Look at Life: Volume One - Transport [DVD]

What gems we have here !!This nicely presented 4 disc box-set from Network DVD contains 54 (transport and travel themed) cinema shorts on 4 DVDs from the late fifties and early sixties. Hopefully other box-sets will be following on other suitable themes.Rank originally made over 500 of these shorts designed for interval insertions or fillers at their cinemas. As Rank were "proper" film-makers, the original picture and sound quality was excellent and all films were made in glorious technicolor. However, modern digital remastering has made these now remarkably look as good as new and as if you were watching a film made today, the only giveaway being the clothes worn and the cars driven (all the chaps seemd to wear their ties whatever they were doing in those days!!)The content and subject matter of each ten minute film features very separate and distinct areas for examination, presented in such a way as to be of equal interest and importance to a ten year old schoolboy as well as the older community. These are the subjects that we would have all been curious about and the ones which still fascinate today e.g. hovercraft design and development, car growth, motorway and trunk road development, the jet-age, the great liners, steam decline and moves into diesel-electric trains, air sea-rescue, road accidents and road safety etc. etc.In addition to the subject matter of each film, the fabulous photography and glorious narrations from the likes of Tim Turner and Raymond Baxter ("proper chaps") mean that each little featurette is a ten minute potted social history and documentary in itself, giving a wonderful glimpse of a much simpler time when British engineering, design and innovation dominated the world and everyone just got on with it - no doubt largely because they could as we did not suffer from a Health and Safety executive on every corner.Well done Network, these are amazing little films and I am delighted that someone has dusted them off and made them available to us all, lest they were forgotten forever and never to be seen again. You must release all 500 of them.There are only one or two films here which are duplicates of those released in the smaller look at life series which have been previously released on the railways, civil and military aviation, cold war jets and swinging london.My only complaint is a small one and is that there is no booklet or insert included with the DVDs to provide the film detail. Instead this is printed on the inside of the DVD case and you have to remove the DVDs to read any detail.Otherwise a fantastic release and at this price is great value at just over 60p for each film which you can keep forever. Looking forward to the next batch.

Having feasted on similiar material from the BFI, I decided to check out this Network release. This is a lovely collection of nostalgic and charming short documentary films that cover various forms of transport.From land, sea, and air, to modernising the transport infrastructure, which includes the railways and ports, to road building.Road transport covers diverse subjects, such as the building of taxis to picking up customers, the training of police drivers, as well as two-wheeled forms of transport including motorbikes, scooters and cycling.In the air we have passenger aircraft, with the work of the air hostess, then we have gliding and hot-air ballooning. On the water we see the "Queen Elizabeth" Liner, and the story of the Hovercraft from its invention.This is just a taste of the 54 little gems that we have here, a Kaleidescope of information about 1960's transport, a fascinating dip into a bygone age. The narrators include Raymond Baxter and Eamonn Andrews.This collection was produced by the Rank Organisation, to replace newsreels in their Odeon and Gaumont Cinemas.The digitally restored colour pictures are rich and clear, sound quality is good. No subtitles. The 54 films give a total running time of over eight hours, and were made from 1959 to 1969, A brief synopsis of each film is shown on the inside of the dvd case.The 4 discs are stored in a single-size dvd case, so its compact.Here is a list of the films:*DISC ONE - Ticket To Tokyo./ Letting Off Steam./ New Roads For Old./ Flight On A Cushion./ Talking Of Coaches./ Alpine Rescue./ Shopping For A "Queen"./ Sailing The Sky./ Driving Test./ Shape Of A Ship./ Air Hostess./ Taxi! Taxi!!./ All Through The Night.*DISC TWO - Over And Under./ Horse-Power Riders./ Eyes Of The Law./ Scooter Commuter./ Sea Horses./ So They All Hover Now./ The Village Sleeps Again./ Birdmen./ Draw The Fires./ The Car Has Wings./ Vintage Models./ Pilot Aboard./ Where No Tide Flows.*DISC THREE - High, Wide And Faster./ Oil Aboard./ Report On A River./ Europe Grows Together./ Turn Of The Wheel./ City Of The Air./ Behind The Ton-Up Boys./ Going Places Under Water./ Living With Cars./ Flying To Work./ The Spirit Of Brooklands./ Weather Adviser./ What Price Safety?./ Down In The Dumps.*DISC FOUR - Cats Of The Sea./ Breaking The Ice./ Skimming Through The Sixties./ The Big Take-Off./ Lighter Than Air./ Just An Accident./ Scrambling For It./ The Straits Of Dover./ Where Do You Leave The Boat?./ Pushing The Bike./ Playing Trains./ The City's For Living In./ All In A Day's Work./ A Load Of Pheasants.

When I was a wee lad, my Dad used to take me to the Gaumont and Odeon cinemas where these short documentaries were shown between the two main films. How I loved these very interesting and well made films and as I was interested in transport subjects, particularly aircraft, it was always exciting to see any aviation subjects. Ever since the VHS/video era, I have campaigned marketing companies to try and source these films from the Rank Organisation and release them for public viewing, before the Masters were lost forever.Alas the years went by and the DVD era came in, so I tried again and successfully got one of them to release some of these films on civil and military aviation and alsp on railways. At last, Network can be congratulated on releasing even more of these films and Vol.1 is all on transport-related subjects, no less than 44 films on 4 DVD discs covering aviation, ships, railways, cars, buses, motor bikes and hovercraft. Wonderful to sit back and relive all these well-made films again and beautifully digitally remastered, resulting in amazing quality considering all were made between 1959-66. Please let's have more to enjoy life as it was?