Humphrey Jennings Film Reader

Jennings Humphrey

Humphrey Jennings (1907-1950) has long been recognised as one of Britain's greatest film directors. His studies of national life, and particularly his three war time films "Listen to Britain", "Fires Were Started", and "A Diary for Timothy", invaluable documents of their times, remain among the highest achievements of world cinema. Jennings's films are rich due to the drama of subject matter and the range of passions and skills he brought to his work. He was a gifted painter, a key member of the Surrealist movement; a poet and a literary critic; a founder of the Mass Observation movement, and a historian who assembled an anthology of writings about the Machine Age, Pandaemonium.

"The Humphrey Jennings Film Reader" tells the story of his brief, varied life in his own words, using many previously unpublished letters, treatments and screen-plays. It reprints all of his unpublished critical writings on literature, painting and other subjects (most of them unavailable in book form since the 1930s), the texts of his radio broadcasts for the BBC, and a selection of his poems.

About the Author

Humphrey Jennings was born in 1907 and educated at Cambridge University. He is recognised as one of Britain's greatest film-makers. His studies of national life made for the GPO Film Unit, the Crown film Unit and the Ministry of information before and during the Second World War include "Listen to Britain" (1941), "Fires Were Started" (1943) and "Diary for Timothy" (1945), films which are both invaluable records of their time and cinematic masterpieces. Part of the richness of the films is attributed to the wide range of interests and talents which Jennings brought to his subject matters. He was a poet and literary critic and a gifted painter of the Surrealist movement. In 1936 he played a key role in organising the International Surrealist Exhibition in London. He was also a founder member of the anthropological movement Mass Observation. Humphrey Jennings career was cut short when he died in an accident in 1950.

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