The Bells Go Down – 1943 | 90 mins | War | B&W

Plot Synopsis

The Bells Go Down was released in April 1943 and directed by Basil Dearden, the film is set in East End of London, where we follow the experiences of an assorted group of Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) volunteers facing the Blitz of 1940. The film explores the way in which ordinary people, plunged into war, find within themselves the capacity for bravery and dedication. The crook in the group (Mervyn Johns) rescues the policeman who in peacetime has arrested him. Tommy Trinder, whose personality to some extent unbalances the cohesion of the group, is allowed to die heroically, trying to save the life of his hated commander (Finlay Currie).

It was unfortunate for the Ealing film that it was released in the same week as Humphrey Jennings‘s Crown documentary, Fires Were Started, which again told a story of the AFS in London three years earlier. Jennings was already moving from ‘pure’ documentary towards fiction film techniques and, although his actors were all seconded firemen, they were given lines to speak, albeit improvised on the set rather than formally scripted in advance. By comparison with Jenning’s film however, Dearden’s looks like a polished studio work, an entertainment with a serious theme. Yet it amounted to hyper-realism when compared with the standard Hollywood view of Britain at war, exemplified by William Wyler’s Mrs Miniver.

Extract© George Perry: Forever Ealing.