Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 5235 (Master Record)
Title | Year | Date |
JOHN'S 5TH BIRTHDAY | 1955 | 1955-01-01 |
Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Colour Sound: Silent Duration: 11 mins 17 secs Subject: Family Life |
Summary This amateur film was made by a Sheffield filmmaker, Kenneth Tofield. It shows his son John on his 5th birthday having a party and playing with his friends in their back garden. |
Description
This amateur film was made by a Sheffield filmmaker, Kenneth Tofield. It shows his son John on his 5th birthday having a party and playing with his friends in their back garden.
The film begins showing birthday cards on a table with a vase of flowers. In the garden the birthday boy takes the cover off his new tricycle and gives his mum a thank you kiss, showing the inscription on the card. John rides off on the trike around the garden, bordered by daffodils, with his mum looking out from...
This amateur film was made by a Sheffield filmmaker, Kenneth Tofield. It shows his son John on his 5th birthday having a party and playing with his friends in their back garden.
The film begins showing birthday cards on a table with a vase of flowers. In the garden the birthday boy takes the cover off his new tricycle and gives his mum a thank you kiss, showing the inscription on the card. John rides off on the trike around the garden, bordered by daffodils, with his mum looking out from the kitchen window. John goes off to greet his small friend at the front of the house, and his friend also has a go on the trike while John goes on his scooter. He then greets two other children arriving with their mother. Now a group of children are playing together in the garden, chasing each other around. Their respective mothers, and, presumably, a grandmother, watch as they play.
They then go into the house and sit around the dining table where they eat ice cream, cakes and biscuits. Mother lights the candles on the birthday cake, and John blows them out before having a slice. There are then close ups of the daffodils in the garden and other spring flowers, and also birds in the branches of the trees, which are just coming in to bud. This is followed by raindrops falling in puddles and rain water gushing out of a drainage pipe. Again the flowers are shown, this time with rain drops, including bluebells and irises. His mother helps John put on his new school uniform and satchel, and together they walk off, with father waving goodbye at the gate, as the film comes to an end.
Context
For those who have rarely had times as pleasant as those of riding around the garden on a trike in the pre-school age of innocence.
A subject typical of many a home movie: a son’s birthday. And it’s a typical birthday party to go with it, with ice cream, cakes, biscuits, and, of course, mother lighting the candles on the birthday cake. After the party the young friends chase each other around the beautifully kept garden in Sheffield in 1955. Finally, capturing that most auspicious of...
For those who have rarely had times as pleasant as those of riding around the garden on a trike in the pre-school age of innocence.
A subject typical of many a home movie: a son’s birthday. And it’s a typical birthday party to go with it, with ice cream, cakes, biscuits, and, of course, mother lighting the candles on the birthday cake. After the party the young friends chase each other around the beautifully kept garden in Sheffield in 1955. Finally, capturing that most auspicious of days, young John heads off for his first day at school with his brand new satchel, all preserved in Kodachrome by proud dad. Kenneth Tofield was living at the time on Brooklands Crescent in the Fulwood area of Sheffield, where he had moved with his wife Joan in 1947. Kenneth worked for the Midland Bank in Sheffield and was a keen amateur filmmaker who made a number of similar films before and after the war. These were often of family and friends out in the snow and skating on ice, which he would show for local groups in his own film shows. As will be apparent from the film, he was also a keen gardener, winning the Brighter Sheffield competition five times for his gardens whilst still living at his parent’s house in the 1930s. |