Rent or Buy (From The Oxford Times)

Rent or Buy

7:48am Thursday 26th November 2009

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Armistice Day had a special poignancy this year, as it was the first since the passing of the last three resident British survivors of the Great War (why does the media always ignore Claude Choles, who was born in the Worcestershire village of Wyre Piddle in 1901, but emigrated to Australia in 1926?). With the majority of schools now marking the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month with a two-minute silence, there will almost certainly have been curious kids coming home to ask what prompted this pause in their usually hectic lives. Well, you can now explain everything by sitting them down in front of Dave Unwin's 2001 animated adaptation of Michael Foreman's moving novel, War Game.

The action centres on friends Will, Freddie, Billy and Lacey, who are playing football when news breaks that Britain has declared war on Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany. Determined not to miss out on an adventure, the boys volunteer for duty and are encouraged to play the game by a singing King George V. However, Will and Lacey's mother (voiced by Kate Winslet) is heartbroken by the news and informs them that war isn't about fun and glory, but death and destruction.

Undeterred, the pals head for the Western Front. But they are soon enduring the harsh reality of the trenches and the war that would supposedly be over by Christmas is still raging when dawn breaks on 25 December. However, much to the surprise of the tommies, the guns fall silent and they hear German voices singing carols. Slowly, figures appear in No Man's Land and soldiers who had been implacable enemies just moments before begin fraternising and exchanging gifts. A game of football even breaks out, with Will, Freddie, Billy and Lacey at its heart.

But this return to sanity proves to be all too transient, as the officers recall their troops and prepare them for an evening assault. The closing sequence, in which a badly wounded Will finds himself in a shell crater and trades photographs with a dying Hun in defiance of George V's musical admonition to play up for his team will do more to teach kids about the pitiless brutality of war than any history book.

There's still no let up in the spate of DVDs marking the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War. However, the current crop of compilations contain some fascinating insights into both everyday life in wartime Britain and the calibre of the movie propaganda that was devised by the Ministry of Information. Of particular value is the two-disc Public Information Films of the British Home Front 1939-1945, which runs for nearly five hours and packs in dozens of shorts that were designed to boost morale and keep the public vigilant. There's even a bonus section on the reconstruction era.

Howls of protest erupt today at the mere mention of the nanny state. But, during the Second World War, the government couldn't afford to presume that the population would always do the right thing at the height of an emergency. Consequently, it churned out posters, newspaper advertisements, radio spots and screen trailers supporting such common sense slogans as `Careless Talk Costs Lives', `You Can't Be Too Careful', `Look Out in the Blackout', `Is Your Journey Necessary' and `Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases'.

The latter campaign was driven by an eponymous 1945 film by the incomparable Richard Massingham, whose doltish geniality, as he committed a succession unpatriotic faux pas, made him one of the famous faces of the period. But the MoI was also quick to recruit A-list stars to drive its messages home. Comics like Tommy Trinder, Arthur Haynes and Arthur Lucan (who was known to millions for playing Old Mother Riley) all did their bit, as did actors like Alastair Sim, Roland Culver, Jimmy Hanley, Stanley Holloway and a very young George Cole. Many of the country's ablest directors also worked anonymously on training and instructional films.

The quality of some of the items on show here isn't the best, as one presumes there simply wasn't the budget to spruce them up. But the grainy images and crackling soundtracks only enhance the experience of watching exhortations to `Make-Do and Mend', `Buy for Service', `Dig for Victory', `Keep It Dark', `Lend to Defend' and `Keep Calm and Carry On'.

Few companies do these wartime collections better than Panamint, who have several new titles available, including We Forgot About Germany, which takes its title from a line in Ralph Keene's The New Britain (1940), which was scripted by the novelist Graham Greene. With a rousing score by William Alwyn, this is an extremely shrewd piece of propaganda, as it laments the fact that successive administrations took their eyes off the Third Reich while also vaunting the socio-economic advances of the inter-war years that now make the British cause even more worth fighting for.

Equally acute is Humphrey Jennings's Words for Battle (1941), which adopts a God's eye view of our sceptred isle to show how pluckily the populace was responding to the demands of conflict. But, despite Laurence Olivier's typically mellifluous readings from classic works of English poetry and prose, the quotation from the Gettysburg Address and the shot of Abraham Lincoln's statue in Parliament Square suggest that this is as much a plea to America to abandon neutrality as it is a rallying cry to domestic audiences.

Anthony Havelock-Allan's From the Four Corners (1940) had similarly exploited London landmarks to enable Gone With the Wind actor Leslie Howard to explain to troops from Canada, Australia and New Zealand that this wasn't simply a fight for the Motherland, but a crusade against infamy. But blatant resorts to imperial loyalty were still produced, among them John Page's West Indies Calling (1944), which depicted cricketing legend Learie Constantine serving as a welfare officer for the Ministry of Labour. However, using a familiar face to plug a cause was a trusted tactic, as was the case with Roy Boulting's The Dawn Guard (1941), which saw actor Bernard Miles appeal for volunteers for Dad's Army.

But not all wartime shorts relied on celebrities, as the MoI was keen to make ordinary people feel that their contribution to the war effort was also essential. Producers Ian Dalrymple and Harry Watt, for example, sought to reassure viewers that the country was in good hands by praising the work of the police force in Charles Haase's War and Order (1940), while ace producer Paul Rotha not only ensured that Jack Chambers's Night Shift (1940) exulted the workforce putting in long hours to produce vital tank components, but also reflected the degree to which factories across the land were dependent upon women, who were entitled to respect from their male colleagues.

The films anthologised in Women and Children at War stressed the same message, with Brian Desmond Hurst's Thorold Dickinson-scripted Miss Grant Goes to the Door (1940) showing how two sisters tackled a Nazi parachutist and John Page's Land Girl (1942) paying tribute to the Women's Land Army. The previous year, Page had teamed with Paul Rotha on The Countrywomen, which focused on the contrasting views of Mrs Urban and Mrs Rural to laud the Women's Institute for its role in making a success of the evacuation programme, managing food shortages and maintaining spirits with communal entertainments.

The remainder of this selection concentrates on children, with Thorold Dickinson's Westward Ho! (1940) seeking to placate anxious mothers by averring that their kids were going to enjoy living on the coast or in the country and Frank Sainsbury's Living With Strangers (1941) celebrating the fact that 80% of evacuees had returned home because the threat of invasion had passed. Indeed, children were invariably shown having a ball rather than being cowed by fear or privation, with Our School and Bampton Shows the Way (both 1941) descending on the same school in rural Devon to show how pupils were putting their lessons to practical use by producing their own food.

Britain's trawler fleet confronted danger every time it put to sea and it's good to see its unsung heroics finally being marked in Fishermen at War. Filmed in St Ives and Grimsby, Ivan Scott's Sailors Without Uniform (1940) showed how boats not only continued to go out in all weathers to put food on the nation's tables, but also risked attack by the German navy. Frank Sainsbury captured even more dramatic footage for Atlantic Trawler (1944), which showed doughty vessels surviving encounters with mines and U-boats, while the same year's Fishermen in Exile chronicled the exploits of Dutch crews who had crossed the North Sea after their own country had been occupied.

Also included here is JB Holmes's Merchant Seamen (1941), which follows a young sailor who is rescued after his ship is torpedoed and decides that the best way of exacting his revenge is to retrain as a gunner. The sequences of the crew adrift at sea recalls those in Pat Jackson's Western Approaches (1944), which is long overdue recognition as one of the most important British films made during the war.

Jackson recruited seamen from Liverpool for this gruelling study in selfless heroism, which sees the occupants of a lifeboat attempt to warn the vessel detailed to fetch them of the proximity of the U-boat that torpedoed their convoy supply ship. Commissioned by the Crown Film Unit and photographed in Technicolor in often hazardous conditions by Jack Cardiff, this audacious blend of human drama and combat thriller anticipated neo-realism in its use of authentic situations and non-professional performers. Moreover, Jackson (who is now in his 90s) demonstrated how stories rooted in truth made for much more effective propaganda than the more gung-ho actioners produced in wartime Hollywood.

Speaking of the States, American GIs began arriving in Britain in March 1942. But it took another year before the MoI commissioned Anthony Asquith to make A Welcome to Britain (1943), which is paired with Letter from Ulster (1943) on Panamint's Over-Paid, Over-Sexed and Over Here.

Actor Burgess Meredith fronts this often amusing insight into the cultural differences between the Yanks and and their Limey allies. It takes a while to warm up, as a couple of brass hats explain the purpose of the exercise (with Meredith pulling `ordinary Joe' faces behind their backs). But once the scene shifts to a country pub, things begin to liven up, as a brash American flashes a fistful of dollars before mocking a couple of kilted Scots. He then shows how not to win friends and influence people over a game of darts.

Demurely sipping a half at the bar, Meredith demonstrates how one should behave in such situations. And he continues to exhibit finishing school manners on being invited to supper, as he eats frugally so as not to waste his host's rations. He can't quite resist trying to flirt with a young lady on a bicycle (who keeps appearing just out of reach), but he recovers his poise in time to discuss race relations in the American forces on the train to London, where he learns about British currency from Bob Hope and sees Beatrice Lillie singing at a USO dance before he reminds his fellow countrymen of the `painted perils' of Piccadilly.

Sponsored by the US Office of War Information, this famous film seems positively crude compared to the avuncular style favoured by the MoI. But, then, anything would seem brusque compared to the poetic gems found on Our Country.

Directed by John Eldridge, Our Country (1944) views Britain through the eyes of a shore leave sailor, who is not only relieved to be alive, but also thankful that the way of life he left behind has survived the Nazi onslaught. It's a rose-tinted paean, whose images of harvest time feel like out-takes from some Soviet agit-prop. Yet while William Alwyn's music stirs the soul, there's an edge to Dylan Thomas's lyrical commentary, as it implies that the struggle has taken its toll on the landscape and its people. But the mood is always one of pride in the unity and endurance that has helped bring the nation to the brink of victory.

Humphrey Jennings struggled to share this sense of celebration and optimism in The Dim Little Island (1949), which confronted the malaise felt by a population in the depths of austerity that was beginning to wonder who had actually won the war. Originally entitled Awful Old England, after a poem by Rudyard Kipling, Jennings's penultimate picture took a demobbed serviceman struggling to refind his niche on civvy street on a similar tour of the country to see how much had changed in the past decade.

En route, satirical artist Osbert Lancaster, naturalist James Fisher, industrialist John Ormston and composer Ralph Vaughan Williams find reasons to be cheerful in Britain's past achievements and future prospects. Yet, Jennings appears to undercut their elegiac positivity with a debunking melancholy that proves infinitely more poignant than the worthies' loftier assertions that all is well and ever more shall be so.

By their very nature, directorial decisions effect the entire tone of a piece and it's a shame that Jonathan Martin and Philip Nugus felt the need to incorporate hazy dramatic reconstructions into their epic documentary, Churchill's Bodyguard. Based on the autobiography of Walter H. Thompson, this is a compelling piece of work that makes admirable use of archive photographs and footage to chart what was essentially a master-servant bond that lasted for 18 years between 1921 and the end of the Second World War. Yet while Robert Powell's narration is typically superb and Dennis Waterman presents Thompson as a hail fellow well met, the stylised inserts gravely diminish the project's authority.

A former messenger boy, the resolutely working-class Thompson supposedly saved Winston Churchill's life on some 20 occasions, as Indian, Irish and Arab nationalists, Nazi spies, Greek Communists and deranged assassins sought to eliminate him. However, it seems that Thompson's biggest enemy was Churchill himself, as he seemed to court danger in his reckless desire to be at the centre of the storm. Indeed, Churchill is much more the subject of this 13-part study than Thompson, although it does dwell on the strain placed upon the detective inspector that eventually caused him to have a nervous breakdown.

Feeling padded in places and always keener to be accessible than definitive, this will frustrate experts and the curious alike. However, it eventually gets round to examining the pair's personal relationship and the description of their final farewell is extremely moving. More might have been mentioned about Thompson's life in the 13 years after Churchill's demise, but this still makes a fine companion to the same team's Hitler's Bodyguard.

The last wartime title to consider this week is by far the best. Originally produced for French television in 1969, Marcel Ophüls's The Sorrow and the Pity provides an epic chronicle of collaboration and resistance in the French provincial town of Clermont-Ferrand between the capitulation of 1940 and the Liberation of 1944. Moreover, it also explores the part played by France in the Final Solution.

This was certainly a film with an agenda, as its producers, Andrew Harris and Alain de Sédouy, had actively supported the Soixante-Huitards during the May Days of 1968 and they were determined to expose the resistancialism that had amended history to place Charles De Gaulle and his Free French at the heart of underground activity against both the occupying Nazis and Marechal Philippe Pétain's Vichy regime. But, while its revelations still have a shocking power, this landmark documentary's enduring effectiveness owes much to Ophüls's mastery of his material.

Everything about this extraordinary account of France's wartime experience is arranged by meticulous contrast. Clermont-Ferrand itself was chosen as it was both close to Vichy and served as the centre of Maquis activity in the Auvergne. Personal testimonies were juxtaposed with contemporary newsreels, while prominent politicians and everyday citizens were encouraged to ponder both local incidents and their wider national context.

Expert and unreliable witnesses alike were given equal opportunity to testify, as they had all been in the crowds that had witnessed the respective arrivals of Pétain in 1940 and De Gaulle four years later. Consequently, French and Germans, aristocrats and peasants, intellectuals and workers, diplomats and spies, democrats and fascists were all invited to contribute to this demolition of the war's clichés and stereotypes in order to reveal that the population which endured the Nazi tyranny could not be divided so easily into resistors and collaborators as even those who lived through this traumatic time would like to suppose (or, indeed, would prefer those who came after to believe).

Ophüls's use of archive footage is exemplary. But the indelible moments were provided by such dismayingly unrepentant figures as Wehrmacht captain Helmut Tachsend and Charlemagne Division veteran Christian de la Mazière, whose arrogance contrasted sharply with the unassuming recollections of British agent Denis Rake, Maquis chief and Buchenwald survivor Louis Grave and Jewish historian Claude Lévy. Impossible to watch dispassionately, this is a film that everyone should see at least once.

Sabotage was one of the chief tactics employed by the various European resistance movements during the war, with railway lines often being key targets. However, the destruction wrought in Géza von Bolváry's The Wrecker (1928) was inspired by commercial rather than patriotic motives. Owing much to the shadowy Expressionist style that Fritz Lang refined for such silent thrillers as Dr Mabuse, the Gambler (1922) and Spies (1928), this rattling yarn centres on a criminal mastermind who is prepared to kill in order to prove his contention that buses are superior to trains. But while this may sound a rather frivolous conceit - especially as the Ealing comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt and Thomas the Tank Engine books would similarly exploit the bus-train rivalry - the crashes staged by Von Bolváry give this a terrifying viscerality that was rare in British cinema of the time.

Adapted from a popular play by Arnold Ridley (who went on to play Godfrey in Dad's Army) and Bernard Merivale, the screenplay was co-written by Angus MacPhail, who would later collaborate to excellent effect with Alfred Hitchcock, who would model his plucky amateur troubleshooters in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The 39 Steps (1935) on cricketer Carlyle Blackwell and United Coast Lines secretary Benita Hume, who join forces to unmask Jack the Wrecker. Ironically, Albert de Courville borrowed liberally from Hitch for his 1936 remake, Seven Sinners, which used discarded footage of the spectacular wrecks and derailings that Von Bolváry had staged with the full co-operation of Southern Railways before an unprecedented 22 cameras on the Basingstoke to Alton branch line.

Produced by Michael Balcon and scripted by newcomers Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, Seven Sinners is less a commuter terror than a comedy thriller, which stars Americans Edmund Lowe and Constance Cummings and opens during the Nice Carnival to give it a suitably cosmopolitan feel. The twisting plot follows a pair of intrepid insurance agents, as they try to deduce why someone would go to the trouble of causing a train crash to disguise the murder of Allan Jeayes. A snapshot taken at a Guildhall banquet leads them to the whist-playing Joyce Kennedy, who, in turn, sends them in pursuit of wealthy Henry Oscar and the doctor who signed his death certificate.

A second train smash, this time involving a lorry parked on the tracks, seems to have brought the trail to a dead end. But French detective Thomy Bourdelle finds a cufflink amidst the wreckage and this enables Lowe and Cummings to establish a connection between an Argentinian gun runner and a disarmament group named the Pilgrims of Peace. However, it will take the detaching of a dining car and a shootout in a newsreel theatre before the case can be closed.

British film-makers in the 1930s were forbidden by law from directly referencing the international situation, but contemporary audiences would have readily recognised the allusions to the European arms race, the rise of right-wing regimes in Latin America and US isolationism. Two years later, they would also have noticed the similarities between this film and The Lady Vanishes, which Launder and Gilliat scripted for Alfred Hitchcock. Critics often complain these days that there's too little originality in the movies. But it would seem that it was ever thus.

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