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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.

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 wrote: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...

Max von Mayerling wrote: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.

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".

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.

[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.

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

MichaelB wrote: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.