The poetry and genius of the British documentary movement was without a doubt, Humphrey Frank Sinkler Jennings (1907-1950) whose films with their warmth and spontaneity of feeling would catch more than any others , the true atmosphere of Britain and the mood of its people during wartime. He would achieve this by eschewing the more practical approach of his peers and recounting instead - the sights and sounds of the British people, their culture, mores and traditions and lovingly, their foibles.
Jennings had originally signed on with the GPO Unit in 1934 and returned to it in 1938. He would make his mark as co-director alongside Harry Watt, of London Can Take It, which told the story of the first big bombing raid on London during the onset of the Blitz. It's chief directive was to dramatize to those abroad - particularly the Americans - how their own democracy might likewise be threatened. Jennings followed suit with three impressionistic film poems, showcasing an England at war - Heart of Britain (1942). At this distance in time, it is difficult to calculate how much in his best films, Jennings owed to the collaborative effort of his outstandingly talented young film editor, Stewart McAllister. Like Jennings, McAllister would be credited as co-director, cultivated the style with just sounds and images on their own, and it results in a tremendously evocative impression of Britain at war. This was perhaps Jennings' most completely successful work, though it did get him into a mite of hot water with his colleagues who were suspicious of his 'arty' and 'intellectual' 1943 effort Fires Were Started. This production was more safely recognized in the genre (and no less original) - a masterly tribute to London's fire services, profoundly affectionate, intensely poetic, this was the public film - at its height of creativity.
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| The propaganda poet - Humphrey Jennings |
Jennings would develop a decidedly more symbolic and semi-fictional technique in his next two features. The Silent Village (1943) an account of a V-1 flying-bomb attack on England, and in 1945 - A Diary for Timothy, which was a portrait of Britain in the last few months of the war that reflected on an uncertain future. Jennings' final commentary on war - A Defeated People (1946) was a characteristically sympathetic study of the German experience following the armistice.