The Complete Humphrey Jennings - Volume One: The First Days

[DB7]

From the BFI.

Post Haste (1934)
Making Fashion (1938)
Locomotives (1934)
Spare Time (1939)
The Story of the Wheel (1934)
SS Ionian (1939)
Farewell Topsails (1937)
The First Days (1939)
Penny Journey (1938)
Spring Offensive (1940)
Speaking from America (1938)
Welfare of the Workers (1940)
The Farm (1938)
London Can Take It! (1940)

Special features
Presented in High Definition and Standard Definition
The Birth of the Robot (1936): a Len Lye film for Shell on which Jennings collaborated
English Harvest (1939): alternative cut of The Farm
Cargoes (1940): an alternative cut of SS Ionian
Britain Can Take It! (1940): an alternative cut of London Can Take It!
40-page illustrated booklet with newly commissioned essays and credits

[MarcDavidJacobs]

A beautiful press release (a phrase I never imagined myself using!) from the BFI on this now available for perusal. Arrival date 19th September. The full set looks to be in three volumes, each one of their patented Dual Format Editions. And with the inclusion of extras like the ones on the first volume, the whole thing sounds impossibly tantalising, and I for one can hardly wait for the full thing to be available. Indeed, I got a bit messianic about the whole thing and wrote an open letter to the BFI, on how I think this might well be a landmark release in the making:

Dear British Film Institute heroes,

It has been probably two decades since my first VHS tape, and perhaps a dozen years since my first DVD; I've even had a second-hand laserdisc or two in my day. Home cinema has always been a lifeline for me, being one of that first generation which has not actually been introduced to either most or all of its favourite cinema in a cinema itself. Yet, in a way, home cinema has also been merely a convenience, a way to satisfy the seemingly over-growing need for instant gratification, and a way to speedily and faithfully fulfil the recommendations of friends - and, just as importantly, to indoctrinate others in turn. And it has also been a tool, a way to truly engage with a beloved (or even an initially-despised) film in a way that - for all its otherwise-unimpeachable superiority - simply cannot be provided by the physical filmhouse.

But all of this, in my humble view, goes entirely out the window with the arrival of The Complete Humphrey Jennings. Until now, home cinema formats have always been mere substitutes: a reproduction, as of a painting, however faithful to the original this might be. But this collection - as will be the others similar to it now surely to come - is, for the first time, the artefact ITSELF. Ever since I first was acquainted with the great Lindsay Anderson's essay on Jennings, Only Connect, I have sought out Jennings's works through dozens of different releases, from the extraordinary anthologies of Panamint to the dodgiest dubbed cassette tapes. Even now, I can look over at a ridiculously-overpriced 16-minute DVD-R, apparently produced by no less a body than the US National Archives And Records Administration, which consists of an endlessly-repeating loop of A Defeated People: apparently the only available source for this crucial post-War work, despite neither its packaging nor the print itself mentioning Jennings's name anywhere!

All such dross, all these endlessly repeated purchases of the canonical works in myriad, unpredictable edits - all that maddening effort now mercifully at an end.

But, as I say, it is not merely this one aficionado and avid collector who has you to thank, nor is it even just the devotees of British cinema in general or Humphrey Jennings in particular; rather, it is - and I feel I can say this without exaggeration - the entirety of film history. No longer now need the majority (let alone the totality) of the work of ANY great cinematic artist, whether established or merely waiting to become so, remain inaccessible save only to a few select scholars; no longer need the budding or curious, committed amateur cinephile resort to several contradictory filmographies and secondary sources, pouring over what amounts in the end to merely a list of titles which he suspects he'll never have a chance to see, and which thus must and shall remain all but meaningless to him.

The day that absolutely anybody can access for themselves the complete output of 'the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced' - including several works that even Anderson, his greatest champion, himself probably never saw - shall be a red-letter day for ALL those who truly love film. And, if there is any justice in this world, it will change the way we think about the appreciation and enjoyment of cinema altogether.

It will, in short, be the moment at which home cinema at last comes into its own, when it shall have finally discovered its real purpose, the one for which it was truly invented: the creation of a portable filmic archive - of a self-contained LIBRARY - as the singular, indispensible reference for an invaluable body of work which, without it, would only continue to languish in total obscurity, having might as well never been created in the first place.

Bless you, BFI, and all those who sail in you.

-----

I suppose that rather says it all, doesn't it?

[Onedin]

Uploaded by the BFI on YouTube. Worthy bit of information underneath the clip too.

[Onedin]

[penfold]

Not his best known film.....but one of his most evocative, and probably my favourite....just two years later and this would all be gone, and you would have tractors and all the other impedimenta of wartime maximum production.

[DaveK]

Robert Vas made a superb programme about Jennings for the BBC 1 'Omnibus' series some while ago. It was called 'Heart of Britain'. To tie-in with the BFI DVD issue it should be repeated.

[didi-5]

... adds another must-buy title to the list ...