Tawny Pipit

Tawny Pipit is written and directed by both Bernard Miles and Charles Saunders, and Miles also stars in the piece. It also stars Rosamund John, Niall MacGinnis, Jean Gillie, Christopher Steele, Lucie Mannheim, Brefni O'Rourke and George Carney. Music is by Noel Mewton-Wood and cinematography by Eric Cross.

The village of Lipsbury Lea suddenly springs to life when it is discovered that a pair of rare Tawny Pipit's are nesting in one of the local fields. As outside forces threaten to destroy one of nature's great achievements, the villagers rally around to stand defiant in Mother Nature's corner.

Dated? Yes absolutely. Even twee? For sure. Unsubtle propaganda? Too right mate! Wonderful? Yes indeed.

Anyone would think we were fifth columnists!

The Brits were great at this sort of thing, at showing a slice of old fashioned life, where quaintness rules the day and nature's wonderful pastures envelope an assortment of colourful characters rallying around for a collective cause. Tawny Pipit is basically a metaphor for standing up to the bad guys, in this case during war time, Nazi Germany. The message is simple, if we stand together then you shall not have her!

All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small.

The backdrop is quintessential Britain, a place of rolling hills, country lanes, of one public house, one grocery shop, one post office, one vicar who actually serves a purpose to the community and one copper who no doubt gets around on his bicycle. Into this British ideal comes those villagers, each with their own ticks and traits, be it stoic men of straight backs refusing to bend an inch, or pretty ladies doing their bit for the cause - such as stopping tanks in their tracks! And of course pesky villains who would gladly steam roller a birds nest or filch the eggs for financial gain. You shall not pass, unity is powerful. Doesn't matter if it's 1944 or now, it's whimsy with relevance and it's a jolly good show. 7/10

The film was largely shot in Lower Slaughter and is a fascinating historical record of the Cotswolds during WW2. Today Lower Slaughter is a much visited village; the buildings are largely unchanged and the mill wheel still turns, if only for show. In "An eye for a Bird" 1970 Eric Hosking, who was the ornithological advisor for the film wrote : "It was decided that it was quite impossible to contemplate filming an actual tawny pipit; it nests mainly on the Continent where the war was raging. It was decided to photograph a pair of ordinary meadow pipits and keep to shots which showed the back view only; the tawny has a plain breast and the meadow a speckled one, but their back plumage is very similar."

When convalescing RAF pilot Niall MacGinnis and his nurse, Rosamund John, are out bird watching in rural Gloucestershire, they spot a Tawny Pipit -- not just one, but only the second nesting pair in English history. They rouse the entire village to protect these visitors in a wartime paean to British kindliness and back-country values.

Bernard Miles and Charles Saunders co-direct from a script of their own devising. Miles also acts in heavy make up as a wheel-chair bound military man. It's a well-told story, but very heavy-handed in its subtextual message, as the local Church choir sings a composition about the birds, and later regales a visiting Soviet sniper with "The Internationale", in a sequence in which Miles gives her his old machine gun and Land Girl Jean Gillie wonders if she would be as good a shot were the old Land of Hope and Glory invaded.

I can't help but compare this to the sort of movie that Ealing would become famous for; this comes off as beating the matter to death, with few of the oddly endearing eccentrics that Ealing would use to make its central theme clear. Still, it's very watchable throughout with some good performances.

Tawny Pipit was filmed in and around Bourton-on-the-Water, in Gloucestershire. I know this because my mother is one of the children, front and center, in the church choir scene. She was one of those children evacuated from London, and living with her grandparents during the war. I have been searching the world for a copy of this on video, but apparently it has never been been released to video. I sure wish it was. My mother is now 65, and would love to possess it as a memento of her childhood.

In the early days of American TV, what with the battles raging between the major studios and the new and growing industry, almost the only films available for showing on the new medium were fairly obscure Poverty Row movies (often from defunct studios) and films from Great Britain. From 1950 up to the time that the major Hollywood studios got into TV (say 1955 to 1957) young Anglophile film lovers like myself were privileged to view dozens and dozens, probably into the hundreds, of British-made films, both big and small, and by doing so gain a lifelong love for classic British acting styles, whether practiced by Eric Portman over there or by Ronald Colman over here. One of the films that was always listed in those days was TAWNY PIPIT, yet I never saw it until last night, mainly because when I, as a kid, saw the film listed, I had no idea what 'Tawny Pipit' meant - was it a condition? a place? a liquor? - and I was still unfamiliar with its lead actors, so I never watched it. I missed out on a lot.

This is a delightful film, one that could only have been made in England, showing a whole town - indeed, a whole culture - coming together to protect a bird - the Tawny Pipit - and its eggs, when this bird alights in one of its fields, only the second known incidence of the Pipit visiting Britain to hatch eggs. Since it is a wartime film, the patriotism rings both feverish and proper, and we quickly realize that the town has taken up the fight to protect the Pipit and its eggs not just for the Pipit's sake, but as a show of the rightness of the English Way of Life as against that of the Dreaded Hun (and they are called that several times), this even to the point of having something of a town celebration for the passing through of a Russian female sniper who has supposedly killed a thousand of the Dreaded Hun. Lucie Mannheim, a displaced German-Jewish actress, plays the short but showy role for all it is worth.

A few points regarding the actors. 1) Niall MacGinnis, our erstwhile young hero, played mainly tough seafaring types through much of his career but was immortalized on film for his absolutely iconic performance as Karswell, leader of a devil-worshiping cult in CURSE OF THE DEMON - one of the finest performances ever seen in a horror film. 2) Lucie Mannheim, our Russian heroine, was also the woman who gives rise to all of Robert Donat's consequent problems in THE 39 STEPS, when she is stabbed in the back shortly after meeting him; she was also the wife of that wonderful British actor Marius Goring for some 35 years. 3) Rosamund John, our leading lady, is, at this point in her career, almost unbearably pretty - not beautiful, but with a prettiness that rather transcends beauty - but she is known only to veteran Anglophile film lovers and had no international career. And 4) Bernard Miles, thanks to his acting, directing, producing, etc. (most especially on the stage) was actually created a Peer of the Realm - Lord Miles - before Laurence Olivier rose to that exalted status.

Anyway, this is a simple, lovely film, and if you could tear the kiddies away from their computer games long enough for them to develop an interest in something so laid-back and simple, they might benefit from it. I just did, and it's 65 years since I first decided to NOT watch the movie at their age.