Hungarian-born John Halas arrived in Britain in 1936 and established his own studio in 1940 with Joy Batchelor. They began with commercial advertisements for detergents and cornflakes, but the war soon demanded Home Front instructional cartoons, told with humour and, in this engaging film, some striking expressionist designs. The theme is salvage. A bone, a toothpaste tube, a child’s spinning top, and a tin can enlist for duty. “We want to be a shell!” the bone tells the recruiting officer (a medicine bottle). Along with other discarded but happy household refuse they troop off to a munitions factory, where their wish comes true.

Geoff Brown