Finest Hour: Films by Humphrey Jennings

3rd November 2007

A few weeks ago I saw a programme of four films by Humphrey Jennings (Finest Hour: Films by Humphrey Jennings, 11th - 13th September 2007, BFI South Bank). This was part of a documentary season run by the British Film Institute (BFI) commemorating five British documentary film-makers, all of whom were born in the same year, 1907 - Humphrey Jennings, Basil Wright, Paul Rotha, Edgar Anstey and Marion Grierson.

I've written several posts in this blog about Humphrey Jennings' film A Defeated People and the view it portrayed of Germany after the war. Seven of Jennings' films were shown as part of the documentary season at the BFI, (four in 'Finest Hour' and three in other programmes), but not A Defeated People, and none of the programme notes made any reference to it, probably because it does not fit easily with the themes highlighted in the season - technology, nationhood and industry, the everyday heroism of ordinary men and women during Britain in wartime, technical and industrial progress, people at work and Britain as a 'Land of Promise'.

This made me think about using film as historical evidence. On the one hand films can provide a very immediate and accessible view of place and time. Angus Calder in his classic work 'The Myth of the Blitz' makes extensive reference to Humphrey Jennings and his films in his last three chapters on 'Deep England' (on the emotive power of the English landscape), 'Telling it to America' and 'Filming the Blitz.' He refers to most of Jennings' films in the book, but, like the BFI documentary season, completely ignores A Defeated People. Presumably this is because the film does not fit easily with his theme of 'The Myth of the Blitz' and how British people like to remember their role in the war and afterwards.

In my MA dissertation (on 'Winning the peace': Germany under British Occupation, as portrayed in Humphrey Jennings' film A Defeated People, the British Zone Review and the exhibition Germany under Control) I argued that, if Jennings' films are considered an accurate representation of Britain in wartime, A Defeated People should also be considered an accurate representation of post-war Germany, especially when viewed critically and compared with the treatment of similar themes in other sources.

On the other hand, different people respond to films in different ways. As I said in my dissertation "when we watch the film now, our reactions may tell us more about our own personal experiences and beliefs and about popular memories in the society in which we grew up, than what were the original intentions of the director, or whether the film reflected official policy or popular attitudes at the time."

I was therefore interested to read (in the BFI programme notes) about differences in interpreting another of Humphrey Jennings' films 'Spare Time'. This short, 15 minute film aimed to show  what ordinary working people did in their spare time in different parts of England: coal miners in Wales, steel workers in the North-East, and cotton workers in Lancashire. The 'Kazoo Band' sequence in the film, where a group of young people, dressed in uniform, practiced playing their kazoos, marching up and down an empty football pitch, has been controversial ever since the film was first released in 1939. Basil Wright, Jennings' fellow documentary film maker, wrote in 1951:

"The Kazoo band, the wind blowing chilly through the imitation silk uniforms, the Britannia tableau tottering on its undernourished pall bearers, and the drum majorette aping, like a grey ghost, the antics of a transatlantic and different civilisation - all this is brilliantly presented. But it is presented in terms of a cold disgust; there is no sense of the human enthusiasms which must somewhere exist behind such a drab and pathetic spectacle. Humphrey was, perhaps rightly, attacked violently for this sequence when Spare Time first appeared, but the fact remains that, as a piece of movie, it is both brilliant and unforgettable." (Quoted in the BFI programme notes for 'Finest Hour' Films by Humphrey Jennings)

Others have different views. As the BFI programme notes said:

"All this results in a film that different viewers have quite differently interpreted. Some find it patronising: Jennings' fellow 'movement' film-maker Basil Wright attacked it as 'sneering'. Others consider it less patronising than other documentaries of the period whose concern for social improvement has sometimes dated horribly."

After watching around 20 films in the documentary season at the BFI, including programmes of films by other directors, I was in no doubt that I agreed with those who found 'Spare Time' less patronising than many other documentaries, a few of which had indeed dated horribly. Though all those featured were great documentary film directors, what distinguished all of Humphrey Jennings' films (including 'Spare Time', his wartime films, and A Defeated People) was an overriding concern for people as individuals, sympathy and human understanding, and his ability to portray people on their own terms, without putting words into their mouth, or obviously acting out a script.

If a viewer sees a sequence in his films, such as the Kazoo Band, as 'patronising' or 'sneering', perhaps this reflects more of the attitudes of the viewer, than those of Jennings himself?

Comments

[Marvynbn]

Great post., man