In 1969 one writer, Daniel Millar, declared this film “the highest achievement in British cinema”. It is certainly close to being Jennings’ highest achievement. “Definitely an advance in film-making for me”, he wrote to his wife in April 1942 when the film was in production; “really beginning to understand people and not just looking at them and lecturing or pitying them”. The rapport he shows with his cast of amateurs, members of London’s Auxiliary Fire Service, is certainly remarkable: the warmth and ease of the portrayals makes this a milestone in British cinema’ representation of ordinary people doing a job. Shot in the docklands area of London’s East End, the film recreates the Blitz of 1940-41, using buildings already damaged once by the Germans and now set alight all over again. “Nobody is quite sure where the film ends and the conditions of making it begin”, Jennings informed his wife, though through the chaos the crew achieved a remarkable degree of realism. After the war, William Sansom, seen as the new boy at the fire station, found success as a novelist and short story writer. Action and behaviour in the film, he revealed, was entirely authentic except for one detail: no-one in the film used foul language.

Geoff Brown