Tawny Pipit (film)
Tawny Pipit is a British war film produced by Prestige Productions in 1944. It tells of how the residents of a small English village collaborate when the nest of a pair of rare tawny pipits is discovered there.
| Tawny Pipit | |
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| Directed by | |
| Produced by | Bernard Miles William Sistrom |
| Written by | |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Noel Mewton-Wood |
| Cinematography | Eric Cross Ray Sturgess |
| Edited by | Douglas Myers |
Production company | Two Cities Films (as a Prestige Production) |
| Distributed by | General Film Distributors |
Release date |
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Running time | 81 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Plot
During the Second World War, Jimmy Bancroft (Niall MacGinnis), a fighter pilot just released from hospital, and his nurse (now his girlfriend) Hazel Broome (Rosamund John) are on a walking tour through the countryside. They arrive at the (fictional) village of Lipsbury Lea and, being keen birdwatchers, discover that a pair of tawny pipits, which are rarely seen in England, are nesting nearby.
Staying in the village, they enlist the locals to protect the nesting site until the eggs hatch. The villagers do so with great enthusiasm, led by the fiery retired Colonel Barton-Barrington (Bernard Miles) and the Reverend Mr. Kingsley.
The field where the nest is located (known locally as the pinfold) is due to be ploughed by order of the county's War Agricultural Executive Committee (the "War Ag"), and a delegation to the Ministry of Agriculture in London fails to get the order rescinded. The minister was Barton-Barrington's "fag" at his public school, Marlborough, and personally intervenes to save the field from being ploughed.
The eggs duly hatch, but not before a plot to steal them on behalf of an unscrupulous dealer is foiled by an alert army corporal (a professional ornithologist) who is serving nearby.
Cast
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Authenticity
James Fisher and Julian Huxley were credited as ornithological advisers for the film. Nevertheless, Eric Hosking's footage of the pipits was actually of meadow pipits because he could not get genuine tawny pipits from German-occupied Europe.[1]
Filming location
Location filming was done in Lower Slaughter in the Cotswolds. The precise whereabouts of the fictional Lipsbury Lea are not specified, but the local pub serves ales brewed in Burford, which is in Oxfordshire, close to the boundary with Gloucestershire. The railway station seen briefly in the film was Stow-on-the-Wold.
Propaganda value
By the time the film was released (not until 1947 in the United States), the threat of invasion had subsided, but it was still seen as an effective piece of propaganda. It showed the love of the English for their country and all classes of society uniting for the common good. A subplot shows Barton-Barrington presenting his Browning Automatic Rifle to Corporal Bokolova (Lucie Mannheim), a Russian soldier on a goodwill tour, whilst giving a fiery speech about some foreigners being "jolly good chaps".
Reception
Rosamund John was later to say, "Rank didn't think they would be able to sell it to America so it was stashed away for a while. When it was shown, it was wildly popular, because it was everything the Americans thought of as being English."[2]
The New York Times wrote, "Seldom does such a piece of unsophisticated charm and humor reach the screen, but this is one that is presented in such an utterly beguiling fashion that it would be a grave error not to see it."[3]
References
- Moss, Stephen. "Brits and their birds". BBC Wildlife Magazine. Retrieved 9 December 2010.
- Tom Vallance (2 November 1998). "Obituary: Rosamund John - Arts and Entertainment". The Independent. Retrieved 13 June 2014.
- "English Movie Magic - NYTimes.com". movies.nytimes.com.
- Tawny Pipit at IMDb
External links
- Tawny Pipit at IMDb
- Review of film at Variety