The Way Ahead

The Way Ahead (1944)

From Workers — To Warriors

A mismatched collection of conscripted civilians find training tough under Lieutenant Jim Perry and Sergeant Ned Fletcher when they are called up to replace an infantry battalion that had suffered casualties at Dunkirk.

Date of release
1944-06-09
TMDB
6.5 / 10 (42)
Runtime
1h 55m
Genres
Drama, War
Director
Carol Reed

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 0. Including: National Board of Review: Top Ten Films

The Way Ahead (1944) is a British Second World War drama film directed by Carol Reed. The screenplay was written by Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov. The film stars David Niven, Stanley Holloway and William Hartnell along with an ensemble cast of other British actors, including Ustinov in one of his earliest roles. The Way Ahead follows a group of civilians who are conscripted into the British Army and, after training, are shipped to North Africa where they are involved in a battle against the Afrika Korps.

Production

The Way Ahead was written by Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov, and directed by Carol Reed. The three had originally produced the 1943 44-minute training film The New Lot, which was produced for the Army Kinematograph Service. The Way Ahead was an expanded remake of their earlier film, this time intended for a commercial audience.

The driving force behind the film was David Niven, a 1930 graduate of Sandhurst, who at the time was a major in the British Army working with the Army Film Unit and later served in Normandy with GHQ Liaison Regiment. Niven was the executive producer on The Way Ahead.

The last scene in The Way Ahead shows the soldiers advancing in a counter-attack. Instead of the film ending with the words "The End", it concludes with "The Beginning". In a film made and released during the war, this was an effort to galvanise public support for the final push in the war effort, with a perhaps not unintended reference to one of Winston Churchill's famous quotations: "This is not the end.

Peter Ustinov wrote of sailing to North Africa with Carol Reed where footage of the Platoon in Algeria was filmed at Philippeville (now Skikda). The minaret of the town's Mosquée de Sidi Ali Dib is clearly visible as Bren carriers drive through the streets.

In the United States, an edited version of The Way Ahead, with an introduction by journalist Quentin Reynolds, was released as Immortal Battalion.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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