Housewife, 49 (ITV, 2006 and Acorn Media, 2007)
This made-for-TV historical drama is based on the journals of Nella Last, a British housewife who participated in the Mass Observation Project, a large-scale data collection effort carried out by a non-governmental social research organization that started up in 1937 to document the experiences of ordinary citizens during wartime by asking them to keep and submit regular journal entries. Because Nella participated in this project until 1965 (the organization kept it going long after the war ended), her writings are quite extensive and offer a fascinating account of civilian life during and after wartime. In fact, British writer and comedienne Victoria Wood found Nella's account so fascinating that she turned it into the screenplay that became Housewife, 49 and then took on the starring role herself. A rather short, plain woman, Wood is quite perfect for the part, making the ordinary look extraordinary as Nella evolves over the years covered by the film (which ends with the cessation of the European part of the war in 1945). At the start of the film, Nella is a very quiet person who clearly suffers from a form of agoraphobia. She becomes visibly agitated just walking down the street of her hometown, Barrow-in-Furness, and literally flees from the scene of the Women's Voluntary Service organization that she wants to join as a way of keeping busy after war is declared. She is so disoriented on this occasion that she finds herself on a street where she hasn't lived in years and has to be reminded by her sister-in-law (who still resides on that street) that she is in the wrong place. Nella lives with her husband Will, a taciturn and domineering man who oversees some kind of wood manufacturing operation. Will doesn't approve of Nella's desire to spend time outside the house engaged in volunteer service work. Nella also has two grown sons, Arthur and Cliff, who live at home until they enlist and go off to war. Part of the story involves Nella's changing relationship with her younger son Cliff, who suffers a number of painful losses during the war that make it difficult for him to readjust to civilian life. Wood does a splendid job of turning Nella's writings into a series of vignettes that tell the story of her gradual transformation into a strong, caring woman with a life of her own. She eventually joins the Women's Voluntary Service and learns to get along with women of a much higher social class than she is. These women learn not to be such terrible snobs as the war makes them all equal in suffering the losses of homes and family members. She successfully defies her husband and in so doing challenges him to show her greater respect. Her regular submissions to the Mass Observation Project also give the people working in that office something to look forward to. The whole video runs just over ninety minutes in length and does every bit as good a job as Foyle's War of depicting life on the home front in England during World War II.
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