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Fires Were Started (1943)

Director: Humphrey Jennings

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From Time Out Film Guide

Jennings' one venture into feature-length drama-documentary narrowly escaped being brutally chopped down by the publicity men at the Ministry of Information. Certainly it lacks the tight narrative structure common in good commercial films, but Jennings is a strong enough film-maker to ignore formulae and conventions to build his own unique structures. Here he used real firemen and real fires - kindled among the blitzed warehouses of London's dockland - but with the aim of creating something more than documentary realism. It is the epic quality of the firemen's struggle that excites Jennings, and his celebration of the courage and dignity of ordinary people working together in the shadow of disaster makes the film extraordinarily impressive.

Author: RMy 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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Fires Were Started

Cast & crew

Director: Humphrey Jennings

Producer: Ian Dalrymple

Cast: George Gravett, Philip Dickson, Fred Griffiths, Loris Rey, Johnny Houghton, William Sansom full cast

Genre(s): Documentaries

Duration: 74 mins

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