A long awaited and much needed remastered and restored print of "Night Mail" (1936) by the GPO Film Unit; directed by Harry Watt & John Grierson as producer; words and music by WH Auden and Benjamin Britten; is now available on DVD. The documentary is supplemented by "The Way to the Sea" (1936) also with words and music by Auden & Britten; "Spotlight on Night Mail" (1948); "Thirty Million Letters" (1963); "Night Mail 2" (1986) (updated version of "Night Mail" featuring poetry by Blake Morrison); a fully illustrated BFI illustrated booklet with essays by author Blake Morrison, film composer Miguel Mera and more.
I would rate "Night Mail" as a great documentary with its extraordinary fusion of music, sound, verse and voice. It had a budget of £2000, "perhaps less", and the young Britten's fee was £10; the score for 10 instruments was completed 'to picture' in 4 days. The particular difficulties of the recording at GPO Studios at Blackheath are outlined in extracts from BB's Diaries. Auden's verse spoken by Stuart Legg presented technical difficulties and could not be recorded in a single take.
I've had a ropey off-air video for several years and have always been fascinated by the sheer ingenuity of the camera crew and how they managed to film the sequence of the mail pouches being captured from the nets at the railside as the train travelled at high speed. Director, Harry Watt writes about the sheer chutzpah of his camerman, literally hanging out of a window, just behind the catching net, with a hand-held camera! "It was a bloody dangerous. Chick (cameraman) struggled half-out of a window. Pat and I hung on to his legs and prayed. The run up to the changeover position was endless. The train seemed to be going faster and faster, and I could see that great black bag hanging on its sinister arm and rushing inexorably at Chick's head. There was a sudden frightening crash as the pouch landed in the van ahead of us, and a faint 'ok' from Chick. We hauled him in, his eyes streaming with water from the rush of the wind. Now it was over I think we all realised what a foolhardy thing it was to have done." Apoplexy for the HSE in 1936!
The changing landscape is moodily photographed all the way to Glasgow, Edinburgh or Aberdeen, together with the fusion of commentary and music.
This is the night mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door...
Several nuggets were rejected in the process of timing the verse to work with the images, or discarded - among them one which described the Cheviots as 'uplands heaped like slaughtered horses' a simile which was thought to be too violent for the filmed landscape. However, it was eventually used in the 1986 'Night Mail 2'. I'm now ready for a further shufti.
A first class buy from MovieMail @ £11 99.
www.moviemail-online.co.uk 
