Listen to Britain / A Diary for Timothy

dir. Humphrey Jennings
UK, 1942 / 1944-45

Finally got round to watching the Lindsay Anderson-approved "poet" of British cinema. The first, a propaganda film made as part of the Crown Film Unit is indeed a remarkably allusive, montage-influenced gem, constructing through the build up and juxtaposition of images a picture of a Britain soldiering on, and in so-doing creating a piece of propaganda that is both obvious and subtle. Helpfully, here's the whole thing:



The second, made over a period of months as the war ended was less adventurous and less interesting, but one thing it had that the previous didn't was a voice-over written by EM Forster and read by Michael Redgrave, in that way that some old British film voice-overs do where a rather stiff-upper-lipped man attempts to come across as kindly and caring toward the new baby of the title but just sounds creepy and threatening.