The Volunteer (1944 film)

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The Volunteer
TheVolunteerTradeAd.jpg
Trade advertisement
Directed by Michael Powell
Emeric Pressburger
Written byMichael Powell
Emeric Pressburger
Produced byMichael Powell
Emeric Pressburger
Starring Ralph Richardson
Pat McGrath
CinematographyFrederick Ford
Edited byJohn Seabourne
Michael C. Chorlton
Music by Allan Gray
Release date
  • 10 January 1944 (1944-01-10)
Running time
24 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

The Volunteer (1944) is a short black-and-white British film directed, written and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and starring Ralph Richardson, Pat McGrath and Anna Neagle. It was produced for the British Ministry of Information during the Second World War, as recruitment propaganda for the Fleet Air Arm. [1]

Contents

It was one of a highly regarded series of wartime collaborations between Powell and Pressburger, which also included The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) and A Matter of Life and Death (1946). [2]

Synopsis

The film features Ralph Richardson starring in a West End production of Othello . Pat McGrath plays his dresser, who joins the Fleet Air Arm and becomes a war hero as famous as Richardson himself. Anna Neagle and Laurence Olivier make cameo appearances, as do the film's director, Michael Powell, and another British film director, Anthony Asquith.

Cast

Reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "With touches of quiet charm, domesticity and romance, Powell and Pressburger have built this into a plausible real-life story told by Richardson. Ingenious devices – the aircraft carrier's own newsreel, for example – fill in the picture of life in the Fleet Air Arm from the earliest days of training, through shore and shipboard work and play at Alexandria and Algiers, and finally into exciting action against a flock of German planes." [3]

Kine Weekly wrote: "Fiendly, unaffected Fleet Air Arm 'personal' documentary ... Technically it is perhaps a trifle fragmentary, but on the other hand it is refreshingly free from conscious and pretentious patriotism. In all, an engaging recruiting poster, and quota at that! ... The picture is inconsequential in its planning, but natural acting, and easy, friendly commentary, nevertheless give it an agreeable air of authenticity. It's good propaganda and even better entertainment." [4]

The director Michael Powell during filming for The Volunteer, 1943 The Royal Navy during the Second World War A17389.jpg
The director Michael Powell during filming for The Volunteer, 1943

Home media

The film is available as a supplement to The Criterion Collection DVD of Powell and Pressburger's film 49th Parallel (1941), and on the BFI's blu-ray edition (2001) of Powell and Pressburger's film One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942). [5]

References

  1. ↑ "The Volunteer". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 17 August 2025.
  2. ↑ Christie, Ian (1985). Arrows of Desire: The Films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Waterstone & Co Ltd. ISBN   978-0947752132.
  3. ↑ "The Volunteer". The Monthly Film Bulletin . 10 (109): 122. 1 January 1943. ProQuest   1305815437.
  4. ↑ "The Volunteer". Kine Weekly . 321 (1907): 43. 4 November 1943. ProQuest   2676988735.
  5. ↑ Powell and Pressburger (directors / screen-writers) (1944). One of our aircraft is missing (motion picture, blu-ray). BFI. BFIB1422 – via 5-035673-014226.

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