Brief City

The Festival of Britain of 1951 was specifically designed to mark the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851, but whereas the Great Exhibition showcased products and inventions from around the world, the Festival concentrated on British achievements. It was also seen as a bit of welcome relief for the British people after six years of war and six more of post-war austerity. Some prophets of doom foretold disaster for the Festival, but in fact it turned out to be a huge popular success. Over the five months between May - September 1951 around 8.5 million people visited the site on London's South Bank where it was held.

The Festival left a permanent legacy to London in the shape of the Royal Festival Hall and the South Bank arts complex, but many of the structures built for it, such as the Dome of Discovery and the famous Skylon, were only temporary and only existed for a brief period, hence the film's title. (Many people, in fact, hoped that the Skylon could be preserved, but it was destroyed on the instructions of the Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had been returned to power at the General Election of October 1951, shortly after the Festival had ended. Churchill disliked the Festival on the grounds that it had been the idea of the previous Labour government).

This short film was the official record of the Festival, produced by the Central Office of Information with sponsorship from the "Observer" newspaper. It is narrated by the Festival's architect Hugh Casson and focuses on design and architecture. As with many British documentary shorts from the forties and fifties, this one has a notably optimistic tone. Although the optimism is tinged by a sense of regret that the Festival is now over, it is assumed that the Modernistic style of architecture exemplified by the Festival's buildings would play an important role in building the Brave New Britain of the future. From a 21st century standpoint, of course, mid-20th century Modernism can often look like the god that failed, but the appeal of films like this one is the light which they can shed on the social history and social attitudes of a past age. They also show how quickly these attitudes can change. I suspect that if the Skylon had been preserved it would today be a much-loved icon, cherished not as the symbol of a high-tech future, which is what it was when first erected, but as a nostalgic reminder of the fifties, a decade which has entered the popular memory as the era of a kinder, gentler Britain.