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Wartime Homefront [VHS]

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The two films included here recount the bravery and resilience of the British during the dark days of The Blitz. LONDON CAN TAKE IT! features footage of Londoners at work by day, and in the air raid shelters or performing civil defense duties by night. American reporter Quentin Reynolds pays tribute in his narration to the courage of Londoners during the nightly bombing raids and to their stoic hard work in the resulting devastation. The 1940 film, directed by Humphrey Jennings and Harry Watt, seems almost like a companion piece to Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent of the same year, with Joel McCrea standing in for Quentin Reynolds in the Hitchcock film.

The justly celebrated docu-drama FIRES WERE STARTED, written and directed by Jennings for release in 1943, shows the hard work and sacrifice performed by the civilian home defense during the German bombing of London. The film shows us the "typical" workday of a firefighting team, with the roles of firefighting personnel entirely performed by actual firefighting personnel. The climax of the film is an assignment as the unit fights a terrifying fire at the docks on the Thames. This sequence is augmented with footage taken during those actual fires.

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