Protag (Gemma Arterton) is a young woman in 1940 London. She's living with an artist who isn't bringing in that much, so she gets a government typing job. They send her to the Ministry of Information to type scripts for short propaganda films of the "don't waste food" genre. She becomes a screenwriter because the men who run the unit decide they need a "woman's viewpoint" to make their scripts more effective. She's smart and ambitious and becomes a real contributor. When she reads a newspaper item about two spinster sisters who took their fishing boat to Dunkirk, she decides that this would make a great story for a full length propaganda feature, and she goes down to the coast to interview the sisters.
Of course, what really happened is nothing like the news story, but no matter. She works up a treatment, sells it in the pitch meeting, and keeps working on revisions as it gets made. In addition to the crap she has to take because she's a woman, there are the usual problems. The actor cast to play the drunken uncle for comic relief (Bill Nighy) is a once popular matinee idol whose ego won't accept that he's now a has been. They have to work a dog into the script. The Ministry of Information decides that they need an American character to sell the picture in the US, so they have to figure out how to plausibly get a Yank to Dunkirk. (They make him a war correspondent covering the British Army.) To play him, the Ministry sends them an American RAF pilot who is knee-buckling handsome but has never acted before. One after another, the script problems are overcome and the production moves forward. You can see from the bits of movie within a movie that it's a real piece of cheese, and no Mrs. Miniver, but it suits the times and is a popular and commercial success.
Like Day For Night and State and Main, it's a valentine to the business of making movies that shows you how much intelligence and effort goes into even hack work.
Of course, what really happened is nothing like the news story, but no matter. She works up a treatment, sells it in the pitch meeting, and keeps working on revisions as it gets made. In addition to the crap she has to take because she's a woman, there are the usual problems. The actor cast to play the drunken uncle for comic relief (Bill Nighy) is a once popular matinee idol whose ego won't accept that he's now a has been. They have to work a dog into the script. The Ministry of Information decides that they need an American character to sell the picture in the US, so they have to figure out how to plausibly get a Yank to Dunkirk. (They make him a war correspondent covering the British Army.) To play him, the Ministry sends them an American RAF pilot who is knee-buckling handsome but has never acted before. One after another, the script problems are overcome and the production moves forward. You can see from the bits of movie within a movie that it's a real piece of cheese, and no Mrs. Miniver, but it suits the times and is a popular and commercial success.
Like Day For Night and State and Main, it's a valentine to the business of making movies that shows you how much intelligence and effort goes into even hack work.