Behind-the-scenes photos of documentary pioneer Humphrey Jennings filming alt-history drama The Silent Village
Transposing the story of the recent Nazi destruction of a Czech mining village to the Welsh valleys, Jennings’ 1943 film The Silent Village was a powerful alternative-history story that prompted a swell of Welsh solidarity with the Czech miners.
These images capture documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings on location for The Silent Village (1943). The film was made in response to the Nazi destruction of the Czech mining village of Lidice in June 1942. This was itself a reprisal for the assassination of the German ‘protector’ of the region – an event depicted in British feature films including Operation Daybreak (1975) and, more recently, Anthropoid (2016).
All of the men of Lidice were killed, the women were sent to concentration camps and the children were either murdered or, if deemed ‘suitable’, re-homed with Nazi families. The event sparked grief and outrage in the international community and efforts were immediately made to memorialise this village, which the Nazis tried to obliterate from history.
The idea for The Silent Village originated with Czech poet Viktor Fischl who was working for the Czechoslovak Ministry of Information in London. His poem ‘The Dead Village’ lamented the loss of Lidice and he wrote to Jennings to suggest a film which would be part documentary, part re-creation, drawing parallels between Lidice and the mining communities of Wales. Jennings described it as “one of the most brilliant ideas for a short film that we’d ever come across” and immediately began planning The Silent Village.
The film evolved from Fischl’s original conception to become a drama-documentary directly transplanting the events of Lidice to the south Wales village of Cwmgiedd. Jennings spotted the picturesque village on a postcard while scouting locations. He and his crew spent six months living with the villagers as they shot across the autumn and winter of 1942. The first eight minutes of the film show everyday life in Cwmgiedd: chores, chapel, school, pit and pub (where the behind-the-scenes photograph at the top of this article was taken), before switching to a more scripted mode with the arrival of the Nazis which drives the remainder of the 36-minute film.
Jennings was incredibly taken with the people of Cwmgiedd. He wrote to his family of their “honesty, culture, manners, practical socialism [and] real life with passion and tenderness and comradeship and heartiness all combined”. While Jennings was filming, the mining community more widely were establishing the Lidice Shall Live movement and fundraising to re-build the village after the war.
This solidarity is captured in the powerful final speech of the film as we return to present-day Cwmgiedd and the chairman of the miners declares that the name of Lidice: “has not been obliterated. The name of the community has been immortalised… It lives in the hearts of miners the world over.”
Produced with the support of the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.