Britain Through a Lens: The Documentary Film Mob

GENTLE PIANO MUSIC

While children dance...

..tanks roll down the street.

A mother spring-cleans in the slums.

Fishermen cast their nets.

In the 1930s and 40s,

a small group of British artists and film-makers

were inspired by an extraordinary vision.

They believed they could change the country

with films about real life.

To fund their radical cinema, they made an unlikely alliance

with the government and big business.

This programme tells the story of that prolific relationship...

..and reveals how the British documentary was born.

WIND ROARS SOFTLY

WIND ROARS, STATIC ON SOUNDTRACK

AIRCRAFT ENGINES ROARING

Made in 1941, Listen To Britain is acknowledged

as an early masterpiece of the British documentary industry.

Very simply made, without voiceover telling you what to think,

it presents itself as authentic truth.

DANCE-HALL MUSIC

But Listen To Britain was a government propaganda film.

Its intent was to encourage the country to stick together

for the fight.

Somehow this remarkable film

defies a seemingly unsolvable paradox.

It's both beguiling wartime propaganda

and an honestly made documentary.

Listen To Britain is one of the works

of the British Documentary Movement.

They were a small band of young men and women filmmakers

who worked in the years just before and then during the Second World War.

They were full of contradictions, as one wit among them admitted.

A documentary director must be a gentleman,

a socialist...

..have a university education...

..a private income...

..his own car...

..a nasal voice,

and have made some sort of film.

A well developed nasal voice has been known to excuse the other requirements.

Except being a gentleman and a socialist, of course.

But perhaps the contradictions within the Documentary Movement

made them ideally suited to the challenge they faced

during the Second World War.

MALE-VOICE CHOIR SINGING "MEN OF HARLECH"

As the bombs rained down and the young men marched off to fight,

the documentarists kept their focus on the life of ordinary people.

But these films also carry a message.

They lift hearts.

THEY CHATTER

This was an art it had taken them years to learn.

For the documentary, the war was the end of a long, hard journey

which began almost 20 years earlier.

WIND WHISPERS

The founding father of the British Documentary Movement

was a young Scot called John Grierson.

He was a former political activist and street preacher

who wanted to use films to change Britain for the better.

I want to use the cinema as a pulpit.

In 1927, Grierson approached the government

seeking funds for one of his film sermons.

The civil servant who took this meeting, Stephen Tallents,

later told a BBC television reporter about it.

One morning in February 1927,

a young Scotsman named John Grierson came into my office.

I took to him at first sight. He poured out his ideas

with so much enthusiasm and so much conviction.

Today, all that remains of the West London office block

where Grierson met Tallents is Queen's Tower.

This once rose above the vast headquarters

of the Empire Marketing Board.

Known as the EMB, it had been created by the Tory government

to manage public relations for the British Empire.

The EMB's mission was to do more than sell Jamaican bananas

or Indian tea.

Tallents told Grierson the government had asked him

"to bring the empire alive".

Grierson replied that a documentary about everyday life

within the empire would do precisely that.

By the end of this meeting, John Grierson,

the former street preacher, had a strategically vital ally

deep inside the British Civil Service.

Through the Empire Marketing Board,

Stephen Tallents could apply to the government for the funds to make a documentary.

80 years ago, about a thousand boats landed herring

at the Great Yarmouth quayside.

This was where the empire got its breakfast kippers from.

Tallents believed a film about this profitable British export industry

was sure to appeal to the money men at the Treasury.

Also he knew that the man who would green-light the film,

financial secretary of the Treasury, was a herring nut

who'd been writing a book about the role of herring in British history.

In 1928, the Treasury assigned Tallents the money

to commission Grierson to make a documentary.

SEAGULLS CRY

A year later, Grierson delivered Drifters,

a feature-length silent documentary about the herring fishing business.

It shows real people in their everyday lives.

Unlike other films of the 1920s, there is no handsome hero,

no love story, and no thrilling plot.

Throughout its 80 long minutes,

nothing out of the ordinary happens.

For impact, Grierson just filmed real fishermen on real boats,

at one point lashing his camera to the wheelhouse roof

to film the boat's prow crashing into the surf.

CINEMA ORGAN MUSIC

The government put Drifters on general release.

In an age where the cinema never showed reality,

it was a sensation.

INSPIRING ORGAN MUSIC

One critic described the film as...

..a masterpiece of simple sincerity and sterling humanity.

Drifters was a PR coup for an important British export industry.

It's now regarded as the first film of the British Documentary Movement.

Following the success of Drifters,

in 1930 the Empire Marketing Board was given a new sub-department,

number 45.

It was called the EMB Film Unit.

Its brief from the government was to produce more documentaries

about the dynamic industries of Britain and her empire.

John Grierson became a civil servant.

He was now the boss of his own government sub-department,

and he set about building a documentary film industry here.

He put an ad on the front page of the Times newspaper.

During 1931,

the EMB Film Unit filled up with would-be documentarists.

They were all young and keen,

and knew next to nothing about film.

Basil Wright had made a couple of self-financed shorts,

and wanted to work on a larger canvas.

Edgar Anstey was a scientist looking for a creative outlet.

Arthur Elton was an heir to a baronet,

and had his own butler.

Women also joined,

such as Grierson's schoolteacher sister Ruby.

Stuart Legg had just left Cambridge University

when he sat at Grierson's knee.

Grierson presided over a school.

He was doing something new. We all were.

We were a school,

a body of men.

By the end of 1931,

in a sub-department of the Empire Marketing Board

was assembled the founding members of the British Documentary Movement,

although they didn't know it yet.

Only in his early 30s himself,

Grierson was about ten years older than his recruits,

who looked up to him like disciples to a prophet.

They talked about his natural charisma,

his mesmeric eyes.

Grierson told the would-be directors not to regard the film unit

as a factory for churning out documentaries about the empire,

nor were they to waste taxpayers' money

experimenting in a new cinema aesthetic.

Stuart Legg had one very odd conversation with Grierson.

Legg, are you interested in films?

Yes.

Well, forget about that, because that's not the point!

Grierson told recruits to the film unit

they'd been specially chosen to develop a form of the documentary

that would change the world...

..as one of them, Edgar Anstey, later recalled.

Grierson tended to choose people...

..who had a social awareness,

er, and who wanted to do something

about helping build our society.

He saw the documentary film

as an instrument

for the analysis and further development of society.

This pub in London's West End was the film unit's favourite local.

Attendance here was almost compulsory.

Over beers and whiskies, the former street preacher explained in detail

the social purpose that inspired him.

Grierson believed the documentary would help unify the country.

He was concerned that Britain had taken a wrong turn.

It was divided between rich and poor,

and the working class were held in contempt

by all other social classes.

Documentaries would build respect between the classes

by revealing how much different people relied on each other,

especially on the hard labour of the working class.

Documentary outlines the patterns of interdependency

more distinctively than any other medium whatsoever.

Grierson believed that Britain genuinely was interdependent,

and people needed to be made aware of it.

THEY SHOUT AND LAUGH

He told his disciples that, to achieve this social purpose,

all a documentary had to do was reveal the truth

about British life.

The high ideals that motivated the Documentary Movement

were of little interest to government.

Britain was in the grip of the Great Depression

at the start of the 1930s.

Following a worldwide stock-market crash,

British exports had fallen by half. Factories were closing.

The government's first major direction to the film unit

was to produce a PR film

celebrating the glories of British industry.

INSPIRING MUSIC

Industrial Britain, made in 1931,

was a crucial breakthrough for the Movement.

It pioneered a form of the documentary

that eloquently served their social purpose.

It finds an epic beauty in the smoke of industry.

These images are set to stirring music.

And, a documentary first,

there is voiceover commentary...

Black countries of belching furnaces and humming machinery...

..well spoken by an actor with appropriate gravitas.

Ask anybody in the glass industry,

and they will tell you, "This is Bill Forsyth,

the man who fills the glory hole up in Smethwick."

He works a trade as old as the Pyramids.

STIRRING MUSIC

Their methods have not changed much either.

The Movement's message is unmistakeable

in Industrial Britain.

It turns ordinary working men into screen heroes.

Sam Hustleby is called a chairman in the glass world.

He is the senior craftsman.

His three helpers are called the servitor, the foot-blower

and the taker-in, and great dignity is still attached

to each degree of seniority.

Harry Watt joined the EMB Film Unit

soon after they completed Industrial Britain.

We were putting the British working man,

the backbone of the country, onto the screen.

Before that, he was the comic relief in these ghastly British films.

You see? Ghastly films!

They always started with the butler and the maid,

and then the funny gardener or a funny taxi driver.

We knocked all that down.

Although only 20 minutes long,

Industrial Britain was picked up by distributors,

who then showed films in packages and multiple bills.

It was given a nationwide release,

so British cinema audiences could now see

how the country relied on the hard labour of the working class.

One review said it was...

..beautiful, and certainly expressive.

It's only spoilt by the voiceover commentary.

The government also had reason to be pleased.

Its message was getting out too,

promoting the business of Great Britain plc.

In the years following Industrial Britain,

the economic crisis deepened.

Unemployment reached 30 percent in some parts of the country.

There were wage cuts and strikes.

The government wanted its film unit to make more documentaries

publicising the glories of British industry -

but there could be no reference to the economic crisis.

Grierson didn't want to talk about unemployment and strikes anyway.

His command to his directors was...

Don't accentuate the negative.

Grierson told his disciples

the Documentary Movement would help the country get back on its feet

by presenting Britons as involved in a great communal effort

of industry.

The uplifting films the government wanted from the film unit

were just what the Documentary Movement was eager to make.

Between 1931 and '33,

the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit made over a hundred films.

Nearly all were produced by the energetic Grierson.

They were directed by his disciples...

..like Basil Wright. He later spoke about working for Grierson.

I suppose everybody has their own recollections

of working with him, or for him.

He was a very, very hard taskmaster, there's no question of that,

and one had to get used to doing without sleep

and other unnecessary things.

The documentarists created many new working-class heroes.

Potters,

shepherds...

and fishermen were all brought to the screen,

and with their consistently optimistic outlook,

these documentaries were more good publicity

for the EMB and the British government.

But in September 1933, it suddenly ended.

The government introduced massive cuts,

and the Empire Marketing Board, in which the film unit was based,

was closed down.

At the height of its work for the Commonwealth,

the EMB was - well, butchered.

The documentarists had done nothing wrong.

But with the entire Empire Marketing Board gone,

the film unit was doomed too.

The unlikely saviour of the Movement was a Conservative politician.

Sir Kingsley Wood sat in the Cabinet as Postmaster General.

His brief was to manage all the mail, phone and telecommunications in Britain,

which the government had bundled up into a single nationalised company,

the General Post Office, or GPO.

Wood snapped up the now homeless film unit.

He set them to work on films promoting the activities of his government department...

..like encouraging people to buy telephones...

These thieves have been apprehended

by the judicious use of the Post Office telephone!

One of these.

..or celebrating a new stamp design.

You see that your design will have to be six times the size

of the finished stamp each way.

Thank you.

Are there any particular conditions in the designing of the stamp?

Yes. You must keep to the head of the king

which appears on present stamps.

-Otherwise I have a free hand?

-Absolutely.

The GPO Film Unit was given its own offices,

here at 21 Soho Square.

In their smart new headquarters, Grierson reminded his disciples

of the social purpose that had first inspired the documentary.

It remained fundamental, even though they were now making films

for the Post Office.

Can we imagine a world without letters?

Does anyone appreciate the postman? We take him for granted,

like the milkman, the engine driver, coalminer, the lot of them.

We must acknowledge them, and pay respect and gratitude to one another.

This is what documentary is all about.

Like a parasite,

the Movement was burrowing its way inside a new government department.

In 1935, the GPO gave the film unit its first significant commission.

It would be a celebration of the postal special

that delivered mail along the railway line

between London and Glasgow.

TRAIN WHISTLE BLARES

The film was called Night Mail.

Released in 1936, it's a landmark in the history of the documentary.

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,

Bringing the cheque and the postal order,

Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,

The shop at the corner and the girl next door.

Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb,

The gradient's against her but she's on time.

Night Mail's splendid soundtrack, which still enthrals today,

was mostly the work of two recent recruits

to the GPO Film Unit.

The poem was written by a scruffy assistant director

called WH Auden,

and set to music by the film unit's in-house composer,

Benjamin Britten.

These two titans of 20th-century art left the GPO soon after Night Mail,

but thanks to their contribution,

it's now one of the best-known works of the film unit.

Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder

Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,

Snorting noisily as she passes

Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,

Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.

Sheepdogs cannot turn her course,

They slumber on with paws across.

In the farm she passes no-one wakes,

But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

DRAMATIC MUSIC

Night Mail also throbs with the social purpose

of the Movement.

The railways were the information superhighways of Britain in the '30s.

In Night Mail, the documentarists portrayed the hardworking posties

as the men who operated Britain's high-tech communications network.

It was directed by Harry Watt.

He was an ambitious young filmmaker.

-Is this the mail train, mate?

-It is, yes.

In 1983, the BBC invited Watt and cameraman Chick Fowle

on a train journey along the route north.

THEY LAUGH

WHISTLE BLOWS

You must remember, in the GPO Film Unit, that, you know,

we weren't long-haired people going around

saying, "Oh, I think I might make a film about something."

We were taken into Grierson's office and stood at attention,

and he called you Watt. He didn't call you Harry.

"Watt, you're going to make a film about a train."

-And you said, "Yes, Mr Grierson." Isn't that right?

-Exactly right.

-All right now?

-No, no.

You want two bridges and 45 beats.

Night Mail has a gripping sense of being there

as the action takes place on the postal special.

One...

One, two...

HE COUNTS SILENTLY TO BEAT OF TRAIN ENGINE

Night Mail's realism was an extraordinary achievement.

In the 1930s, to film a scene like this

aboard a fast-moving train required ingenuity and nerve.

-TRAIN WHISTLE BLARES

-Like that!

OK.

-Yeah.

-I held your legs, and I was more frightened than you were!

-I was not scared at all.

-You weren't scared?

-No.

-Because you were doing a job.

-That's right.

Yes. But you were right out to your waist.

Stick the camera up now.

Now!

If that part came through, I was lost.

That was the end of that.

Watt threw everything at Night Mail,

but this film is not always quite what it seems.

For months before shooting began,

one of Watt's colleagues, Basil Wright,

had travelled up and down on the postal special

making detailed notes, as he later explained.

I don't know how many times I went up and down on that train.

It became my second home.

From the scraps of dialogue that he'd noted down,

Wright wrote a script.

The whole object of the operation

was that I should, er, be there

and make sure that, er,

anything which was said

by the workers on the travelling post office,

er, was accurate,

and wasn't messed about with.

The central scene of Night Mail,

inside the travelling sorting office, was entirely scripted.

-Bill, first division coming over.

-And again, Bill.

-Second division!

It wasn't even shot on board the train,

but in a studio in South London...

..where there was room to park the GPO's sound-recording apparatus,

which filled a large truck.

Inside the studio was a set that replicated

the interior of the postal special.

This is exactly the same floor, the real old floor,

that we built our sets on. It's quite extraordinary.

You can see the marks, the holes in the floor,

where the sets were built.

The sorting-office set was staffed with real posties.

They performed the script written from their own words.

-Anybody know Dalgarret?

-What?

-Dalgarret.

-Not on this division.

Thanks to their inventiveness, the GPO film unit

had taken the documentary into rich new territory.

Up till now, ordinary life had only been seen.

Now it could be heard too.

-Well, what's the trouble?

-Badly addressed.

-Dalgarret? It's in the files.

-Thanks.

Night Mail was put on general release in 1936.

One critic called it...

..more exciting than any confected drama.

It was shown in over 600 cinemas across Britain.

This was excellent PR for the GPO.

But the documentarists had the last word.

The film ends with a powerful reminder

of the critical role of the postman in British lives.

It was written by Auden, and voiced by Grierson himself.

Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,

Asleep in granite Aberdeen,

they continue their dreams

but shall wake soon and long for letters.

And none will hear the postman's knock

without a quickening of the heart.

For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

After Night Mail, John Grierson was at the peak of his powers

as leader of the documentary movement.

But some of his behaviour was considered inappropriate

for a civil servant.

It had come to the notice of the Government

that Grierson had been hiring out the film unit

to organisations outside the GPO.

Such as the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, Shell and the BBC.

There's no evidence Grierson used the film unit for personal profit.

He regarded non-GPO documentaries as further opportunities

to spread the message of the movement.

ON FILM: 'The 7½ hour shift begins.

'The miner works in a cramped position.

'Often he has scarcely room to swing his pick.'

Coalface of 1935 was a promotional film for the British coal industry.

It reveals how the country's comforts

relied on the backbreaking toil of miners.

'He works along the seam, hewing out the coal.

'His average output is 22 hundred weights per shift.'

At meetings with senior civil servants,

Grierson had his knuckles rapped for operating outside his remit.

Grierson argued that his film unit earned extra income for the GPO.

But he was politely informed that it was absolutely taboo

for a Government department to hire itself out like a private company.

In 1937, the slow wheels of the state finally rolled over Grierson.

An influential civil servant wrote:

"The Post Office unit has given an incredible amount of trouble."

Grierson was moved away from his post as head of the GPO film unit.

He promptly resigned from the civil service.

The documentary movement barely missed a step with Grierson's resignation.

Many of his disciples had already left the GPO film unit,

and were now scattered across Soho in small production houses.

They sold their services to various private companies.

The Orient Shipping Company...

..engineering giant Vickers Armstrong...

..BP, and Shell... all commissioned documentaries

from the former members of the GPO film unit.

These documentaries were made outside the GPO,

but inside the movement.

The documentarists had been trained to celebrate

the ordinary lives of working class people.

The private sector provided them with new opportunities

to spread this message.

Grierson was no longer the documentarists' boss,

but he was still their prophet.

The disciples had become apostles.

In 1935, a privately sponsored film made here in London's East End,

led to a crucial advance in the documentary.

80 years ago, this was one of the world's most miserable slums.

The British Commercial Gas Association funded a documentary

that would explain why the slums should all be knocked down.

The gas company would do well out of the rebuilding programme.

-ON FILM:

-'A great deal of thought from architects, engineers

'and other experts, has gone into the design

'of buildings for rehousing.

'Here is a model of a block of flats

'prepared by the British Steelwork Association.'

Housing Problems is a bit like a corporate video.

It doesn't hold back

as it celebrates the achievements of its sponsor.

'The gas industry has designed suitable appliances

'for cheap cooking, and for room and water heating,

'especially to meet the needs of slum clearance schemes.'

But in the middle of Housing Problems,

a new form of documentary bursts forth.

The interview.

Now I've got a nice little place of my own.

Three bedrooms, a lovely scullery, a living room and a bathroom.

The bathroom is the best of all, what we wanted.

It was John Grierson's sister Ruby who pioneered the interview.

She was the uncredited assistant producer on Housing Problems

and she wrote to her brother saying...

"I'm going to put up a camera and a microphone

"and I'm going to ask them questions.

"I'm going to tell them,

" 'The camera is yours and the microphone is yours.' "

Ruby Grierson was undaunted by the cumbersome equipment she needed.

She planned to take a sound truck and a lighting crew

deep into the slums.

"I'm going down to the East End and I'm going to love it there,

"and get to know the people well."

It's rumoured that what Ruby Grierson

said to the people she filmed was...

Here's the camera and the microphone.

Now it's your chance to tell the bastards

what it's really like to live in a slum.

It gets on your nerves, everything is filthy.

Dirty, filthy walls and the vermin in the walls is wicked.

So I'll tell you, we're fed up.

In Housing Problems, people aren't just witnessed,

they provide their own testimony.

Thanks to the documentary movement,

even those at the bottom of the pile now had a voice.

I don't suppose people realise what it really is

to be tied up in the one room and can't get anything any better.

I'm only hoping the council will line their ideas up

and get their minds made up to get the flats ready

so that every working class man will have a hygienic flat to live in.

In Housing Problems, slum dwellers, the lowest of the low,

the dregs of society, speak.

It turns out they're just like everyone else.

Coming into these rooms, I've had no luck since I've been in them.

First I lost one youngster in one,

and then I lost another youngster in another one seven-weeks-old.

Housing Problems shows how, outside the Government film unit,

the movement continued to pursue their social purpose.

In promotional films for private industry,

they gave ordinary people a voice.

I couldn't open the windows to let any air in.

We like to open all the windows now and let the nice fresh air in

in the morning for the children,

and my children are ever so much healthier and better.

You cad!

Meanwhile, back at the GPO Film Unit,

things were getting rather silly.

Ha! I'll tell you.

What?!

The Glorious Sixth of June was put out in 1934

to announce that the GPO charges were about to be reduced.

You don't say!

There seems little social purpose in this hokey cokey nonsense.

But the film stars a key player in the future of the movement.

The hero, the determined postie...

I'll serve for the honour of the GPO.

..Is played by the man who would go on to become

the most influential documentary maker in Britain.

Humphrey Jennings.

-Give them to me!

-Never.

Humphrey Jennings was first and foremost an artist

who had been introduced to the GPO Film Unit by his friend Stuart Legg.

He was constantly searching for juxtapositions

which would mean something.

Very curious pictures, some of them.

Obviously a great streak of his surrealist interest

was there but a lot of his pictures have

this sort of smack about them, of searching for juxtaposition.

As well as being a painter,

Jennings had been involved in mass observation.

He had made a painstaking study of the everyday habits of British life.

Jennings' observational experience, accompanied with his surrealist eye,

would prove a potent mix when he began to direct documentaries.

He'd reveal ordinary life as it had never been seen on film before.

'The mills open at eight and close at five.

'Saturday afternoons and Sundays off.'

Humphrey Jennings directed Spare Time in 1939.

It was commissioned by the Government,

which wanted something light-hearted to be shown at the World's Fair.

It's a film about the fun

ordinary British people have on their days off.

Jennings assembled a series of striking images to create

a touching documentary portrait

of ordinary life in Britain at the end of the 1930s.

In Spare Time, Britain has an ambiguous beauty.

It's an awkward country of small pleasures.

This didn't go down well with the hard core of the movement.

Some documentarists accused Jennings of...

'A patronising, sometimes almost sneering attitude

'towards the efforts of low-income groups.'

-And...

-'Laughing at the plebs.'

The movement became caught up in an argument

about how to portray ordinary life.

But in 1939,

the future course of the documentary was out of their hands.

'This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin

'ended the German government...

'That no such undertaking has been received,

'and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.'

The Second World War, which began in September 1939,

started badly for the documentarists.

Flogging phones and the postal service was no longer a priority

for the British government.

All the war effort required from film production

was propaganda for the home front.

The man in charge of commissioning propaganda films

was Sir Joseph Ball.

An extreme right-wing spy master,

he was deeply suspicious of the lefties in documentaries.

Ball refused to meet with anyone from the movement.

For the first few months of the war,

the GPO Film Unit did absolutely nothing.

Basil Wright wrote to the newspapers.

"When are we going to start?"

Harry Watt was bursting with frustration.

'We sat on our backsides, terribly anxious to work,

'and did nothing at all.

'We were given nothing to do.'

I'm going mad.

A highly-skilled, eager unit with lots of gear and lots of film.

We'd stored up gear and film ready for the war

because it was obviously coming.

The GPO Film Unit reminded each other

they could make the kind of films the country needed.

The documentary movement's ultimate goal

was to create a sense of unity in Britain.

Up till now, this message had been hidden

in promotional films for British industry or the postal service.

With the country at war,

it was time for their message of unity to become explicit.

They decided to show the Government what they could do.

With no official funding or support,

the GPO Film Unit went out into the world with loaded cameras.

They would demonstrate the power of documentary.

ON FILM: 'London is calling.

'London calling to the world.

'The Monday morning workers left their tube trains

'to face a new world where everything seemed strange.'

First Days of 1939 is a remarkable snapshot of Britain

as the country stands on the brink of apocalypse.

'The shining facades of the West End put up barricades.'

It's a vivid record of how this historic moment

was playing out in the street.

It's also uplifting.

'Three-quarters of a million children

'had been moving out of the London region during the weekend.'

The documentarists had been trained to have an optimistic outlook.

'For this was a city of children.

'London has many monuments to the dead past,

'but the real London is its young life, its future.'

First Days celebrates Britons' stiff upper lips -

their determination to keep on.

It gives heart.

'Back in the West End, life is flowing by in the old channel.'

BIG BEN TOLLS

As soon as it was complete, a copy of First Days

was sent direct to the Houses of Parliament.

So the Government could see for themselves how the documentarists

would contribute to the war effort.

In 1940, the film unit was moved out of the GPO

and into a new government department - the Ministry of Information.

The MOI had been established to control propaganda in wartime.

It named its new film unit the Crown Film Unit

and immediately set the documentarists to work.

AMERICAN MALE: 'It is late afternoon

'and the people of London are preparing for the night.

'Everyone is anxious to get home

'before darkness falls, before our nightly visitors arrive.'

London Can Take It was made in 1940.

Britain then stood alone.

America was not yet in the war.

The British Government commissioned a documentary

about how the capital was bearing up under German bombing raids.

It was hoped this might sway US public opinion

towards an alliance with Britain.

'Now they're going into the public shelters.

'This isn't a pleasant way to spend the night but the people accept it

'as their part in the defence of London.'

Apart from the American drawl of the voiceover,

London Can Take It is a classic work of the British documentary movement.

'There's the wail of the banshee.' SIREN WAILS

'A nightly siege of London has begun.

'The city is dressed for battle.'

All classes of Britons are shown suffering together.

It feels like an authentic picture of ordinary life in the Blitz.

'These are not Hollywood sound effects,

'this is the music they play every night in London -

'the symphony of war.'

AIRCRAFT HUM AND RUMBLES OF EXPLOSIONS

London Can Take It was also released in Britain

while the Blitz was still raging.

The MOI put observers in the audience who noted that:

"The audience enjoyed it as part of their own experience."

-'..it is true that the Nazis...'

-When released in the US,

it was a massive hit and got nominated for an Oscar.

'They will drop thousands of bombs

'and destroy hundreds of buildings and they'll kill thousands of people,

'but a bomb has its limitations.

'It can only destroy buildings and kill people,

'it cannot kill the unconquerable spirit

'and courage of the people of London.'

MOURNFUL MUSIC

At its worst, during that terrible winter of the Blitz,

the Germans bombed London for 76 consecutive nights.

A similar hell was visited on many other major British cities.

Over 40,000 Britons were killed.

By the summer of 1941, the Blitz was over.

Britain and her allies were now bombing Germany in return.

Mildenhall Airfield in Suffolk was then a major base

for the operations of RAF Bomber Command.

A documentary was made here about that ruthless campaign.

The film was the brainchild of the Crown Film Unit's Harry Watt.

He called it the best idea he ever had.

He convinced the Government to fund a film about how the RAF

was hitting back against the Germans.

Made in 1941, Target For Tonight was the most successful

documentary in the history of the movement.

C for Charlie, airborne, sir.

-19 hours 35 minutes.

-Thank you.

Translate, please.

Hello, control. Hello, control. C for Charlie took off 19.35.

On Target For Tonight, Watt used techniques he had pioneered

on Night Mail.

First he did meticulous research,

then he wrote a script describing in detail one night's mission

against a German fuel dump.

Place names were changed for security purposes.

It was partly filmed on set in a studio.

But authenticity was guaranteed

because all the characters in the film, from the wing commander

to aircraft hand, were played by the real people

who actually did the job.

MEN WHISTLE AND CHATTER

Ah, just the man I want. You owe me half a crown.

-Listen, I can't pay my mess bill, let alone you.

-Well, neither can I.

All right. See me after the trip.

-Righto.

-You would remember that.

Hey, some klutz pinched my boots.

Come on, pull your finger out. Where's my boots?

Target For Tonight strikes an almost perfect balance

between documentary and drama. One more twist of the dial

and Watt would have lost more than he gained.

-Bomb doors open.

-Bomb doors open.

Harry Watt's film was much more than a triumph of technique.

Steady!

Documentarists had learned how to make screen heroes

-out of ordinary people.

-Bomb's gone.

Target For Tonight works in the same direct but understated way.

It celebrates the everyday courage

of the young fliers of Bomber Command.

I got a bull's-eye with the last one.

Good man. Bag of nuts or a cigar?

Target For Tonight was a huge hit in the cinemas.

It was so popular

that it became a catchphrase.

A young man talking about his dinner date would call her

"the target for tonight".

One reviewer called this Crown Film Unit production:

"The greatest story of the war."

Target For Tonight now stands as a moving commemoration.

Many of the aircrew Harry Watt filmed

died in action during the war.

Go and get an ambulance, will you? The operator has copped it.

SWING MUSIC PLAYS

It was hard to escape Government propaganda films

during the Second World War.

The 20 million Britons who never went to the cinema

were ushered into church halls and village halls for free screenings.

In the days before TV, this was the only way they could be reached.

They were shown films explaining how best to behave

in every aspect of life on the home front.

From driving in traffic to good nutrition.

By the end of the war,

the MOI had a fleet of over 100 projector vans,

which laid on some 60,000 screenings a year.

All of this propaganda onslaught was made for the Government

by the documentarists.

The Crown Film Unit was the main supplier

and the small production houses

established by the members of the documentary movement worked hard

for the Ministry of Information.

In just six years of conflict, the small band of documentarists

produced over 700 films for the British Government.

The culmination of the struggle of the documentary movement

came as the war ended in 1945.

The Government was already planning for the coming peace.

The Crown Film Unit was ordered to produce a film

that would set a hopeful tone for this future.

BABY GRIZZLES

BABY GRIZZLES

'And it was on 3rd September, 1944, that you were born.

'The label on your cot said, "Timothy James Jenkins."'

Diary For Timothy uses the storytelling device

of a soldier's letter to a newborn child.

'Thousands of babies were born on the same day

'and you are one of the lucky ones.'

It passes on the lessons the country has learned

during the Second World War.

'When you joined us, we had been fighting for exactly five years.'

It shows how Britain was unified by a common sense of purpose.

'And you didn't know, and couldn't know, and didn't care.

'Safe in your pram.'

This was the truth the documentary movement had been established

to expose. In Diary For Timothy,

it's revealed with compelling emotion.

'About five kilometres to the west of Arnhem

'in a space of 1,500 yards by 900 on that last day,

'I saw the dead and the living.

'Those who fought a good fight and kept the faith with you at home,

'and those who still fought magnificently on.

'They were the last of the few.'

Diary For Timothy was directed by Humphrey Jennings.

He was inspired by seeing Britons join together during the war.

He described sensing:

"A glowing warmth of love and comradeship for each other."

His faith in the spirit of Britain seems to have given Jennings

the confidence to reveal the country as he genuinely saw it.

At times, its honesty makes Diary For Timothy uncomfortable to watch,

but all the more powerful.

This is what documentary is all about.

BAND PLAYS SWING NUMBER

Diary For Timothy was the last significant work

of the British documentary movement.

After the Second World War, the movement petered out.

Within five years, Jennings was dead.

He fell off a cliff scouting locations.

Ruby Grierson, the bright young woman who had pioneered

the interview in the slums, died in the war.

She was filming on a boat which was torpedoed by a German submarine.

John Grierson, who had started it all,

remained abroad for much of the rest of his life,

founding still-thriving documentary industries in Canada and Australia.

Harry Watt of the popular hits Night Mail and Target For Tonight

quit documentaries and began a new career directing commercial movies.

Some of Grierson's old disciples

stayed on in the post-war documentary industry,

but none lasted into the age of television.

The British documentary movement had flourished for about 15 years.

It had begun with a political idea to unify the country

through films about the real lives of the people who live here.

To do this, they developed a new craft.

They'd become expert at making uplifting portraits

of ordinary life.

During the Second World War,

the British public had become used to watching reality.

Britons had learned to enjoy looking at themselves.

The movement had set out to reveal ordinary life.

By 1945, the documentary had become part of it.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd.

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