|
The same year that he made his masterpiece Target For Tonight, Harry Watt also directed this short propaganda film (backed by the Ministry of Information) that was explicitly aimed at the United States - hence the use of American journalist Quentin Reynolds as the narrator. The aim was to show what ordinary Britons were putting up with during Christmas of 1940, the first spent under the German blitz. The film's central message is that life goes on, but not without considerable modification. Church bells are silent, and Christmas trees are trimmed to fit air raid shelters and Underground stations, the latter providing mass overnight accommodation for those who lacked suitable facilities at home. But, as Reynolds stresses, "we shouldn't feel sorry for them because they don't feel sorry for themselves": the last thing Watt wanted to convey was any sense of defeatism. His film was nominated for a Best Documentary Short Subject Oscar, losing to the Canadian propaganda film Churchill's Island - which was also about the British under fire. Michael Brooke
| 
Complete film (9:38)
