North Sea

"North Sea" is one of a series of short documentary films produced by the GPO Film Unit during the late thirties. A number of them have recently been shown on the "Sky Arts" channel. Most of these, of which "Night Mail" is perhaps the most famous, were expressly made to publicise the work of the British General Post Office, but the unit clearly had a wider remit as it also made films with no, or little connection to the postal service, and "North Sea", made by Harry Watt who was one of the directors of "Night Mail", is one of these. It is possible that the radio stations which play an important part in the film were operated by the GPO, but this is never made clear.

The subject of the film is the British fishing industry, specifically the rescue of an Aberdeen-based trawler, the "John Gillman", which is disabled in a storm. The crew radio for help and are rescued with the assistance of the coastal radio stations. The skipper of the rescuing ship is initially reluctant to set out- he has superstitious objections to setting sail on a Friday- but soon conquers his fears when he realises that the lives of his fellow-seafarers are at stake.

This is not a "fly on the wall" documentary of the type with which we are familiar today; I doubt if such a film would have been feasible given the technology of the thirties. It is rather a dramatic reconstruction of real-life events, although Watt used real fishermen as his actors, just as he had used real railwaymen and postal workers in "Night Mail".

The film has never achieved the fame of "Night Mail", possibly because it lacks that film's most distinctive feature, an evocative poem by a famous poet set to music by a famous composer. As with a lot of the GPO documentaries, its main interest today lies in the picture it gives of life in the period. As with "Night Mail" a lot of stress is laid on contemporary technology, in this case the network of radio stations which allow the stricken trawler to be located quickly and help dispatched as soon as possible. This sort of technology was doubtless very unsophisticated compared with modern radar and satellite-based global positioning systems, but as shown here it appears to have worked.

I haven't awarded the film a score out of ten, as it seems pointless trying to compare it with the full-length dramas which I normally review. Like a number of the GPO documentaries, however, it is still worth watching today, if only from the point of view of the social history it contains.

The John Gilman, a trawler out of Aberdeen, sets out on Friday. It's an unlucky day, but out they go, and run into a storm that nearly sinks them. In fact, they have to tell Wick Radio that they don't need salvage; that would mean they lose all their cargo.

The other IMDb commenter seems uncertain if Wick Radio was run by the British Post Office, which would make it a proper subject for the GPO's film unit. Perhaps the copy he looked at lacked the ending, which makes it clear that the PostOffice does run these stations, allowing the ships on the sea to keep in touch.

It's produced by Cavalcanti, and directed by Harry Watt, director of the classic documentary NIGHT MAIL. I see the roots of the sort of movie that Watt and others in his group would make during the War, showing Britons just doing their work under desperate situations.