The Winslow Boy

England before the First World War. Ronnie Winslow, thirteen years old, is expelled from a naval college over a small theft. The boy says he did not do it. His father believes him and decides to take the state to court. The case grows: the newspapers, parliament, public opinion. The family pays for it for years. Anthony Asquith directed the film from Terence Rattigan's play, and the play itself started from a real case. Robert Donat plays the barrister. The telling hardly shows the courtroom at all; everything is discussed inside the house. The real subject is not the boy: it is what a family is prepared to risk to be proved right, and what that costs each of them.