Two Cooks and a Cabbage

Grandma breaks up the cricket game and tells a girl to pick and cook a cabbage. The other girl insists on cooking one too, but does it all wrong.

It is nice to know that the British government was as capable of producing a dull industrial film as the US was. Usually all we see are brilliant propaganda pieces from the Humphrey Jennings unit of the GPO. It's better shot than John Ford's SEX HYGIENE, which is the gold standard for surprisingly bad government documentaries. This one is visually decent, due in no small part to the fact that the director started out in the camera department.

Apropos the featured reviewer, John Ford's Sex Hygiene is among the best PSA films ever made. The sensitive topic is handled with great candor, important given that the stakes are high. A "surprisingly bad government documentary" it is not. STDs were a huge threat to the fighting capability of the hundreds of thousands of U. S. soldiers in the European theater after D-Day. Instead of lecturing, Ford's film dramatizes real-life dangers and is blessedly straightforward on how to get testing and treatment, and how easy and important it is to do so. Like Duck and Cover, Sex Hygiene stands as one of best uses to which filmmaking has been put.

As to the film under review, I agree with the featured reviewer that it is poorly shot, and in plot and dialogue as unappetizing as the cabbage that's badly cooked.