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Britain at Bay: Peace & War 1937-1940 PG
SCREENING Britain at Bay is a programme of films from the BFI National Archive, some rarely screened, others rightly celebrated. They vividly capture the transition from optimism to high alert as the nation faced up to another momentous conflict.
For many, British life in the inter-war years was characterised by a forward-looking idealism, an age in which tradition was celebrated and new ideas embraced. Despite the trauma of the Great Depression, the 1930s became the era of Mass Observation, an attempt to capture the minutiae of everyday British life, and the ‘Machine Age’, which saw developments in industry, consumer products and public amenities enabling the population at large to enjoy improvements to every aspect of work and leisure. Yet just as progress beckoned, the government had to prepare its citizens for the worst as war with Germany shifted from distant threat to grim reality.
"When war was announced in 1939, the GPO Film Unit under Alberto Cavalcanti and with directors such as Harry Watt and Humphrey Jenning in its ranks, was the organisation in prime position to document it. These two DVDs collect eight of the films made by the Unit up to Christmas 1940.
The First Days documents the early days of wartime Britain. It has a curious atmosphere. Though a war documentary, there is no gunfire. Instead, a city prepares for conflict during sunny autumn days. Countless sandbags are filled, shelters are constructed and children are evacuated. It is a picture of a patient, stoical populace for whom everything has changed.
The picks of the collection are the two eloquent films written and presented by Quentin Reynolds, American war correspondent for Collier’s magazine, Britain Can Take It! and Christmas Under Fire, the latter a sombre, world-weary despatch from an England ‘fighting for its life’ during the Blitz. The sound of carols from King’s College, Cambridge has never sounded so precious.
The other films are more crudely propagandist, as could be expected from a war still young and vigorous. The deeper humanism of Humphrey Jennings’ mid-war work required different circumstances to give it birth."
UK RELEASE 1937 - 1940
DIRECTORS Marion Grierson, Humphrey Jennings, Harold Purcell and others
RUNNING TIME 86 minutes
COUNTRY UK
official film website and trailer
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