The Way Ahead

All facts (17)

1. #001

   The film's premiere in the United Kingdom was held on 6 June 1944, on D-Day.

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2. #002

   At the time the film was made, David Niven, who played the role of Lieutenant, was a Major in the British Army serving in operations during the Second World War. He was a 1930 graduate of Sandhurst, the British Army's military academy.

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3. #003

   The film began life as The New Lot (1943), an Army training and instructional film written by Sir Peter Ustinov and Eric Ambler and featuring most of this film's cast (David Niven came later). The training film's bluntness unsettled some officers and it was suppressed. It resurfaced thanks to a copy recently found in an archive.

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4. #004

   Sir Peter Ustinov, who wrote the film and played the Anglophobic café owner Rispoli, was only a private in the British Army, so it was said that he was Major David Niven's batman (an officer's servant, a kind of military valet) in order to explain his presence on set to visiting senior officers. Ustinov served in the British Army Film Unit for much of the war.

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5. #005

   As recently as 1983, the film was still being used for officer training in Australia.

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6. #006

   In his autobiography, David Niven states that the film was shown at Sandhurst (the British Army's officer training school) for training purposes for many years.

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7. #007

   The film is an expanded remake of the Army Kinematograph Service training film The New Lot (1943).

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8. #008

   It appears that the British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, asked David Niven about the possibility of making a film that would pay tribute to the British Army, much as In Which We Serve (1942) had paid tribute to the Royal Navy. Niven then contacted director Sir Carol Reed with a proposal to expand the earlier training film The New Lot (1943).

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9. #009

   Trevor Howard (the Officer on the Ship) is not listed among the film's opening credits.

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10. #010

    The ship on which the platoon is sunk was part of a convoy taking part in "Operation Torch", the Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa.

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11. #011

    A homage to the film's final scene, which shows men advancing with fixed bayonets across a smoke-filled battlefield, was used as the closing title sequence of the British sitcom Dad's Army (1968). John Laurie (Private Luke) also starred in the series as Private Fraser. It recreated the scene faithfully, exactly as in the film.

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12. #012

    This was Sir Peter Ustinov's first feature-length screenwriting credit.

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13. #013

    The opening prologue is a quotation of the definition of the word "army" from the "Encyclopaedia Britannica". It states: "AN ARMY--A considerable body of men, armed, organized, and disciplined, to act together for purposes of warfare."

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14. #014

    The writers Eric Ambler and Sir Peter Ustinov worked together with director Sir Carol Reed and made the training film The New Lot (1943), which was expanded into this film. John Laurie, Raymond Huntley and Sir Peter Ustinov appeared in both The New Lot (1943) and this film.

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15. #015

    This was Renée Asherson's (Marjorie Gillingham) first cinema film.

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16. #016

    This is one of Hugh Grant's favourite films.

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17. #017

    This was Tracy Reed's debut.

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