Painted Boats

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.

Veteran Ealing director Charles Crichton's second feature film is as much documentary as drama. Handsomely shot on location by fellow Ealing craftsman Douglas Slocombe, like most of the studio's productions of the period it was intended at the time as reportage but has long since become a historical record of a vanished world.

The heroic tone of Louis MacNiece's commentary (portentously intoned by James McKechnie) is in marked contrast to the simple humanity of the film itself.

There isn't much of a plot to this slightly unusual but fascinating and quite well made film that is part documentary and part soap opera. However that isn't really the point here as the film has far more worth as a snapshot of life for those families who worked and lived on the British canals in the 1940s.

Whilst the film used (mostly) professional actors, the backdrop was real and utilised lots of location filming . As I said there isn't much of a story beyond the lives of a family who live and work on a canal barge and the world they live in. The story concerns the character Mary (Jenny Laird) and her love of life working the canals as generations before her have done. She is engaged to fellow bargee Ted Stoner who dreams of putting down roots and living in a house (unlike Mary). He hopes the army will call him up and offer him a way out and a trade even though he is is supposedly exempted from the draft as well as being illiterate. His younger brother Alf (Harry Fowler) finds life on the canal exciting yet his fractured education and that of others who live like him is also very prominently addressed.

Although there is a certain amount of a 'rose tinted' view of the lives of these gypsies of the river, the film doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of their life either, especially the scene where a contract is signed but the women in the scene cannot write their name so just sign it with an 'X'.

This film works as a glimpse of a way of life that existed for the best part of 200 years. However even in 1945 the film makers could see that the writing was on the wall for the bargee way of life. The importance of the railway network and the improvement of the roads and the rise of the HGV are all addressed. The second world war was probably the last hurrah for the canal network and those who worked on it for industrial reasons. In fact the war itself may very well have prolonged its importance and therefore its existence for a few extra years as trains were needed for things like troop transport and petrol was in short supply for road vehicles because of the war effort. However by the 1950s the wide scale commercial use of lorries, the nationalisation of the railways and the post war social changes in areas such as improved housing, education and healthcare all but effectively sounded the death knell for this way of life and by the end of the 1960s the canals were of little commercial importance anymore . In this respect the film offers us an invaluable look into the final few years of life on the canals and the people who worked them.

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.