0:00:04 > 0:00:05100 years after his birth,
0:00:05 > 0:00:08you'd think that we know Dylan Thomas pretty well by now,
0:00:08 > 0:00:10but, somehow, his genius resists
0:00:10 > 0:00:13being pushed into pigeon holes.
0:00:13 > 0:00:16He was a brilliant poet, gifted writer of short stories
0:00:16 > 0:00:19and a successful radio broadcaster.
0:00:19 > 0:00:22He was a raconteur, bohemian, womaniser
0:00:22 > 0:00:24and drinker of legendary excess.
0:00:28 > 0:00:30But what did he do during the war?
0:00:30 > 0:00:33He spent most of it scripting propaganda films
0:00:33 > 0:00:35for the Ministry of Information!
0:00:37 > 0:00:39So, how did a poet who once said
0:00:39 > 0:00:42that poetry and politics should not mix,
0:00:42 > 0:00:44end up more or less working for the Government?
0:00:44 > 0:00:47And how was the work of Dylan, the poet,
0:00:47 > 0:00:51influenced by his work as Dylan, the propagandist?
0:01:07 > 0:01:10At the outbreak of the war, Dylan Thomas was 25 years old,
0:01:10 > 0:01:14and had already published five volumes of poems and short stories.
0:01:14 > 0:01:17He was also beginning to get occasional jobs
0:01:17 > 0:01:19writing radio features for the BBC,
0:01:19 > 0:01:22but he had no experience of writing for film.
0:01:22 > 0:01:26What's not in doubt, however, was his love of the medium.
0:01:28 > 0:01:30As a boy, he would frequent the cinema
0:01:30 > 0:01:32here in the Uplands of Swansea.
0:01:33 > 0:01:35There's a bank on the same spot now,
0:01:35 > 0:01:38but Dylan immortalised the old cinema
0:01:38 > 0:01:42in one of his short stories as the flea pit picture house where
0:01:42 > 0:01:46he whooped for the scalping Indians and banged for the rustlers' guns.
0:01:47 > 0:01:51As he grew older, his tastes in film grew more sophisticated.
0:01:51 > 0:01:54And according to one Swansea friend from the period, the only time
0:01:54 > 0:01:56he ever saw Dylan really annoyed,
0:01:56 > 0:01:59was when somebody made a disparaging remark about Greta Garbo,
0:01:59 > 0:02:01one of his favourite actresses.
0:02:04 > 0:02:08At his home here in Cwmdonkin Drive, he began to fill notebooks
0:02:08 > 0:02:12with the poems that would catapult him to literary prominence.
0:02:12 > 0:02:14But one of the first things he ever published was
0:02:14 > 0:02:18an article in his school magazine in 1930 on the history of film.
0:02:20 > 0:02:25Aged only 15, he wrote a critical appraisal of cinema pioneer,
0:02:25 > 0:02:28DW Griffith, that showed a precocious familiarity with
0:02:28 > 0:02:31the techniques of film-making.
0:02:31 > 0:02:35"Griffith," he wrote, "introduced the now familiar tricks
0:02:35 > 0:02:38"of the close-up, the fade out and the cut back.
0:02:38 > 0:02:41"He realised the importance of motion-pictures,
0:02:41 > 0:02:43"not as freak exhibitions,
0:02:43 > 0:02:47"but as works of art produced through an entirely new medium."
0:02:47 > 0:02:50Small wonder then that the schoolboy who wrote these words,
0:02:50 > 0:02:53would himself, within a few years, be producing work
0:02:53 > 0:02:56within that new medium.
0:03:02 > 0:03:06Between 1941 and 1945, Dylan Thomas scripted
0:03:06 > 0:03:11or co-scripted at least 15 propaganda films for the Government.
0:03:11 > 0:03:14In these dominions, their children are brought up in freedom
0:03:14 > 0:03:15and for freedom.
0:03:15 > 0:03:18A generation taught to value the best of the old world...
0:03:18 > 0:03:21As Dylan strove to master this new medium,
0:03:21 > 0:03:25for a time, his creative powers had to be focused on
0:03:25 > 0:03:28giving voice not to his own ideas,
0:03:28 > 0:03:30but to those of the Government.
0:03:30 > 0:03:34The new nations of the Commonwealth, side by side at last with Russia,
0:03:34 > 0:03:39China and the USA, making a new nations of the world.
0:03:39 > 0:03:42United in a war to the death against the living death
0:03:42 > 0:03:43of slavery under fascism...
0:03:43 > 0:03:46But no-one at the beginning of the war would have expected
0:03:46 > 0:03:49Dylan Thomas to become involved in propaganda films.
0:03:49 > 0:03:53Dylan had a horror of killing, and he certainly didn't want to fight.
0:03:53 > 0:03:56But he was also equally dismissive of anybody who was
0:03:56 > 0:03:58involved in the war effort in less direct ways too.
0:04:01 > 0:04:05Every literate or semi-literate party-goer in London is
0:04:05 > 0:04:07stampeding the Ministry of Labour, willing to do
0:04:07 > 0:04:12anything from licking stamps and bums to writing recruiting literature,
0:04:12 > 0:04:16or broadcasting appeals for warm bodies to become cold.
0:04:16 > 0:04:20Principle prevents us, I hope, from propaganding.
0:04:20 > 0:04:23The fact that he could be so dismissive of propaganda
0:04:23 > 0:04:27and recruiting, and yet end up doing just that a couple of years later,
0:04:27 > 0:04:30implies a character somewhat at odds with himself.
0:04:34 > 0:04:37In order to begin to understand this contradiction,
0:04:37 > 0:04:39we need to look more closely at Dylan's politics.
0:04:41 > 0:04:43One major influence on his political outlook
0:04:43 > 0:04:46when he was growing up in Swansea in the 1930s,
0:04:46 > 0:04:51was his friendship with the communist sympathiser, Bert Trick.
0:04:51 > 0:04:53Dylan would often call at Bert's greengrocer shop
0:04:53 > 0:04:57here in Brynmill in Swansea, and in the flat above the shop
0:04:57 > 0:05:00they would plot the annihilation of the ruling classes,
0:05:00 > 0:05:04as he put it, over blancmange and jelly supplied by Bert's wife.
0:05:06 > 0:05:09Dylan described himself at the time as a socialist
0:05:09 > 0:05:11but an unconventional one.
0:05:11 > 0:05:13However, by the time of the outbreak of the war,
0:05:13 > 0:05:16his politics, if anything, were even harder to define.
0:05:17 > 0:05:22This is what he wrote to Bert Trick in September 1939.
0:05:22 > 0:05:25I don't know how you feel about all this,
0:05:25 > 0:05:29but I can't raise up any feeling about this war at all, and the demon
0:05:29 > 0:05:33Hitlerism can go up its own bottom. I refuse to help it with a bayonet.
0:05:35 > 0:05:42In May 1940, Dylan took his medical for the forces and was classed C3,
0:05:42 > 0:05:46the last category of men who would be called up for active duty,
0:05:46 > 0:05:50an outcome that would almost certainly have been a great relief to him.
0:05:50 > 0:05:53I've come to meet Professor John Goodby who has published
0:05:53 > 0:05:57numerous studies of Dylan Thomas, and I started by asking him
0:05:57 > 0:06:00whether or not Dylan could be described as a pacifist.
0:06:01 > 0:06:04I think he was and he wasn't, you know.
0:06:04 > 0:06:06It's this chameleon quality again.
0:06:06 > 0:06:08Constantine Fitzgibbon, his first biographer,
0:06:08 > 0:06:12said that he'd read the stories about Dylan Thomas, he'd heard all
0:06:12 > 0:06:17of the stories and they seemed to be stories told not of one man or even
0:06:17 > 0:06:21two men, but of six or eight, and I think that's very much to the point.
0:06:21 > 0:06:23Yes, he was a pacifist in certain ways.
0:06:23 > 0:06:28He was a pacifist in the '30s like a lot of socialists,
0:06:28 > 0:06:30they didn't want another war.
0:06:30 > 0:06:34There's a very strong Welsh tradition of anti-Imperialist pacifism as well,
0:06:34 > 0:06:36a very honourable and strong tradition of that
0:06:36 > 0:06:38and he was part of that.
0:06:38 > 0:06:40What would the alternatives have been for Dylan
0:06:40 > 0:06:41at the beginning of the war?
0:06:41 > 0:06:44The alternatives to writing film scripts would have been
0:06:44 > 0:06:47working in a munitions factory,
0:06:47 > 0:06:51having some kind of job with the military but which didn't involve
0:06:51 > 0:06:56active combat, so on a defence battery or something like that.
0:06:56 > 0:06:58He was very unwilling to work in a munitions factory,
0:06:58 > 0:07:02he saw that as indirectly killing people, turning a cog,
0:07:02 > 0:07:04turning a screw.
0:07:04 > 0:07:08"Oh, no, I'd rather be a poet any day and drink beer, deary me."
0:07:08 > 0:07:13But I think that within the remit of writing film scripts in the war,
0:07:13 > 0:07:14was something else,
0:07:14 > 0:07:19it wasn't just about propaganda for joining the forces.
0:07:19 > 0:07:22There was also an element of social reconstruction,
0:07:22 > 0:07:27and I think this was part of maybe what drew Dylan Thomas in.
0:07:31 > 0:07:33The message of many of these films was
0:07:33 > 0:07:35that there could be no return to the 1930s.
0:07:35 > 0:07:39Lads shouldn't have to play in a place like this.
0:07:39 > 0:07:42Kids shouldn't have to grow up in soot and muck.
0:07:43 > 0:07:45It isn't right!
0:07:45 > 0:07:48In 1942 the government's Beveridge Report was a bestseller,
0:07:48 > 0:07:52with over 600,000 copies sold.
0:07:52 > 0:07:54It set out a blueprint for the establishment
0:07:54 > 0:07:56of a post-war welfare state.
0:07:56 > 0:07:58Ah, now this is much better!
0:07:58 > 0:08:02Aye. These flats are better than 'ouses that was 'ere.
0:08:02 > 0:08:04Like most films that Dylan Thomas wrote during the war,
0:08:04 > 0:08:08this was reviewed in the industry's own monthly magazine,
0:08:08 > 0:08:10Documentary News Letter.
0:08:10 > 0:08:13Propaganda value, very good for the home front,
0:08:13 > 0:08:16particularly since the film makes it clear that plans for the future
0:08:16 > 0:08:19are bound up with the war effort,
0:08:19 > 0:08:22which we are all engaged in, here and now.
0:08:22 > 0:08:25But who's going to make them come true?
0:08:25 > 0:08:28They are!
0:08:28 > 0:08:33You are! You're only folk that can make these plans come true.
0:08:33 > 0:08:36Remember, it's your town.
0:08:38 > 0:08:42If you think about it, Beveridge's plan talks about
0:08:42 > 0:08:47looking after the citizen from the cradle to the grave.
0:08:47 > 0:08:50Now Dylan Thomas's poetry is about first and last things.
0:08:50 > 0:08:54It's about birth, it's about genesis and it's about death, you know,
0:08:54 > 0:08:56and in a weird way,
0:08:56 > 0:09:00the coordinates of his poetry line up in the early '40s
0:09:00 > 0:09:04with the new coordinates of the state in the Beveridge Report.
0:09:04 > 0:09:08And I think this, perhaps, is something that drew him in as well.
0:09:16 > 0:09:19Dylan Thomas's first employers in the world of film-making were
0:09:19 > 0:09:21Strand Films, at the time, one of the biggest
0:09:21 > 0:09:25producers of documentary films in Britain.
0:09:25 > 0:09:28During the War, their offices were in this building here in Soho,
0:09:28 > 0:09:31where they worked under contract to the Ministry of Information
0:09:31 > 0:09:34producing as many as 70 films each year.
0:09:34 > 0:09:39Despite Dylan's initial reservations about "propaganding", as he put it,
0:09:39 > 0:09:42working for Strand Films seemed to agree with him.
0:09:42 > 0:09:45He even referred to it sometimes as his war work.
0:09:46 > 0:09:49This is how he described the office here at No 1 Golden Square
0:09:49 > 0:09:52in a letter to a friend.
0:09:52 > 0:09:54I write to you in a ringing, clinging office
0:09:54 > 0:09:58with repressed women all around punishing typewriters,
0:09:58 > 0:10:01and queers in striped suits talking about cinema and,
0:10:01 > 0:10:05just at this very moment, a man with a bloodhound's voice
0:10:05 > 0:10:09and his cheeks, I'm sure, full of Mars Bars, rehearsing out loud
0:10:09 > 0:10:12a radio talk on India and the Documentary Movement.
0:10:13 > 0:10:17Despite the slightly sarcastic tone of that letter,
0:10:17 > 0:10:20Dylan did enjoy his time at Strand Films.
0:10:20 > 0:10:24He was on a salary of £8 a week, rising later to £10 a week.
0:10:24 > 0:10:27And it was a convivial working environment -
0:10:27 > 0:10:30production meetings were often informal affairs
0:10:30 > 0:10:32held in the back bar of the Cafe Royal
0:10:32 > 0:10:34or other nearby watering holes.
0:10:34 > 0:10:37But despite Dylan's reputation as something of a drinker,
0:10:37 > 0:10:40many of his colleagues from this time
0:10:40 > 0:10:42have attested to his professionalism as a writer.
0:10:42 > 0:10:44The fact of the matter is
0:10:44 > 0:10:46he simply wouldn't have kept his job otherwise.
0:10:46 > 0:10:49You've now arrived on your practice war site.
0:10:49 > 0:10:51As you can see,
0:10:51 > 0:10:54conditions are not likely to be particularly comfortable...
0:10:54 > 0:10:59Despite its rather dull title, Balloon Site 568 was warmly received
0:10:59 > 0:11:02by the reviewers at the Documentary News Letter.
0:11:02 > 0:11:06After some weeks of training, the girls get familiar
0:11:06 > 0:11:08with their floppy elephantine charges.
0:11:08 > 0:11:12The weird flock of balloons going into bed makes a striking picture.
0:11:13 > 0:11:15That review can be seen online here
0:11:15 > 0:11:18and like every other review in the magazine
0:11:18 > 0:11:21it ends with an assessment of the film's propaganda value.
0:11:21 > 0:11:25"A job, which the film admits must at times be hard,
0:11:25 > 0:11:27"even depressing, is shown to be an inviting one.
0:11:27 > 0:11:31"The film should bring in recruits to the Service."
0:11:31 > 0:11:34But just how effective were films like this
0:11:34 > 0:11:36within the wider war effort?
0:11:37 > 0:11:40To answer that question, I'm meeting up with Dr Jamie Medhurst
0:11:40 > 0:11:42of Aberystwyth University,
0:11:42 > 0:11:45who's an expert on the documentary films of this period.
0:11:45 > 0:11:49The films were seen as an important part of the war effort.
0:11:49 > 0:11:53The Ministry of Information recognised the importance of film.
0:11:53 > 0:11:57I think it goes back to the post-World War One period,
0:11:57 > 0:12:00certainly in the late '20s, 1930s, with the growth of the
0:12:00 > 0:12:04British Documentary Movement under the leadership of John Grierson
0:12:04 > 0:12:08who himself saw the cinema as a kind of pulpit to preach to the masses.
0:12:08 > 0:12:13And I think this then flows into the war period and the recognition
0:12:13 > 0:12:16that film can have an impact and can change people's minds.
0:12:16 > 0:12:19And what kind of films were they making?
0:12:19 > 0:12:22All kinds of films, to be honest. I think the range is quite extensive
0:12:22 > 0:12:25and if you think of it in terms of a spectrum, then on one end
0:12:25 > 0:12:27you have the films that were training...
0:12:27 > 0:12:30essentially training films for prospective soldiers.
0:12:30 > 0:12:33You have films that provided information,
0:12:33 > 0:12:35factual information on the war effort.
0:12:35 > 0:12:37Films that were a little bit more subtle
0:12:37 > 0:12:40in terms of changing people's minds -
0:12:40 > 0:12:43I don't know whether soft propaganda is the phrase here -
0:12:43 > 0:12:46through to the harder end of propaganda,
0:12:46 > 0:12:49which is perhaps more obvious, more direct...
0:12:49 > 0:12:51- Attacking the enemy? - Attacking the enemy,
0:12:51 > 0:12:54and one of those films is Dylan Thomas's These Are The Men.
0:12:54 > 0:12:56DRUM ROLL SOUNDS
0:13:01 > 0:13:03These are the men
0:13:03 > 0:13:05These are to blame...
0:13:07 > 0:13:09One of the cleverest scripts that Dylan Thomas wrote
0:13:09 > 0:13:11was for this film,
0:13:11 > 0:13:14based on an imaginative re-use of Nazi propaganda.
0:13:15 > 0:13:20Dylan took Leni Riefenstahl's famous 1934 film of a Nuremberg rally,
0:13:20 > 0:13:23and superimposed satirical new "translations" in English,
0:13:23 > 0:13:26in which Hitler and other Nazi leaders
0:13:26 > 0:13:29apparently confessed their sins.
0:13:30 > 0:13:32VOICEOVER: I was born of poor parents.
0:13:32 > 0:13:37I grew into a discontented and neurotic child. My lungs were bad.
0:13:37 > 0:13:40My mother spoilt me and secured my exemption from military service.
0:13:40 > 0:13:43Consider my triumphant path to power!
0:13:46 > 0:13:49Despite its sophisticated use of ridicule,
0:13:49 > 0:13:52the film These Are The Men is still quite a direct piece of propaganda,
0:13:52 > 0:13:55and as such, it's fairly untypical of the kind of thing
0:13:55 > 0:13:59that the Ministry of Information was trying to do during the Second World War.
0:14:03 > 0:14:05During the First World War,
0:14:05 > 0:14:08propaganda had been far more blunt and jingoistic.
0:14:08 > 0:14:12By the 1940s, the authorities realised that the British people
0:14:12 > 0:14:14were too sophisticated and too sceptical
0:14:14 > 0:14:18to accept such crude demonisations of the enemy.
0:14:21 > 0:14:23Propaganda now refrained from stridency,
0:14:23 > 0:14:27opting instead for a more restrained and more sincere tone.
0:14:27 > 0:14:30Wartime propaganda films put far more emphasis on what was being
0:14:30 > 0:14:34fought for rather than what was being fought against.
0:14:34 > 0:14:37And so, in 1942 Dylan Thomas found himself
0:14:37 > 0:14:39writing about a very familiar subject.
0:14:45 > 0:14:48Morning is breaking over Wales at war
0:14:49 > 0:14:52Not the long and faraway wild war
0:14:52 > 0:14:55Of the mountain Welshmen and the English kings
0:14:55 > 0:14:57But the terrible near war of England and Wales
0:14:57 > 0:15:00And her brothers and sisters all over the Earth...
0:15:00 > 0:15:04This was a film commissioned to complement similar pieces
0:15:04 > 0:15:07that had featured Scotland and Northern Ireland.
0:15:07 > 0:15:10According to the review in Documentary News Letter...
0:15:10 > 0:15:13The main points are made by an imaginative use of music
0:15:13 > 0:15:18and commentary the latter an impressive effort by Dylan Thomas,
0:15:18 > 0:15:22with its simple verses about the slump and its aftermath.
0:15:22 > 0:15:26Dragging through the squalor with their hearts like lead
0:15:26 > 0:15:29Staring at the hunger and the shut pit head...
0:15:31 > 0:15:34If the film critics were impressed with this simplicity
0:15:34 > 0:15:38in Dylan Thomas's verse commentary, to what extent did this reflect
0:15:38 > 0:15:40a new departure in his writing?
0:15:40 > 0:15:43It would be simplistic to say, as some people have,
0:15:43 > 0:15:47that he learned to write simpler because he had to write the films.
0:15:47 > 0:15:50Good writers want to make readers work.
0:15:50 > 0:15:53Good writers are interested in what they want to say that's original.
0:15:53 > 0:15:56They're not interested in dumbing things down
0:15:56 > 0:15:58to the level of journalism.
0:15:58 > 0:16:04So, I think that the films helped Dylan
0:16:04 > 0:16:08to explore a new lyrical vein and they helped him to devise
0:16:08 > 0:16:12new structures for spreading meaning in deceptively simple forms.
0:16:13 > 0:16:15Nothing in their pockets
0:16:15 > 0:16:18Nothing home to eat
0:16:18 > 0:16:22Lagging from the slag heap to the pinched, packed street...
0:16:22 > 0:16:25According to one critic, "The film should please the Welsh
0:16:25 > 0:16:28"and interest the English and the Scots."
0:16:28 > 0:16:30However, it didn't please the censors,
0:16:30 > 0:16:32with its pointed references to unemployment
0:16:32 > 0:16:34and at one point there was talk of banning it even,
0:16:34 > 0:16:36until it was eventually cleared for exhibition
0:16:36 > 0:16:39by the Ministry of Information here in London.
0:16:42 > 0:16:45Throughout the war, there was a certain amount of tension
0:16:45 > 0:16:48between artist and bureaucrat.
0:16:48 > 0:16:50Documentary makers claimed there was too much scrutiny,
0:16:50 > 0:16:52with more and more people having to be consulted
0:16:52 > 0:16:56before scripts could be agreed or rough-cuts approved.
0:16:56 > 0:16:58Get this threaded up, will you?
0:16:58 > 0:17:00They were heavily censored.
0:17:00 > 0:17:02This is wartime, we have a Ministry of Information
0:17:02 > 0:17:06working on part of the Government to ensure that the correct message,
0:17:06 > 0:17:09the same message, was going out across in all media,
0:17:09 > 0:17:14in newspapers, in radio and of course in film.
0:17:14 > 0:17:18So tell us the convoluted method by which
0:17:18 > 0:17:23Wales Green Mountain Black Mountain eventually passed for exhibition.
0:17:23 > 0:17:26The British Council was unhappy with Green Mountain Black Mountain
0:17:26 > 0:17:30because of the images of unemployment, particularly,
0:17:30 > 0:17:33and referred it to the Wales Office of the Ministry of Information,
0:17:33 > 0:17:36who took exception to the film on different grounds,
0:17:36 > 0:17:39because they weren't convinced that Dylan Thomas was the right person
0:17:39 > 0:17:41to be involved with this film.
0:17:41 > 0:17:44He wasn't "a proper Welshman" as he lived in London.
0:17:44 > 0:17:47This was referred then to the Ministry of Information in London
0:17:47 > 0:17:49who took a different view and decided that, no,
0:17:49 > 0:17:52Dylan Thomas was the right man and the film was passed.
0:17:52 > 0:17:55But it's an interesting example, I think, of that censorship process,
0:17:55 > 0:17:59of that interference, you could argue, from higher up the chain.
0:18:03 > 0:18:07Dylan had lived in London for several short periods of his life
0:18:07 > 0:18:10before he began work with Strand Films.
0:18:10 > 0:18:13He met his wife in this pub in 1936.
0:18:13 > 0:18:17He took part in the International Surrealist Exhibition the same year
0:18:17 > 0:18:21and there's a surreal flavour to his critical description
0:18:21 > 0:18:24of the English capital to his friend, Vernon Watkins.
0:18:25 > 0:18:30"I've just come back from London, city of the restless dead.
0:18:30 > 0:18:33"It really is an insane city and filled me with terror.
0:18:33 > 0:18:37"Every pavement drills through your soles to your scalp,
0:18:37 > 0:18:39"and out pops a lamp-post covered with hair.
0:18:39 > 0:18:43"I'm not going to London again for years, its intelligentsia
0:18:43 > 0:18:46"is so hurried in the head that nothing stays there.
0:18:46 > 0:18:48"Its glamour smells of goat.
0:18:48 > 0:18:51"There's no difference between good and bad."
0:18:53 > 0:18:56But in his first years with Strand Films
0:18:56 > 0:18:59he had to spend most of his time here in London
0:18:59 > 0:19:02and in 1943, the Thomases came to live
0:19:02 > 0:19:04in an artists' studio, long since demolished,
0:19:04 > 0:19:07here on Manresa Road in Chelsea.
0:19:08 > 0:19:11It wasn't very comfortable at the best of times,
0:19:11 > 0:19:13but after the birth of their second child,
0:19:13 > 0:19:16Caitlin and the children spent more and more time
0:19:16 > 0:19:19with friends and relatives outside London.
0:19:19 > 0:19:22Another major factor of course was the risk of air raids.
0:19:24 > 0:19:26When Dylan came to meet Donald Taylor,
0:19:26 > 0:19:28his prospective employer at Strand Films,
0:19:28 > 0:19:33for the first time in 1940, he stayed here in Hammersmith.
0:19:33 > 0:19:35Unfortunately his visit coincided
0:19:35 > 0:19:37with the first night of the London Blitz.
0:19:37 > 0:19:39And this is how his host,
0:19:39 > 0:19:43Theodora Fitzgibbon, described the scene that evening.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46"The planes flew up the Thames,
0:19:46 > 0:19:49"which was lit up like a horrifying pantomime,
0:19:49 > 0:19:52"dropping their deadly cargo indiscriminately."
0:19:53 > 0:19:56AIR RAID SIREN SOUNDS
0:19:57 > 0:19:59As he spent more time in London
0:19:59 > 0:20:01and experienced the effects of the bombing,
0:20:01 > 0:20:04the Blitz gripped his imagination,
0:20:04 > 0:20:07as he confided to his friend Vernon Watkins.
0:20:09 > 0:20:11The Hyde Park guns were booming.
0:20:11 > 0:20:14Guns on the top of Selfridges.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17A plane brought down in the Tottenham Court Road.
0:20:17 > 0:20:19White-faced taxis still trembling through the streets,
0:20:19 > 0:20:22and buses going, and even people being shaved.
0:20:24 > 0:20:26Are you frightened these nights?
0:20:27 > 0:20:30When I wake up out of burning birdman dreams
0:20:30 > 0:20:34and hear the sound of bombs and gunfire only a little way away,
0:20:34 > 0:20:36I'm so relieved I could laugh or cry.
0:20:39 > 0:20:44Dylan used the same idea in this script for his film, Our Country.
0:20:44 > 0:20:46Oh, walking through the streets in the morning
0:20:46 > 0:20:48Would nearly make you want to sing
0:20:48 > 0:20:51Though there were dead people under the stones
0:20:51 > 0:20:53Or people not dead
0:20:53 > 0:20:56Sing, because the world was alive again in the daytime
0:20:56 > 0:21:00And I was alive and you were alive.
0:21:02 > 0:21:06Air raids, and their terrible consequences,
0:21:06 > 0:21:08were a theme to which he returned
0:21:08 > 0:21:12time and time again in his own poetry too.
0:21:12 > 0:21:14When the morning was waking over the war
0:21:14 > 0:21:17He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died
0:21:17 > 0:21:20The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide
0:21:20 > 0:21:25He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone
0:21:25 > 0:21:28And the funeral grains of the slaughtered floor...
0:21:33 > 0:21:37At the beginning of 1944, Donald Taylor formed a new company,
0:21:37 > 0:21:41Gryphon Films, and he took Dylan on to work for him there too.
0:21:41 > 0:21:45Dylan was increasingly asked to work on feature-length film scripts
0:21:45 > 0:21:48about Robert Burns, about the Blasket Islands,
0:21:48 > 0:21:51about the 19th-century Edinburgh murderers, Burke and Hare.
0:21:51 > 0:21:54Although none of these projects went into production during Dylan's
0:21:54 > 0:21:58lifetime, he really enjoyed this work and we detect occasional
0:21:58 > 0:22:02notes of frustration creeping into his correspondence from this period
0:22:02 > 0:22:05because he still had to work on the propaganda films too.
0:22:05 > 0:22:09There is nothing but glibly naive insincerity
0:22:09 > 0:22:12in this huge, tin-roofed box of tricks.
0:22:12 > 0:22:16I do not care a bugger about the Problems of Wartime Transport.
0:22:20 > 0:22:23But the propaganda films still had to be made
0:22:23 > 0:22:28and sometimes the end product was just as rewarding, artistically,
0:22:28 > 0:22:30as working on feature film scripts.
0:22:32 > 0:22:35One of the highlights of his creative relationship
0:22:35 > 0:22:38with Donald Taylor was the documentary Our Country.
0:22:38 > 0:22:42And once again, Dylan turned to poetry for the commentary.
0:22:42 > 0:22:44To begin with, a city
0:22:44 > 0:22:47A fair, grey day
0:22:47 > 0:22:50A day as lively and noisy as a close gossip of sparrows
0:22:50 > 0:22:54As terribly impersonal as a sea cabin full of machines
0:22:54 > 0:22:57When morning is driving down from the roofs of buildings
0:22:57 > 0:23:00Into stone labyrinths and traffic webs
0:23:00 > 0:23:03When each man is alone forever in the midst of the masses of men
0:23:03 > 0:23:06And all the separate movements of the morning crowds
0:23:06 > 0:23:09Are lost together in the heartbeats of the clocks...
0:23:12 > 0:23:14The film was made in 1944
0:23:14 > 0:23:18and premiered here at the Empire, Leicester Square.
0:23:18 > 0:23:20According to the Spectator, it was,
0:23:20 > 0:23:23"The most exciting and provocative film for many a long day."
0:23:23 > 0:23:25According to the Documentary News Letter it was,
0:23:25 > 0:23:30"The sole and successful experimental film of the war period.
0:23:30 > 0:23:33"It says important things in a new way."
0:23:35 > 0:23:39The film consists of a series of episodes bound together
0:23:39 > 0:23:43by a merchant seaman on leave who wanders around "Our Country".
0:23:43 > 0:23:47In Wales he chances upon a language lesson in school.
0:23:47 > 0:23:50I wonder if you can say "Good morning, sailor" in Welsh.
0:23:50 > 0:23:52CHILDREN: Bore da, forwr.
0:23:52 > 0:23:57Dylan's correspondence with Donald Taylor whilst they were working
0:23:57 > 0:24:01on this film reveals how willing he was to be a team player.
0:24:01 > 0:24:04Despite his standing as one of Britain's leading poets,
0:24:04 > 0:24:07he was not precious about his verse at all.
0:24:09 > 0:24:10Dear Donald,
0:24:10 > 0:24:13the cuts you made in the verse-commentary,
0:24:13 > 0:24:15which from the point of view of the film were essential,
0:24:15 > 0:24:20did destroy some of the continuity of the verse, as verse.
0:24:20 > 0:24:24Written down, the verse looks a little chaotic -
0:24:24 > 0:24:25as it's bound to be.
0:24:25 > 0:24:27Heard spoken to a beautiful picture,
0:24:27 > 0:24:31the words gain a sense and authority which the printed word denies them.
0:24:31 > 0:24:34Going out, out over the racing rails
0:24:34 > 0:24:36And the grumble of London leaving thunder
0:24:36 > 0:24:38Over the maze track of metal through a wink and a spin
0:24:38 > 0:24:40Of towns and signals and fields
0:24:40 > 0:24:43Out to the edges of the explosive, the moon-moved
0:24:43 > 0:24:46Man-indifferent capsizing sea...
0:24:48 > 0:24:51But although Dylan was happy enough to bow creatively
0:24:51 > 0:24:54to Donald Taylor's greater experience in the world of film,
0:24:54 > 0:24:56continuing to write his own poems
0:24:56 > 0:24:59was just as important to him as ever.
0:24:59 > 0:25:02In November 1944 he complained to a literary friend that...
0:25:02 > 0:25:05"I'm writing film scripts for a living,
0:25:05 > 0:25:09"and the time left over from that I try to spend on poems.
0:25:09 > 0:25:12A miserable arrangement, which should be reversed."
0:25:13 > 0:25:16And yet, during the war years, whilst scripting,
0:25:16 > 0:25:18Dylan was also building up the material
0:25:18 > 0:25:21for his next collection of poems, Deaths And Entrances -
0:25:21 > 0:25:24widely considered to be one of his finest.
0:25:24 > 0:25:29So was scripting as detrimental to his poetic output as he thought?
0:25:30 > 0:25:34Caitlin Thomas always thought that Dylan was wasting his talent
0:25:34 > 0:25:37on this rubbish and that there were
0:25:37 > 0:25:39a lot of good poems gone west because of that.
0:25:39 > 0:25:42I think that's probably true up to a point
0:25:42 > 0:25:45but I think that writers sometimes do things
0:25:45 > 0:25:47without even knowing why they're doing them,
0:25:47 > 0:25:52and it advances their art or it takes them to a different place.
0:25:52 > 0:25:54For three years he doesn't seem to have produced
0:25:54 > 0:25:56much in the way of poetry at all,
0:25:56 > 0:25:58or he was working on the scripts as far as we can see.
0:25:58 > 0:26:02- Was he happier being told what to write?- Maybe, maybe.
0:26:03 > 0:26:05He did say in one letter that a writer cannot be a writer
0:26:05 > 0:26:0724 hours of the day.
0:26:07 > 0:26:10He has to be a normal human being as well.
0:26:10 > 0:26:12And he seems never to have been happier
0:26:12 > 0:26:15than when he was having a drink, being convivial,
0:26:15 > 0:26:17or lying in a warm bath eating dolly mixtures
0:26:17 > 0:26:19and reading the latest Agatha Christie.
0:26:19 > 0:26:23So there are other aspects to his life
0:26:23 > 0:26:27than sitting down and simply writing.
0:26:27 > 0:26:30And perhaps it's dangerous for us to think of film-writing
0:26:30 > 0:26:34and poetry as inhabiting opposite ends of the spectrum of writing?
0:26:34 > 0:26:38It is dangerous to see them as opposed.
0:26:38 > 0:26:40One of the things that's unique about Dylan Thomas -
0:26:40 > 0:26:44and I think you could say utterly unique, you know,
0:26:44 > 0:26:47the only poet I can think of who manages to do this -
0:26:47 > 0:26:52is that he was a success writing anthology popular poems
0:26:52 > 0:26:55and at writing high-modernist masterpieces,
0:26:55 > 0:27:00and that he also bridged the gap between poetry and popular culture.
0:27:00 > 0:27:04He loved popular culture. He was way ahead of his time.
0:27:04 > 0:27:08Most of early 20th century writing, modernism particularly,
0:27:08 > 0:27:11is set up in opposition to popular culture,
0:27:11 > 0:27:14which is seen as completely trashy and trivial.
0:27:15 > 0:27:18Dylan never really accepted that,
0:27:18 > 0:27:23and so working as a film script writer allowed him
0:27:23 > 0:27:25to leap across the gap, as it were.
0:27:27 > 0:27:30And a man-made journey still within the island gates
0:27:30 > 0:27:32Through valleys and troubles
0:27:32 > 0:27:35Over hills slag-black or grey as slumtown slates
0:27:35 > 0:27:39Or through fat lovely fields all lying green under their flower folds
0:27:39 > 0:27:42To where Wales waits...
0:27:43 > 0:27:47Dylan's talent for what he called descriptive visual writing -
0:27:47 > 0:27:50the famously idiosyncratic style that would later
0:27:50 > 0:27:52manifest itself in Under Milk Wood -
0:27:52 > 0:27:56certainly blossomed during his time at Strand.
0:27:56 > 0:27:59Meadow and chapel and huge bitten sea coast
0:27:59 > 0:28:01Hump-backed, iron-tracked, bricked-over, smoked-out
0:28:01 > 0:28:04Spread-eagled bundle of valleys
0:28:04 > 0:28:06The valley's voice...
0:28:08 > 0:28:11On the centenary of his birth, perhaps it's only fitting
0:28:11 > 0:28:14that Dylan Thomas's considerable poetic achievements
0:28:14 > 0:28:17should be the main focus of the celebrations.
0:28:17 > 0:28:19However, we should not ignore his work
0:28:19 > 0:28:22in the field of propaganda and film.
0:28:22 > 0:28:25It influenced his development as a poet, and perhaps we cannot
0:28:25 > 0:28:30fully appreciate his poetry without also acknowledging his love of film.