Fires Were Started

BFI Film Classics

by Brian Winston

This work suggests that Humphrey Jennings' re-enacted documentary about the London Blitz, Fires Were Started, is an understated propaganda masterpiece. The book provides an account of how Jennings recaptured the reality of the Blitz for his cumbersome camera through a process of meticulous research.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published October 27, 1999

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fires Were Started is a propaganda drama-documentary made in 1943, all about the firemen fighting the Blitz. It’s a must-see. Before I saw it, I would have been skeptical, too.

I will mention just two curious points here.

I found out that the piano-playing fireman who leads the community singing was none other than WILLIAM SANSOM, author, who was indeed a fireman in the war, and then wrote a ton of novels and stories, including one of my very favourites, “The Vertical Ladder”, which is in The Second Pan Book of Horror Stories . So that was very cool.

Second, all the fire scenes are reconstructions. To do this

Arrangements had been made for the loan of fire-fighting equipment : the Heavy Unit, a fire float, a turntable ladder, an ambulance, an auxiliary towing taxi, five trailer pumps. Impressive though this was, the equipment was inadequate to cope with the fires that Jennings set.

“Humphrey set the building alight so much that he had the Fire Brigade down there five or six times. You know, the real firemen. We had the appliances, and we were real firemen but we never had the gear to put it out. And it caused a bit of animosity.”

You have to laugh.