The Foreman Went to France

The Foreman Went to France
Original UK quad format poster
Directed by	Charles Frend
Screenplay by	Leslie Arliss John Dighton Angus MacPhail
Story by	J. B. Priestley
Produced by	Michael Balcon
Starring	Clifford Evans Tommy Trinder Constance Cummings Gordon Jackson
Cinematography	Wilkie Cooper
Edited by	Robert Hamer
Music by	William Walton
Production company	Ealing Studios
Distributed by	United Artists Ltd (UK)
Release date	22 June 1942 (1942-06-22) (UK)
Running time	87 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

The Foreman Went to France (released in the USA as Somewhere in France ) is a 1942 British Second World War war film starring Clifford Evans, Tommy Trinder, Constance Cummings and Gordon Jackson. It was based on the real-life wartime exploits of Welsh munitions worker Melbourne Johns, who rescued machinery used to make guns for Spitfires and Hurricanes. It was an Ealing film made in 1941 with the support of the War Office and the Free French Forces. The script was by J.B.Priestley and reflects both optimism about an eventual victory and the sense that the post war world would have to be different from that of the 1930s. All of the 'heroes' are portrayed as ordinary people caught up in the war. The score was written by William Walton.

Plot

Welsh factory foreman Fred Carrick (Clifford Evans) goes to France on his own initiative to retrieve several pieces of valuable machinery ahead of the German invasion. Along the way, he is helped by two soldiers (Tommy Trinder, Gordon Jackson) and an American woman (Constance Cummings). To get to France, Fred has to get round the opposition of his firm's bosses and British civil servants. While in France, he has to learn about the role of the fifth column. His gradual realisation of how authority can trick him has been argued to be an allegory of Britain learning not to be too trusting; but also, through the role of Anne Stafford, the American woman, an anticipation of an eventual alliance with the United States. During the race to the coast with the machines, the film evokes the huge scale of the flood of refugees that fled the advancing Nazis in France in 1940.

Cast

• Clifford Evans as Fred Carrick, the foreman
• Tommy Trinder as Tommy Hoskins
• Constance Cummings as Anne Stafford
• Robert Morley as Mayor Coutare of Bivary
• Gordon Jackson as Alastair 'Jock' MacFarlan.
• Ernest Milton as the stationmaster in La Tour
• Charles Victor as the aircraft spotter on the Works roof
• John Williams as the 'English' army captain
• Paul Bonifas as the Prefect of Rouville
• Anita Palacine as a La Tour barmaid
• Francis L. Sullivan as a French skipper
• Mervyn Johns as Official, Passport Office
• Sidney Adams as Driver
• Owen Reynolds as Collins, Burns & Fawcett Works Manager
• Ronald Adam as Sir Charles Fawcett, Managing Director
• Eric Maturin as Older Man (uncredited)

External links

• The Foreman Went to France at the BFI's Screenonline
• Template:BFI Explore
• The Foreman Went to France at the British Board of Film Classification
• The Foreman Went to France at IMDb
• The Foreman Went to France at AllMovie