The deceptions of fiction were everywhere in Britain’s wartime output, with studio re-enactments, inauthentic locations, and imaginary characters jostling alongside serving officers and frontline footage. But the game moved to another level when Humphrey Jennings, in The Silent Village, transferred a real, recent and painful wartime atrocity – the Nazi’s destruction of the buildings and most of the inhabitants of the Czech village of Lidice in June 1942 – to a new location entirely, a Welsh mining village. The ipetus for a Lidice film came from the exiled Czech government in London. By shifting the horrific story to Wales, Jennings was able, perversely, to create a more realistic feeling, with extensive location shooting. He could also satisfy the Ministry of Information’s constantly rumbling desire for a film to portray what life in Britain might be like under Nazi occupation. Some documentary diehards complained about Jennings’ subterfuge and oblique approach, but evidence suggests a warm public response. And whatever the awkward moments in Jennings’ handling of dialogue and his amateur cast, the film shows the upper-class director’s genuine sympathy for the Welsh mining community where he lived and worked for some months before shooting started. “Quiet, impres- sive, real. No melodrama”: that was one spectator’s comment.

Geoff Brown