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The lowdown: 'The Way Ahead' is a British wartime drama made in 1944, which chronicles the experiences of a group of British Army conscripts from their arrival at the training base to their deployment in North Africa. The film stars David Niven as Lieutenant Jim Perry, who must turn eight men from very diverse backgrounds into highly-trained soldiers, together with Sergeant Ned Fletcher (William Hartnell), who is responsible for most of the men's physical training. The film begins shortly before the war, providing the viewer with an opportunity to see some of the future soldiers in civilian life. When the men are waiting at the railway station to go to the army base, they have a run-in with Sergeant Fletcher, not realising that he will be in charge of their training. When the training begins, one of the men makes a complaint about Fletcher, and he is uniformly disliked, but the men eventually build a grudging respect for their drill sergeant, who is destined to ship out with them when their training is completed. Hartnell, who is credited as Billy Hartnell in this film, makes a very convincing drill sergeant, in a role that is not unlike the one he played in 'Carry on Sergeant' some 14 years later. The film features a number
of other familiar actors, including Peter Ustinov (who also co-wrote it
with Eric Ambler), Stanley
The
verdict: 'The Way Ahead' is a highly-engrossing and well-made
film that will particularly appeal to fans of war films, and
Trivia:
'The Way Ahead' is based on a shorter 1943 army training film called 'The
New Lot', which was also written by Ambler
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