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The Times, which had always supported the work of the Documentary Movement, noted in 1938, 'the film of fact…is…the distinctively British contribution to the art of the moving pictures. English producers of fiction films can scarcely do more than show America that they have mastered a technique that was first developed at Hollywood'. 12 As we have seen, by the beginning of the war, a significant body of critical opinion believed that some form of documentary realism was the appropriate style around which to build a British national cinema. But while the documentarists had shown the way and had earned considerable critical approval for their work, screenings of their films had been limited to schools, union halls, film societies and art houses; few had been distributed through the cinema chains. They had yet to find a mass audience for their films. As Andrew Higson has noted,

…. [S]everal of Grierson's colleagues felt that documentary must temper its
modernism, , re-engage with the story form, and embrace at least some aspects
of commercial narrative cinema, in order to reach anything like a national
popular audience. Indeed, the conjunction of a liberal humanist morality
and social democratic politics also insisted that British documentary realism
should mark out a space within the public sphere for the expression of the
private, the personal, the emotional, and the individual, which meant, in
effect, drawing on the resources of narrative cinema.13

The opportunity for the marriage of documentary and narrative cinema into a form that would be distinctively 'British' and distinctively 'realist', came with the declaration of war on Germany in September 1939.

Waging 'total war' demanded the complete commitment of all national resources, military, demographic and economic, in order to achieve victory, and this included film. The cinema, attracting weekly audiences in the millions, was the ideal medium through which to explain to the nation why they were at war, reveal the true nature of the enemy, disseminate information and to maintain morale in the face of hardship and adversity. Certainly many within the American film industry were sympathetic to Britain's plight and the Hollywood 'British' film did much to sell Britain's cause to America and boost morale in Britain itself. Yet in war, even the closest of allies can be unpredictable, and Britain needed to ensure that her cause was projected through British-produced films. While filmmakers had never shirked from waving the flag and promoting the national interest, the Second World War, the 'people's war', would require a more intense effort to maintain the will to wage war and sell Britain's cause neutral nations.

Films about real people in real situations, films that promoted democratic endeavour and communitarian values, and which fostered a sense of duty and sacrifice appeared to many to be what was required at this desperate time. Drawing upon the work of the documentary movement, and influenced by the arguments for cinematic realism that had emerged in the late 1930s, filmmakers responded by producing films that were innovative and distinctly British. But this did not happen overnight. The first propaganda feature of the war, Alexander Korda's hastily produced The Lion Has Wings (released in November 1939), was a clumsy attempt to merge documentary and narrative forms in an attempt to explain to the public why the nation was at war and to allay the deep-seated anxiety about enemy air raids on British cities causing massive destruction and enormous casualties.

From the end of the First World War, enthusiasts of air power had continually claimed that the air weapon had the potential to win wars almost without the assistance of the other arms. Under successive air force commanders, this belief became enshrined as RAF doctrine. Thus throughout the inter-war years, emphasis was placed on the role of the strategic bomber and its ability to deliver a massive knock-out blow against the enemy heartland, create destruction and panic and undermine the enemy's will to continue the war. But attack from the air was a two-way process, and as Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, alarmed at a volatile and re-arming Europe, warned in 1932, 'the bomber will always get through'.

And this dictum was remembered a few years later as National Socialist Germany created its own powerful air force - the Luftwaffe. In the mid-1930s, it became common knowledge that the Committee of Imperial Defence had estimated that the first air attack on Britain would probably last for sixty days and result in some 600,000 dead and 200,000 injured.14 Such ideas were dramatically reflected on the screen in Alexander Korda's terrifying vision of future war Things to Come (1936) - based on the dire predictions of H.G. Wells. Shortly after the release of this imaginary destruction of 'Everytown' by aerial raiders, cinemagoers were confronted with newsreel reports of the the very devastation caused by raids on Guernica, Barcelona and Shanghai - proof indeed of what the bomber could do. Thus, for the British people, the most terrifying prospect of a future war was of devastating attacks on undefended cities, delivered without warning and resulting in massive destruction, countless casualties and widespread panic among the civil population. At the beginning of the war, then, a primary task for British propaganda was to allay such fears and convince the public that not only was the military establishment capable of defending against such attacks, but was equally capable of launching massive retaliatory raids against the enemy. It was these fears that The Lion Has Wings attempted to allay.
The film deliberately avoided the label 'documentary' because Korda felt that such a tag wouldn't appeal to distributors, but the opening 15 minute sequence, designed to explain why Britain was at war and contrasting peaceful, democratic and progressive Britain with the aggressive militarism of Hitler's Germany, was edited newsreel footage. The remainder of the film was loosely constructed narratives based around two key ideas. Firstly that Britain's air defences would deter German raiders - there is a quite ludicrous sequence in which Luftwaffe pilots approaching London turn back at the sight of barrage balloons on the outskirts of the city - and secondly, that Bomber Command would be a significant factor in defeating Germany.15

NOTES AND REFERENCES:

12. The Times, 8 December 1938.

13. Higson, Waving the Flag, 193.

14. Robert Mackay, The Test of War: Inside Britain, 1939-1945 (London: UCL Press, 1999): 45.

15. See K. R. M. Short's detailed analysis of the film in Screening the Propaganda of British Air Power: From RAF (1935) to The Lion Has Wings (1939) (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1997).