The Girl of the Canal

Veteran Ealing director Charles Crichton's second feature film is as much documentary as drama. Handsomely shot on location by fellow Ealing craftsman Douglas Slocombe, like most of the studio's productions of the period it was intended at the time as reportage but has long since become a historical record of a vanished world.

The heroic tone of Louis MacNiece's commentary (portentously intoned by James McKechnie) is in marked contrast to the simple humanity of the film itself.

A sort of hybrid film with a good dose of documentary mixed in with a slight story. Excellent photography of a the canals and the boats and showing a way of life that was about to vanish. Could have done without the sonorous intonation of the poetry making it a sort of aquatic Night Mail.

I find it almost impossible to watch this right through, so nostalgic is it of a way of life virtually gone now. The blend of professional actors with, presumably, real-life characters works well. There's nothing really to fault-photography is very good and sharp; music appropriate; lots of familiar faces-e.g. Megs Jenkins, a young Harry Fowler...

Couple this with "The Song of the Road" (1937), which is about the replacement of horses on farms, and you have a pretty good depiction of life in England before and after the War. One critic summed up the 1937 film as "..a sentimental, idealised account of a country at peace with itself". It's not that simple of course, but there are plenty of documentaries about analysing the harder edge of those times.

Enjoy these films for what they are-wonderful depictions made with feeling, and valuable social documents.

There isn't much of a plot to this slightly unusual but fascinating and quite well made film that is part documentary and part soap opera. However that isn't really the point here as the film has far more worth as a snapshot of life for those families who worked and lived on the British canals in the 1940s.

Whilst the film used (mostly) professional actors, the backdrop was real and utilised lots of location filming . As I said there isn't much of a story beyond the lives of a family who live and work on a canal barge and the world they live in. The story concerns the character Mary (Jenny Laird) and her love of life working the canals as generations before her have done. She is engaged to fellow bargee Ted Stoner who dreams of putting down roots and living in a house (unlike Mary). He hopes the army will call him up and offer him a way out and a trade even though he is is supposedly exempted from the draft as well as being illiterate. His younger brother Alf (Harry Fowler) finds life on the canal exciting yet his fractured education and that of others who live like him is also very prominently addressed.

Although there is a certain amount of a 'rose tinted' view of the lives of these gypsies of the river, the film doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of their life either, especially the scene where a contract is signed but the women in the scene cannot write their name so just sign it with an 'X'.

This film works as a glimpse of a way of life that existed for the best part of 200 years. However even in 1945 the film makers could see that the writing was on the wall for the bargee way of life. The importance of the railway network and the improvement of the roads and the rise of the HGV are all addressed. The second world war was probably the last hurrah for the canal network and those who worked on it for industrial reasons. In fact the war itself may very well have prolonged its importance and therefore its existence for a few extra years as trains were needed for things like troop transport and petrol was in short supply for road vehicles because of the war effort. However by the 1950s the wide scale commercial use of lorries, the nationalisation of the railways and the post war social changes in areas such as improved housing, education and healthcare all but effectively sounded the death knell for this way of life and by the end of the 1960s the canals were of little commercial importance anymore . In this respect the film offers us an invaluable look into the final few years of life on the canals and the people who worked them.

The brief notes on the DVD sleeve include the word, 'charming' twice and whilst this is appropriate the film is much more. Indeed the 'charming' storyline can be ignored and the beautifully shot film enjoyed as a documentary, albeit with more than a little of the propaganda feel to it. Cinematography is by Douglas Slocombe and most effective with great use made of the lyrical landscapes and cloud peppered skies. Curious time for film-making, during the War and this must have been intended as a morale boost as much as anything. Amazing shots of the canals, including vivid footage that I have never seen before. I'm astonished that this historic document has been so ignored for so long and for anyone interested in a glimpse at what life on the canals was like in the mid 40s, this is invaluable.