BRITAIN CAN TAKE IT [Main Title]

A shorter version of LONDON CAN TAKE IT re-edited for showing to British audiences.

START 00:00:00 Opening titles and a brief introduction by 'Collier's Weekly' correspondent Quentin Reynolds, holding a lit cigarette in his left hand.

00:00:50 A view of St Paul's Cathedral and the City of London from Senate House in Bloomsbury (the location of the wartime Ministry of Information) opens a sequence showing Londoners making their way home from work before the start of a night-time Luftwaffe bombing raid -the locations are a bus stop in Oxford Street next to Selfridges Department Store, Westminster Bridge and Piccadilly Circus. Air Raid Precautions (ARP) volunteers arrive at their ARP post, British Army anti-aircraft gunners man a sound-locating device in one of the big city parks, people queue up to enter an underground public air raid shelter and slowly take their turn to enter once the doors have been opened. As the sun sets behind the Houses of Parliament, the long barrel of a 4.5-inch Mk XII naval-pattern gun and a searchlight are pointed skywards as the last people in the queue outside the public shelter disappear out of sight. A team of firemen from the London Fire Brigade and a solitary ARP warden await the first sign of the enemy. The first sound of throbbing aero engines is heard over shots of buildings outlined against the night sky. Searchlights are switched on and a battery of 4.5-inch anti-aircraft guns opens fire at the unseen raiders in the night sky. Over a soundtrack of Luftwaffe bombers flying overhead and explosions, vivid flashes of light from bursting bombs and anti-aircraft guns illuminate buildings and ARP wardens patrolling the streets. Firemen aim water hoses onto burning buildings. A section of London docks (Surrey or Woolwich Docks?) burns fiercely. The sounds of battle ebb away at daybreak.

00:03:58 A sequence beginning with a daylight view from Senate House looking towards Westminster, Victoria, Pimlico and Battersea Power Station showing bomb damage in the city centre and in a suburban street (Blackheath ?) and women looking out of a broken window and collecting a pint of milk from the front door. Scenes of destruction to ordinary homes (including a new block of London County Council apartments) caused by the bombing. Commuters head to work on foot across London Bridge (?) and walk pass bomb-blasted offices. Shots of a double-decker bus thrown against buildings by bomb blast, a damaged commuter railway line still in operation and commuters riding to work on the back of a horse-drawn cart. People on their way to work pass shattered shop fronts in Oxford Street. A shopkeeper sweeps up shattered glass from his women's fashion store and a woman steps over the debris to buy a dress from him without having to step through the entrance. Shots showing people taking away some of their personal possessions as they evacuate their homes and pack up their belongings amid scenes of devastation, their Majesties Queen Elizabeth and King George VI (in the uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet) in a bomb-damaged part of Buckingham Palace and male and female social workers and commuters in bombed-out streets. Shots showing the Queen talking to rescue workers, ARP workers clearing away rubble near the Monument in the City of London and traffic and pedestrians crowding the streets and pavements at Oxford Circus and Trafalgar Square. Views of a blitzed Georgian-period crescent, a damaged part of Somerset House on the Thames and St Paul's Cathedral from Ludgate Circus, as yet undamaged by enemy bombing.

00:06:17 Firemen hose down a tall office building, rescue workers attempting to clear away a mound of smoking rubble, people gazing at the destruction in a suburban street, householders moving their belongings out of their blast-shattered homes. Schoolchildren and their teachers assemble in a bus depot for evacuation to the countryside and double decker London Transport buses take them away to a railway terminus. Headlines chalked onto blackboards announce RAF raids on Berlin and invasion ports along the French and Belgian coast. RAF armourers load bombs into an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bomber and three Whitleys fly in formation somewhere over England. A woman sweeps the debris off her gas cooker and a West End shopkeeper sweeps up glass off the pavement. Two tired and grimy London firemen. Scenes in South East London (?) - an electric tram passes a busy street market, miniature Union Jacks flying above the boarded up front of the 'Dutch Boy Laundry' and a busy shopping street. Shots showing two rescue workers extricating a cat from ruins, bomb damage in an LCC housing estate and an ARP volunteer cadging a light for his cigarette from a London taxi driver. The closing shot shows the statue of King Richard I (Coeur de Lion or Lionheart) in Old Palace Yard outside the Houses of Parliament with the bomb-shattered neo-Gothic window at the entrance to the House of Commons in the background. End credits.

END 00:07:52

35mm