British Transport Films: Elizabethan Express

At Platform 5, The Elizabethan,

A special express for the holiday season,

Summons its strength.

And the time to depart

Marks an ending for some,

But, for many, a start.

     When I reviewed British Transport Films' production 'Blue Pullman' back in 2021 I mentioned briefly another BTF film, 'Elizabethan Express' of 1954.  And much that I said then about 'Blue Pullman', and indeed 'An Artist looks at Churches' of 1959, could be said of this film.  Apologies in advance, then, if I repeat myself.

     'Elizabethan Express' is a film I've watched many times since I first saw it on C4 - and sometimes, strictly between you and me you understand, with tears in my eyes.  I certainly regard it as a favourite, even if at times it verges on the mawkish.  Whatever its faults, it is, however, a good example of how the BTF could produce a beautifully crafted short film (some 19mins)  'documentary'. I've used inverted commas because this film, like 'Blue Pullman', is really a piece of advertising, of a rather 'Reithian' stripe, making the travelling public aware of a 'new' non-stop express service, 'The Elizabethan', between London King's Cross and Edinburgh Waverley 'over the Tyne'.*  (It was Lord Reith (1887-1971), the first Director General of the BBC,  developed what are often referred to the Reithian Principles - a distillation of the BBC's mission - 'to inform, educate and entertain' the public.  The BTF and the wider Documentary Film Movement in Britain shared those principles, but perhaps not so explicitly.)

     'Elizabethan Express' was also an attempt to show that the newly nationalised rail service had put the War Years behind them - years when the railways were run into the ground by the War effort - eg the barest amount of maintenance and little if any new rolling stock.  Glamour, and comfort, this film announced, had returned. This attempt was made by the use of 'Heroic Materialism' of a much more potent variety than that on display in 'Blue Pullman'; the crossing of the Tweed via the Royal Border Bridge at Berwick is a marvel.  You could say that the train and specifically the engine - a pre-War Class A4 Pacific designed by Sir Nigel Gresley for LNER - is the star.  The narration describes the engine - The Silver Fox - in suitably heroic terms has having 'the speed of a greyhound and strength of a boar'.  Coupled with this celebration of technology is an appeal to the Wartime collective effort of a sort first seen on the big screen in Walter Summers's 'The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands' of 1924.  In 'Elizabethan Express' the narrative of the journey is interspersed with sections describing the work of all those toiling 'behind the scenes' to achieve the feat of what was then the longest non-stop passenger service in the world.  A slightly 'elite' train service as collective endeavor.

     The filming was quite an endeavor of itself, for unlike 'Night Mail' of 18 years earlier which re-constructed the interior of a night mail train in the studio for filming, 'Elizabethan Express' was filmed entirely on location.  Camera man (Billy Williams) and his assistant shared the footplate with driver and fireman.  Those repeated shots of the flank of the train, and (I think) the external shots of the engine in the water trough sequence, were shot just north of Peterborough where the Peterborough-Leicester line runs parallel to the East Coast Mainline for several miles.  But then the documentary film of this form is essentially a fiction of some sort; John Grierson (father of the British documentary film movement) called it 'dramatised reality'.

     Well, that has dealt with 'inform' and 'educate' and now for the 'entertain'.  This is mainly in the form of the narration written by Paul de Saux in doggerel.  An hommage to 'Nightmail', I presume, which had poetry written for it by W H Auden' no less.  No criticism of the actors who voiced the narration, Alan Wheatley & Howard Marion Crawford, but it is, it has to be said, a hit-and-miss affair.  Sometimes clunky: 'Watch them consistently filling the gaps in their faces with food'.  Sometimes rather affecting: 'The loud hiss of steam as the train seems to slow to the pace of a cloud breaks the afternoon task and disperses the dream'.  A quick nod also to the composer Clifton Parker who wrote the, at times Brittenesque, score.

* 'The Elizabethan' ran during the summer months.  It replaced the 'Capitals Limited' express in 1953, the year of the Coronation of Elizabeth II.  The Capitals Limited express, inaugurated in 1949, was a Post-War restoration(of sorts) of the non-stop 'Flying Scotsman' service which by then had been 'reduced' to a stopping service. According to Wiki, the 'Capitals Limited' made the non-stop journey between London and Edinburgh in 8 hours, 'The Elizabethan' in 6 hours 30 mins.  The service was withdrawn in 1963.

 

 Elizabethan Express

1954

Editor                    Tony Thompson
Cinematography  Billy Williams
Producer               Edgar Anstey