Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 717 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| CRICKET 1952 (FEATURING LOCATIONS IN ILKLEY AND SLEIGHTS) | 1952 | 1952-01-01 |
|
Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Silent Duration: 8 mins 15 secs Credits: Jack Eley Subject: Sport |
| Summary This film features several cricket matches during 1952. |
|
Description
This film features several cricket matches during 1952.
The film begins showing a cricket match with a pavilion and cars parked around the perimeter. Several batsmen are seen getting out.
Title: 'Bradford v Ilkley, August 1952'
The film moves to another cricket match at a different location. Trees on a hill overlook the field.
Intertitle: 'A Cricket outing to Sleights, August 1952'
Three women stroll along a street. They are followed by two men, one with a bulldog. A...
This film features several cricket matches during 1952.
The film begins showing a cricket match with a pavilion and cars parked around the perimeter. Several batsmen are seen getting out.
Title: 'Bradford v Ilkley, August 1952'
The film moves to another cricket match at a different location. Trees on a hill overlook the field.
Intertitle: 'A Cricket outing to Sleights, August 1952'
Three women stroll along a street. They are followed by two men, one with a bulldog. A sign shows the 'Forest of Vale Hotel', and people are seen leaving before another cricket match is shown. The umpires come out, followed by the players and two batsmen. One cricketer puts on his kit, and a group of women are sitting in the stand knitting.
The next scene shows houses near a river, and a couple standing on the footbridge which crosses that river. There is also a small waterfall. A number people stroll around the small village. A man plays with a bulldog on the grass beside the river. Outside a pub, a playful group of people are standing around with their drinks. One man quickly downs his while another lights his pipe.
The End
Context
The 1950s, and the zenith of cricket as the perfect expression of the English refinement of leisure accompanied by smoking a pipe and having a beer.
This film is a wonderful evocation of an idyllic post-war Britain, at least for the well-heeled living in the prosperous Yorkshire town of Ilkley. The clichéd phrase of, “the sound of willow against leather” sums up a whole lifestyle, and it’s seen here with the archetypal colonel in cricket blazer, sporting a Jimmy Edwards moustache and...
The 1950s, and the zenith of cricket as the perfect expression of the English refinement of leisure accompanied by smoking a pipe and having a beer.
This film is a wonderful evocation of an idyllic post-war Britain, at least for the well-heeled living in the prosperous Yorkshire town of Ilkley. The clichéd phrase of, “the sound of willow against leather” sums up a whole lifestyle, and it’s seen here with the archetypal colonel in cricket blazer, sporting a Jimmy Edwards moustache and accompanied by a British bulldog. As an Ilkley Club batsman makes his forlorn way back to the pavilion, the ladies keep themselves occupied, knitting. It is not entirely sure who is behind the camera in this film but it is most likely the highly accomplished Leeds amateur filmmaker John (Jack) Eley, possibly with the help of his fellow member of Leeds Cine Club, and its off-shoot Mercury Movie Makers, Reg White. Jack was very prolific from 1932 through to 1980, but especially so in the 1950s and ‘60s. Historic information on non-county cricket clubs is hard to come by but it seems that both Ilkley Cricket Club, founded in 1850, and Sleights are still playing on the same cricket grounds as they do in this film. |
