This colour film of North London in the late 1940s is a sequence of insignificant moments - a man leading a horse, children in a playground, flats being built, old women answering the door, cars in streets, empty streets. And yet, together with a soundtrack from George Delerue, it becomes something more.
What it becomes is an elegy. We see a man leading a working horse which will soon be utterly obsolete; children playing who can remember only warfare; posters advertising the Ideal Home next to embryonic high rise blocks; old women who thought themselves old at the end of the war to end all wars who have now witnessed another; a bomb shelter in the garden of a woman with prematurely grey hair; a dairy with no cows on a street with bollards still painted white from the blackout. This film shows the birth of Post War Britain - and the grief at the death of Britain before the war.
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This film was curated by Cool it, Baby!, who also curated the film posted in The 80-year-old Little Girl.
this is really very touching and moving…and interesting to see the re-birth after the war. I love the simplicity of then and the technology of now.
[...] (Direktlink, via How to be a Retronaut) [...]
Brilliant, moody film. Cracking website.
Your ‘contact’ button doesn’t work. So… for your consideration for this site, this collection of photographs of mine on Flickr.
Elegy, perhaps, but from those bomb shelters and crumbling blocks, in a short decade, would rise an astonishing world of art, music and culture.
Again, thank you for featuring this clip that I edited and for another beautifully written introduction. I do wish you had told me about it!
Talking of old footage of England, I’m sure you’ll love this tremendous colour footage, filmed in 1939, of a journey along the Great North Road, from London to Grantham. It’s a REAL ‘Timetripper’!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYmFxoLb4OM
Thank you again Peter, for taking the time to comment about your film. As I mentioned under “The 80 year old little girl”, I am sorry not to have told you that your film had been featured on “How to be a Retronaut” - I was sure you would find it somehow, and I wanted you to be surprises - in a good way - by the impact of your films. I hope you have been. I found this film, combined with its soundtrack, to be something very special indeed. I would very much like to see any other film curatorial choices you make, and I will look at the other colour footage you mention straight away…
Hey Mikael, I am very sorry not to have replied earlier to your comments - your collection is a fascinating piece of work, and would make a great feature on “How to be a Retronaut”…
This film is absolutely beautiful, and such hauntingly soulful music.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lord Elgin , hellostarhotel. hellostarhotel said: Lovely short video, of St John's Wood in the 1940s, in colour http://bit.ly/fWHzCQ [...]