158. Fires Were Started (1943)

Directed By Humphrey Jennings

Synopsis

Fire-fighters do the Blitzkrieg Bop.

Review

This is a quite interesting film, it is filmed as if it was a documentary, but it is clearly scripted and although the actors are actual fire-fighters they had to learn their roles for the film. And of course the camera angles and the quality of the cinematography (which is quite good) would be inconceivable if this was an actual documentary during the Blitz.

So we put the idea that this is in any way a documentary aside and then we can focus on the film. The acting is a mixed bag, some of the "actors" are so natural that they work perfectly, while other seem to be slightly too aware of the camera therefore seeming quite soulless when saying their lines. This is however a minor quibble. One problem is a sound one, I don't know if it was my copy, but at times the soundtrack is much louder than the speech, or often the speech is nearly whispered because the boom was probably too far away.

The plot isn't that fascinating it involves fighting a fire before it gets to a boat. The excitement comes from the constant rain of bombs from German aircraft and the always imminent fire. In the end it is a pretty good film about camaraderie and the British Blitz spirit idea, and it does have an interesting idea with the using of actual people who were doing the jobs depicted in the film.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Humphrey Jennings' reputation always remained very high among film makers, but had faded among others. His films appear strikingly different from the 'social critique' approach which typified the documentaries of Grierson and his "school" of the 1930s and the feature films of the 1960s and 70s such as Lindsay Anderson'sThis Sporting Life (1962) or Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960).

After 2001 this situation was partly rectified: firstly by the feature-length documentary by Oscar-winning documentary-maker Kevin Macdonald, Humphrey Jennings: The Man Who Listened to Britain (made by Figment Films in 2002 for British television's Channel 4); and secondly by Kevin Jackson's monumental 450-page biography Humphrey Jennings (Picador, 2004). In 2003 two of his films, Listen to Britain and Spare Time, were included in the Tate Britain retrospective, A Century of Artists' Film in Britain which featured the work of over one hundred filmmakers.

As of 2005, nearly all the films of Humphrey Jennings are available on DVDs.

No excerpt of the film on the Youtubes, so here's Fireman Sam, suitably Firemany and British: