The GPO Classics Collection: Britain At War - The First Days

Star Review

Squadron 992 was directed by Harry Watt at the GPO Film Unit in 1940, this famous documentary depicts the life of a barrage balloon squadron posted to South Queensferry in the wake of the Luftwaffe's infamous raid just after the outbreak of war in 1939. It features a reconstruction of an aerial dog-fight, played out as a background to a poacher's dog chasing a hare. Battleships, trains on the Forth Bridge and the Hawes Inn of Kidnapped all feature in this enthralling documentary.

anon on 20th October 2002

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Film Description

Three GPO Film Unit documentaries showing the effect on the British people of the first 2 years of War. Features The First Days (Jennings, Jackson & Watt, 1939) which captures the strange atmosphere of preparation for war, The Front Line (Watt, 1940), in which Dover is a frontier target for the Reich, and Squadron 992 (Watt, 1940), a drama documentary about training a balloon squadron.

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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 organisatio... more >

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.
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View all 228 of Graeme Hobbs’s reviews

The current vogue for television history has rekindled our curiosity about the past. But while the charismatic expertise of such media dons as David Starkey and Simon ... more >

The current vogue for television history has rekindled our curiosity about the past. But while the charismatic expertise of such media dons as David Starkey and Simon Schama lends events an easy accessibility, the raw actuality of primary sources often provides a more immediate insight into the incidents and ideas that shaped an era. Hence the value of the documentaries contained in The GPO Films Collection’s `Britain at War’ series.
Volume One opens with The First Days, Humphrey Jennings’s 1939 short about the Phoney War and the precautions taken by Chamberlain’s government to meet the anticipated Nazi onslaught. It’s a priceless snapshot of a moment in which patriotism and perturbation were forged into the indomitable spirit that meant the same director could boast Britain Can Take It in the title of his record of the Blitz just a few months later. Produced at the behest of the Ministry of Information, such films were calculated pieces of propaganda. Yet, such is their restraint that they smack more of authenticity than authority. Moreover, they reinforced the necessity of everyone doing their bit - be they those manning London’s barrage units (Squadron 922) and coastal defences (Men of the Lightship) or ordinary people simply making do (Britain at Bay and Christmas Under Fire). Considering the gravity of our plight, it’s slightly surprising that these wartime shorts should seem so nostalgic. < less

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