National Film Theatre (or BFI if you insist)

I don't often go to the National Film Theatre but have been twice in the last few days and enjoyed each visit. First off was a black and white double bill of 'London Terminus' and 'A Window In London' on Friday and then 'The Chalk Garden' this evening.

'London Terminus' is a 16 minute film about life in Waterloo Station in 1944 and I found it fascinating to see what was similar to the station as it is today and where it has changed. The thing that struck me most was the movement of people. It was incredibly busy back then as it still is, but the crowds of people were moving across the concourse in 1944 whereas my immediate memory of Waterloo today is static crowds blocking the concourse waiting for trains - the movement has gone. I also felt a slight swelling of pride when the narrator said that over one million people commuted into "the Great City" - London is a great city and it's mine. I found the film both fascinating and touching.

'A Window In London' was a proper film, with Michael Redgrave in the lead role, filmed in 1939 and related to the previous film since our hero is a crane operator building Waterloo Bridge. There's a lot going on in the film under the basic storyline such as the apparently sexless marriage of the lead couple since they work shifts and only have Sundays together, the temptations on the man but not on the woman and the class structure at work in the film where our hero has a posh accent even though he's a crane driver but his colleagues are (of course) common cockneys. Two things stood out for me - the way it was portrayed as perfectly acceptable for the men to push and pull women around as they saw fit and, in the wider scenes of travelling across London, the total absence of pubs! Where were they? I also liked the panoramic scenes of the Southbank without all the buildings we're used to today.

This evening's film was a different kettle of fish again, 'The Chalk Garden' from 1963 starring Deborah Kerr, Edith Evans and John and Hayley Mills and set in Sussex somewhere. It's a rather Hollywood-ized version of the stage play of the same name but I liked it. It was introduced with a short interview with Julie Harris, the costume designer for the film, which was a nice way to start it. There's something about seeing films on the big screen that makes them very different and adds to the experience of seeing them - I'm not sure I would've liked my first viewing of this film on DVD on the small screen. It's a slow burner, starting off tight and controlled and gradually becoming looser and more naturalistic and it's only in the final few scenes that we understand why. And I'm not saying why.

Maybe I ought to go more often? Or, more likely, it's that Chris knows his films.