THE WAR3

<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 >>

Although popular with audiences, the leading characters were upper class and far too privileged to represent the nation at war. The opening documentary sequence was clearly an 'add on' intended to avoid long narrative sections explaining why Britain was at war, and the other documentary sequences seemed ill-matched with the narrative. The Lion was just too clumsy a production to have a significant influence on British cinema. However, by 1940, other filmmakers were becoming aware that the realism of documentary film was often appropriate for feature films dealing with the war. As Roger Manvell explained, from 1940 some of the qualities of the documentary style began to appear in many industry produced war features - 'an understanding of emotional values and a faithfulness to the environment in which the film was set'. Manvell, cites such early war features as Convoy (1940) and 49th. Parallel (1941).16 But of all the innovations of the period, perhaps the most interesting were the official story documentaries produced for the Ministry of Information. The story documentary was a new cinematic form intended to realistically show the work of the armed and auxiliary forces and imaginatively wove together documentary and narrative style. These films were scripted but based on everyday incidents and acted by serving personnel. The first of these story documentaries, Target for Tonight, was intended to show the public exactly what the Royal Air Force was doing. promote the activities of the Royal Air Force in 1941-1942, Target for Tonight and Coastal Command. It addressed important propaganda themes, and made a significant contribution to the development of wartime realist cinema.




<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 >> Although popular with audiences, the leading characters were upper class and far too privileged to represent the nation at war. The opening documentary sequence was clearly an 'add on' intended to avoid long narrative sections explaining why Britain was at war, and the other documentary sequences seemed ill-matched with the narrative. The Lion was just too clumsy a production to have a significant influence on British cinema. However, by 1940, other filmmakers were becoming aware that the realism of documentary film was often appropriate for feature films dealing with the war. As Roger Manvell explained, from 1940 some of the qualities of the documentary style began to appear in many industry produced war features - 'an understanding of emotional values and a faithfulness to the environment in which the film was set'. Manvell, cites such early war features as Convoy (1940) and 49th. Parallel (1941).16 But of all the innovations of the period, perhaps the most interesting were the official story documentaries produced for the Ministry of Information. The story documentary was a new cinematic form intended to realistically show the work of the armed and auxiliary forces and imaginatively wove together documentary and narrative style. These films were scripted but based on everyday incidents and acted by serving personnel. The first of these story documentaries, Target for Tonight, was intended to show the public exactly what the Royal Air Force was doing. promote the activities of the Royal Air Force in 1941-1942, Target for Tonight and Coastal Command. It addressed important propaganda themes, and made a significant contribution to the development of wartime realist cinema.
	After enduring the hard blows of Dunkirk and the Blitz, what the British people needed to know was that the armed forces were hitting back, that not only could 'Britain take it' but equally was 'dishing it out' as well. At that time, only the 'long arm' of RAF Bomber Command was capable of hitting back and hurting enemy. Typically overstating the case, Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the cabinet in early September 1940, 'the bombers alone provide the means of victory'. Target for Tonight, made in early 1941 and released in August of that year, was central to this notion of hitting back at the enemy. Written and directed by Harry Watt, the film was a curious, but remarkably successful, mix of documentary and feature - a docudrama that used serving RAF personnel acting out a narrative that it was claimed showed only what the RAF were doing every night. Produced for the Ministry of Information by the Crown Film Unit, the film had an apparent official status denied to other features about the RAF.

In the 1930s, Harry Watt had worked for Grierson's GPO Film Unit alongside Humphrey Jennings, Alberto Cavalcanti and Basil Wright. Yet even in his official documentary work Watt broke away from the conventional documentary format and managed to introduce a narrative element - the journey of the mail from London to Scotland (The Night Mail), or the story of one voyage of a fishing boat in North Sea. Filmed on trains and trawlers, Watt portrayed real postal and railway workers and trawlermen doing on film exactly what they did in real life and using natural dialogue instead of the conventional 'voice over' narration. In the first years of the war, Watt directed Squadron 992 - essentially a film about air defence - Dover Front Line and Christmas under Fire and worked with Jennings on London Can Take It (1940), perhaps the most important and influential of the all the Blitz films. Significantly, all these films were about ordinary people suffering under enemy air attack but standing up to the worst the enemy could do, indeed, even maintaining some semblance of 'normal' life under constant attack. However, by late 1940, according to his autobiography, Watt decided that it was time for a 'hitting back' film instead of 'taking it' efforts. The RAF, he noted, were already starting to bomb Germany, 'so there was the obvious subject'. He approached the Ministry of Information with his idea, the 'Ministry agreed wholeheartedly, and off I went to see the Air Force Public Relations Officer, Wing-Commander Williams'. The RAF agreed and Watt was commissioned to write and direct a film based around the bombing of Germany. Pilot Officer Derek Twist (later to head the RAF Film Unit) was provided as liaison officer and the filmmaker was given unprecedented access to bombing reports and the RAF bomber base at Mildenhall in Norfolk and the cooperation of RAF aircrew.17
Paul Mackenzie casts some doubts on Watt's claim regarding the genesis of the film, suggesting rather that the Air Ministry had already decided that it wanted a documentary film that would show the public how Bomber Command had developed and its current activities in carrying the war to the enemy heartland.18 Presumably Watt's suggestion fell on fertile ground and the go-ahead was given for Watt to prepare a scenario. Using crew debriefings, raid reports and other material, Watt produced a script that was solidly based on the, by now, routine activities of RAF bomber crews. However, instead of the history of Bomber Command with a conventional voice over narration envisioned by the Air Ministry, Watt decided to focus on a re-enacted example of a single mission by a single bomber - a 'Wellington' heavy bomber with the call sign 'F for Freddie'.


For the crew, Watt chose Squadron Leader 'Pick' Pickard, a veteran of many raids as pilot, and other serving personnel as the crew for 'Freddie'. The film opens with a RAF photo-reconnaissance flight over Germany. Later, back at Bomber HQ, the photographs are studied and these reveal new oil storage tanks at a rail junction - Freihausen', in the Black Forest region of Germany - a perfect military target for Bomber Command. The Air Ministry order an attack and we follow the subsequent raid through the experiences of 'F for Freddie': from the organisation of the mission to the attack itself, and the bomber's return to base - a typical example of a night raid on Hitler's Germany.