In 1895, thirty-one-year-old Leon Gaumont took over the reins of Comptoir General de la Photographie and created the only film company in the world that is as old as cinema itself. In 1910, he created Gaumont Actualites which, under various monikers, continued to exist until the Eighties. To celebrate Gaumont’s 130th anniversary, we asked its archive for eighty minutes of newsreels from 1939. This was not just any old year. In the newsreels, wellknown events sit alongside less-known but no less significant ones, together with a plethora of minor news items about ordinary people who, unbeknownst to them, were living through the final moments of peace. On the screen we see: the end of the Spanish Civil War; the stipulation of the Anti-Comitern Pact between Spain, Italy, Japan, and Germany; the German occupation of Czechoslovakia; the election of Pope Pius XII; the Italian invasion of Albania; conflicts between Jews and Palestinians in Palestine; the signing of the Pact of Steel between Germany and Italy; the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union; and the German invasion of Poland.

Gian Luca Farinelli