Mind-Munitions

The Second World War 219
in tone and were produced at a far more leisurely pace than the
newsreels whose business was ‘hot’ news. The official films were
more like documentaries, short informational films explaining how
to plant potatoes, how and when to wear a gas mask, how fires were
extinguished, how tanks were built, and so on. They might not appear
to be propagandist but they were designed to serve the war effort in
its widest sense. The effective founder of the British documentary
film movement, John Grierson, had already defined documentary
as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’. Like the newsreels, therefore,
the official films presented, not reality but an illusion of reality, an
illusion determined by the cameraman and where he pointed his
camera, the director and where he placed his subjects (more often
actors than ‘real people’), the editor and where he cut his footage,
and by the exhibitor and where and when he showed the final film.
The MOI recognized that ‘for the film to be good propaganda, it
must also be good entertainment’. Most people who went to the
cinema would expect to find a newsreel and an official short film
or two, as well as a supporting film, but these were not the main
attractions. People went to the cinema to see the main feature, and
it was there that propaganda, if skilfully handled, could most
effectively be insinuated, while the audience was relaxed and thus
off its guard. Feature films with war themes were comparatively
few in number – most people went to their dream palaces to escape
from the realities of war – and in fact declined in number as the
war progressed. Romantic melodramas and films such as The
Wicked Lady (1945), starring James Mason and Margaret Lockwood,
were what the public wanted to see and studios such as
Gainsborough duly obliged. The number of studios in operation,
however, dropped from the pre-war figure of 22 to 9 as technicians
were called up, taxes affecting the industry were increased (and
seat prices as a result). Under such conditions, the achievement of
the native film industry was extraordinary and the production of
recognized ‘classics’ nothing short of miraculous.
This is not a history of the wartime cinema, but no discussion of
Britain’s war propaganda between 1939 and 1945 can fail to
mention several examples of classic film propaganda. The films of
Powell and Pressburger (Contraband [1940], 49th Parallel [1941],
One of Our Aircraft is Missing [1942], The Life and Death of
Colonel Blimp [1943], A Canterbury Tale [1944], and A Matter of
Life and Death [1946]) made a notable contribution, as did those