Stricken Peninsula

Stricken Peninsula is a 1945 propaganda film made by the Army Film Unit and the British Ministry of Information for the Department of Psychological Warfare to highlight the British Army's reconstruction work in southern Italy in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The film was directed by Paul Fletcher and was narrated by William Holt.[1][2] A contemporaneous review of the film by the Documentary News Letter (DNL) praised it as "salutary and excellent. The realities of the war's aftermath presented with considerable artistry".[3]

A score for the film was composed by the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, but it is now lost. A reconstructed score arranged by Phillip Lane and performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March 2016.[4][5] The DNL reserved their criticism for Vaughan Williams's score feeling that it was "execrable" and that "One is conscious only of obtrusive and disagreeable noise intruding between the audience and a moving story". This was the last of the British propaganda films that Vaughan Williams scored. Jeffrey Richard in his 1997 book Films and National British Identity wrote that Vaughan Williams's score could "stand on its own" as "an atmospheric and economical but musically sophisticated and multi-layered evocation of the various facets of post-war reconstruction".[3]

References

1. "Stricken Peninsula". Imperial War Museum - Stricken Peninsula. Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 10 March 2016.
2. Michael Kennedy (1964). The works of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780193154100.
3. Jeffrey Richards (15 September 1997). Films and British National Identity: From Dickens to Dad's Army. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4743-5.
4. "Afternoon on 3 - Wednesday 9 March". BBC Radio 3 - Afternoon on 3. BBC Radio 3. Retrieved 10 March 2016.
5. "Stricken Peninsula (1945)". BFI database. British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 12 March 2016.

External links

• Stricken Peninsula at IMDb