An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Nick Curtis's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Len Lye, Norman McLaren, William Coldstream, Patrick Jackson, Alberto Cavalcanti, Lotte Reiniger, Harry Watt, Basil Wright.
Cast: Evelyn Corbet, Dwight Godwin, Charlotte Leigh, Bob O'Brian
Description: Founded 75 years ago, the General Post Office's Film Unit promoted its various services and illustrated the communications revolution of the 1930s through the work of some of the most influential figures in the British documentary movement. This compilation of eight short films made between 1936 and 1939 highlights some of those directors whose work embraced social reportage, animation, advertising, drama-documentary and public information films, among them Alberto Cavalcanti, William Coldstream, Patrick Jackson, Len Lye, Norman McLaren, Lotte Reiniger, Harry Watt and Basil Wright
Country: UK. 1936-39. 79mins
Bygone era: Night Mail, made in 1936 by Harry Watt and Basil Wright, recalls the good old days when the postal services were both reliable and romantic
As part of its 75th anniversary celebrations, the British Film Institute is screening a selection of the remarkable films made by the GPO Film Unit (also, coincidentally, founded in 1933). A precursor to the commercial, the documentary and the public information film, these shorts were initially aimed at explaining and promoting the
General Post Office’s services. More than that, though, the Unit under visionary director John Grierson nurtured talent and encouraged innovation, and created an unparalleled cinematic record of Britain in the Thirties.
Among this first tranche of newly-restored films, released in cinemas and then on DVD under the collective title Love Letters and Live Wires, the best-known is Night Mail. Made in 1936 by Harry Watt and Basil Wright, it depicts a speeding, nocturnal locomotive, delivering urgent correspondence to rich and poor, north and south, young and old alike, the urgent, insistent rhyming narrative by WH Auden echoing the thrum of wheels over sleepers. Night Mail depicts an inter-war Britain poised on the brink of social and technological change and also recalls a time when the postal services were both reliable and romantic. Basil Wright would go on to produce emblematic wartime documentaries including London Can Take It! and Lift Up Your Heads.
If Night Mail is a familiar friend, though, there are also wonderful curios and novelties in this collection. Len Lye’s N or NW subsumes a finger-wagging lesson about using the correct postcode in a story of threatened love that draws on surrealist imagery. The same director marries avant-garde animation to cha-cha danceband music in his beautiful, near-abstract exploration of industrial Britain, Trade Tattoo.
In William Coldstream’s The Fairy of the Phone, a delightfully improbable musical about telecommunications, switchboard operators trillingly enquire: “Is your house on fire?” Love Letters and Live Wires also contains early works by Alberto Cavalcanti, Norman McLaren and Lotte Reiniger.
In publicising this collection, the BFI has likened the telecommunications explosion of the Thirties to the internet revolution of today. It’s unlikely, though, that a contemporary film about a search engine would be as artful, or as fondly recalled by future generations, as the works of the GPO Film Unit.
Until 2 October; www.bfi.org.uk/gpo
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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