Set up as a production in the autumn of 1944 when people hoped Britain’s war was petering out, A Diary for Timothy uses the birth of a baby on 3 September 1944 (the war’s fifth anniversary in Britain) to mount a film that in a tender, vaguely melancholy mood mulls over the war’s past and present, and Britain’s possible future. During Timothy’s first months Hitler launches his new secret weapon, the V-2 bomb, flying faster than sound; the Allies experience a setback at Arnhem; audiences flock to a production of Hamlet; a children’s choir salutes the Russians in song; and snug in his cot, Timothy Jenkins, innocent and unknowing, gurgles and sucks his fingers as the uncertain future stretches before him. A sometimes flowery commentary written by the novelist E.M. Forster guides us through the patchwork and leaves baby Timothy with this thought: “Are you going to have greed for money or power ousting decency from the world as they have in the past? Or are you going to make the world a different place – you and all the other babies?” Neither the baby nor Jennings could know the answer; we perhaps do. The film was released in March 1946.

Geoff Brown