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‘Holiday’ is a vibrant and witty observation of holiday making at Blackpool. Amongst other things, it exemplifies the sometimes oblique manner by which corporate film units promoted their parent organisations’ activities. In the case of British Transport Films (BTF), the titles intended for showing to the general public sometimes showed or directly promoted travel on British Rail, for example the BTF film 'Elizabethan Express' (1954). Others, like 'Holiday' portrayed – sometimes impressionistically - the places to which trains could carry people and what they could do when they got there. As a body of work, these films amount to a (generally cosy and reassuring) picture of post war British life and location. Holiday was never planned as a major release, and was effectively put together in the cutting room – its use of musical montage perhaps reflecting director John Taylor’s background in the 1930s Documentary Movement – but became one of the most popular items in BTF’s catalogue and its visualisation of British leisure patterns ultimately a somewhat iconic one. |
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