With 2005 being the 60 th anniversary of VE Day, it provides an opportune time for us to look back at the front line role of the South East during the War. The Battle of Britain was fought mostly in the skies of the area and the famous 'bouncing bomb' (as seen in The Dambusters) was first tested off the coast of Herne Bay at Reculver Towers . The era has been immortalised in countless British films and with wartime cinema high in popularity the British film industry at the time enjoyed a boom period. With the victory of the Allied Forces secured in 1945, celebrations commenced but it would still be some time before any semblance of normality returned to daily life.
When war broke out, few thought the conflict would last as long as it did. Barely two decades since the end of the previous World War, the memories of that conflict still lingered for many. Even the actors with which we associate this period in film, from Jack Hawkins and Kenneth More to John Mills, saw active service themselves. Perhaps it is this insight into the reality of conflict that brings an edge to their performances in the British War films made both during and after the war. As fighting continued closer to UK shores, cinema attendance rose rapidly. At its peak during this time, an average of three cinemas were being opened every week - unconceivable in the current era of the dominant multiplex. But Hollywood filled these packed cinemas as well as British made efforts, the Brits didn't have a monopoly on their audiences. After all, with the shrill of the air sirens and the sounds of planes overhead, the mood was more for entertainment and fantasy than a reflection of reality. There's another side to this period too, one that has become better known in recent years through TV documentary series such as Nation in Film and The Second World War in Colour - that of the ordinary person on the Home Front and their experiences of war. Sadly there aren't vast amounts of this kind of footage owing to film being rationed during the period, but there's enough to provide a fascinating insight into the daily live on civvy street in the South East.
The Dambusters, The Colditz Story, The Cruel Sea, We Dive At Dawn - the names of some of the most famous British war films roll of the tongue of any enthusiast, but in reality, surprisingly few of the best remembered wartime films were actually made and screened during World War II. John Mills, perhaps the most prolific of the British screen actors in the UK during the period and who popped up in many of the most well-known and critically acclaimed films from In Which We Serve to This Happy Breed , We Dive at Dawn and Waterloo Road (to name but a few), is an exception rather the rule. Many of the films regarded today as 'classic British war films' - The Dambusters, The Battle for the River Kwai, Reach for the Sky and The Guns of Navarone for example - were all made in the post-war period. So what of the war films produced and watched during the war itself? Less well known to modern audiences, many of these films can be brought under the inevitable theme of patriotism but within this category, there are two broad camps - comedy and drama.
Dramatic films with the patriotic seam running through them range enormously - from Laurence Oliver's Henry V (1944), In Which We Serve (1942) an out and out war film celebrating heroism in the Navy, The Young Mr Pitt (1942) a biopic of the famous Prime Minister to The Bells Go Down (1943) celebrating the heroism of the Auxiliary Fire Service during the Blitz (and with a rare straight performance from funnyman Tommy Trinder) and Sabotage Agent where British saboteur Robert Donat goes undercover to destroy a German chemical weapons factory. What all of these films do have in common is a sense of the individual, the idea that one person can make a difference - echoing of course the propaganda at the time, Dig for Victory, Careless Talk Costs Lives, harnessing the power of the masses through targeting single people. There are also, interestingly, not as many major battle scenes as one might expect. The focus of these films is the people, not the special effects (see also the strange genre hybrid that is Secret Mission ). It might also have been construed as distasteful to portray major battles as no corner of the country was left untouched by the effects of war. The last thing these people would have wanted is to be reminded of the realities of conflict. The death of characters in these films is always an heroic one too, no human effort goes to waste in this fictional portrayal of the war.
Interestingly, one of the genres that thrived during this period but is almost dead and buried on the big screen today albeit still commonly found on television, is the thriller or mystery drama. Actors like Clifford Evans (At The Villa Rose , Castle Of Crimes) and of course Hugh Sinclair, immortalised as Simon Templar aka The Saint (The Saint's Vacation, The Saint Meets The Tiger), appeared in several thrillers and mysteries of the time. Sinclair also starred in The Four Just Men, a thriller set during WW1, and Alibi, a rather intriguing thriller featuring the honey voiced James Mason. Mason too was a popular choice for casting directors of thrillers made and released during the war period - from Alibi and The Night Has Eyes to The Patient Vanishes and the intriguingly titled They Met In the Dark. Not all of these thrillers are of particularly high quality but then they weren't made to last, they were made for affordable entertainment that provided an escape from the grim reality of war. In terms of the South East, it seems only one major (and sadly virtually forgotten) thriller with a strong link to the area remains - The Brighton Strangler (1945). An actor playing the Brighton Strangler on stage in London receives a blow to the head during a bombing raid. Thereafter he believes that he is the Strangler and sets out to murder. The wonderful Brighton Rock with a cracking performance by Richard Attenborough didn't come out in cinemas until 1947, its dark and dangerous mood pushing the boundaries of what had come to be expected from the popular thrillers and mysteries from the actual war period. Perhaps it is the shared sense of danger that made thrillers of this period so successful with the audience (experiencing more than their fair share of real life danger outside of the cinema building) or maybe it is because the 'good guys' always win. Either way, it's clear that the government clearly didn't underestimate the power of film in the battle of propaganda. Chief projectionists over the age of 18 and senior film technicians over the age of 30 were deemed to be in a reserved occupation and thus exempt from military conscription.
Comedy was another genre to thrive during the war period - so much so that arguably the post-war success of Ealing and the likes of Passport To Pimlico, Whisky Galore, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Belles of St. Trinians and Lucky Jim were a by-product of this. The style of comedy in films during and after the war differ enormously. With women being recruited for work and social classes being mixed up in the forces, various barriers had been broken down in society. It became more acceptable post-war to attack the status quo through comedy whether the Army, the NHS or the class system itself. This would have been virtually unthinkable during the war period itself before the huge social upheavals that followed the Allied victory. The focus of comic films released during the war period is once again predominantly on the individual, the underdog made good - the underlying message being that if a buffoon can defeat the Nazis, anyone can. Tommy Trinder and Will Hay, names sadly unknown to many modern day cinema-goers, were two of the most successful actors at portraying the comic anti-hero who saves the day. Sailors Three in which Trinder and two other sailors accidentally find themselves on a Nazi ship and successfully requisition it on behalf of the British Navy is a fine example of this. Fiddlers Three with more or less the same basic plot (but this time involving a time warp and ancient Rome as well as the Nazis - it has to be seen to be believed) is another and, of course, the wonderfully funny The Black Sheep Of Whitehall and The Goose Steps Out , both Will Hay vehicles, are other fine examples. Of course, a lot of comedy at this time also featured singing and dancing, the last bastion of the, at the time, hugely popular and now sadly defunct, music hall acts. Geraldo and his Orchestra, again one for music buffs today (but still well worth a listen), were massively popular at the time. Providing the audience with, say, a comic like Trinder combined with Geraldo and co. was hugely successful - literally two for the price of one and with money short on the ground, entertainment needed to be cheap as well as cheerful. The brilliant and much under-rated Champagne Charlie is a fine example of pure morale raising entertainment in the true music hall style, even Charlie himself (Trinder again) is a music-hall player.
With this focus, both in serious and comedy drama, on the individual, it comes as no surprise to find that there is a reasonable amount of WW2 home footage made by the British film enthusiasts of the time. Despite film being rationed, individuals still managed to secure enough to make a record of their daily activities. Material from this period at SEFVA (the South East Film and Video Archive - based at Brighton University ) includes wartime preparation and colour film of air raid precautions. The Director of SEFVA, Frank Gray, reveals that a rather wonderful film was recently discovered and passed to them by the Leatherhead History Society. In this, Gray says, there's a "complete record of wartime from 1939 to 1945 including parades, fund raising campaigns, everything from the wartime kitchen to travelling cinema." There are also scenes of the family putting their blackout curtains up for the first time - and taking them down for the last time. Gray also tells of a rather amusing West Sussex Home Guard film that reminds him of Dad's Army. There's an instruction in it for what to do if you catch a member of the Luftwaffe - apparently the best way to stop him from running away is to pull his trousers down!
On a more serious note, SEFVA has footage from the late Thirties of Zeppelins going across the sky. Gray says he finds this chilling - it was only in later years that it became apparent that these slow moving giants of the sky had been taking aerial photos in preparation for wartime bombing. On VE day itself, SEFVA have got film from across the region with various celebrations happening. Surprisingly, some of the amateur material is in colour. Although the official news reels were black and white, Gray says that "amateur material provides us with the record of the Home Front in colour". Kodak introduced a colour reversal stock around 1935/1936 and despite being expensive, colour footage from this period, and of course onwards, still exists. Sadly SEFVA don't regularly do special screenings of this WW2 footage, but it is incorporated into their programme of events. And this year, to tie in with the anniversary, there will be a small display in the Surrey History Centre.
The legacy of this period in British history upon film-making is enormous. Massive social upheaval led to new styles of film and the emergence of a whole new wave of talent - both onscreen and behind the films. For the first time too, the majority of film makers were dedicated to showing and celebrating, the lives of ordinary individuals. It changed the way film was perceived, people saw a reflection of themselves up there on the silver screen. For once, films related to them, to their lives instead of being vehicles for hero worship. Perhaps it is this legacy that has had the most impact. The South East is a hotbed of creative talent and with the advent of digital technology, film-making is quite literally, within anyone's reach.
Elizabeth Hyder
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