The Dim Little Island (1949) User Reviews

A little look at post-war Britain through the words of famous men

[lestermay · 6/10 · 2 February 2006]

This is a ten minute short film, the penultimate film made by the brilliant documentary film maker, Humphrey Jennings, before his untimely death in 1950.

It is a collection of the thoughts of four distinguished Britons, each of whom speak about Britain and its past, present and future. The related film images of Britain's nature and industry are beautiful.

The quality of the sound track on the Panamint DVD ('Our Country' - released 2005) is poor and composer Ralph Vaughan Williams words, in particular, come across somewhat incoherently.

I presume that in post-war down-at-heel Britain, the Ministry of Information felt the need for some light propaganda that would convey the message that Britain might be down but she was not out! I wonder if anyone felt, in the late 1940s, that this short film succeeded? Nevertheless, it's an interesting little film but not a delight. The main feature on the DVD - 'Our Country' (1944) - is well worth seeing.

trying to hold things together

[g-hobbs · 13 September 2005]

Jennings' penultimate film is a short piece in which four men – composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, naturalist Jamie Fisher, industrialist John Orston and cartoonist Osbert Lancaster reflect on the roles of caricature, 'wild nature', industry and music in Britain's national life and attempt to dispel the notion that the country is a 'dim little island'. Jennings' conception was to edit the four strands of visual and spoken narrative together to produce an interdependent portrait of a place in which nature, industry and culture hold equal importance in the life and new growth of the nation. This is familiar Jennings territory, and although there are some typically inspired and witty touches, such as matching words about a candle to a shot of a large industrial chimney, the oft-repeated charge, that after the war Jennings' films lacked passion, is hard to deny. The narration talks of the 'great upheaval of national consciousness and emotion' that the nation had recently experienced and that Jennings' films so eloquently expressed. For him to use the same techniques of stylisation and range of shots – a clip from Fires Were Started appears and there are shots of water that could have come from Diary for Timothy and wheat fields from Listen to Britain – but to address a post-war lack of confidence instead of a surge of wartime solidarity, means the film is not as convincing as it should be; its intended audience is rather vague. Maybe this is due to the tone of the narrative; the naturalist warns that we may have to 'ration the fun' we get out of nature, the industrialist warns that we need 'more work from below and more drive from the top'. If we have that, he says, 'we can still compete'. With so many warning notes in the narrative, it is unsurprising that our attention is drawn to the editing in the film - it seems to be trying to hold things together instead of reinforcing ties already present.