Fires Were Started

I stand be corrected, but I don't think we actually see any enemy planes in this reenactment of one day (and night) in the life of a team of firefighters using actual firemen, which treats the Blitz more like a natural disaster than an act of aggression from abroad.

The cast of 'Fires Were Started' were all non-professionals, but Wally Patch later briefly appeared unbilled as a civil defence warden arriving alongside Dr. Reeves in 'A Matter of Life and Death' to remind us that people were killed doing this job; and ending the film in wartime with the funeral of one of the team required considerable horsetrading with the authorities.

TV decision-makers have developed such a low opinion regarding the viewer's intelligence that even the well-meaning and insightful reality "immersion" programs (24 hours in the hospital, police, fire brigades or airport custom services) must rely on fast-paced editing, on-the-nose voice-over or intrusive background music to overemphasize the heroism of their subjects.

One can easily diagnose it as TV symptomatic mimicry of cinema driven by an unfair assumption about reality's appeal (or lack thereof). Just as if the camera wasn't effective enough a window on the real, producers need to make their docs as thrilling, suspenseful, emotionally engaging and ultimately as entertaining as movies or series... and that's why today, documentaries show and tell, tell what to know and how to feel; that should be useful for National Geographic but when It deals with humans, what these programs show should be telling enough.

"Fires Were Started" is such a program.

The documentary (or film shot documentary-style) was released in 1943 and consists on a day's work in a firemen unit at the height of the Blitz, from the phone operators to the dispatching and logistics. The closest to a 'central' protagonist is a rookie, a young volunteer named Barrett. Before we get to the action, in intimate scenes shot in studios, we see firemen as relatable average Joes, enjoying leisure time, drinking tea, playing ping pong, snooker, having fun with an improvised piano session with the "Mow Meadow" song that sets the well-times mood whiplash occurring shortly before the end of the first half.

Indeed, when the alarm rings and a building neighboring the London harbor is under the flames, we're taken to the second half that has nothing to envy from the punchiest reality program. Naturally the film is closer in spirit with movies like "Battle of Algiers" (with a naturalistic approach that could have inspired Altman and oddly enough, I even thought of "Car Wash"). It's interesting that it used real firemen (quite good actors) and reconstructions over already destroyed buildings instead of simply shooting the real thing, the result is a successful "entertainazation" of reality and without the constant reliance on these hyperbolic effects (narration, voice over, etc.) music is sporadically used, there's no flooding of emotions (Spielberg should take notes) and that the film ends up affecting you with its poignancy says a lot about the storytelling talent of Humphrey Jennings.

Jennings doesn't go for effects, he lets the camera rolls at every department and inflicts us many unglamorous sequences about fire hydrants, assignments and the same order being repeated five times, we're not supposed to get everything, except the essential: efficiency-driven processes, organization, and men and women working together. Once we gather that, we get to a lengthy leisure sequence culminating with "Mow at Meadow" song and I could see why director Lindsay Anderson called Jennings a poet. Anyone can make a 'propaganda' film showing brave firemen defeating fire, climbing unsteady ladders, under the pressure of backdrafts or lack of water pressure, watching their comrades hurt or dying but it takes a certain coolness to show these men having fun and enjoying their time before the call of duty, highlighting their humanity before their vulnerability.

Jennings is a poet of the everyday folks showing us that heroes are nothing but ordinary guys, jeopardizing their life for principles, but not acting like holy sacrificial lambs. And once again, British cinema prove its capability to display the upper lip spirit less through the characters' bravery or courage but their stoic attitude under the fire. Although I doubt everyone would have stayed that cool under German bombings (some smiles might strike as a tad unrealistic given the film's context).

There's one image that speaks a thousand words though, when Barrett finds the crushed and burnt helmet of a partner in the ruins and that image symbolizes the ultimate bravery of men whose job consists as facing the very fire and ashes Winston had promised. It's a sad irony that Jennings died in 1950 after an accident while looking for locations as if embodied the very courage he showed in his film. "Fires Were Started" is a rather minor propaganda film but I mean it as a compliment, it's a great tribute to men who fought the big fight and to a director who could have given a little more and who certainly inspired the New British Wave of he 1960s with Anderson, Reisz, Schlesinger.

So, don't let its short runtime and lack of juicy casting fool you, if you admire firemen and their heroic sacrifices all through history, this is a film you can't refuse.

Fires Were Started has no stock footage. However, it is similar to such in that an ignorant 1990s eye risks being unable to see through the strangeness of 1940s Britain to the lives and tensions portrayed in this film. Fires Were Started is a witty, poetic account of the war effort understood as the acts of everyday Londoners. You can work hard watching it dissecting the poetic sequences of imagery; you can take it easy and enjoy the people we meet or you can follow the exciting narrative of 24 hours during the bombing of London. Poetry.

I'd been trying to track this movie down for a while so I had high expectations of it, and on some counts it disappointed and on others it actually excelled. I was expecting a propaganda film with a plummy BBC voice-over intoning: 'Here we see the lads of Heavy Unit one, sector c 14, enjoying a pint of bitter and a sing song before their shift.' Instead, I was presented with a proper film with characters and a plot and everything! This struck me as particularly extraordinary having seen the first film on the DVD which was a motley collection of clips of Britain at work for the War Effort, inter-spliced with a lunchtime concert (blitz spirit etc.) featuring Myra Hess wearing what looked like a lab-coat playing piano rather animatedly.

To make a film with such high production values in wartime, with everything seriously rationed is quite extraordinary. Okay, it portrays the firemen as heroes, but it presents them in a light that is far from uplifting. They are men who work tirelessly and they take great risks, and then they go and do it all over again the next night – none of this wandering off into the sunset with a girl on your arm. By 1943, when the film was made, the blitz was pretty much over, but the horror and uncertainty of the V1s and V2s was yet to come and although the tide seemed to have turned, there was no end in sight at this point. Jennings' stroke of genius was to create a film that identified with its audience and was honest with them, while actually having the humour to keep morale up.

The use of actual firemen for the characters has its pros and cons – some of them are decent actors, others are very poor, but I should imagine that in 1943 people in possession of an equity card were rather few and far between. There is obviously some stock footage used in the long shots of the burning warehouses, giving a broader picture of what the crew of one pump were up against, which is no bad thing. The stock footage is actually pretty important as it gives a reality that would otherwise be lacking (see also Malta Story).

All in all this is a triumph of realistic, humanist film-making from the darkest days of our darkest hours.

Produced to celebrate the work of the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS), FIRES WERE STARTED is a drama-documentary recounting a day in the life of those men charged with the responsibility of dousing fires during the Blitz of 1940-41 in London's Docklands. None of the actors are professional; they have been encouraged to play the roles of 'ordinary' people. As a result some of the performances are better than others. What renders the film truly remarkable is the fact that it was produced under very difficult conditions with high production values: the re- enactments of the nighttime air raids are convincing, with staged scenes intercut with actual footage. Produced as a propaganda piece to celebrate the virtues of community, of people pulling together at a time of great stress, FIRES WERE STARTED shows the difficulties experienced by Londoners at that time; not only during but after the nightly raids; how the city picked itself up and continued working, even after the heaviest bombing. The actors manage to create a spirit of community - not only through working but also singing, eating and drinking together. The film is an invaluable record of life during the Second World War: should be required viewing for any social historians interested in the period.