Third Cinema

Fires Were Started

The film that sets Jennings’ standing on this most clearly is his only feature length film, Fires Were Started. The story of a day in the life of the Auxiliary Fire Service, the film is disputably both fiction and documentary – it is a re-enactment, but of ‘real’ events, using the actual A.F.S servicemen and women. Its status as documentary (as that is how it is most commonly labelled) does not alter its political stance. Jennings was asked to make the film by the C.F.U’s producer Ian Dalrymple, and was therefore making the film for the Ministry of Information. In Fires Were Started, Jennings completely avoids any visual, and almost any verbal (“They’ll be raiding tonight” is as direct a mention as the film gives), reference to the invading German/axis planes. As Winston notes “No planes are identified. No distant dogfights figure. The fires are started without human agency” (Winston, 1999 pp40). He deliberately avoids giving the threat an identity. Furthermore there is only one major reference to the British military and indeed to the concept of a battle in war terms – the ammunitions ship in the dock.

The Third Cinema that Jennings is originating permeates into each key scene of the film – it is not just in the overall of the film that one can see Jennings’ oppositional work. In the detail of scenes his stance comes through eloquently and forcefully. One of the prime examples of the symbolism in the film is the ammunitions ship. The ammunitions ship, one of the film’s closing images, is photographed at a constant distance, and is kept in a mixture of nightly shadow, and morning silhouette. Jennings goes further than the more common tactic of simply ignoring the enemy, to veiling the primary imagery of war itself. He makes the ammunitions ship an impersonal, almost ghostly, object. He chooses to make its value that of a universal object of appreciation – a wondrous floating vessel, elevating it above its wartime value as supplier of ammunition for the front. As Johnny puts it in the film “You wanna go down the road and look over the wall. There’s a boat down there, good as new. She ain’t got a scratch on ‘er … it’s a sight for sore eyes.” In Brian Winston’s reading of the film (BFI Film Classics – Fires Were Started) he translates this as Jennings as propagandist working, “in other words, the raid fails”, elaborating further “Stoic resistance is transformed into triumph – indirect, sociological propaganda for the Home Front and allies and Neutrals” (Winston, 1999 pp41). Although partially true, this reading simply reflects the most obvious layers of Fires Were Starteds political stance. However, he does touch on what I see as a key issue in understanding Jennings as Third Cinema proponent when he reflects on the triumph being not only for the Home Front and the allies, but more crucially, for the ‘Neutrals’. Jennings shows this symbol of developed man – the ship – impervious to the tribulations of war.

Yet there is no victor, war produces no wins, only losses, as is so simply demonstrated with the shots of Jacko’s coffin being carried through the churchyard to screen left, with the munitions ship moving hauntingly out to sea screen right. The twin movements of the scene showing the cyclical nature of war; death moving slowly in, as death moves slowly out. A more vivid anti-war statement is hard to find in any British film of the period (including the immediate post-war years).