We of the West Riding

Here's a short subject about the mill towns of the West Riding of Yorkshire.... basically the western and southern third of that old and sprawling county, once a kingdom. In 1945, it was the mill towns, and the narrator of this movie, as he tells it, has everyone working in the factories.

That's during the week, of course. The weekends are for different purposes, like bicycling, football, dramatics, and brass bands.

There's a great deal of poetry in the narration, words that have fallen out of use in the city-bound language of today. There's also poetry in the sweep of the camera over the vistas of old buildings, flocks of sheep and the courses of rivers.

Some interesting views of Yorkshire just after the war.Made at Merton Park studios when they were making publicity shorts.The question is for who's benefit was the film made.An early effort from Ken Annakin.

We of the West Riding is an odd short made immediately after the end of the war. Telling the tale of a typical family from the West Riding region of Yorkshire, it is nominally a slice-of-life view of an urban family whose working days are spent in the enormous fabric mills that dominate the area economy and their free time spent cycling through the beautiful moors of the countryside. A standout is the cinematography of Peter Hennessey, particularly the city street scenes which have an almost Dickensian feel to them which prompts some of the strangeness when they are contrasted with the well meaning narration. I'm not sure just why this was made but it is a visually striking memorial for a moment in time in post-WWII England where a traditional way life (whether for good or bad) was just barely hanging on, destined for oblivion in just a few short years.