Fires Were Started (1943)

By 1943, Britain had been living with the threat of the Blitz for the better part of three years, and the films being made at home reflected that exhausted, determined reality. Fires Were Started belongs to a particular tradition of British wartime documentary filmmaking that was less concerned with Hollywood-style heroics than with bearing honest witness. Produced by the Crown Film Unit, the government-backed production outfit responsible for much of Britain's wartime non-fiction cinema, it was written and directed by Humphrey Jennings, a filmmaker who had already established himself as one of the most thoughtful voices working in the documentary form. Where many propaganda films of the period reached for the rousing and the rhetorical, Jennings tended toward the observational and the poetic, and Fires Were Started is very much a product of that sensibility.

The film follows a new recruit joining a National Fire Service unit and experiencing, alongside his colleagues, the particular rhythm of life during the Blitz: the waiting, the camaraderie, and then the sudden, dangerous reality of a night's work amid burning buildings. Crucially, most of the people on screen are not professional actors. Jennings cast real firefighters in the principal roles, shooting on location in London among streets that bore the genuine scars of bombing raids. The result is something that sits awkwardly between dramatic reconstruction and historical document, a quality that gives the film both its chief interest and its chief limitation. The top-billed cast, including Phillip Wilson-Dickson, George Gravett, Fred Griffiths, Johnny Houghton and Loris Rey, bring an authenticity to their roles that no studio casting could have replicated, though what they offer in lived credibility they cannot always provide in dramatic range. For anyone who has spent time with other war films of its era, such as The Ox-Bow Incident, released the same year, the contrast in conventional storytelling craft is fairly pronounced.

Jennings was, by background, a painter, poet and member of the Mass Observation movement, and his interest in ordinary British life under pressure runs through his wartime output. His approach here is closer in spirit to the essay film than the feature, prioritising texture and atmosphere over plot or character arc. For a point of comparison in terms of documentary ambition, his contemporary Robert Flaherty was producing work on the other side of the Atlantic around the same period, as seen in Louisiana Story, though the two filmmakers approached their subjects from quite different angles. The question of whether Fires Were Started succeeds as cinema, as opposed to succeeding as record, is precisely what makes it the kind of film worth arguing about over a drink rather than simply filing away under "important".

Fires Were Started (1943) is a curious hybrid (part docudrama, part propaganda, part historical artefact) crafted in the thick of World War II by filmmaker Humphrey Jennings. Blending real firefighters with scripted scenes, it follows a new recruit’s first day with the National Fire Service during the Blitz, capturing the grim routine of wartime Britain with stark realism. The black-and-white cinematography, often shot on location amid actual bombed-out streets and smouldering ruins, lends it an undeniable immediacy; you can almost smell the soot and hear the distant wail of sirens. For that alone, it’s fascinating, a film not just about history, but made within it. Yet as cinema, it’s dramatically inert. With no traditional plot, minimal character development, and dialogue that leans toward procedural exposition, it feels closer to a training film than a narrative feature. The performances (many by non-actors) are authentic but flat, and the pacing meanders through long stretches of watchful waiting punctuated by brief bursts of chaos. There’s poetry in its restraint, yes, but also tedium. It captures the quiet heroism of ordinary people under fire, yet rarely stirs the emotions it so clearly respects. An important, quietly compelling time capsule that earns admiration more than enjoyment. Neither good nor bad in the conventional sense, it's simply a sober, unvarnished record of resilience. Watch it for historical insight, not entertainment; appreciate it as testimony, not storytelling.

I find myself returning to that word "testimony" quite a bit when I think about this one. There are films you admire and films you enjoy, and every now and then there are films that don't quite fit either category but still feel necessary. Fires Were Started lands somewhere in that third space. It's not an easy watch for anyone hoping to be swept along, and if you go in expecting the emotional punch of something like 1917, you'll likely come out puzzled. But there's something that stays with you, a kind of quiet weight, the knowledge that the soot on those walls and the fatigue on those faces was real. It earns its place in the conversation, even if it doesn't earn a repeat viewing any time soon. Some films are made to be felt; this one was made to be remembered.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 1943  | Watched: 2026-04-09

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Watch in the UK
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Stream: OVID
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Related on Movies With Macca

More from United Kingdom: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) · Blue (1993)
More from the 1940s: Louisiana Story (1948) · The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) · Men Without Wings (1946) · The Bank Dick (1940)
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More war: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · The General (1926) · Men Without Wings (1946) · When the Wind Blows (1986)