This is one of about eighteen films made between 1940 and 1947 by Kenneth Raynor – Kenneth had earlier changed the spelling from its original ‘Rayner’.   Most of the films are of life in and around the village of Swallownest, 8 miles east of Sheffield.  This is perhaps his most intimate film, where Kenneth himself appears, with dark hair and glasses.  Other people in the film haven’t been identified.  For more on Raynor see the Context for Rays (1944).   This film is a great example of the...

This is one of about eighteen films made between 1940 and 1947 by Kenneth Raynor – Kenneth had earlier changed the spelling from its original ‘Rayner’.   Most of the films are of life in and around the village of Swallownest, 8 miles east of Sheffield.  This is perhaps his most intimate film, where Kenneth himself appears, with dark hair and glasses.  Other people in the film haven’t been identified.  For more on Raynor see the Context for Rays (1944).  

This film is a great example of the value of the ‘home movie’.  It presents a rare glimpse into the family home of a provincial middle class family during the first years of the Second World War.  This was clearly a professional, and fairly intellectual, family, judging by the books and records, which are given prominence in the film as if making a statement.  As a youngster Kenneth was an avid collector, keeping all his toys and comics, and this can be see here with the books and records.  He was also a conscientious objector during the war, a fact that must have made life difficult for him working as a chemist in the steelworks in Rotherham, even though in this work he was undoubtedly contributing to the war effort.  But judging by the other films made in and around Swallownest during the war, showing many of the villagers, there is no evidence that Raynor experienced any hostility there (assuming his stance was generally known).

As with his other films, this one shows the care with which Raynor filmed.  It wasn’t easy to film indoors, with the poor light, but he doesn’t shy away from this, and even manages a lovely twilight image of the moon, a difficult feat with the poor equipment he must have had.  He even managed to get hold of some colour film (another difficult feat in wartime), and do some fancy photography which brings some humour into the film. What is especially noticeable, in his other films as well, is the attention he gives to showing close up portraits, even if it does make his subjects somewhat self-conscious.

One interesting facet of the film is just how well stocked the pantry looks, to say that it is in the middle of the war with strict rationing – they also seem to have managed a substantial Christmas meal, even having HP sauce.  The film also shows how a typical middle class family at that time entertained themselves through music, both singing around the home piano, and listening to records – before the domination of TV.  Raynor makes a point of showing his record player in close up, which looks very modern.   At this point the film is quite dark, and it doesn’t show the mechanism of the automatic record changer fully in action, so it isn’t easy to determine the make and model.  Although the first of these appeared in the US in 1927, the Automatic Orthophonic launched by the Victor Talking Machine Company – and later that year HMV produced the Automatic Change Gramophone in England – it wasn’t until the mid to late 1930s that they began appearing on record playing consoles, like the one in the film.  This may well be one of the Garrard range with a "pusher platform", the RC-5, RC-6 and RC-8, which first appeared in 1936. It is possible to see the lever at the side of the turntable which pushes each record forcing it to drop (see the online article at midi-magic, References).  This would certainly have been fairly rare in England at this time, and so it isn’t surprising that Raynor shows it off at the beginning of the film.

As can be seen, they have a fair selection of records.  At this time they weren’t called lps (long playing), as these didn’t become generally available until around 1948 when the 12-inch vinyl, running at 33⅓ rpm, become widespread (the following year RCA brought out  the first 7 inch 45 rpm, popularised by rock and roll).  In fact RCA had introduced a 33⅓ vinyl in 1931 – when it merged with Columbia to form EMI – but this wasn’t a commercial success and only lasted for a year.  Although vinyl was available for radio stations this was still the era of the old 78s (actually 77.92 rpm) made from shellac.   As these only had a short playing time, classical records, as seen in the film, would usually come in a box set.  The three main record producers at the time were the US based EMI  – the owners of HMV (His Master's Voice) and, in Britain at least, Columbia records – Deutsche Grammophon, and the British record label Decca.  

The series of box set classical recordings seen at the end of the film may well have been made by EMI at the Abbey Road recording studio opened in 1931.  They show that Raynor had very up to date taste in British classical music, with a host of twentieth century British composers, including John Ireland, Arnold Bax, William Walton, Arthur Bliss and Elgar. Without access to old catalogues, it isn’t easy to determine which label these records belong to. The inclusion of John Moeran’s best known work, his Symphony in G minor, might help.  This wasn’t first recorded until the previous year, in Manchester by the Hallé Orchestra under Leslie Heward in late November early December 1942, and released in 1943 by HMV (Heward died soon after in May 1943).  Like John Ireland, and his friend Peter Warlock, John Moeran was, and remains, very much on the fringe of the popular repertoire.  Somewhat puzzlingly, there is also a copy of Arnold Bax’s 3rd Symphony, which apparently was first recorded in December 1943 and January 1944, by Barbirolli and his Hallé Orchestra – and so, presumably, not available before New Year’s Eve 1943.

There is still more interesting aspects of the cultural life of the early war years.  The novel that the woman is reading towards the end, A Leaf in the Storm by Lin Yutang, had only recently come out in 1941.  Set in China, it deals with the war with Japan before the attack on Pearl Harbour at the end of 1941.  The other book, taken off the bookcase, is God and Evil by C. E. M. Joad, which was even more recent, published in 1943. Cyril Joad is an interesting character, one of a type of public intellectuals, like his heroes George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell, which has subsequently disappeared from the public realm.  Joad, like Raynor, had been a pacifist (albeit a much more public one), until the rise of fascism led him to abandon this position, and also to prompt the writing of this book (it touches upon the concentration camps). 

He was best known at this time as a member of the popular BBC radio programme, The Brains Trust, which started life on Jan 1st 1940 under the name Any Questions, a forerunner of the later radio programme also called Any Questions,  and the TV offshoot,  Question Time.  The two other early panellists were Julian Huxley and Commander Archibald Bruce Campbell, chaired by Donald McCullough.  This had a huge audience – around 29% of the population, and generating on average around 4,400 letters each week – almost as much as the wartime comedy series ITM (It's That Man Again).  If we think that standards at the BBC have slackened, we might consider that Joad was thrown off the programme in 1948 for travelling first class on a train with a third class ticket!  At his trial it emerged that, for some reason, he “had an obsession about trying to defraud the railways, and he used to carry pocketfuls of penny tickets, lie about which station he had boarded the train, and even scramble over hedges and fields to avoid ticket collectors” (References).  Which simply sounds as if he remained devoted to the ways of many a schoolboy!

The Brains Trust was a general discussion programme of various miscellaneous topics chosen by the audience, subject to some BBC censorship, and criticised by some as, basically, dumbing down and avoiding controversial subjects (one wonders what those same critics might make of today’s BBC offerings?). Joad was known as ‘The Professor' (he wasn’t really, though he was Head of Philosophy at Birkbeck College).      It may have been listening to this programme that inspired the purchase of God and Evil, a forerunner to a more explicit defence of Christianity in his 1952 Recovery Of Belief - A Restatement Of Christian Philosophy.  Or it may have just reflected the intellectual clime of the times, when Fabian socialists like Joad, and those of an even more radical hue, were read and discussed much more widely than they are today.  Joad challenged head on the criticism of ‘philosophical vulgarisateur'; and whatever his shortcomings as a philosopher, his aim to cultivate ‘the philosophical attitude of mind’ among a wider audience most probably had some results (certainly at least one still flying the flag, see the The Cyril Joad Society, References). 

But away from the all the highbrow stuff, this film also shows people having a good time, even in the middle of the most devastating war in history.  Yet by December 1943 the momentum in the war had definitely shifted in the allies favour; in Italy, North Africa, the Pacific and on the Eastern Front.  It would be fascinating to compare this to similar footage from Germany made around the same time, if any exists.

References

Asa Briggs, The War of the Words, The history of broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. III, Oxford University Press, 1970.

Jonathan Rée, Proletarian Philosophers: Problems in Socialist Culture in Britain 1900-1940, Oxford, 1984.

midi-magic: Record Changers

E.J. Moeran: Symphony in G minor

Richard W Symonds, The Brains Trust

Online text of Joad, God and Evil

Henry Farrell, The Great Train Ticket Scandal of 1948

Robert Hill, Philosophy For All

The Cyril Joad Society