Humphrey Jennings

Intellectual Criticism

Against these critical perspectives, there is little in the way of really rounded criticism, yet there are some doubts about two aspects of Jennings; his intellectual detachment, and his middle class status.

In much positive writing on Jennings there is often a reference to his intellectual status. It is most commonly used as an ironic aside, that his ability to make films elevates him above being an intellectually distanced person, and filmmaker. Or, if not as a starting point for further elaboration on Jennings connection with his subject, it is used as an historical pointer, often reflecting on Grierson’s view of Jennings as an ‘Intellectual dilettante’. Yet there is a real issue here, and almost no debate on the matter. It is often suggested that his standing as intellectual gives him elevated status to portray the lives of those around him. “He sought therefore for a public imagery, a public poetry” (Anderson, 1954, pp3). But this is to further undervalue both the importance of the sociological background he made the films from, and the sociological foreground he was making the films for. The most simplistic of the problems this raises is the gap between the possible readings of the film by someone aware of Jennings themes and favoured imagery, and the new viewer. Indeed Jennings films are so imbued with symbolism leading into intellectual ideas, that some levels of the films are closed to the uninformed viewer (true both contemporarily and upon their release). “Although he used public images, these images had associations and connotations which were not usually accessible to the public at large. Most people would not consciously associate the locomotive with the tarot pack, the horse, the Industrial Revolution.” (Lovell & Hillier, 1972 pp68) By imbuing each image with these connections, he is distancing himself and his films from the less educated – often both his subject and the majority of his viewers. His layered use of such symbolism often denies the viewer full access to the films. His intellectual associations, whilst opening up more imagery within the films than those of his contemporaries, also close doors in terms of the films accessibility. In touching on this problem Lovell and Hillier use the following example “A shot of St Paul’s towering above a mass of rubble on one level is a very symbolic image, but Jennings would also have been aware that this particular view of the cathedral revealed vistas that had not been seen for over a quarter of a century.” (Lovell & Hillier, 1972 pp68). Having raised this point, however, Lovell and Hillier then take this very problem to its extreme with an indirect example of the problem with Jennings’ intellectual depth in his film imagery [on the tarot pack association] “Apart from the Chariot, the other card-image which inspired him was the Maison-Dieu, the house struck by fire from heaven” (Lovell & Hillier, 1972 pp91). They have raised an interesting doubt in the work of Jennings only to accentuate the lack of critical balance with insufficient exploration of the problem raised.