Painted Boats (1945) - film review

For generations, the Smith and Stoner families have lived and worked on the canals of England, transporting valuable cargoes between the great industrial heartlands of the country.  Whilst the latest generation of Smiths adhere to the tradition of the horse-drawn barge, the Stoners have moved on and embraced motorisation.  Despite this divergence, the two families remain on good terms, and Mary Smith intends to marry Ted Stoner.   When her father dies suddenly, Mary cannot bear to give up the only life she has known and so takes his place, supported only by her old mother.  She then receives further bad news...

Painted Boats is Ealing Studios’ warm tribute to the men and women who work and live on England’s canals.  It remains one of the company’s most enchanting films, despite its somewhat awkward mix of documentary, wartime propaganda and drama.  Ealing’s motivation for making the film was presumably to draw the public’s attention to the importance of the canals, which had fallen into neglect in previous years but which were proving to be essential for the British war effort.    

The film was an early offering from director Charles Crichton, a former film editor who would later distinguish himself with some of Ealing’s best known films, including the classics Hue and Cry (1947) and The Lavender Hill Mob (1951).  He would in later years co-direct A Fish Called Wanda (1988) with ex-Python John Cleese.  Heading a pretty nondescript cast is a young and comely Jenny Laird, who would fail to hit the big time but who would nonetheless become a familiar face to British television audiences in the sixties and seventies.  

If Painted Boats were merely a piece of drama, it probably deserves to be forgotten - particularly as the delivery from most of the so-called actors is as wooden as the barges they are standing on.   What has given the film its longevity is its educational content.  It explains, briefly, how the canals came into being during the early years of the Industrial Revolution and reminds us of the their importance as a vital transportation network for over 150 years.  It also relates, rather poignantly, how the canals fell into decline when road and rail took over their work in the early decades of the 20th Century.

The main charm of this film lies in the naturalistic way in which it is shot, on the Grand Union Canal against a backdrop of some of the most beautiful scenery in England.   The film evokes a way of life that appears idyllic but which, as we soon discover, was exceptionally hard.  Painted Boats is not so much a film as a window onto a past that will be unrecognisable to most of us.   It provides not only a valuable visual record of a noble tradition that has long since passed away, but a powerful statement of the transience of all things.

© James Travers 2010

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