Fires Were Started –Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019 M07 25 - 96 pages Humphrey Jennings (1907-50) was perhaps the most gifted film-maker of the British documentary movement. Involved in the Mass Observation project of the 1930s, Jennings' talent lay in picturing ordinary life in ways that were inventive yet authentic. "Fires Were Started –" (1943) is his major achievement. A film about a day's work for a unit of mainly auxiliary volunteer firemen at the height of the blitz, it blends observation with reconstruction to achieve a particularly poignant kind of propaganda. Lindsay Anderson expressed the opinion of many commentators and viewers when he wrote in Sight and Sound (in a 1954 article reprinted as an appendix to this volume) that Jennings was 'the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced'. But how could a documentarist also be a 'poet'? This is one of the questions addressed by Brian Winston in his study of "Fires Were Started –", a question which is particularly relevant today in the wake of the massive public controversies surrounding 'faked' documentaries. For Winston documentary film-making is always 'creatively treated actuality' and must be taken as such if it's to be properly valued and understood. |
Contents
| 6 | |
1 A Fresh and Loving Eye | 7 |
2 An Intellectual Artist | 10 |
3 The Simplest of Pictures | 20 |
4 The Idea of Connection | 34 |
5 Films of Britain at War | 37 |
6 This Is What We Were Like The Best of Us | 46 |
7 The Past with the Present | 52 |
8 Jennings Films Are All Documentaries | 58 |
9 The Murky and Undecided Realities of Today | 67 |
Only Connect Some Aspects of the Work of Humphrey Jennings by Lindsay Anderson | 70 |
Notes | 76 |
Credits | 77 |
| 78 | |
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Common terms and phrases
achievement actually Anderson artist audience authentic become Bells BFI FILM Blitz Brigade Britain British called camera cast Cicely cinema Cockney continued contrast Control conventional crew death despite detail dialogue direct documentary Dykes early editing effect elements English example expression fact feeling fiction FILM E CLASSICS film-maker final Fire Service Fireman Fires Were Started Grierson ground hand Home human Humphrey Jennings images intellectual interest Jacko Jennings Johnny later least less lived locations London McAllister means Movement names never notes observation Officer opinion particular past perhaps picture played present production propaganda question raid reality remains rest scenes screen script seems sense sequence ship shooting shots showing simply singing sort sound story Street style suggested tell thing thought treatment truth Unit whole women