The Humphrey Jennings Collection

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Film Description

Features three films from the man described by Lindsay Anderson as perhaps 'the only true poet of the English cinema': Listen to Britain, Diary for Timothy (both from the newly-made BFI 2004 prints) and I Was a Fireman. In Listen to Britain, Jennings collects and edits the sounds and sights of wartime Britain into an extraordinarily moving and effective collage. Diary for Timothy is a film that is relevant for every generation and bears repeated viewings. The feature-length I Was a Fireman, the story of 24 hours in the life of a fire crew during the Blitz, is an innovative work that should be as iconic to British cinema as Vigo's L'Atalante is to French.

Film Information

DVD Extras

Kevin MacDonald's Humphrey Jennings: The Man Who Listened to Britain (50 mins); 12 page collector's booklet with an introduction by David Putnam.

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Review by David Parkinson on 8th July 2005

The films of Humphrey Jennings are invariably cited for their bold combination of lyricism and authenticity. But the Poet of the British Documentary Movement also invested his work with a political humanism that recognised that the key to winning the Second World War was the indomitable spirit of the British people. Consequently, the three pictures in this long-overdue collection concentrate on ordinary folk doing the extraordinary things in order to emphasise the heroic nature of continuing with everyday life in the face of uncertainty and peril. Released in 1943, I Was a Fireman (aka Fires Were Started) anticipates neo-realism with its creative use of actuality and a non-professional cast that responds to the Blitz with a cheerful courage that's more immediate and effective than any flagwaving dramas being produced at the same time. Similarly, Diary for Timothy (1945), with an accompanying commentary written by E.M. Forster and delivered by Michael Redgrave, celebrates the contribution ordinary citizens have made to the war and will make to the peace. But the masterpiece here is Listen to Britain (1942), which captures the spirit of the nation in a moving visual montage that was assembled with poetic finesse by co-director Stewart McAllister.

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Review by Graeme Hobbs on 6th May 2005

For the three films included on this collection, the term ‘documentary’ is clearly inadequate. Listen to Britain is a sublime composition of the sights and sounds of Britain in the midst of war. Its seamless sequence of images and sounds can be watched time and again for its beauty, connections and the economy with which it tells vast stories of the human spirit. Diary for Timothy is set during 1944-45 in a nation utterly wearied by war, and this film diary for a newborn baby shows the world around him at that moment. There is a deep humanity here – Michael Redgrave captures the tone of E.M. Forster’s commentary perfectly, and its final sequence is one of the most moving in all cinema. Finally, I Was A Fireman, about 24 hours in the work of a Fire Unit during the Blitz, should be as iconic to British cinema as Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante is to the French. In its respect for the stories of ordinary people, its use of non-professional actors and the poetry of its visual connections, it ushered in a realm of new cinematic possibilities in Britain.

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Review by Lord Puttnam on 6th May 2005

I was first introduced to the work of Humphrey Jennings by the late Lindsey Anderson, and the intervening years have only served to make me increasingly grateful to him.
Whether or not there’s still room in the world for the type of visual poet Jennings so brilliantly exemplified is open to question.
Did the artist and the moment in history he recorded simply coincide?
Or were the times themselves the making of the artist?
That’s an argument that can run and run – what’s certain is that once you’ve been exposed to Jennings work, it’s all but impossible to view that particular moment in history through any other lens.
In 1998, when any number of people in Britain were arguing over the most appropriate way to celebrate the Millennium – and the foundations of the Dome were already being dug at Greenwich, I made an eventually forlorn attempt to convince a number of people in and around Government of the unique opportunity that existed to make a clear statement of what type of country Britain wished to be in the twenty first century.
What were its values, and how would it attempt to express them.
I was able to assemble a group of remarkably young ‘decision makers’ and as evidence of what might be possible I showed them two pieces of film.
The first was the final sequence from Close Encounters of a Third Kind with which I wanted to demonstrate the mixture of awe and wonder which propels the character played by Francois Trauffaut into the spaceship.
The fact that his desire to know what the future might offer conquered his fear seemed to me a perfect metaphor for the best way in which to address our nation’s future.
I then showed them Jenning’s ‘Listen to Britain’. At first they couldn’t make it out, some even laughed rather uneasily. But after about four or five minutes the mood changed. There was no more laughter, the editing seemed less ponderous and the film began to work its magic.
Most telling was the fact that when it finished, after what seemed a longish silence, among barrage of questions nobody asked ‘why had they been shown it’. They all understood the context, and they all made the connection.







So it was sad when it proved impossible to translate their understanding into a commitment to do for the citizens of the twenty-first century what Jennings had done for their Grandparents, fifty years earlier – remind them of why they were on the planet, the job that remained to be done, and the fact that it mattered.
I owe Humphrey Jennings an enormous debt – you don’t have to look very hard to find his influence in Chariots of Fire, Local Hero and The Killing Fields. Not in their narrative, not in their Cinematic style, but in the underlying values to which all three movies subscribe.
Watch the work of Humphrey Jennings and experience what it is to believe in something much, much bigger than you are.
It’s a really wonderful feeling.

Review by Graeme Hobbs on 12th July 2007

19th August 2007 sees the 100th anniversary of Humphrey Jennings' birth. Filmmaker, photographer, poet, painter, Jennings is best known today for his remarkable wartime films – films that utterly transcend their documentary roots and show subtle, poetic connections between places, people and the time through which they were living. The three films on this collection are among the greatest ever produced in England, and thoroughly deserve Lindsay Anderson's memorable accolade that Jennings was perhaps ‘the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced.’ In Listen to Britain he does exactly that – these are the sounds of a nation at war that combine and seem to form a protective shield for the island beneath. I was a Fireman praises the everyday heroism of the members of the Auxiliary Fire service, while Diary for Timothy shows the devastated world to a newborn baby and asks the question that that can be asked of every new life: ‘Are you going to make the world a different place?’

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Article - "Humphrey Jennings " by Moviemail
Friday 1st April 2005

Described by Lindsay Anderson as ‘the only true poet of the English cinema’, Humphrey Jennings is a good deal less well known than the pageant of luminaries who recommend him as one of Britain's greatest directors.
Last year, over fifty years after Jennings' dea...  View article in full

Article - "Humphrey Jennings" by Kevin Jackson
Wednesday 6th April 2005

A small confession: the first time I went to see an evening of short films by Humphrey Jennings - this would have been in the early eighties or thereabouts - I went in the same sort of earnest spirit that drives people to evening classes in Latin. My knowlege was, at...  View article in full

Article - "London Pride" by Graeme Hobbs
Monday 1st May 2006

London Pride presents a fascinating collection of documentaries from the 1940s, showing how much the recent history of the city was shaped by the experience of the war and the need for the rebuilding that followed. It begins with Harry Watt & Humphrey Jennings...  View article in full

Article - "Humphrey Jennings" by Graeme Hobbs
Thursday 12th October 2006

The quotation inevitably pressed into service in discussions of Humphrey Jennings comes from Lindsay Anderson’s appreciation of him in the Spring 1954 issue of Sight and Sound, where he says, ‘it might reasonably be contended that Humphrey Jennings is the only real p...  View article in full

Article - "London in Festival Year 1951" by Graeme Hobbs
Sunday 3rd December 2006

‘No-one was taught to hate anything’ - three films about the 1951 Festival of Britain.

London in Festival Year collects three films about the Festival of Britain in 1951 and its main exhibition on the South Bank. A commemoration of The Great Exhibitio...  View article in full

Article - "A Useful Piece of Equipment: The Reminiscences of Humphrey Jennings’ Assistant Director, Joe Mendoza" by Joe Mendoza
Friday 16th November 2007

Dora Wright was our ‘ace’ Production Manager. She’d worked with Alexander Korda before he buzzed off to the States. She said, “Humphrey’s going to make the National Gallery film and he wants you to be his assistant. He says he knows nothing about music and you know a...  View article in full

Article - "Only Connect: some aspects of the work of Humphrey Jennings" by Lindsay Anderson
Friday 4th January 2008

I
It is difficult to write anything but personally about the films of Humphrey Jennings. This is not of course to say that a full and documented account of his work in the cinema would not be of the greatest interest: anyone who undertook such a study would certa...  View article in full

Article - "Land of Promise: The British Documentary Movement 1930-1950" by Michael Brooke
Saturday 12th April 2008

"Doubtless, were we a rational race, the spectacle of our present position would overwhelm us. But then we've always, thank heaven, remained deaf to appeals to reason, convinced that the experts are invariably wrong." So says the cartoonist Osbert Lancaster during Hu...  View article in full

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Collections & Lists

This film is part of the following Film Collections

Best London-Set Films

Including: 10 Rillington Place, 28 Days Later, 84 Charing Cross Road, 9 Songs, Alfie (1965), An American Werewolf In London, Betjemans London, Blow-up, Charlie Chan - In London, Closer.

Film First - MovieMail's Sister DVD Label

Including: It Happened Here, The Alcohol Years, The Humphrey Jennings Collection.

GPO / Crown Film Unit Films

Including: 40s Britain - Fishermen At War, Classical Music In The Forties, Drifters / Caller Herrin, GPO Animation, Len Lye - Rhythms, London Pride, Night Mail / West Highland, The GPO Classics Collection: Britain At War - The First Days, The GPO Classics Collection: Britain at War -Under Fire, The GPO Story: Thirties Britain (Vol 1).

Wartime Documentaries

Including: 40s Britain - Fishermen At War, Battle For The Skies, Britains Home Front at War - London Can Take It!, Britains Home Front At War - The Home Guard and Britains Citizen Army, Britains Home Front at War - Women and Children at War, Britains Home Front At War - Words for Battle / Writers at War, Burma Victory, Churchill, Colditz, Desert Victory.

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This film is part of the following Customer Film Lists

BFI Top 100 British Films by MovieMail

In 1999 the British Film Institute surveyed 1000 people involved in UK film and television to create the BFI Top 100 British films made in the 20th century. Here is the result - each film here stands up to repeat viewings, and shows the incredible contribution Britain has made to cinema.

Month by Month Movies by Clinton Morgan

Some films are appropriate for a Sunday afternoon. Some films are appropriate around Christmas time. Other films are appropriate for midnight viewings in double bills. Here is a list of movies that are appropriate for all twelve months of our calender year.

MovieMail Top 100 Best-Sellers of All-Time by MovieMail

This is your list: the 100 films you've bought the most of in the 10 years of MovieMail's existence. There are some surprise entries and some glaring omissions – but it’s all true, and, frankly, you’ve got very good taste! It’s such a good list that we're going to make it a permanent fixture on our website and to celebrate the launch we’ve slashed many of the prices on these wonderful films. Enjoy!

Top Documentary Shorts - a look at Britain on film by Lester May

Little gems deserving a bigger audience. There is a wide variety of great documentary films now released on DVD. Many of them will help to complete the picture in your family history and in some of them, some lucky people will actually see their ancestor on film! These films are excellent examples of the art of documentary film making and give a fascinating view of our islands in peace and in war, at work and at play. There are some real gems too, so surprise yourself and dip into these wonderful films about aspects of our island life.

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