Movie · 1987 · Drama, War, Family · 1h 53m · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 7.4/10 (24.4K ratings)
The epic story of a world at war. And a boy at play.
Overview
A middle-aged man recalls his childhood growing up in and around London during World War II.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.4/10
IMDb: 7.3/10
Letterboxd: 3.68/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 96%
Metacritic: 86
TMDB: 6.9/10
Director
John Boorman
Production
Goldcrest, Nelson Entertainment
Cast
Sebastian Rice-Edwards, Geraldine Muir, Sarah Miles, David Hayman, Sammi Davis, Derrick O'Connor, Susan Wooldridge, Jean-Marc Barr, Ian Bannen, Annie Leon, Jill Baker, Amelda Brown, Katrine Boorman, Colin Higgins, Shelagh Fraser, Gerald James, Barbara Pierson, Nicky Taylor, Jodie Andrews, Nicholas Askew
Curator Review
Verdict
A vivid, unusually playful World War II memory piece that treats the Blitz through a child’s eyes without losing sight of fear, loss, and class-life texture. Its mix of nostalgia, chaos, and precise visual storytelling makes it stand out from more solemn war dramas.
Best for
viewers who like coming-of-age stories
fans of British wartime cinema
people interested in memory-driven, semi-autobiographical films
viewers who appreciate observational detail and strong period atmosphere
Skip if
you want a conventional battle movie
you prefer war films with a grim, purely tragic tone
you dislike episodic childhood storytelling
you need a tightly plotted narrative with a clear central mission
Overview
Hope and Glory is less interested in strategy or heroics than in the strange emotional weather of wartime childhood. John Boorman turns the London Blitz into a world of scavenged adventure, domestic upheaval, and sudden terror, all filtered through a boy’s half-understanding. That perspective gives the film its unusual balance: funny, chaotic, affectionate, and sometimes devastating in the same breath.
Worth noting
What lingers most is the film’s physical confidence. Streets, rubble, shelters, and back gardens feel lived-in rather than reconstructed, and the camera keeps finding small human dramas inside larger destruction. It’s a war film, but also a memory film, which means it values sensation, incident, and atmosphere over plot mechanics.
Bottom line
The result is one of the more distinctive British films of the 1980s: intimate without being precious, nostalgic without being sentimental. If you respond to childhood stories that understand how wonder and dread can coexist, this is an easy recommendation.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Sean Baker · 209 likes
That one shot when the German plane goes down in the background while the British fighter flies over the street as the residents cheer... WOW. That's next level precision. Expert camera operation... panning up to keep that plane perfectly framed.
Mike D'Angelo (4.5★) · 81 likes
84/100
World War II as the bonfire party from Cold Water. Boorman's camera is frequently just that supple, taking undulating paths across piles of rubble as kids clamber in and out of frame, and the film's emphasis on blissful adventure in the midst of destruction has lost none of its counterintuitive power over the years—indeed, I can't think of another wartime reminiscence that's even remotely similar. Every anecdote teems with memorable specificity, and while I still think the movie permanently… more
chavel (3.5★) · 77 likes
Some bomb blasts, firestorms and fearsome German parachuters aside, there is relatively little consequential impact in John Boorman’s Hope and Glory that you could easily dismiss it as a non-essential in the World War II subject canon, yet it’s so unusual in capturing a different side of the war that I find it decidedly essential.
The British have declared war on Germany, and the community of a London suburb now prepares for daily bombing raids. When it’s too late at… more
Karina Oliveira · 67 likes
"It was all they talked about, getting ready for war. But nothing ever happened. It was all words and no action. Hopalong Cassidy, on the other hand, now that was the real thing.”
When Hurricane Andrew walloped South Florida as a Category 5-er in 1992, my primary concern wasn't loss of life or property damage. No, I was busy moping over the storm's impertinent choice to make landfall on my birthday. I look back on this attitude with no little… more
AD917 (4★) · 64 likes
War never looked so damn innocent. But it would, through the eyes of a child, with the distance of memory.
The harsh realities of English life during World War II are never entirely out of view, but they’re obscured by a lack of perspective. One by one, the houses of the street are reduced to rubble. News spreads of a local girl’s mother being killed in an air raid. A German pilot even parachutes into town on a sunny afternoon.… more
1959 · Drama · 1h 39m · NR · Curator 9.4/10 (420.9K ratings) · Where to watch: Max
A foundational coming-of-age film about childhood freedom, mischief, and the emotional truth of memory.
Topics
coming-of-age, World War II, British cinema, nostalgic, wartime home front, family drama, childhood perspective, period detail, black comedy, memory film