Think of England had its world première at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, 14 Nov 2025
Richard Hawkins’ directorial debut everything (2004) was an independently produced, low-budget peep into the world of sex work. Though coming with a period setting, his belated follow-up Think of England is similarly concerned with a kind of sex work, namely pornographic filmmaking – and if all those participating in this ensemble endeavour are not entirely happy to be doing so, their reluctant decision to submit to wartime duty and to get it over and done with is encoded in the film’s very title.
It is 1943, with the war effort still raging. Text at the beginning reveals two clandestine film projects that have been commissioned by the Ministry of Information to boost morale among the troops. The first, personally endorsed by Winston Churchill himself, is a film version of Shakespeare’s Henry V to be directed by and star Laurence Olivier, in the hope that all those patriotic speeches might remind soldiers what they are fighting for and stir them to valiant action. The second, rather less salubrious shoot, definitely not given public approval by the Prime Minister, is a series of three hardcore films, to be shot by a small motley (cast and) crew in a Nissen hut on the Orkneys, for the fighting men to cum and see.
The first thing we see in the film is Captain Clune (John Mc Crea) sitting on a chair on the beach looking out to the ocean. He is waiting for the warship to arrive which is bringing the people who will, under his decidedly weak command, make the films together. These will turn out to be dancer, good-time girl and wannabe actress Holly Spurring (Natalie Quarry), genuine movie star turned army conscript Corporal Evans (Jack Bandeira), wardrobe and makeup woman Agnes Dupré (Ronnie Ancona), young sound recordist Clifford (Ollie Maddigan), and bona fide German expressionist director Max Meyer (Ben Bela Böhm), reduced to this work by his status as a Jewish refugee from the Nazis. There will also be one unexpected guest (Oscar Hoppe), hiding out on the island.
Yet the important thing for now is Clune’s location, sitting on the sandy line where solid land meets fluid water. For Think of England is a film very much about lines: about the moral boundaries that these characters will and won’t transgress; about the lines between truth and fiction, whether in the juxtaposition of Laurence Olivier’s real propaganda film with ones entirely invented by Hawkins, or in these actors having to fake feelings and rôles, using costumes, sets and lube, while also performing their most intimate acts entirely for real.
These characters – including Clune – have been forced, through blackmail or various other means, to take this job – and while Holly may be the one on the bed, they are all in one way or another getting fucked, with half an eye turned to their own private longings and ambitions. That the film they are making is also called Think of England ensures that this is a pouioumenon, a reflexive work very much about its own making, where real-life dramas and contemporary mores are staged on a makeshift Forties film set. This allows the cast to play actors who are themselves acting, and working out in these scenarios what they have become and what they want to be.
Still, where Hawkins’ film has an intimacy coordinator on board, Clune’s very much does not – instead its stud is the kind of person who should never be allowed anywhere near a film set, let alone near a naked actress. For not only is Evans armed and banged up on amphetamines, but he is also a psychologically unhinged rapist and a recently convicted murderer. He has come to realise, as an actor, that dressing up and playing soldiers for king and country is just another part – with horrific, damaging consequences for himself and others – and this new rôle on the island is just another stage for his deep trauma to play out until the money shot.
Think of England starts as one of those particularly English comedies – think Peter Cattaneo’s The Full Monty (1997) or Nigel Cole’s Calendar Girls (2003) – which engender titters from sexual awkwardness and embarrassment, and at first its dialogue is peppered with unconscious innuendo (“girls together”, “spotted dick”, etc.) reflecting the kind of film that is about to be made, as well as a more general tone of seaside sauciness. Yet it is not long before the film takes a much darker turn, and it is very much the better for it. These people have had their dreams dashed, their families destroyed and their psyches damaged, and soon their film intended to break one taboo will end up breaking another, and in so doing will become a document, however lost, of war’s madness.
strap: Richard Hawkins’ World War II drama shows the making-of a propaganda porn film, while stripping down its cast and crew
© Anton Bitel
