40s Britain: Our Country

Film Description

A box set that collects together the three releases Our Country/The Dim Little Island, At The Coal Face (featuring The Cumberland Story and Rhondda and Wye), and Twenty Four Square Miles/An English Village.

In Our Country, directed by John Eldridge, the steadfastness of the British people is a source of reassurance to a sailor on leave. With stirring words by Dylan Thomas, rousing music from William Alwyn and camerawork from Jo Jago, this film gives an intimate view of British life on the Home Front. Also includes Humphrey Jennings's penultimate film 'The Dim Little Island' wherein Vaughan Williams, Osbert Lancaster and others dispel the image conveyed by the title.

With miners and management as actors, The Cumberland Story, directed by Humphrey Jennings, is a true account of the modernisation of the mines in the 1940s. It includes a dramatic reconstruction of the Ladypit disaster of 1837, when callous mine-owners neglected safety and 36 men died as workings beneath the Irish Sea were flooded. Rhondda and Wye explores the famous Welsh valleys and contrasts the development of the Rhondda's collieries with the pastoral scenes of the farmlands and plains of the Wye Valley.

24 Square Miles is a survey of that area centred around the market town of Banbury. Narrated by John Arlott, it analyses the assets and needs of the area and how it is likely to develop in the future. 'Harting', a picturesque village on the Sussex Downs, typifies the traditional pattern of an English village. Various members of the community appear in the course of their daily work.

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Related Genres

• Classic Movies / British
• Documentaries / Natural World
• Documentaries / Other