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The Gentle Sex (1943) More at IMDbPro »

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
An unusual British wartime film, 23 November 2003
Author: (jcurrie58@hotmail.com) from Orpington, England

I saw this film recently on TV, and although social attitudes have changed drastically and is a tad patronising, it's still a worthy entry in the "soldiers going through training" film. What is unusual about it is that it concentrates on women rather than men. British films at the time (and for quite a few years afterwards) were male dominated. The recruits are a mixed bunch: Betty Miller (Joan Greenwood), the youngest, has never been away from home before or done anything for herself and is desperately homesick; Dot Hopkins (Jean Gillie)who wants to do something different; Erna the refugee (Lilly Palmer); Maggie Fraser (Rosamond John) the friendly Scottish girl, who never stops eating; Anne Lawrence (Joyce Howard) who is from a service family who knows what she has to do and is the beauty of the group. Joan Simpson (Barbara Waring), who is sharp tongued and stand-offish but who turns out to be as lonely as the rest of them and Gwen Haydon(Joan Gates) the cheery Cockney girl. Although I found the film enjoyable, I would like to have known more about the background of the recruits. Rosamond John's Scottish accent was unconvincing, though her performance was fine. And was Joan Simpson meant to be a lesbian? She showed her disdain for men throughout and the lady who saw her off at the railway station was very affectionate towards her, though she is listed in the credits as "Miss Simpson", although no reference to their being related was never made clear. Joyce Howard is lovely with a warm, friendly personality. I had never heard of her before and wondered if she was a relation to Leslie Howard, the director? And how any stretch of the imagination could John Laurie (the soldier who dances with Maggie) be referred to as "young", as Leslie Howard did in the final narration? He must have be 45 if he was a day. However, it was nice to see him with a smile on his face for a change. All in all, a good entry in the British wartime film genre.

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
A pleasant and unassuming 'slice of life' drama, 19 July 2002

Author: RitaRisque from Australia

The trick in this movie is keeping track of the seven girls - seven dual main characters. All are very different young ladies who, by chance, manage to travel in the same train compartment off to their base. What makes this extra fun is the commentary by Leslie Howard throughout - he spies on the bustling station and selects six candidates, so is it any coincidence that these six strangers end up together? (The seventh, Gwen, almost misses the train and is the last addition to the group)

The easiest four to keep track of are the lorry drivers. Beautiful blonde Anne who loses a loved one in the war, foreigner Erna who is desperate for revenge on the Nazis that destroyed her family, chirpy Scots lass Maggie, who always has a sweet and a smile, and no-nonsense Joan, who comes across as bossy and stand-offish, hiding the fact that she's just as shy and lonely as the rest.

Then we have the remaining three - good time girl Dot, Gwen who "won't be left behind any more" and the little half-pint, Miller, who "finally gets her gun". She's the baby of the group, and is the hardest to keep track of because she is practically Lilli Palmer's twin - it's only when they speak that one can tell the difference!

If you enjoyed films like "Millions Like Us" and "2000 Women" then you'll love this one. An easy 10/10!

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Women will enjoy it more than men, 6 June 2003
Author: Godfrey Flush (heebie_jeebies) from Melbourne, Australia

This film follows the experiences of seven women who find themselves together in the Auxillary Territorial Services during the war. The film begins at a train station where the narrator picks out six young women at random. These six ladies - charming but indistinguishable to me - end up in the same carriage of a train on their way to their base. The seventh, Gwen Hayden, joins the others as the train is about to depart. It's a promising start - we eagerly anticipate what will happen to these seven ladies throughout the course of the war. We assume that they'll all end up going their separate ways, but will perhaps reunite at the end of the war, having each been through some unique and fascinating experiences.

Unfortunately, nothing much happens to any of them. They arrive at their base, engage in some vacuous conversation, and then it's on with the mundane duties of the Auxillary Territorial Services. The first fifteen minutes or so after they arrive is basically a montage of footage showing the ladies and their colleagues being regimented by their superiors, during marching practise and so on, and contains very little entertainment value, except for a couple of attempted visual jokes, including one lady soldier who turns the wrong way and ends up marching away from all the others.

Perhaps the problem with the rest of the film is that it's a little too honest. There's no drama and there are no complications - just a group of ladies fulfilling the mundane duties of lorry driving, drilling and manning ack-ack batteries, and prattling on in between. The almost complete lack of male characters makes the conversation even more intolerable. Occasionally the characters ponder the purpose of the war and what they're really fighting for, but their discourse fails to scale any great philosophical heights. There's a melodramatic spiel by a French woman in the middle of the film, in which she tells some of our British ladies about what the Nazis did to her father and brother, but it fails to stir us amidst the jollility of life in the Services. Rather, it seems like a contrived attempt by the scriptwriters to provide some semblance of drama.

The only other drama that occurs - in fact, one of the few events that occurs in this basically plotless film - happens towards the end of the film, but unfortunately it is too little too late. This film is nothing more than a slice of British life during the war. None of the seven ladies embark on any great adventures, they never experience the hardships of war and since the film only scratches the surface of its seven main characters, at the end one is left feeling as though we hardly know them any better than we did when we first met them at the train station. Women will probably enjoy this film more than men, but there is really nothing in it to make it worthy of recommendation.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Informative, mildly entertaining, 10 June 2005

Author: Igenlode Wordsmith from England

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I imagine this film was originally made as a tool to inform the contemporary public of what war work for those women who enlisted would actually consist; as it happens, to the modern descendants of those largely-forgotten ATS volunteers, it performs the same service.

The answer, apparently, is that they underwent quasi-military training in order to fit them to take over auxiliary roles performed in pace-time by men, thus releasing more soldiers for actual combat: they served as mechanics and drivers, tea-orderlies and telephonists, and, in a rare show of belligerence, assisted as anti-aircraft gunners. I must confess to never being quite clear how the drilling and marching fitted into all this, save to inculcate a general sense of military identity!

'The Gentle Sex' is basically a documentary about these women's lives and training, and there is very little plot as such. There is one dance and a couple of romances, a marathon drive in which no-one falls asleep at the wheel and no-one is left behind, and a bombing raid in which none of the characters are hurt. The women are drawn from a cross-section of types: bossy Joan and gentle Scots Maggie, the pampered baby and the damaged refugee, the sharp shop-girl and the officer's daughter.

Perhaps the most striking moment is when the latter, Anne, goes off into an artificial-sounding speech about how her generation are the first in history to be truly liberated and serve alongside men that had my hackles rising instinctively with its too-obvious message... and then she is quietly deflated by her fiancé's mother mentioning how she herself met her husband after she was wounded while on service at the front in the previous war, and still has the piece of shrapnel to show for it! It's just as much propaganda as the other, of course, but it's an astute acknowledgement and subversion of the film's own potentially preachy effect.

The only reason I initially sat down to watch this picture was because of its curiosity status as 'Leslie Howard's last film', although his on-screen appearance is limited to supplying the voice of the sceptical but finally won-over 'mere male observer' who provides the linking commentary. I can't honestly recommend it as a gripping thriller, and it comes to emotional life only in a couple of places: but it remains what it was made to be, an informative and somewhat idealised glimpse into women's military contribution to the Second World War, in a branch of the service often eclipsed by the WRNS and the WAAF. I am reminded -- in a not uncomplimentary comparison -- of the well-presented British Transport Films documentaries.

Worth seeing, but don't expect too much.

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3 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
My brief review of the film, 8 October 2005
Author: sol- from Perth, Australia

Thinly disguised World War II propaganda, it nevertheless effectively gets it message across, however as a film for satisfying viewing, it does not quite work. The main problem is that there is too little drama driving the film, however the characters are also not developed very well as individuals, which makes it hard to keep track of who is who, and it makes it hard to care for any of them. The philosophies the film brings up are rather wishy-washy, but not all is bad here. The material is edited all quite well together, and Leslie Howard, who is seen from behind in early shots, narrates the movie quite well: he has such an easy-to-listen-to voice. So, this is not quite terrible viewing, but neither it is a good film by any stretch.

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A propaganda film paying tribute to the women of the ATS, 24 March 2009

Author: emmaf3 from United Kingdom

This film should be watched with an understanding of its intentions, which was to bolster morale and pay tribute to the ordinary British women serving in the ATS, as well as encourage recruitment. There were many propaganda films made around this time, some better than others, but they all had a huge impact on helping the war effort. These were not career soldiers, remember. They'd been called up from offices, shops and factories from all over Britain and did a fantastic job. Practically every British family had at least one female member serving in the ATS during the second world war. We're reminded over and over again, that these women were doing the kind of work normally reserved for men and more important were valued for it! Every so often, a bystander will remark on how hard they work. The film lost no opportunity to remind a tired and increasingly demoralised British public what the war was about and why it was important not to give in.

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Seven Characters In Search Of A Plot, 5 July 2007

Author: writers_reign from London, England

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Okay, it's 1943 and presumably there's no indication of when the war will end, no sign of any breakthrough and D-Day is still a good twelve months away so why not shoot a little propaganda-lite; a sort of visual blend of 'The Lady' and 'Women's Companion' magazines; a little about food, a little about clothes, a little about men, etc. At the time it was probably a minor success; the viewer is drawn gently into it via Lesley Howard's voice-over as he 'selects' a group of women who have all 'joined up' - in this case the A.T.S - and then permits us to follow them on their train journey to the camp where they will undergo basic training. As a time-capsule it is fascinating because for the viewer in 2007 it is like travelling to Atlantis or one of those lost civilizations that so beguiled Professor Fawcett. Was there EVER an England like this? Clearly there was and Tony Blair couldn't rest until he'd obliterated all traces of it. The cast are all competent and although a handful - Joan Greenwood, Rosamund John, John Laurie, Lili Palmer, Jimmy Hanley - continued to work on stage and/or screen none of them really achieved what today we would call Super stardom. It's a modest effort, quintessentially English, worth watching on TV - which is where I saw it - but not worth searching for on DVD.

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2 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Boring wartime propaganda without any particular pace or verve, 13 June 2005

Author: csrothwec from Yorkshire, England

My view is that this film has nothing to compare it with wartime productions like "Millions like us", let alone the Powell and Pressburger masterpiece, "A Canterbury Tale". While the production and acting standards are quite good, the whole thing simply lacks pace and sufficient development of either plot or characters to keep the viewer's interest. Rather than attempting to follow the fortunes of seven new recruits to the women's forces in the second world war, (and then dissipating the time covered by the film trying to keep up with all of them), Howard would have done better to focus, (as in the two afore-mentioned films), on a small number of characters and investigate the way in which the relationships between them develop and intensify and, in THESE ways, allow the message of "why we are fighting" to come through much more clearly than in the stiff upper lip, (except, of course, for Lilli Palmer playing "the excitable foreigner"!), rendering of patriotic platitudes which the film produces. A disappointment and, in my view, now mainly of interest only for what it conveys of "established" views of women's war time endeavours in 1943 rather than as visual entertainment which, while being revelatory of its own period, ALSO far transcends this and provides entertainment and reflection of a much deeper nature as well. Right, let's roll "A Canterbury Tale" again and see how it SHOULD have been done!

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3 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Wartime Story of women in the ATS, 18 November 2007

Author: rtaggart-1 from United Kingdom

I am a great aficionado of 1940s -50s black and white movies, but I am afraid this one seemed like a lead balloon. The premise was interesting - Leslie Howard as an almost God - like figure looking down on the milling crowd and selecting his characters -and I settled back for an interesting story to unfold. I waited in vain. Not only did very little happen (which can still mean an excellent movie)but there was very little character development. I ended up with the feeling that women were basically rather boring, spineless creatures, which is surely the antithesis of what the film was trying to achieve? I've seen so many films from this era and later where we see women as they really are, innovative, brave,tender, funny,witty. It's the first time I've seen Lilli Palmer as a quiet colourless creature. There were endless opportunities for fun/tragedy/drama,etc, which just didn't materialise. Even the music hall song was flat and stale. Perhaps in its time it might have worked as a propaganda film purely to show that women can be successful in the army but apart from this I'm afraid it was a non -starter and I gave it the thumbs down.

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