Film Forum

(1987) Boorman’s comedic childhood WWII memoir finds 9-year-old Bill Rohan growing up in a London suburb amid the thunderous chaos of the Blitz – and having a grand time smashing rubble, playing in the parachute of a German paratrooper, and reveling in the glorious destruction of his school by an errant Luftwaffe bomb. Nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. The story of Bill Rohan is revisited in Boorman’s QUEEN AND COUNTRY, premiering at Film Forum on February 18. Approx. 113 mins. 35mm.

Reviews

“It’s hard to believe that a great comedy could be made of the Blitz but John Boorman has done it.”
– Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

“The high points (of John Boorman’s career) are quite high, none more so than HOPE AND GLORY, a cheerfully revisionist war film set in London during the Blitz and based on Mr. Boorman’s memories of his childhood.”
– Mike Hale, The New York Times

“(Boorman) astounds and enchants us with this fond and funny little masterpiece that comes straight from the heart.”
– Rita Kempley, The Washington Post

“A painstaking re-creation of the period. All of the cars and signs and clothes look right, and there are countless small references to wartime rationing, as when the older sister draws seams on her legs to make fake nylons. But after re-creating the period, Boorman also reconstructs the very feeling that was in the air.”
– Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“Boorman’s autobiographical film about family life during the Blitz is subversively light on the blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice, and a joy throughout. Seen through the eyes of nine-year-old Bill Rohan, the war was a wonderland of superior fireworks displays every night, and adventure playgrounds of rubble and ruined houses… The wind in the willows and the willow on the cricket ball – Boorman’s long-lost England communicates its affectionate poetry.”
– Brian Case, Time Out London