Living through the Blitz ........... Manchester and London and eight short films

I cannot really imagine living through the Blitz, those nightly ordeals of making preparations to spend a night in the shelters, waiting for the wail of the siren and then that night of broken sleep listening to the whistle and crump of bombs mixed with the fear of a direct hit.

So London Can take It which is a collection of short films made during the last world war are a vivid record of what was once a nightly experience for people across the country.

And despite the title and the emphasis on London there is a brilliant short from the Co-op on the Manchester Blitz.

All of the eight were of course made as propaganda and the thing about propaganda films from the last world war is that you can take them in many different ways.

On the surface they present an insight into how we got on with the war which despite the fact that they are propaganda show real people in real situations.

But looking at them from a distance of three quarters of a century they show how the British Government wanted the war and its prosecution to be seen by both the home population and countries around the world.

And layered on top of that were how the film makers play writers and documentary makers saw their role and went about their work in telling the story of Britain at war.

Sometimes their perception of what should be made and showed ran counter to that of the Governments of which the best example is the film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp by Powell and Pressburger which Churchill didn’t like and wanted suppressed but which was a strong film about British values.

I still enjoy watching it and count it alongside a handful of others which in their different ways portrayed a nation at war.

All of them focused on that powerful idea that this was the Peoples’ War.  Now I am not naive enough to think that everyone thought so, there were still much snobbery, a degree of corruption and a practical cynicism of some of what we told.

But that said remembering conversations with my mother and others there was a degree of purpose and ideal which these short films convey.

So I reckon they are well watching.  The collection which starts with London Can take it and finishes with that Co-op film on Manchester are available on a DVD from the Imperial war Museum.

Pictures; cover and rear of London Can Take It, IWM, Design by Simple Design