British Transport Films: 'An Artist looks at Churches'

     We are back in the world of British documentary films, a place that this blog has not visited for far too long a period - the sort of thing that was played in British cinemas before the main feature, and also, I can just remember, aired on BBC2 way back in the late Sixties and early Seventies. That was where I first saw 'Shellarama' and, I think, 'An Artist looks at Churches', which was written and narrated by the British Neo-Romantic artist John Piper. The latter was produced by 'British Transport Films', the former by the 'Shell Film Unit'. Thanks to the BFI both films are available on DVD. Piper was more than an artist - perhaps more of a Renaissance Man - the designer of tapestries and stained glass, graphic designer, writer, photographer, editor, theatre designer.

     'An Artist looks at Churches' forms part of six disc compilation of work by the BTF entitled 'Railways Forever!'. Another three compilations, at least, are available, but for me this and 'A Future on Rail' are the most interesting selections. All of these box sets, however, are very evocative, sometimes moving, and one cannot help but feel a wave of nostalgia. British Transport Films was established under the direction of Edgar Anstey (1907-1987) in 1949, a year after the nationalisation of the railways. Anstey, who was also a film critic at 'The Spectator', was stepped in the British Documentary tradition, having previously worked John Grierson at the Empire Marketing Board. I suppose the BTF's remit was not unlike that of Lord Reith's BBC: 'Inform, Educate, Entertain', as well, of course, as drum up custom for the railways. In addition they made films for other transport bodies such as London Transport. In all the product of that same class and culture that was chronicled by the novelist C P Snow. A somewhat better class of 'product' it has to be said. And one which seems to easily blend both the progressive and the conservative strands of post-war culture.

     Odd really, this nostalgia of mine, for it is for a time I did not know, for by the time I was born most of the best work by the BTF was past, as films made from the late Sixties onwards tend toward the utilitarian and the commonplace. Occasionally they succeed but too often the films lack a sort of heroic quality that can be found in works such as 'Ocean Terminus' and 'Snowdrift at Bleath Gill' - the 'Heroic Materialism' described by Kenneth Clarke in his landmark television series 'Civilization'. In some respects this tilt towards the banal is mirrored in other aspects of contemporary British film making and in the culture generally. Perhaps it reflects a crisis in Modernity, a loss of narrative. Certainly 'Heroic Materialism' failed to satisfy, failed to make up for the absent God. But it did for a while, at least, supply a common narrative structure. All that said the GPO Film Unit was still capable of producing a film like 'Picture to Post', directed by Sarah Erulkar, that could brilliantly combine the post-war ethic with the visual language of 'Swinging London'. Certainly the BTF didn't come to terms with the changes of the 1960s. Edgar Anstey retired in 1974, the BTF finally closing in 1982.

     Back, finally, to the film in question, and it is a classy production - atmospheric cinematography and a score by John Racine Fricker (1920-1990). We briefly see Mr Piper at the beginning of the film, strolling through an autumnal looking churchyard but otherwise he is an invisible presence. Just his very flat, rather mundane accented narration guiding us through a thousand years of English church history - one church, at least, for every hundred years. Not that architecture over predominates - space is given to the other arts, stained glass and sculpture for instance. Perhaps the choices are not the most obvious, but the film is none the worse for that. Though those choices are mainly from the south west, if memory serves me right. It is good, however to see the somewhat unknown St Philip's Cosham by Sir Ninian Comper included (and filmed so beautifully). The more well known churches, such as Lavenham or Ottery St Mary, appear in the two 'collages' that bookend the film. In common with a nearly all of these short documentary films of the early Post-war period there is a note of optimism - rather misplaced here at that. We have not entered into a new period of church building, or a golden age of church patronage of the arts. Far from it.

An Artist Looks at Churches                                                                                               1959

Producer                                Edgar Anstey
Director/Cinematographer   John Taylor