Conquer by the Clock

I'm not sure the clock actually manufactures time nor am I sure that the overly laboured message here would achieve much more than a society of exhausted, nervous wrecks. The premise is that every second counts, and so if you sneak out for a cigarette or go to a ball game on your day off, or even go to the toilet, then you are essentially a saboteur! Yes, the message is ridiculously over-delivered and actually quite dangerous as many of the tasks it uses as examples could not be safely carried out by people who are seeing double whilst standing for hours on end with sore feet and fatigue. There is plenty of industrial archive included to illustrate just how joined up everything is, and just how inter-dependant production and distribution can be, but a couple of folks dying because their lifeboat didn't have enough tins of corned beef seems to put the blame a little disproportionally on the stockist rather than the Nazi with his finger on the torpedo. Still, it does remind us all that time wasted helps no one. Just be thankful they didn't extend that philosophy to this film, else we might still be watching it live!

This Oscar-nominated short urging people to work hard and ceaselessly for the American war effort was directed by Slavko Vorkapich, a man justly celebrated for his montage work. That's the message of this film. With an average shot-length of slightly under two seconds, beautifully reinforced by Erno Rapee's driving score and a series of clocks running at about five times their normal rate, it makes its point with a sledgehammer -- but one precisely applied.

After an introductory section, we get a couple of stories: Jean, who is an inspector on a production line for bullets, who lets bad shells go through because she takes too many cigarette breaks, and a man who delays shipping out lifeboat supplies. The music disappears and the shot-lengths expand during these sections, and then contract again while showing the consequences of their inaction. It's a fine example of what can be accomplished by great montage work.