Queen Cotton

A short documentary made during the war about the wonders of cotton. The aim was really to promote and show off haute couture from cotton materials when other materials were scarce because of the war.

It was a time when cotton was king in Lancashire, as the raw cotton arrived from all over the world into Manchester so it can then be taken to the cotton looms in Lancashire.

We do not just see the yarn being made but the intricate designs for clothes being made by designers and the colourful dyes being produced by scientists.

An interesting short documentary of a life that has vanished, the cotton mills of Lancashire have become extinct.

Ironically a few shots for this film of looms being loaded with spools of coloured cotton (with Allan Gray's triumphal score replacing the accompaniment originally provided by William Alwyn) reappeared a couple of years later in 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' in a sequence supposedly taking place in 1919 demonstrating the replacement of khaki with something prettier now the First World War was over.

In its original context the shots were intended to demonstrate - as World War II entered its second dreary year - that British industry was still ticking over nicely; and one could dream in Technicolor of better things to come (even if it would have taken an awful lot of coupons to acquire any of the creations we see modelled at this film's conclusion).