is one of several films that brings the era of the Second World War to life; and makes the great combat films (such as "The Longest day", "Patton", et al) resonate even more with repeated viewings. If interested in other suggestions, see my "Viscerally experience WWII" Amazon guide (just click on my name & then side left, to "So you'd like to..."). Incidentially, for those considering viewing this film as a family, I'd suggest you choose "Mrs. Miniver" for that instead, & save this film (with has some sexual issues) for the adults. Cheers!

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A masterwork by a master director
John Boorman's coming of age drama shows the resilience of family in the face of the random and the ridiculous in World War Two London. The individual scenes and characters will pop into your consciousness and serve as a reference point for conversations and reminiscences. Boorman's genius is in not burdening his vignettes with too much plotline and simply allowing the characters to reveal themselves in the trying situations they face as the result of the hardships of wartime London. Worth watching again and again. The acting is stellar! A masterwork by master artists.

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I have been thinking a lot about this flm lately
I have been thinking a lot about this flm lately; I don't know why exactly. Perhaps it has to do with my own aging father being in such terrible contrast to Billy's Grandfather George. The parts I think of today, after nearly two decades since seeing Hope and Glory, are almost exclusively about the grandfather, and how Billy remembers their relationship while he and his mom go to the country to live with her father, to escape the London Blitz. <
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>I am saddened to see my father slip into a feebleness bordering on dotage; whereas the grandfather in this film is an eccentric character who defies old age by having never entirely grown up. He still enjoys the things that young boys do, and he plays and shoots and imagines on a level with his grandson. At the end of the film, the two of them laugh hysterically upon discovering that the school has been bombed out, and Billy doesn't have to return to school on that day after all. When another boy looks up prayerfully and says "Thank you Adolf", both Billy and Grandfather George are in complete agreement: Billy gets to return to the countryside for a while still, and his grandfather won't be alone with all those women, Billy's grandmother, mom and aunts. (That doesn't constitute a spoiler exactly: it's just a favorite scene, one of a great many.) <
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>I need another Hope and Glory *fix*, and am going to get a copy right now........