“LONDON CAN TAKE IT”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 7 December 1940, Page 7

“LONDON CAN TAKE IT”

Of the war films so far shown in New Zealand most have been disappointing, for censorship has imposed rigid ru.es, and propaganda which builds upon too scattered facts cannot get across, but “London Can Take It,” a splendid film which arrived by air mail recently under a special arrangement made by the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom, Sir Harry Batterbee, really gets across. It will open on Friday at the State Theatre. Here is a plain story of the fortitude of the every-day, every-street Londoner under the mental strain and physical burden of this new and dreadful war upon men, women and children. But this is not a horror picture, of death and maimed misery; it states the mass reaction to the terror that does not work. Against the background of the descending night, the raid warning, gun flashes and crashes, and vast upheavals of sound it tells how and why London Can Take It. The commentator is an American, with a fine voice that fits the scenes and the theme perfectly. The wail of the warning, the swelling and then unceasing engine roar, the A.A. fire and bomb explosions, he says are not studio effects: they are as London heard them on this typical raider night (though dwarfed by the limitations of sound reproduction almost to nothing in comparison with the fact). The film begins with the late afternoon homeward rush to prepare for the night of certain raids, scenes at the entrances to public shelters, home shelters, the posting of London’s vast civilian army of wardens, guards and workers. The camera tilts to the late evening sky on the wail of the siren, to a single balloon air.ong the clouds. The booming of the raider engines swells. They are there, somewhere. but the camera does not find them; one realises only later that there are no planes in this film until its end, ana then they are friendly, but the roaring booms in the blackness above. Through the dim streets the patrols continue. From the dead blackness of open spaces in London or about London heavy anti-aircraft batteries burst into light and noise searchlights glare upwards. Fire breaks out in a central block and there the camera goes. It is superlative night photography. With the early morning London sleeps its soundest, from the “all clear” to the nour for rising. The wardens and workers have carried on through tin's night of war. Anno Domini 1940 The dav corps begins where the night corps turns over to them, fire-fighting, rescue and medical duties, street, service and bombed building repair, and demolition toil But mostly London goes back to work in the morning, to factories, offices. shops and public services—London Can Take It.