Fires Were Started [I Was a Fireman] **** (1943, Philip Dickson, George Gravett, Fred Griffiths) – Classic Movie Review 9124

Writer-director Humphrey Jennings’s wonderfully sensitive, realistic and moving 1943 documentary Fires Were Started about a London fire unit’s 24-hour day during the German air-raid bombings of winter 1940 elevates mundane detail to sublime significance and is now acclaimed as a classic.

Fires Were Started starts with a new recruit joining the National Fire Service and ends superbly with the firemen fighting a night bombing of the London dock area in the World War Two Blitz.

It is a remarkable historical document as a record of the mood and feeling of the time. It is much more impressive than the same year’s drama film on the same subject, The Bells Go Down, unluckily released simultaneously.

Fires Were Started [I Was a Fireman] is directed by Humphrey Jennings, runs 65 minutes, is made and distributed by Crown Film Unit, is written by Humphrey Jennings, is shot in black and white by C M Pennington-Richards, is produced by Ian Dalrymple and is scored by William Alwyn.

It features Philip Dickson, George Gravett, Fred Griffiths, Johnny Houghton, Loris Rey and William Sansom. The non-professional cast were all serving London firemen. Their dialogue is largely improvised.

Exterior shots were filmed on location, while the interior scenes were shot at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England.

Jennings’s first original cut of Fires Were Started was titled I Was a Fireman and ran 74 minutes, but it was cut to 65 minutes and released as Fires Were Started.

Humphrey Jennings, born in 1907, was director of ground-breaking documentary films for the renowned Crown Film Unit: Listen to Britain (1942), Fires Were Started (1943) and A Diary for Timothy (1945). He died tragically in 1950 aged 43 falling off a cliff while scouting locations for a film in Greece.

It is released by BFI Video (2012) (UK) (DVD). The BFI’s Complete Humphrey Jennings Volume Two DVD contains The Heart of Britain (1941), Words for Battle (1941), Listen to Britain (1941), Fires Were Started (1943) and The Silent Village (1943), plus I Was a Fireman (1943, 74 minutes), Jennings’s original cut of Fires Were Started.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 9124

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com