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Humphrey Jennings

Stewart McAllister

Wingspan Productions

Listen to Britain

Documentaries

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Factual

24/09/2017

BBC Four - Listen to Britain

Humphrey Jennings' 1942 documentary depicting a day and a night on the Home Front.

Factual short depicting life in England during the Second World War. It is made up of a series of nimbly and subtly connected scenes, depicting a day and a night on the Home Front.

Listen to Britain is one of the great masterpieces of 20th-century film. BBC Four celebrates its 75th anniversary by rescreening the classic documentary ahead of an evening of 12 new films inspired in some way or other by the original, commissioned by BBC Four and the BFI from new and emerging film-makers as a result of a national call-out.

Created by the celebrated director Humphrey Jennings and his superb editor Stewart McAllister, it was commissioned in 1942 as a piece of wartime propaganda, but its elegance and artistry have ensured that its influence has extended far beyond its original purpose. It is made up of a series of nimbly and subtly connected scenes, depicting a day and a night on the Home Front. And despite lacking any dialogue, story or narration it nonetheless sent a powerful and lucid message to anyone watching either in Britain or abroad - this is a nation united: pulling together with fortitude and stoicism, determined to maintain its character as a civil and civilized culture, keeping calm and carrying on.

Having stripped away the usual trappings of either documentary, or feature film, Jennings uses both masterful framing and ingenious cutting to display how the business of war abuts the day-to-day. On first glance the director's hand is often imperceptible. But make no mistake: it's always there. Jennings makes poetry from the pictures, from lapping waves to dancing couples and floating barrage balloons. And the soundscape is just as carefully designed: moving between the sound of children playing to the rumble of military vehicles, between the puff of a steam train to the clatter of a factory. 

And running throughout is music - played in pubs, in schoolyards, in church vaults, on factory radios and culminating in a lunch-time concert by pianist Myra Hess at London's National Gallery - where everyone from the Queen to the office worker on her break are shown to share a common pleasure.

Listen to Britain's portrait of a nation had an extraordinary impact - it's been said that when they saw it, cinema audiences in UK stood up and applauded, overwhelmed to see a film that captured their experience of wartime life so well. But whether or not it really captured that truth (or simply what they wanted to be true), in the years since it has certainly shaped the nation's collective consciousness: this is now the wartime Britain people often think of when they're asked to picture that time.

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