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- Title
THE IMAGINATION AT WAR: VISIONARY POETICS IN HUMPHREY JENNINGS'S "I SEE LONDON" AND LONDON CAN TAKE IT!
- Authors
BIRDWISE, SCOTT
- Abstract
This article reconsiders the image of documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings that is perhaps best known to posterity--that of the cinematic poet of "the people's war." It discusses the visionary poetic background of Jennings's wartime poem "I See London" (1941) and his film London Can Take It! (1940) and contextualizes their representations of everyday life during the national emergency of the Blitz through reference to the paradoxes animating Jennings's post-surrealist poetics of the people's war. The article argues that Jennings's most significant contribution to wartime morale resides in the way in which he affirms the people's imaginative capacity to collectively adapt to the conditions of total war--extraordinary conditions that, as Jennings shows, also possess their own (extra)ordinary aspects of rhythm and routine. Rather than simply normalizing wartime paradoxes, however, the article suggests that Jennings appeals to the poetic imagination to protect the historical and symbolic dimensions of the form of life of the people, thus resisting their reduction to the targeted object of destruction.
- Publication
Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 2023, Vol 32, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
0847-5911
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3138/CJFS-2021-0028