London Can Take It! is a short documentary about the German
blitz on London during the early years of World War II. Quentin Reynolds, an
American war correspondent, serves as the narrator for a series of images of
the kinds of preparations that the citizens are making in advance of the
nightly attacks on their city. As the sirens wail, they close their curtains
and relocate to shelters. From 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., much of the city goes into
hiding as the German planes bomb different sectors. The next morning, the
destruction of various sections of the city is heartbreaking to witness, but
the Londoners go about cleaning up their neighborhoods and going back to work
and even getting ready for another cycle of attacks. The film, produced by
England’s GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit for the Ministry of Information,
is meant to be a testament to the resilience of the people of London, and it is
an effective, understated piece of propaganda. The film presents what should be
disturbing images in a very matter-of-fact way, and the narration by Reynolds
is also quite low-key. Despite all of this, though, watching the film is quite
an emotional experience because you get to see the strength of the English
people as they live their lives in the midst of the horrors of war. It’s an
inspiring, powerful film even though it only lasts about 9 minutes.
More about Nostradamus is really rather less about the famed
predictor of the future than it is about the predictions he made that seem to
match what was going on in Europe just prior to American involvement in World
War II. The short begins with a nobleman leading a group of grave robbers to
Nostradamus’s tomb on July 2, 1626, sixty years after Nostradamus’s death. He
learns the hard way to follow the warning on the tomb, “Encroach not upon the
repose of the one lying here,” as it collapses on him, killing him just as was predicted
on a scroll included in the tomb. That’s supposed to be a shocker of an opening
and perhaps a way to solidify the idea of Nostradamus’s accuracy. A short
biography follows, highlighted by his prediction that a young cleric will one
day become pope. When it comes true, everyone goes back to read the thousands
of predictions in his Prophetic Centuries.
The film then gives a series of examples to demonstrate further the accuracy of
his prognostications: the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the creation and
eventual failure of the League of Nations, and a host of World War I events. It’s
the slipperiness of the language that allows people to think that Nostradamus
was so spot-on with his predictions. Of course, “fishes of steel” could be submarines and “machines of
flying fire” could be airplanes, and
Germany could be the “miserable republic
usurped by a new leader,” Adolf Hitler. This is when the “real” focus of the
film becomes more apparent: the predictions about the situation in Europe at
the time of the film’s completion in 1940. Vichy France and the bombing of
England are among his predictions (if, of course, you accept the
interpretations of his language as applying to them), and the film then uses
the prediction that the “daughter of the English Isles” will help to end the
war. A shot of the Statue of Liberty that ends the film couldn’t be more obvious
about its plea to have the United States fulfill its “destiny” by entering the
war. The use of both re-enactments of historical events and contemporary
newsreel footage is quite effective, and the narration increases in intensity
and emotion as the film progresses, reflecting the heightening concern over the
events in Europe at the time.
Quicker ‘n a Wink was the second (and last) Pete Smith
Specialties entry to receive an Academy Award. It features the work of Dr.
Harold E. Edgerton at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who invented
the process of stroboscopic (“super high speed”) photography. Edgerton’s
process allows us to see in slow motion the kinds of actions like the whir of
fan blades and the breaking of a soap bubble that occur too quickly for us to
be able to examine them with the naked eye or even to capture with the
conventional photographic process. We get to see some unusual effects such as a
bullet shattering a light bulb and a golf ball punching a hole in a telephone
book. At times, there are comparisons between Edgerton’s photographic process
and “standard” photography, such as the moment when a football player’s foot comes
into contact with a football. The film (and Edgerton, I suppose, by extension)
spends a great deal of time using milk. We see the coronas formed by milk drops
and the tall spire created when a golf ball drops into a vat of milk. It was
intriguing to see how a cat’s tongue curls when it drinks milk, but not all of
the images are equally interesting. The beating wings of a hummingbird are
fascinating to watch, but getting to see a dentist’s drill in slow motion is
hardly a highlight for most people. As a scientific document, this short
captures the beginning of the use of high-speed photography to study the
details of motion too quick to discern with only our eyes. Even though it’s
really just a series of shots, Quicker ‘n
a Wink remains a fascinating historical film.
Siege provides quite shocking timely footage of the devastating
German attack on Warsaw, Poland, at the start of World War II. It’s a simple and
powerful series of images of the kind of damage that was inflicted upon the
city by the German bombers. Journalist Julien H. Bryan arrived in Warsaw just
after the end of the first week of bombing and stayed for two weeks to witness a
series of air raids and the destruction that followed. The German goal was to destroy
the bridges to and from the city, but that never happened. What resulted
instead was the loss of many lives and homes and buildings such as churches and
hospitals. We get to see the bread lines for limited supplies of food as well
as the gutted structures and the bullet holes that riddle walls. Incendiary bombs caused fires almost every day,
and families became accustomed to moving their possessions around the city to
avoid having them destroyed. Bryan’s almost day-by-day account is quite moving.
His story of the maternity hospital where the patients and their four-day-old
babies had to be moved to the basement is quite heartwarming, and his story
about how quickly the women re-entered a field to dig potatoes after an air
raid had killed some of their fellow citizens is astonishing. He appears in the
footage sometimes himself, talking to the residents and recounting their
testimony for the viewer. Interestingly, the footage itself almost didn’t
survive the attacks. Bryan and his small crew had to find a place to get it
developed quickly before it was destroyed or rendered unable to be developed.
This film was released two years before American involvement in World War II,
and it seems clearly designed to increase U.S. support for entering the war
effort by showing the suffering that the people of Warsaw and Poland and the
rest of Europe endured under the German attacks.
Oscar Winner: The
Academy selected the only entry that didn’t involve some aspect of World War
II, Quicker
‘n a Wink. Perhaps there was some concern in Hollywood over supporting
the war so early after its inception.
My Choice: I would pick either London
Can Take It! or Siege instead. Both deal with the
aftermath of the German attack on a city. However, Siege is more likely to
invoke pity based upon the kinds of images that it shares, and London
Can Take It! leaves viewers with perhaps a more upbeat feeling about
the strength of those undergoing the bombings. Both had to be very effective in
building American sentiment for supporting the countries involved in what would
come to be known as World War II.
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