An Inspector Calls (1954)

For the first decade of my working life I lived in Leeds in West Yorkshire. This meant that I was a fairly regular visitor to Bradford.

Bradford has many attractions, not least of all the quality of its curry houses.

Fairly central to the city is the National Museum of Film and Photography, in my memory one of the first major national museums located purposefully outside of London.

And just outside of the Museum is a bronze statue of the novelist and playwright JB Priestley, someone whose writings have somewhat fallen out of fashion in more recent times.

One of his most important early works is his English Journey, and I remember that 50 years after it was written, another important writer of a different generation was commissioned to write a similar work that followed in the kind of footsteps of this pioneering writer.

In spite of having what might be described as socialist leanings, one of the most interesting facts concerning the original JB Priestley English Journey is that he undertook it from the back seat of his chauffeured limousine.

This perhaps sets him apart from someone like George Orwell, who of course famously went down and out in London and Paris, and whilst not exactly adopting a disguise to do so, he actually lived the life of someone without a penny to his name.

And this is the background to the man that wrote An Inspector Calls, perhaps one of his most famous stage works, and one that I have at some point in my theatre going life seen presented on the London stage.

Most recently, I have recorded a broadcast version of this work, and transferred it to my growing collection of over 600 films, accessible at the click of a mouse from a 2 TB hard disk attached to my computer.

It is extraordinary that such an elderly play can be so fabulously engaging even in the present day.

A recent blog entry of mine talked about the way in which the BBC has been looking at the circumstances in the lead up to the First World War, in this centenary year.

In some respects, this play is closely linked to an understanding of what was lost by the destruction of the generation that fought this terrible war.

At the outset of the play, we are told that it is 1912, and the events that take place on a single night that will forever transform the lives of the participants shed great light on this time in our nation’s history.

Without giving away any of the plot details, no spoilers, sufficient to say that a mysterious police inspector interrupts a family in the middle of a family celebration.

Without providing any significant detail, but simply by asking questions about the knowledge that the family members have of a young girl that has taken poison and died horribly at the local infirmary, it is discovered that each of them has played some crucial role in determining the fate of this woman.

It is an extraordinarily moral work, and one which it would be difficult to imagine staged outside of its own period.

But it is fundamentally a work of great insight into the human condition, and the way in which we affect the lives of others, quite fitting then that such an imposing statue of the author should stand so prominently as a memorial to him in his home town.

I am sure it was not simply a quirk of fate that it should be shown at this point in time, when there is so much s thought about the world left behind after this conflict.

That the play should have had such a durable life is a tribute to its quality, and if anyone has not read or seen it, catching the film is an excellent way of appreciating it.

Goodbye Mr Chips (1939)

Bank holidays in Britain are famous for several things. Atrocious weather is one of them, and it is typical that the films scheduled for broadcast fall into the category of family favourites.

This recent Monday May bank holiday has been exceptional as far as the weather has been concerned. And I was fortunate to catch an early morning film, one which I almost certainly have seen before, but which this particular viewing somewhat astonished me for its capacity to evoke an emotional response.

Quite simply, I think it is the fact that we are in the centenary year of the commencement of the Great War.

The BBC has been remarkable at the range and number of extraordinary documentaries looking at different aspects of this important historical moment.

It is only a couple of years since the last of the surviving soldiers that fought in the trenches died. It is now only something that can be remembered through the recorded reminiscences of those that experienced life at the frontline, and there is an added poignancy to the relics of this period in our history, such as the medals and trench art that have survived to come down to us.

It is sobering to think that it will be shortly similarly the case for the Second World War, as those that served in this conflict age sufficiently so that they have become a tiny minority of the population.

And so perhaps it is possible for me to have seen this film before and for it to have changed its significance viewing it now, when so much seems present in our minds.

One of the most moving documentaries that I have recently viewed is a dramatisation of the 37 days leading up to the declaration of war in 1914, subsequent to the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand.

This has been an exceptionally well realised programme, that has essentially sen the whole of the complex political story from the viewpoint of a lowly clerk in one of the foreign office departments, giving an interesting perspective on the way in which Britain was at the centre of an extraordinary empire at the time of the events that led inextricably toward the chaos of the war to end all wars.

What I suppose I had forgotten was the way in which this particular film captured a sense of the world that was destroyed by that conflict, as it amounts to the story of an elderly master at an English boys school, who is invited to become the headmaster of his school as a consequence of the decimation of his peers and the younger masters, called up to fight for King and country.

The achievement of one man’s lifetime ambition is related in the context of his own personal story, including the loss of his wife and child during childbirth.

The sense of the history of the time suddenly becoming more relevant, makes it emotionally compelling in a way that I could not have appreciated at previous viewings.

And I have just discovered that the film was made in 1939, almost certainly during that period of impending war. Perhaps that it should have won five Oscars is a fitting tribute to its quality, and perhaps a deep wish that the lessons of the history that it contains should not be forgotten.