ENGINEMEN

Enginemen was made right at the time when the steam locomotive was being replaced by the diesel. It records not only the men that work with and take care of the engines, but the engines themselves. The film opens with a full shot of a steam locomotive, half covered by the morning fog (or maybe its own steam), with smokestacks and factories in the background. The engine is rotated slowly on an enormous turntable until it stops pointed in the opposite direction. Then it moves onto the tracks. The camera passes over the enginemen, first in the switch room, then in the dressing room where workers from the next shift are getting ready, and others are making a sandwich. We return to the locomotive this time inside its guts while a fireman stokes the furnace as if at the mouth of a deep pit. Shots of the sweating man and the furnace alternate, and then again there is a shot of the great and sparkling body of the locomotive, which highlights its size and hints at the strength, pride and joy of the trainmen. The film returns to the men at the cafeteria, signaled by a close up shot of a blackboard with food prices. While the camera moves around the room, it focuses on the men's faces and we hear some of them talk describing their work, the engines, how they feel about the coming of the diesel, and their recognition of changing times. It reveals a trace of nostalgia for the fading away of the "old days".

"This strongly individual example of Free Cinema is the first effort by a group of young television technicians from Manchester led by Michael Grigsby. The drastic conditions under which the film was shot has resulted in a frequently harsh screen image, and the sound recording was limited by the slim resources available. For all these limitations, the film has a heavy rhythm, a stark beauty and its own interior compulsion to liberate rather than restrict ones imagination. That the director's affections for iron steam, wheels and wintry sky have been so nourished and poetically expressed under primitive conditions of filming is nothing less than a miracle. And the motive force behind this muscular slice of life, captured from a most elusive environment, is tremendously impressive." ("Monthly Film Bulletin", n. 304, May 1959)

Director and plot: Michael Grigsby.
Director of photography: Andrew Hall, Euan Halleron, Eric Harrison.
Editor: Christopher Faulds.
Sound: Michael Sale.
Production company: Unit Five Seven, con un contributo del British Film Institute.