Founded on 1 April 1946 as a peacetime successor to the wartime Ministry of
Information (MOI) propaganda machine (1939-45), the Central Office of
Information (COI) Films Division - and its in-house production body, the Crown
Film Unit, which grew out the GPO Film Unit - was rooted in a tradition of
filmmaking that is now recognised as the British Documentary Movement. A
key task for Clement Attlee's newly-elected Labour government in the postwar
period was to help put a war-weary nation 'back on its feet' and there was no
better medium at its disposal than film. Much of the resulting output, based
around themes of rehabilitation and reconstruction, vividly define the culture
and concerns of a country still mourning the loss of nearly half a million of
its citizens. And perhaps something of that 'unconquerable spirit' that Hitler
had failed to subjugate is captured in such morale-boosting films as The
Undefeated (1950), an unsentimental portrayal of a physically disabled ex-glider
pilot learning to cope with physical disability and become an active and useful
member of the community.
As the devastating economic impact of the war became evident, a spate of
films designed to turn the wheels of industry and revivify trade were
disseminated - Cotton Come Back (1946) encouraged workers back to the Lancashire
textile mills; Furnival and Son (1948) showcased Sheffield steel manufacturing.
Life in Her Hands (1951), which transcends its informational purpose in its
moving depiction of a young widow's grappling with complex emotional issues, is
one of many industrial recruitment films aimed at women. Many women temporarily
joined the workforce during the war, only to return to their domestic roles when
it ended but, given the drastic labour shortage, the government realised that it
was vital to entice women back into industry. While serving their postwar
informational purpose, these films also present a fascinating window into an
industrial past since dwindled to near-extinction, and the practices of everyday
life associated with it.
With the new government came a new social agenda, notably the passing of the
National Health Service and National Insurance Acts in 1946, and it was the role
of the COI to provide the all-important link between film production units and
government departments, in order to bring alive via celluloid and television the
facts and implications of new policies to audiences at home and abroad. At the
behest of then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, the animation
studio, Halas & Batchelor, produced a series of eight lighthearted films
featuring Charley, a kind of 'everyman' cartoon character, to convey information
about the various reforms - Charley's March of Time (1948), explaining the
purpose of the National Insurance Acts of July 1948 or Your Very Good Health
(1948), illustrating how the National Health Service operates. The limited
screen time available for public information films in cinemas made it necessary
to find other means by which these films could be distributed to as broad a
cross-section of the public as possible. Until 1952, a fleet of mobile film
units equipped with portable projectors were sent to the furthest corners of
Britain, where audiences congregated in factory canteens, schools and village
halls to be enlightened on issues as diverse as efficient methods of treating
head lice and the worrying decline of fish stocks in the North Sea. Shown By
Request (1947) describes in detail the operations of the Central Film Library
and mobile units, which offered a free loan service for officially produced or
acquired films.
Through its Colonial Film Unit, the COI-produced films aimed at audiences in
former British colonies. These films were designed to paint a positive image of
British culture and its public institutions, as in The British Policeman (1959),
which reconstructs a police constable's beat and presents the force as a 'friend
of the people'. As well as targeting women at home, Britain turned to its
colonies to solve its continuing labour shortage. The series of films under the
banner Moslems in Britain (1961-c.1966) are among a number made to market
aspects of British working life to overseas audiences.
The demise of the Crown Film Unit in 1952 marked a movement away from
centralised official filmmaking, and the longer format public information film
all but disappeared. Work was increasingly farmed out to independent companies
contracted by the COI on behalf of the government departments sponsoring the
films. From the mid-1950s, hundreds of films were produced for cinema and
television audiences overseas in the form of cinemagazines or magazine
programmes, such as London Line (c. 1966-78) or This Week in Britain (1959-80). The aim of these light news series, which reached their apex in the 1960s, was to project a modern Britain onto the screens of the world and
encourage international trade. From a Trooping the Colour ceremony to the launch
of Mary Quant's mini shift dress to an interview with Harold Pinter on the set
of The Caretaker (d. Clive Donner, 1963), these films provide a kaleidoscopic vision of British culture
and innovation during this transitional period.
As television ownership became increasingly commonplace in the 1960s, the 'TV
filler' evolved as the dominant form for public information films. It also meant
that new and younger audiences could be targeted directly, and such memorable
campaigns as the Tufty and the Charley Says cartoons of the 1960s and 70s, aimed
at children, have since achieved cult status amongst public information film
fans.
If COI films document the public concerns and issues of every generation,
Persona non Grata (1962), the feature-length dramatised security training film
in which a Russian diplomat tries to recruit a lonely British servant as a spy,
evokes the cold-war paranoia permeating the West during this period. Protect and
Survive (1975), an instructive series of animated chapters advising the public
on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack, including 'What to Put in Your
Fall-out Room' and 'The Importance of Your Radio', seems unsettlingly naive
in its approach given the scale of the imminent threat. The government eventually
realised that the campaign would be ultimately ineffectual in the event of a
real attack and it never reached our screens. The 1980s iconic AIDS information
films, Iceberg, My Place and Monolith, define a nation in the shadow of an
epidemic. These films, made by such acclaimed directors as Nicholas Roeg,
adopted state-of-the-art advertising techniques to enforce their grim message
and pushed form and style to new limits with their chilling, abstract evocations
of this new mortal threat.
In 2010 the new Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government announced a wholesale
freeze on marketing and advertising bar a few campaigns deemed 'essential', such as those relating to important health issues or recruitment to the armed forces. Over the following two years operations petered out, and the COI officially ceased to exist on 31st March 2012.
From the early days of post-WWII propaganda to more recent hard-hitting contemporary campaigns on issues such as bullying, binge drinking or child use of the internet, the COI existed as an arena for creativity and its vast and fascinating body of work survives as a chronicle of the ever-changing notion of what it means to be British.
Katy McGahan
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