Sunday, October 03, 2021

West of England (1951)

 BFI

Glorious Technicolor casts a dreamlike spell over Gloucestershire's Stroud valleys in this rather gorgeous short film. Author Laurie Lee, whose 1960 book Cider with Rosie drew on childhood memories of the area, contributes the script for a narration which accompanies painterly images of evergreen scenery, people and industry. At heart a Board of Trade promo for Gloucestershire cloth-making, it's a deliberately soft sell, wrapped up in a gentle, romantic, small 'c' conservative vision of rural idyll.