Betty marries rich Allan out of interest and drives a wedge between him and his family.

A group of travellers, all with something to hide in their past, take shelter from a storm in an old inn. The inn-keeper seems a little mysterious...

The time for this sleepy village to awake and face its demons has firmly landed on its doorstep. The transformation of idyllic rural Englishness has to be tested to its limits, on their own and with time running out, even the softest of hearts have to learn the hardest rule; in order to survive, this little village of Bramley End must, with shocking and disturbing new qualities', adapt to their new surroundings. Frank and hard-hitting World War II cinema.

A fatherless boy tries to make his fortune despite interference from his rich uncle.

Coal Face (1935) was the first influential film to be made by the GPO Film Unit. It continued the experimentation with sound effects and music first initiated in Song of Ceylon (d. Basil Wright, 1934) and Pett and Pott (d. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1934), and was described in the Film Society programme of 27 October 1935 as "an experiment in sound". What links these three films is the contribution of Alberto Cavalcanti.
Cavalcanti had been a member of the French avant-garde film movement during the 1920s and, by 1934, had established a reputation for himself as an expert on the creative use of sound and music in film. In 1934 the British documentary film movement acquired a rudimentary sound system, enabling its filmmakers to make sound films for the first time; it was at this point that Cavalcanti was appointed.
Coal Face was one of the most overtly modernist films made within the movement, comparing only to Drifters (d. John Grierson, 1929) in its use of formalist montage techniques. In addition to a montage editing style largely derived from the Soviet cinema of the 1920s, however, Coal Face also experiments extensively with a variety of sound/image relationships. Although Cavalcanti was responsible for the overall orchestration of sound and music, W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten were also contracted to write the script and music score respectively.
The film's narrative is relatively conventional, providing details on the structure of the coal industry, and the processes used for extracting and treating coal. However, one of the strategies adopted by the documentary movement was to explore the creative possibilities of filmmaking within the framework of such conventional narratives, and here this takes the form of a non-naturalistic deployment of sound, language and music, so that natural sounds, dialogue, speech, music and choral singing are integrated in a dramatic, often strident manner.
Coal Face was an important film both for its innovative aesthetic style and for its ability to express critical social comment (noting, for example, the accident rates in the mines) in a film which was, in effect, made for a government department and sponsored by a commercial industry.

One world, drearily familiar, is rigidly divided by political boundaries. The other, forged by new communications technology, wipes them away. Such idealistic internationalism would soon be trampled upon (this obvious hindsight is further prompted by the bought-in military footage included in this film). But in the internet era contemporary echoes abound.
The occasionally pompous We Live in Two Worlds is subtitled 'A Film Talk by J.B. Priestley'. The left-leaning playwright and social commentator was a key middlebrow celebrity of the day, and his inimitable voice would become a familiar fixture on British radios. His presence here is clunky, but bookends imagery that is freshly, excitingly put together, even if it's basically cutting-room-floor stuff. Cavalcanti and John Taylor had been shooting in Switzerland, on a joint project between the GPO and Pro Telephon-Zürich. Their footage here brings to life Priestley's abstract ideas, juxtaposing traditional Swiss folklore with the incursion of telecommunications and hydroelectric power.
Continuity and change: the theme recurs across the documentary movement's output - but mainly painted, before now, on a domestic canvas. Here it takes on not merely global but cosmic implications. Cavalcanti's weird experiments with echo, repetition and amplification take the film to the edge of science fiction: a contrast with lovely quieter moments earlier on, in which pastoral scenes unfold beneath Maurice Jaubert's lyrical score (this was the French composer's only British soundtrack).
The 'film talk' structure would be echoed by 1939's The City, in which Sir Charles Bressey takes the role of the lecturer to camera performed here by Priestley. Their presence in the GPO catalogue is a little ironic, as John Grierson had long decried 'illustrated lecture' as a form of non-fiction film inferior to the more creative and relevatory 'documentary'. But We Live in Two Worlds can hardly be accused of lacking ambition. In a mere 14 minutes we travel from Priestley's armchair, via the Alps, to the very heavens.

1952 film by Alberto Cavalcanti

Architect Walter Craig, seeking the possibility of some work at a country farmhouse, soon finds himself once again stuck in his recurring nightmare. Dreading the end of the dream that he knows is coming, he must first listen to all the assembled guests' own bizarre tales.