Painted Boats

Airplanes and motorcars and railways have left the canals of Great Britain far behind as our canals like the Erie Canal in my region of America. Today they exist as artificially made rivers hopefully with a fish in them.

But the canals had a revival of sorts as a method of transporting war material during World War II which lasted two years longer for them than it did for us. Painted Boats is an interesting mixture of documentary about the canals with a boy/girl story of two young people who are the latest generation of families who work the barges and locks of Britain's canal system. Jenny Laird and Robert Griffiths are the two young people who meet and plan to marry but Mr. Hitler disrupts all those plans.

These people's whole lives are wrapped up in the canal system from cradle to grave. When you either run a boat or the locks there's little need to know anything else. A really telling scene in this film is when Laird and her mother May Hallatt sign a new contract with a company and sign with "Xs". No need for literacy on a barge.

Painted boats is an interesting story of a time gone by in the United Kingdom.

Nominally a story about two families who live on the canal boats of England navigational network, this is mostly about the canals themselves. We get a short documentary of the origins of Britain's network of man-made navigational rivers, their economic importance, and the issues that the riverine culture has with outsiders.

It's Charles Critchton's second movie as a director, and his training as an editor contributes to the brevity of the piece. Mustn't let the audience grow bored with lectures! Although there are professional actors in the movie, particularly Jenny Laird as the ingenue, there's a handsome authenticity to the movie. The characters all seem genuine.

Ealing were just at the beginning their golden period, after this the studio went on during the next year to make Dead Of Night which was one of their towering achievements. This little film however is not in that class even if still spellbinding for beaming back through Time to us a lost England. It's not completely lost because many people still ply boats along canals, only mainly as a pastime though.

It's a short semi-romantic semi-documentary showing brief episodes in the busy lives of a couple of families on the water, working on the Grand Union Canal between the Midlands and London. The rustic homeliness of it all was beautifully captured by the camera of Douglas Slocombe, I lost count of all the languid and lovely images of riverbanks, quaint buildings with or without thatch, gentle or frothing water and blue skies. And all in a clean and glorious black and white nitrate print. Thick accents through dubbed sound can be hard to follow at times as well as occasionally wondering what's going on as it's all taken so leisurely, but it's not a problem. A splendid lulling narration by James McKechnie takes over at times which is redolent of Eric Portman in Canterbury Tale – Can No One Speak Like That Nowadays? Jenny Laird, who a few years before had played Ethel to Just William was the main character in here, emotional Mary. Harry Fowler then nineteen years old played his usual lovable youth role, while Megs Jenkins seemed ready as usual to wash some glasses.

It leaves loose ends in the rush to finish but the main point was achieved in the one hour: the loving views of some wonderful English countryside. Engrossing inconsequential stuff, give it a punt.

I find it almost impossible to watch this right through, so nostalgic is it of a way of life virtually gone now. The blend of professional actors with, presumably, real-life characters works well. There's nothing really to fault-photography is very good and sharp; music appropriate; lots of familiar faces-e.g. Megs Jenkins, a young Harry Fowler...

Couple this with "The Song of the Road" (1937), which is about the replacement of horses on farms, and you have a pretty good depiction of life in England before and after the War. One critic summed up the 1937 film as "..a sentimental, idealised account of a country at peace with itself". It's not that simple of course, but there are plenty of documentaries about analysing the harder edge of those times.

Enjoy these films for what they are-wonderful depictions made with feeling, and valuable social documents.

This film is mainly a romance but is also a Documentary. Showing life on "the Cut" when the canals where a part of the British transport scene.

The story follows the lives (and loves) of two families. The "Traditional" Smith's (Father, Mother & Mary Smith) in the Horse Drawn Barge "Sunny Valley" (which is converted to a motor barge in the film) and the "Modern" Stoner's (Mother, Ted Stoner & his younger brother Alf) in the motor barge "Golden Boy" & butty (an unpowered barge) "Blackbird".

Although released in 1945 it was filmed during the later part of the second world war the couple Mary Smith & Ted Stoner never get to marry (not in this film anyway) as Ted is "Called-Up" and joins the Army (The Royal Engineers).

The end of the film sees "Sunny Valley" emerging onto the River Thames at Limehouse, East London.