description
Object description
Second World War British Ministry of Information newsreel trailer warning of the dangers of not extinguishing cigarettes.
Full description
A worker, sleeping fitfully in an arm chair in his living room, is having a nightmare (the pictures and other furniture in the room are arranged at strange, surreal angles). He wakes suddenly and shouts "fire". (The room has now returned to normal). The worker wanders about the room worried about what he did with his last cigarette, anxious that he did not leave it alight at his workplace. As he tries to recall what he did with his lighted cigarette he hears the bells of a passing fire-engine and anxiously asks himself "I could not have started a fire - could I?". Using flashbacks, he is shown leaving the factory and talking to two girls on his way out, and he worriedly he asks himself "did I put that fag down?". A brief shot of his concerned face superimposed over an image of a completed aircraft in a hangar is accompanied by the commentary "If you didn't put it out, death and injury to your fellow workers, shortage of ammunition and supplies, fewer tyres for the trucks and fewer comforts for the fighting men on and or sea". Anxiously the worker wrings his hands "What did I do with it? Where could it be? I shall have to be more careful. A lot of horrible things can happen". He then sees the burning cigarette in a glass ashtray in his room and exclaims "Strike Me Pink!". The commentary continues "Let this be a lesson to you. Remember what damage you can do to the war effort by a moment's carelessness. Cigarette ends are dangerous things". The worker then burns his hand whilst extinguishing the cigarette in the ashtray and, while shaking his painful hand, says emphatically "You're telling me!". The film ends with the titles TAKE CARE YOU CAN'T BE TOO CAREFUL.
Physical description
35mm
