THE WAY AHEAD

Carol Reed’s typically meticulous research adds a sense of gritty realism to this vivid, stirring account of a WWII British combat unit undergoing basic training. David Niven stars as Lieutenant Jim Perry, a former pump jockey who realizes he needs to take a tough line with the ragged, widely divergent bunch of civilian conscripts under his command, as he and Sergeant Brewer (William Hartnell) try to prepare them for combat with Rommel’s Afrika Korps.