The Complete Humphrey Jennings

[MichaelB]

Two more reviews of volume 2:

Blueprint - including separate reviews of the individual films. Interestingly, he ranks The Silent Village above Fires Were Started, which I suspect might be a common reaction - Village isn't anything like as well-known, but it's a truly shattering piece of work.

BluRayDefinition.com - a superficial and error-strewn "review" of the films (as with similar pieces by this author, I seriously question whether he actually watched them from beginning to end), but the framegrabs are useful.

[ellipsis7]

Only got to FIRES WERE STARTED so far, reading also the BFI monograph on the train today. a super presentation on BR, the uncompressed soundtrack matches the crisp transfer, satisfactorily exercising my sub woofer (B&W, which suitably looks like a Barnes Wallis 'bouncing bomb')!...

[MichaelB]

Caught by the River on volume two:

It is easy to admire the immense technical and imaginative skill which Jennings exhibited in these dramatic and heart-wrenching documentaries, which clearly influenced other war-time films such as Alberto Cavalcanti’s 1942, Went the Day Well, and Powell & Pressburger’s 1944, A Canterbury Tale, two all-time favourites. But watching them today, they raise all kinds of anxieties about what has been lost in the way of human solidarity and steadfastness in a world in which economists and politicians insist that the only consistent human motive in society is private choice. These amazing films remind us of a time when ‘we are all in this together’ meant what it said.

Cine Vue, ditto:

Whilst not conventionally entertaining viewing, this second collection of such an Jennings' work is a wonderful insight to a bygone Britain - an immensely enjoyable collection with great historical value.

[Documaniaque]

So, if you'd never seen Fires Were Started would you watch that first or I Was a Fireman? Usually I'd go with the "director's cut" 1st...

[MichaelB]

So, if you'd never seen Fires Were Started would you watch that first or I Was a Fireman? Usually I'd go with the "director's cut" 1st...

I can't really answer that because I was only familiar with Fires Were Started until very recently - but as it's by far the most famous of the two cuts it's probably sensible to favour that one first.

[ellipsis7]

It's the tighter, immediately revisited cut, by the director & editor, usually a good thing in the right circumstance (i.e. without outside excessive interference)... I Was a Fireman apparently failed initially to grip the critical & public imaginination, whereas Fire Were Started with the editorial tweaking. essentially shaving shots to their natural essence, hit home hard...

[Documaniaque]

Thanks, those are both good reasons to start with Fires Were Started.

[antnield]

The Digital Fix on Volume Two.

[Max von Mayerling]

My copy arrived with only the blu ray disc included - but the content on the dvd disc is exactly the same, right? (That's what it looks like from the package & blu menu.) If so, I don't think I care about the missing dvd.

[MichaelB]

My copy arrived with only the blu ray disc included - but the content on the dvd disc is exactly the same, right? (That's what it looks like from the package & blu menu.) If so, I don't think I care about the missing dvd.

Yes, it should be completely identical (bar the picture resolution) - I don't think there's anything in the package that's DVD-only.

But it's worth complaining about anyway: you're certainly entitled to the DVD!

[ellipsis7]

Philip French in The Observer on Vol 2: FIRES WERE STARTED;

"There'll be no better, more essential disc this year."

[antnield]

The Arts Desk on Volume Two.

[MichaelB]

Volume 2 has just won Best DVD at this year's Cinema Ritrovato awards.

[MichaelB]

Watching Danny Boyle's London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, I was convinced that the blatant Humphrey Jennings nods couldn't be a mere coincidence - and, sure enough, the project's scriptwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce quickly owned up:

I bought Danny a copy of Humphrey Jennings's astonishing book Pandemonium for Christmas and soon everyone seemed to have it. The show's opening section ended up named "Pandemonium".

The Liberal England blog goes further, and asserts that Jennings' spirit animated the entire event:

I was reminded of the work of Humphrey Jennings, and not just because one of the section of the ceremony was titled Pandemonium. Danny Boyle had the same technique of setting cultural elements from widely different spheres side by side, to the detriment of neither. Jennings' Listen to Britain sets Dame Myra Hess against dance-band music and celebrates both.

[John Hodson]

That's oddly *very* pleasing...

[knives]

The booklet doesn't really answer this, but are the alternate films like This is England simply made of different takes or do they contain whole new scenes and the like?

[MichaelB]

It depends on the film. If I recall correctly, English Harvest contains very little material that wasn't in The Farm (maybe one or two shots), but it's a much tighter and more satisfying edit with a wholly different and much better commentary - a distinctly superior film all round, I thought, even though it's been relegated to the 'extras' section.

But I haven't compared the alternative versions of the films in volume 2.

[MichaelB]

An analysis of the Olympic Opening Ceremony by Paul Tickell, that goes into even more detail about the various Jennings connections:

[Danny] Boyle himself in interview gave us clues as to the lure of magic – or certainly of magical realism British-style (anyone for Michael Powell?). He cites the Humphrey Jennings’ book Pandaemonium as a key to how the scenario was constructed. The Jennings is a compilation of writings from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century about man and machine, capital and labour. But probably more than Pandaemonium as a source-book with its quotations from Milton and Blake, it’s the sensibility of Jennings himself and colleagues of his like Grierson and Cavalcanti who helped to inform Boyle’s vision for the Olympics.

These were writers and directors involved in Mass Observation, a huge experiment in social history from below, as well as being directors who saw themselves as ‘poets of the people’. Boyle can claim something of that mantle. His evening of marvels felt aspirational and celebratory while keeping an unflinching eye on truths which though obvious are rarely aired – about money coming from muck, of wealth more often than not from the pain and suffering of those who labour – many of them in the chains of slavery to further the dubious cause of Empire. On the night we saw the fires which forged the manacles and the kind of utopian-political fire which might break them forever.

Jennings liked a good fire – his portrayal of the Blitz feels like its flames bring all the horrors of hell but also the chance for transformation. Boyle’s flames felt like this – from those of the Industrial Sublime to those in the Prodigy’s Firestarter. (I almost forgot to mention the wit of it all). Fitting then that the Olympic flame should have been such an engineering feat and coup de theatre. Prospero would have been pleased – and so too would Sycorax, not to mention the Bard whose voodoo aesthetics brought these characters into being.

[JacquesQ]

No news of volume 3 either on the BFI site or on Amazon for now. I hope the sales of the first two volumes weren't so low that they would have postponed volume 3 (that is to contain films that are less well known than especially volume 2) indefinitely.

[knives]

It was a fairly long wait between volumes one and two. Considering the massive effort put into these already i wouldn't worry.

[JacquesQ]

It was a fairly long wait between volumes one and two. Considering the massive effort put into these already i wouldn't worry.

You're right, I e-mailed BFI and they told me volume 3 should be released aound July 2013.

[ellipsis7]

Precisely... Volume 3 on 15th July....

[knives]

This should be the last set, right?

[antnield]

Yes, it's been said previously that this would be a three-volume collection. Handily, MichaelB speculated on the contents of the last set a while back...

And of course we can now be reasonably certain of what will be on Volume 3, namely:

• The Eighty Days (1944)
• The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944)
• Myra Hess (1945)
• A Defeated People (1946)
• A Diary for Timothy (1946)
• The Cumberland Story (1947)
• The Dim Little Island (1948)
• Family Portrait (1950)

plus possibly Town Meeting of the World (1946) and Changing Face of Europe: The Good Life (1950), to which Jennings contributed but did not direct. It's also a pretty safe bet that V.1. (1944), a recut of The Eighty Days, will also feature.

[ellipsis7]