Listen to Britain **** (1942, Bud Flanagan, Chesney Allen, Myra Hess) – Classic Movie Review 9140

The 1942 essay film Listen to Britain is a rousing classic wartime documentary short from ace British documentarian Humphrey Jennings, embodying the recorded sounds of vignettes in the nation’s life, as civilians struggle with surviving in World War Two. It was Oscar nominated as Best Documentary in 1943.

It spans a musical mix from musical hall comics Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen to a piano recital by pianist Dame Myra Hess at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, St James’s, in London, attended by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth, later to be Her Majesty The Queen.

Jennings effectively makes the music and sounds speak eloquently for themselves, without the usual accompanying score and voiceover. It is a key film in the British documentary movement.

Listen to Britain is directed by Humphrey Jennings, runs 20 minutes, is made and released by the Crown Film Unit, written by Humphrey Jennings and Stewart McAllister, shot in black and white by H E Fowle and produced by Ian Dalrymple.

There is also a forward by Leonard Brockington K C and the voice of BBC newsreader Joseph Macleod is heard as himself.

Dame Myra Hess is also included in Jennings’s A Diary for Timothy (1945).

Films directed by Humphrey Jennings include: Spare Time (1939), London Can Take It! (1940), Words for Battle/ In England Now (1941), Listen to Britain (1942), Fires Were Started (1943), The Silent Village (1943), A Diary for Timothy (1945) and A Defeated People (1946).

Lindsay Anderson described Jennings in 1954 as ‘the only real poet that British cinema has yet produced’.

The BFI’s Complete Humphrey Jennings Volume Two DVD contains The Heart of Britain (1941), Words for Battle (1941), Listen to Britain (1941), Fires Were Started (1943) and The Silent Village (1943).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 9140

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