Preceded by Spare Time: Humphrey Jennings, probably Britain's greatest documentary filmmaker and certainly the most poetic, in the thirties developed an interest in Surrealism which was reflected in his films. Spare Time is a film about working-class leisure in three British industries: steel, cotton and coal. Jennings wrote, "To the real poet the front of the Bank of England may be as excellent a site for the appearance of poetry as the depths of the sea..." Directed and Written by Humphrey Jennings. Photographed by Chick Fowle. (Britain, 1939, 18 mins, B&W, 16mm, Print from MOMA) La Vie est à nous is a lyrical film essay, a truly collective effort by some of the finest writers, directors and cinematographers working in France in the thirties, yet one that bears the strong imprint of Jean Renoir who supervised the project. It was the first militant left-wing film made in France, in support of the Communist Party, and was banned by the censor and thus only screened in local cinemas to "subscribers" to Ciné-liberté, the magazine of the left-wing group of cineastes. The Surrealist poet and critic Jacques Brunius and the actor Gaston Modot, who also was involved in Ciné-liberté, were among the collaborators. The film is an amalgam of sketches, documentary and pseudo-documentary sequences, among them a "portrait" of the 200 families said to rule France; activities and observations of various working people and the Party's connection to them; and the highlight, in which the Fascist leader, Colonel de la Rocque, performs an idiotic little dance to the barking sounds of Adolph Hitler, thanks to ingenious editing. In Renoir's canon this film might be said to be Le Crime de M. Lange in macrocosm-a film about all the M. Langes, indeed, a film made in the collective spirit of that Popular Front-inspired tale. It is an important link to The Rules of the Game and Grand Illusion (see October 27).