The name is absent

Appendix 3.2: Sample films - synopses and character lists
PICCADILLY INCIDENT UK 45

son.

The flasback which frames the narrative concerns the
legitimacy of this baby: since his parents were not legally
married at the time of his birth he cannot, as we learn at the
end of the film, to the family title. Diana and Alan are
reunited briefly in the last few scenes of the flashback, and
she decides that she must give him up to Joan and the baby,
attempting to persuade him that their own marriage had merely
been a brief excitement 'fireworks which went up^, and held no
real meaning. The sacrifice this requires on her part is
clear to the audience since we have been with her during her
long ordeal at sea and on the island; we know that it was the
thought of returning to Alan that had sustained her. During
the conversation between them there is an air raid in which
she receives fatal injuries, dying later in a hospital bed,
holding Alan's hand. Thus the film neatly frames their story
within the violence and tragedy of wartime disruption and
ensures the survival of Alan's second and apparently happy
marriage to the American, Joan.

Conflicts between love and duty, pleasure and obligation are
played out against three backgrounds: the authority of the
state exemplified by the courts and the services; the
continuity of the family exemplified by the Pearsons in their
aristocratic country mansion; and the isolated group surviving
on the remote island by establishing and sustaining codes of
solidarity, morality and authority.

Female characters in order of appearance, character groups

209

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