Balloon Site 568

Don't expect great art from a propaganda film like BALLOON SITE 568. It depicts the eleven-week initial training session of a group of women from diverse social backgrounds - a secretary, a homemaker, a factory worker - who decide to contribute to the war effort by maintaining barrage balloons. The training is quite arduous, involving listening to a lot of lectures accompanied by practical activities, followed by solemn lessons in the potential risks involved; all of them will be in the front line when the bombing of Britain resumes.

The women respond to their task with enthusiasm, realizing, no doubt, the significance of their roles. They receive willing help from local people, offering them food, baths and shelter wherever possible, and learn to enjoy small occasions like receiving their often infrequent rations.

We also see them enjoying their few moments of leisure-time in the dance-hall, coupling somewhat self-consciously with male officers yet telling them of their inability to forge long-lasting amatory relationships. War work assumes far more significance in their lives.

As a sociological piece, BALLOON SITE 568 offers a fascinating insight into the way in which war work dominated ordinary people's lives, to such an extent that they never quite knew what was going to happen, even the very next day.

Four women from ordinary walks of life decide to join the Women's Air Auxiliary Forces -- the women's auxiliary to the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. They are trained in maintaining barrage balloons, tethered blimps meant to interfere with enemy planes.

It's a jolly life once they're trained and settled in their post in the middle of nowhere, playing the ukulele and getting to ask boys to dances. This is a recruiting film. Probably the most interesting thing about it is the writing credit for Dylan Thomas. Nowadays he is remembered for one poem, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", one play, UNDER THE MILKWOOD TREE, and for drinking himself to death in 1953 at the age of 39; his last words were "I've just had 15 double whiskies. I think that might be a record."