Night Mail

Pretty amazing they used to be able to get people like Auden and Britten to contribute original work to something like this. It shows the standing that documentaries once had, even those dealing with something banal. Night Mail is pretty well made and well shot, but unless you're specifically interested in the historiography of British postal service, you'll find it doesn't really pick up steam until the final minutes, when the song begins. That part is rather cool and worth skipping to.

Watt, Wright, Button and Auden combine their brilliance to create a cinematic, poetic and musical documentation of the LMS Royal Scot Class 6115 Scots Guardsman in action that makes evident the materiality of communication via mail in the early-mid 20th Century. This is mail that is infused with human and machine energy that is completely absent from the digital forms of communication that ensnare us today; in 23 minutes we become starkly aware that such modern communication has little value.

"Silent miles of wind-bent grasses." Loved the slice-of-life industry, boggled at the high speed pouch transfers. In researching the crew on this train, I was pleased to find they were all eventually promoted to Star Destroyer duty. There might even be another Auden poem about that.

A bit dry in parts but I was interested enough by the processes and the original solutions to enable speedy mail delivery that it was fun to watch. The song/poem it the end is some odd fun too.

Shows the somewhat orchestrated operation of the special mail night train running from London to Scotland. Apparently, much of the interior carriage shots were filmed in a studio. Watched during a documentary class on Grierson.

While the subject doesn't interest me much, this is a delightfully cinematic short docu, with a visual rhythm as precise as the procedures it describes. Quite evident are the influences from late silent era avant-gardists, like Gance and Eisenstein, a language I've always found to be particularly stimulating.

Night Mail is one of those great early docs that brings massive talent (Benjamin Britten, W.H. Auden) to bear on creating what is in essence a propaganda or educational film. The mail car was recreated in the studio and is pleasurable to watch like all miniature cinematic worlds. A movie like this brings home how an easily forgotten institution like the postal service serves honorably to tie a society today.

As interesting as a film about the British postal service can be.

"None can hear the postmans knock with out the quickening of the heart for who can bare to feel himself forgotten." Ahh what nostalgia/propaganda. Great rap-sequence in the end, thank you W.H. Auden.