Tawny Pipit

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.

A film that I have only recently discovered. I taped it late one night and copied in onto another tape cutting out the adverts. What a marvelous little film this is with the subliminal message that nobody is going to change the English village way of life. I made a point of visiting Lower Slaughter yesterday and the village is identical to how it was 62 years ago. The mill wheel and the bridge behind it remain the same, great film, great location and a marvelous slice of social and cinema history. I am sure that I saw a Tawny pipit in the distance.Unlike the Titfield Thunderbolt which shows an England that does not exist anymore this great film shows locations that remain the same to this day.

The real essence of this delightful rural comedy: Civlized societies defend their weakest members and value every person, including eccentrics.

Remember that in the '30s, many people saw totalitarianism as being the new. organized, "efficient" way - whilst western Europe was disorganized. The West's governments were seen as being to hidebound and conservative, lacking answers to the chaos of the Depression.

Tawny Pippit showed that our "old-fashioned" system had the right stuff, because it valued freedom, the right to be different and protection of the weak, and showed that countries facing challenges can succeed, even if seeming dis-organized, through shared morals & commitment coming from the people themselves and not dictated - it proved that in the end, good government is the servant of the people.

I have seen this film a few times over the years on TV and the best thing I liked about it is the pub scene where the man from Suffolk berates the people in the pub from Norfolk for being slow to act and refers to a time in the history when Suffolk were fighting an enemy while Norfolk people were still talking about doing something.this type of thing was quite common in England in the past and you were branded what type of person you were from where you lived in England and no doubt Ireland Scotland USA etc.

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.