Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 2639 (Master Record)
Title | Year | Date |
A PRESENT FROM WHITBY | 1948 | 1948-01-01 |
Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Silent Duration: 10 mins 16 secs Subject: Seaside Family Life |
Summary This is an enchanting film of a family holiday in Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay, focusing on a small girl buying presents for her friends. |
Description
This is an enchanting film of a family holiday in Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay, focusing on a small girl buying presents for her friends.
Titles - OLCS "Oscar" award 1948
A Bloggs Production
Title - A Present from Whitby
Intertitles - September Days at Whitby, "The Haven under the Hill"
The film begins showing the abbey in the distance over the top of houses.
Intertitle - the Abbey
The abbey is shown closer up, also with views over the harbour.
Intertitle - Our...
This is an enchanting film of a family holiday in Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay, focusing on a small girl buying presents for her friends.
Titles - OLCS "Oscar" award 1948
A Bloggs Production
Title - A Present from Whitby
Intertitles - September Days at Whitby, "The Haven under the Hill"
The film begins showing the abbey in the distance over the top of houses.
Intertitle - the Abbey
The abbey is shown closer up, also with views over the harbour.
Intertitle - Our next meal
A girl of about 10 years old casts a line and hook over the side of the harbour and pulls it up having caught a fish, which she unhooks.
Intertitle - Pilgrimage to R H B
The film switches to Robin Hood's Bay, where the girl and her father are on the beach looking at crabs. Her mother sits on the beach, but gets up when the camera is turned towards her. Mother and daughter then go out on a boat ride on a boating lake.
Intertitle - A Present from Whitby
People are sitting in deckchairs on the beach near the twin piers, with donkeys passing in front of them. The girl sits on the sand writing a list of presents for her friends and family, including a purse, a doll and a broach. She checks out how much money she has, leaves her notebook with her mother, who is knitting on the beach, and walks off. The girl goes into the shop of W. Braithwaite to buy a present, emerging having bought some Whitby Jet.
Intertitle - The Fleet's in
A fishing boat comes into the harbour, and the girl buys herself an ice cream between two wafers. She goes into another shop advertising St Bruno Flake (tobacco) and buys a small doll. A woman walks past with a child in a pushchair. The girl then enters an amusement arcade. The harbour is full of fishing boats, with fishermen mending their nets.
Intertitle - Up they come
Fishermen pull up their catches of fish in baskets, which are placed onto a rolling belt and up to a truck, onto which the fish are emptied.
Intertitle - Down they go
Some girls slide down the rolling belts on pieces of wood.
Intertitle - Preparing bait
Children watch as fishermen cut up fish for bait. The wooden fish crates and boats are washed down with hoses. The girl goes down to the beach passed the donkeys to join her mother. She ticks off two of her presents, re-counts her money and crosses off the rest on her list. She takes a liking to the doll and so also crosses that off the list.
The End
Context
This is a beautifully made film by an unknown amateur filmmaker of his daughter in relaxed mood while on holiday in Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay in 1948. As well as the usual trip to the Abbey, a visit to a penny arcade and buying some Whitby jet, mother and daughter go fishing and watch the Whitby fishermen as they bring home their catch and prepare for their next voyage out.
This film was donated to the Yorkshire Film Archive by Robin Hood's Bay and Fylingdales Museum, together with...
This is a beautifully made film by an unknown amateur filmmaker of his daughter in relaxed mood while on holiday in Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay in 1948. As well as the usual trip to the Abbey, a visit to a penny arcade and buying some Whitby jet, mother and daughter go fishing and watch the Whitby fishermen as they bring home their catch and prepare for their next voyage out.
This film was donated to the Yorkshire Film Archive by Robin Hood's Bay and Fylingdales Museum, together with another excellent film of Fylingdales from 1954-55. Unfortunately it isn’t known who made the films, but judging by the quality of the filming, editing and use of intertitles, it is probable that they were a keen amateur filmmaker. It isn’t known what the “OLCS” stands for, for which the film won an “Oscar”; possibly the Oldham Lyceum Cine Society which formed in 1945 as one of the numerous offshoots of the Oldham Lyceum, established in 1838 for, “the moral and intellectual improvement of the inhabitants." |