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Fear and Peter Brown

Terror on the home front - literally - in this heady and eccentric brew.

Documentary 1940 16 mins

Overview

There's terror on the home front - literally the home front - in this heady concoction brewed by the brilliantly eccentric Richard Massingham. A somewhat overripe blend of child psychology and anti-Nazi propaganda, laced with touches of noirish chiaroscuro, dreamlike surrealism and Grand Guignol, builds to an almost cosmic crescendo. Moral: "The understanding of fear is the beginning of courage."

The tribulations of our neurotic hero, Peter Brown, dramatise the point that too many parents "have a wrong attitude", unknowingly instilling a lifelong fear of the world into their offspring - which, as exploited by the Nazis, has tipped a whole continent over the edge… Heady stuff indeed: director Massingham, best known for bite-size comedy public information films, tackles more than he can chew in this deadly serious fifteen-minute piece. Fascinating stuff even so: a characteristically idiosyncratic contribution to the war effort from Massingham, and a consciously progressive (for its time) effort at spreading the gospel of modern child development theory via the medium of cinema. This government film is a public record, preserved and presented by the BFI National Archive on behalf of The National Archives, home to more than 1,000 years of British history.

Director

Richard Massingham

Featuring

Nicholas Hannen , Stephen Haggard , Sarah Erskine and Wendy Weddell

Genres

Documentary and Government sponsored film

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Subjects

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