At the screening at the Glasgow Film Theatre during the Glasgow Film Festival, the festival director began with a small confession. Introducing a film called Think of England, he suggested, required a certain amount of bravery when standing in front of a Glasgow audience.
It got the laugh it deserved, but it also set the tone rather nicely for what followed. Because Think of England begins with a premise that sounds almost like a joke, and gradually becomes something rather more thoughtful, and occasionally rather unsettling.
Written and directed by Richard Hawkins, the film is set during the Second World War and built around a wartime rumour so improbable it almost feels invented, that somewhere within the labyrinth of British military bureaucracy someone proposed making pornographic films to boost troop morale ahead of the Normandy landings.
From that unlikely premise Hawkins constructs a peculiar chamber drama. Six rather mismatched individuals are dispatched to a windswept island in Orkney with the highly classified mission of producing erotic films to strengthen the boys at the front. It sounds like the setup for a lost Ealing comedy, and at times the film flirts with exactly that tone.
Early on, the film acknowledges the strange absurdity of the situation with a darkly comic exchange between the aspiring actress Holly Spurring and the makeup artist. As they take in the windswept remoteness of Orkney, one of them remarks that, all things considered, it may not be the worst posting in wartime Britain. At least here, they joke, there is little danger of having the life blown out of them by German bombs, which was more than could be said for London at the time. It is a small moment, but it neatly captures the gallows humour of the period, the ability to shrug at danger and carry on regardless.
The group assembled for this curious task is an odd assortment, a German émigré film director, Max Meyer, played by Ben Bela Böhm, the hesitant and rather harmless Captain Anthony Clune, played by John McCrea, a seasoned makeup artist, played by Ronni Ancona, accompanied by her teenage son acting as sound recordist, played by Ollie Maddigan, and the two reluctant leads, aspiring actress Holly Spurring, played by Natalie Quarry, and the volatile Corporal Harry Evans, played by Jack Bandeira.
It is, in effect, a small ensemble cast placed inside an unusual theatrical experiment. Much of the action unfolds in a single improvised studio inside a military camp, and Hawkins leans into that sense of claustrophobia and containment. The film often feels less like conventional cinema and more like a stage play performed in front of a camera, characters circling one another, alliances shifting, moral boundaries quietly eroding.
Despite the confined setting and the wartime costuming, the film is a nevertheless a visual feast. Cinematographer Sarah Cunningham brings a surprisingly colourful palette to the images, almost graphic novel bright at times, which contrasts sharply with the drab austerity one normally associates with wartime Britain.
Music plays its part too. The soundtrack dips into 1930s standards, including songs like Mad About the Boy and Anything Goes, giving the whole enterprise a mischievous period charm that sits slightly at odds with the darker undertones of the story.
And there are darker undertones. What begins as an absurd wartime anecdote gradually becomes something more reflective, a film about performance, power and the peculiar moral elasticity that war can produce. In peacetime the idea of making propaganda pornography would seem unthinkable, in wartime it apparently becomes a patriotic duty.
The result is an intriguing tonal balancing act, part comedy of manners, part chamber drama, with flashes of something more disturbing beneath the surface.
By the end, Think of England has travelled a fair distance from its cheeky starting point. What initially sounds like a bawdy wartime footnote becomes a quietly intriguing meditation on identity, performance and the stories nations tell themselves in moments of crisis.
Which leaves the title lingering rather provocatively. Think of England, as the old phrase goes, was once advice offered in the name of duty. After this film, it feels rather more like a question
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 6th March 2026
North West End UK Rating:
Running time – 1hr 40mins