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A young man goes on holiday to the seaside resort of Summersea. He meets a girl and romance blossoms between them.
Although it might not seem like it from the above synopsis, "John Atkins Saves Up" was one of a number of films produced by the GPO film unit to publicise various aspects of the work of the Post Office. (They were later to broaden their remit by making a number of short documentaries about other aspects of British life). They evidently thought that it would be difficult to make the work of the Post Office Savings Bank sound exciting or glamorous, so factual information about the operations of the Bank is combined with a fictitious romantic tale. The connection between the two is that John Atkins, a junior office clerk with a big London firm, opens a savings account to save for his holiday, and that the girl he meets is a Savings Bank employee.
Some of the GPO films, notably "Night Mail", retain their artistic value even today, but the appeal of most of them for a modern viewer is the insights they provide into life in the 1930s. What struck me most about "John Atkins Saves Up" is how standards of living have changed over the last eighty years. Certainly, the modern John Atkins, by which I mean a man of similar age in a similar job, would not need to open a special bank account to help him afford a one week holiday in an English seaside resort. Indeed, he probably spends his holidays jetting round the world to exotic destinations which his thirties equivalent could only have dreamed of.
On the other hand, I noted that John, a bachelor, lives in a spacious detached house in the London suburbs, a house which today would probably cost the best part of a million pounds and which a junior white-collar worker could not dream of renting, let alone owning outright. The modern John Atkins, if he lives alone, can probably afford no more than a cramped one-bedroom flat. Standards of living have indeed changed. But not always for the better.
Although it might not seem like it from the above synopsis, "John Atkins Saves Up" was one of a number of films produced by the GPO film unit to publicise various aspects of the work of the Post Office. (They were later to broaden their remit by making a number of short documentaries about other aspects of British life). They evidently thought that it would be difficult to make the work of the Post Office Savings Bank sound exciting or glamorous, so factual information about the operations of the Bank is combined with a fictitious romantic tale. The connection between the two is that John Atkins, a junior office clerk with a big London firm, opens a savings account to save for his holiday, and that the girl he meets is a Savings Bank employee.
Some of the GPO films, notably "Night Mail", retain their artistic value even today, but the appeal of most of them for a modern viewer is the insights they provide into life in the 1930s. What struck me most about "John Atkins Saves Up" is how standards of living have changed over the last eighty years. Certainly, the modern John Atkins, by which I mean a man of similar age in a similar job, would not need to open a special bank account to help him afford a one week holiday in an English seaside resort. Indeed, he probably spends his holidays jetting round the world to exotic destinations which his thirties equivalent could only have dreamed of.
On the other hand, I noted that John, a bachelor, lives in a spacious detached house in the London suburbs, a house which today would probably cost the best part of a million pounds and which a junior white-collar worker could not dream of renting, let alone owning outright. The modern John Atkins, if he lives alone, can probably afford no more than a cramped one-bedroom flat. Standards of living have indeed changed. But not always for the better.
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