The Winslow Boy (1948)

Directed by Anthony Asquith

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What’s legal is one thing. What’s right is another. We’d like them to coincide, of course. A law that commands what is wrong is unjust, no matter how many people support it, and a law that prohibits what is right and needful is also unjust. Even a law that is just in theory can be unwise in practice, and many things in human life we leave to the discretion of ordinary people, not covered by the law, not because we think that everyone will do everything right, but because the alternative, to have everyone under surveillance all the time, would be intolerable. Circumstances also come into play, don’t they? For example, you can’t bring high-priced defense lawyers onto a field of battle for a court-martial. We understand that military courts must be swift and decisive. But what happens when the military court is right for the institution, is clean and proper in its practice, follows its procedures scrupulously, and it still renders the wrong judgment? What do you do then?

“Well, you just put up with it, because there’s no other choice,” you might say, and I’d agree with you, except that our Film of the Week asks us to take things into account that don’t fit the typical court-martial. The Winslow Boy (1948), directed by the underrated Anthony Asquith — I say so because I don’t hear much about him, but maybe he’s a lot better known in Britain — gives us a young teenage boy, Ronnie Winslow, who arrives back home from his military school, Osborne Naval College, too early for the Christmas holidays, because he’s been tried and sacked. His crime? Cashing a postal order for 5 shillings by forging his classmate’s name. He can write the name — he and the classmate, a chum of his, have fooled around with doing such. He admits it freely. He was at the post office that day. He admits that too. There’s a half hour he can’t really account for, or won’t account for, coinciding with when it supposedly happened. The only thing is, he didn’t do it.

“It’s such a trivial amount!” you might say. Yes, but not at a military school. “He’s only a boy!” you might say. Fine, but he’s not been tarred with a criminal record. He’s just been sacked from the school for what everybody would regard as a schoolboy prank. His father, Arthur Winslow (Cedric Hardwicke) has just retired from his work at a bank, because he’s not in the best of health. He’s got a son at Oxford, who is sailing along without doing much there besides partying and spending money — Dickie Winslow, and his father’s got to tell him he needs to work in earnest, because the money won’t be coming in now as it used to. He’s got a daughter, Catherine (Margaret Leighton), a suffragette, but not obnoxious about it, who seems to be all set up, because she’s engaged to a somewhat older man, a member of the lower aristocracy, and he’s got plenty of money. We don’t see that she loves him, but she does like him very much and he’s happy with her. So then, what do you do about this situation? Do you simply take the punch, sigh, and move on?

“Ronnie, I want you to tell me the truth,” says Mr. Winslow. “Did you cash that postal order.” “No, Father,” says the boy. “Ronnie,” says Mr. Winslow a second time, more pointedly, “I want you to tell me the truth.” He pauses. “Did you cash that postal order?” The boy looks him in the eye. “No, Father, I did not.” “I believe you,” says Mr. Winslow. And that determines him. He will fight for the family’s honor and for his boy’s good name, and for what is right. But to do that, he must appeal to a principle beyond legal decisions and military procedures. It is that in all ordinary affairs in England, the accused has a right to a fair trial, and to counsel. Mr. Winslow appeals to MAGNA CARTA!

That was one of the great victories for Christendom and for mankind generally, when Pope Innocent III through his legate, allied with the English episcopacy and the aristocracy, forced the hand of King John, coward and bully by turns, to sign the Great Charter. Understand that charters were common in England in those days, and in other kingdoms. We might call a charter a guarantee of liberties. Kings and other rulers would grant them, usually as a means of mutual benefit. A town might be chartered so that it would enjoy a large measure of home rule, in return for modest taxes to go to the crown. A university might be chartered, to govern itself, with the considerable benefit of drawing in a great number of people from across the country or across Europe — for a university was also an economic powerhouse. Guilds might be chartered — you see what I’m getting at. But the Great Charter applied to all the landed gentry, and in some respects to every free Englishman. The King was not above the law. By the way, the idea of the “divine Right of Kings” was not a medieval one. We have to wait till the very late Renaissance or the early Enlightenment for that!

And against all odds, and against the determined resistance of the Home Secretary, since that’s what’s involved here, Parliament itself, the trial will go on. And who’s the counsel for the defense, but the most celebrated lawyer in the land, a man with immense capabilities and quite a bit of ambition besides, Sir Robert Morton. He is played to perfection by one of our most admired actors at Word and Song, Robert Donat, always delightful and fascinating to watch. But doing what is right comes with a cost. Everyone involved, we will see, must pay — the whole Winslow family, each member in a different respect, and so too Sir Robert himself. But if right were always immediately and obviously advantageous, we’d all be righetous, wouldn’t we? In this life, it is not so.

The film’s screenplay was adapted by the playwright himself, Terence Rattigan, and he was terrific at moving from writing for the stage to writing for the screen. The acting is flawless throughout. Cedric Hardwicke is perfect for Mr. Winslow, stern but also tender, determined and patient, a loving father, though he expresses his love in restrained and quiet ways. It is Margaret Leighton’s breakout role. And Robert Donat shows yet another area of his very broad range. This film too is for the entire family.

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