FOOD FIGHT!
THE CINEMA OF CONSUMPTION IN WARTIME BRITAIN
Richard Farmer
University of East Anglia
ABSTRACT
The comprehensive rationing system established in Britain under the control of the Ministry of Food
(MoF) during the Second World War promoted food as one of the most important sites of connection
between individual Britons and the State. As such, the government was keen to publicise the work of
the MoF, not only to instruct British consumers as to the intricacies of the food control system, but
also to use the communal connotations of rationing to help in the formulation of a sense of collective
Britishness. Using radio, newspapers and cinema to foreground food as an integral element of the
wartime British experience, the MoF encouraged Britons to understand their diet not only in
communal terms but also as an integral element of the war effort. Further, the creation of numerous
works canteens and state-subsidised British Restaurants promoted public dining to an unprecedented
extent, but in such a way as to spotlight the benefits that resulted from such communalism to both the
individual and the State. However, whilst films such as Eating Out with Tommy Trinder (1941) and
Millions Like Us (1943) sought to advance an image of idyllic and idealised gastronomic
interdependency, other films were released which opposed the dominant collective ethos. Madonna of
the Seven Moons (1944) and The Wicked Lady (1945), for example, used images of sensual indulgence
and unrestricted consumption to explore the continued importance and lure of individualism, thereby
demonstrating the limits of the appeal of the collective. Yet whilst the critique of the collective evident
in these Gainsborough films points to the tensions generated by a State-administered diet – as part of a
wider State-directed existence – such films also point to the prominent position that food and the
politics of consumption enjoyed as elements of British wartime culture.
KEYWORDS
Rationing; Ministry of Food; communality; individuality; escapism.
The introduction of rationing in Britain during the Second World War promoted the idea of a
common national diet and linked the State to the individual consumer in such a way that the
principles of food control could be used to define the British as a coherent and specific group.
This process was both advanced and reflected in the cinema of the period, for whilst the
publicity that the Ministry of Food (MoF) exhibited in British auditoriums helped to further
the appeal of a collective gastronomic agenda, commercial feature films also used food
imagery in their attempts to create “authentic” representations of contemporary Britain.
However, whilst many films were happy to toe the official line and advance the idea of a
uniform diet, others preferred to use food to remind audiences of both the gratification offered
by individual indulgence and the pleasures of the flesh. This paper will explore some of the
different ways in which British films of the war years used food, and will suggest that the
frequent use of food imagery in British wartime cinema is linked to a wider cultural and
societal interest in the subject.
This paper can be understood as contributing to the ongoing debate that surrounds the
construction of British identity during the Second World War, and proposes that food was one
element in a more general attempt to imagine the British nation in communal and collective
terms. By proposing that food was intentionally foregrounded within the national community
in order to assist in the construction of a consensual and communal ideal, this paper chimes
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with the ideas of writers such as Margaret Butler and James Chapman, who have both pointed
to the importance of the community in the advancement of the idea of the “People‟s War.” 1
Wartime cinema screens frequently featured images of communal activities: from scenes of
group singing in San Demetrio London (1943) and dancing in The Demi-Paradise (1943) to
the newly established communities of Underground shelterers seen in I Thank You (1941) or
Gert and Daisy’s Weekend (1942) and the village of Bramley End pulling together to defeat
German invaders in Went the Day Well? (1942). In the same way that military-themed films
such as The Way Ahead (1944) used scenes centred on group consumption in the mess or at a
NAAFI canteen to complement those which featuring drill or team-building military
exercises, Home Front films seemed equally willing to show that a collective approach during
leisure hours helped to build an esprit de corps which could be sustained as civilians went
about their war work. As such, the formation of a common, rationing-defined diet – and the
creation of new dining establishments which allowed for dining en masse – helped Britons to
understand themselves in relation to each other and the State, promoting a collective ideal.
However, whilst the intricacies of the rationing system have been explored in great detail
by scholars such as R. J. Hammond and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, relatively little
scholarly work has taken as its theme the cultural prominence of food and the huge amounts
of publicity issued by the MoF. This is still the case, even though, as Hammond noted as early
as 1951, the subject „deserves a specialist monograph to itself.‟2 Similarly, gastronomic
imagery has yet to be extensively investigated by historians studying British cinema of the
war years. Indeed, discussion of the way in which food has been used in film – in different
cultures, genres and periods – is still quite rare, although there is some evidence to suggest
that the subject is now receiving more attention.3 Understandably, much of this scholarship
has tended to focus on films such as Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) or Like Water for
Chocolate (1992) which use gastronomic motifs as central narrative devices or allow food to
define character or identity. What I am more interested in is the incidental use of food, the use
of alimentary imagery as a single and often subtle element of an imagined cinematic reality,
for food, diet and popular attitudes towards both have a historic specificity which needs to be
understood if their use in film is to be satisfactorily explored. As such, Second World War
British cinema provides a fascinating opportunity for historians interested in food and film,
for both subjects were of elevated importance between 1939 and 1945,4 and their frequent
commingling provides ample scope for film historians to observe how this subject was
harnessed by both official and non-official filmmakers to serve particular ideological
purposes.
Those who lived in Britain during the war might have found it difficult to ignore the work
of the Ministry of Food. Not only did the MoF control the national diet through its
administration of the rationing system, it was also a major cultural producer during the war,
issuing thousands of pieces of publicity in numerous different media in the hope of inspiring
British consumers to act in a food-conscious manner. Rationing of certain – often imported –
foodstuffs was first introduced in January 1940, and the scheme was extended and refined
thereafter. Such was the significance of the Ministry‟s work, and so ubiquitous was its
presence in wartime British kitchens, that Lord Woolton – Minister of Food between 1940
and 1943 – was described in an early script of the documentary feature World of Plenty
(1943) as „the unseen guest at ten million breakfast tables.‟5 Further, recognising the
importance of food to both the mental and physical wellbeing of the Home Front, and hence
the nation‟s ability to successfully prosecute the war, Hubert Beaumont MP insisted that „next
to the Fighting Forces the Ministry of Food will play the most important part in the war.‟6
Rationing was a key site of dialogue between the individual and a State that in wartime
played such a decisive role in determining many elements of public and private life. By
restricting the individual‟s right to consume, the government demonstrated its willingness to
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implement radical and potentially unpopular changes to pre-war norms showing that sacrifice
was necessary if Britain was to win the war.
Woolton and his colleagues were convinced that in order for British consumers to trust the
MoF, the MoF would need to talk to the public. As such, the Ministry orchestrated an
extensive publicity campaign to inform the public about the nature and purpose of the
rationing system. This campaign would serve to provide practical information about rationing
and the work of the MoF, build a bond of trust between the Ministry and the people, and
establish food as a prominent aspect of wartime culture, encouraging Britons to recognise the
strategic and martial importance of the subject and thus encourage them to realise the
significance of food in wartime.
The publicity issued by the MoF also sought to position individual consumers as part of a
wider group. The Ministry used food‟s associations with mutuality and collectivity to
integrate the private individual into the public body-corporate and the national struggle,
thereby building the foundations of a communalist gastronomic paradigm. Indeed, Robert
Boothby, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food, described his hope that during the
war „comradeship in matters of food – a sort of community of “food companions” – might
grow.‟7 Boothby‟s phrase brings to mind the title of J. B. Priestley‟s The Good Companions –
popular as a novel, a stage play and in 1933 as a feature film – and so situates this community
of gastronomic equals in the cultural mainstream.
Although during the first months of the war the MoF issued its publicity through the
Ministry of Information (MoI), and although the Ministry of Food would on occasion
continue to make use of the MoI, Woolton realised that such was the quantity of material that
his department would need to issue, and such was the speed with which it would need to reach
the public, that the MoF should co-ordinate its own publicity. Thus the MoF became one of
only two government departments – the other was the National Savings Committee – to run
publicity campaigns independent of the MoI.
In order to create a truly comprehensive publicity campaign, the MoF‟s Public Relations
Division (PRD) made use regular use of all of the media at its disposal. Regular radio,
newspaper and magazine advertisements and short cinema films were complemented by
stand-alone single-issue campaigns and one-off publicity stunts. The PRD was entrusted with
vast sums of money, and in 1943-44 spent very nearly £600,000 on publicity, a figure
equivalent to almost 50% of the MoI‟s entire home publicity budget.8
In June 1940, two months after Woolton took up his position as Minister of Food, the
MoF, working in a partnership with the BBC that would not always prove to be entirely
harmonious, launched The Kitchen Front, a five minute radio programme that was broadcast
to the nation six mornings a week at 8.15.9 The timeslot was the envy of all other government
publicists, for it followed on from the main morning news bulletin and secured huge
audiences: the Corporation‟s own estimates suggested that by October 1940 each edition of
The Kitchen Front was attracting almost five and a half million listeners.10 From mid-1943
the MoF was forced to allow other departments to use two of the six weekly slots, but for
three years the Ministry of Food enjoyed a highly privileged position vis-à-vis the national
broadcaster, a position that it exploited in an attempt to keep food at the forefront of British
wartime culture.
As well as boosting audience figures, by scheduling the programme for broadcast at 8.15
the MoF and the BBC also ensured that the show was listened to by many families as they
gathered to eat their breakfast, placing issues of food and consumption in a familial context.
The immediacy of these live broadcasts helped listeners to understand themselves as part of a
wider national community, for although each show was most often heard in the privacy of an
individual‟s own home, the knowledge that millions of other listeners in millions of other
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homes were simultaneously tuned in helped to establish a bond amongst the soldiers on the
The Kitchen Front.
The programmes also attempted to adopt a genial and light-hearted tone wherever possible.
Lord Woolton, who took a great interest in the publicity work of his Ministry and who was a
regular and popular voice on British radio during his tenure, believed that as „the public was
either going to laugh or cry about food rationing … it was better for them that they should
laugh – even if it was only a somewhat wry smile – than that they should contemplate too
much on the misery of the position.‟11
The humour evident in many of the broadcasts served to make The Kitchen Front – and the
MoF more generally – seem both sympathetic and approachable. Indeed, the Ministry
intended that its radio programmes be understood not simply as a chance for the MoF to
lecture the public, but instead as part of a national dialogue concerning food in wartime. As
such, British consumers were provided with many opportunities to contribute to the show.
Ordinary Britons were encouraged to use The Kitchen Front to exchange cooking tips and
hints, or to send in recipes or food-related stories. Indeed, so popular did the show become
that the Ministry suspected that some correspondents – one, for example, wrote a letter
detailing his adventures with a „teeny-tiny cauliflower‟ – were sending in „obviously
concocted‟ stories in the hope of getting them read out on air.12
Material submitted by the public also constituted a significant element of the second of the
MoF‟s second major publicity campaign, the “Food Facts” advertisements which were printed
each week in more than a thousand separate publications. Many of these advertisements were
also designed to encouraged readers to contribute. In October 1942, for example, readers were
asked to submit recipes as part of a „Potato County Championship‟ in which cooks from
different towns attempted to „win honour‟ for their county.13
First printed in late July 1940, the “Food Facts” advertisements were so positively received
that an initial three month trial was extended indefinitely. Only in 1950, after more than 500
advertisements had been issued, was the series discontinued. As opposed to The Kitchen
Front, the “Food Facts” could be cut out and kept for later and repeated consultation.
Consequently, the MoF believed that part of the series‟ success was that despite the huge
number of advertisements printed each week – more than 40 million – the “Food Facts”
helped the MoF save paper, for in many instances they could replace leaflets the MoF would
otherwise have had to print.14
Adopting a magazine format, the “Food Facts” advertisements crammed as much topical
information into each edition as possible, discussing the changing distribution situation,
changes to the Points Rationing system and giving cooking hints and recipes. On occasion,
though, a less busy style was adopted, and the starker, bolder advertisements so produced
gave out a sterner message, most often pointing to the dangers Britain‟s merchant marine
faced in importing food into the country in an attempt to encourage readers not to waste it.
Such an ambitious campaign came at a significant cost, though. Whilst the PRD selected
papers to carry “Food Facts” and its other advertisements based on strict criteria for ensuring
maximum coverage for minimum cost, and although the MoF enjoyed a government discount,
the bill for the MoF‟s print advertising campaigns was still large. 15 Peaking at an annual total
of £531,712 in financial year 1942-43, press advertising accounted for more than 90% of the
Ministry‟s publicity budget.16
By contrast, cinema advertising was able to reach a comparable number of consumers for a
much smaller cost. Early in the war, the members of the Cinematograph Exhibitors‟
Association (CEA) agreed not only to include a certain number of government films in their
programmes, but to screen these films free of charge. The MoF took advantage of the CEA‟s
generosity by requesting that a short film about a rationing-related topic be screened in British
cinema each week: between March 1942 and November 1946 more than two-hundred short
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Food Flash films – most of which were between twenty and thirty seconds long – were
produced and exhibited.
The MoF‟s own research suggested the reach of this particular medium. Eventually
exhibited in more than 3,000 cinemas, the Ministry estimated that each Flash was watched by
approximately 20,000,000 cinemagoers.17 Given that the MoF enjoyed approximately
£85,000 worth of screen time gratis each year, the cost of the campaign – £10,352 in financial
year 1942-43, for instance – was relatively small when compared to the massive sums spent
on “Food Facts” advertisements.18
Understanding that the multi-subject magazine format that had characterised many “Food
Facts” would not work if used in the Flashes, the films instead offered a brief, and frequently
humorous, explanation of a single point of rationing policy. As a visual medium, the Flashes
were especially well-suited to short instructional subjects and offered advice on subjects as
diverse as how to bone a fish or measure a level teaspoon.
The Food Flashes were not, however, the MoF‟s sole intrusion onto British screens. Short
films like Queen’s Messengers (1941) – which detailed the work done by mobile emergency
canteens in bombed out areas – and The Way to His Heart (1942) – a pastiche of silent cinema
which promoted potato consumption – also helped to ensure that food and rationing were
explicit components of many cinema programmes. The regular screening of films in cinemas
also helped the MoF to position the audience – consumers of both food and film – in a
communal context, encouraging cinemagoers to recognise the significance of collective
experience as an essential aspect of wartime life and of wartime diet.
Running parallel to these regular campaigns were occasional publicity campaigns and
stunts designed to promote single issues. Whilst many of these took the form of conventional
advertising – for example a print advertisement aimed at women which suggested that
cabbage was essential to a healthy complexion19 – others were one-off stunts, such as the
potato fair held in Oxford Street in December 1942, or the installation of a machine to waft
the smell of products baked with National Flour into the faces of shoppers on Piccadilly. Most
of these campaigns appear to have enjoyed a fair degree of success,20 but their real
significance lies in the MoF‟s willingness to enhance its visibility. The PRD worked hard to
make sure that food was brought centre stage and spot-lit: the British public could not plead
ignorance of the food situation given the continual emphasis the government placed on the
subject.
The foregrounding of food served both a practical and an ideological function. For whilst
MoF publicity encouraged British consumers to recognise the importance of food to the war
effort, rationing – and attendant publicity – also helped to construct British consumers as a
distinct group, as an identifiable community defined by a common diet. Indeed, rationing
might be described as a “secular communion,” a gastronomic expression of the nation‟s
coherence and identity.
One very clear instance in which this ideological construct was given concrete form was in
the communal dining establishments created during the war. To complement the food that
each individual was guaranteed under the rationing system, and to produce savings of time
and fuel, numerous factory canteens and British Restaurants – both subsidised – were opened
in order to provide cheap, hot meals. Any company with more than 250 employees was after
1940 required by law to provide a canteen for its staff, whilst British Restaurants were
developed in order to provide a similar service for people who worked in smaller industrial
and business concerns, as well as catering to the general public.
It is believed that the majority of those who ate at such establishments had previously
either eaten at home or had taken packed meals to work with them, meaning that the rising
number of meals taken in canteens and state-run restaurants can be viewed as an increase in
the number of meals eaten outside the home, rather than just as a redistribution of where such
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meals were consumed.21 By increasing the visibility of dining in the public arena, by
establishing a context in which personal consumption was understood communally, and,
further, by linking such consumption to the idea of increased wartime production, canteens
and British Restaurants helped promote the idea of a collective gastronomy, one in which the
communal ideals of the wartime nation were expressed on the long benches and corporate
eating spaces of its newly created refectories.
Although I will discuss Eating Out with Tommy Trinder (1941) and Millions Like Us
(1943) as examples of films which celebrated the importance of communal consumption in
British Restaurants and works canteens respectively, it should be noted that these institutions
also featured in numerous other films, for instance Old Mother Riley, Detective (1943) and
The Lamp Still Burns (1943). That images of these new facilities, of public dining en masse,
feature in so many films, both government shorts and longer commercial productions,
suggests that state-sponsored eating spaces gained enough cultural capital to be recognised as
an element of everyday life as understood by British filmmakers.
Released in May 1941, Eating Out with Tommy Trinder was part of the Ministry of
Information‟s “Five Minute Film” series. Accordingly, it would have been screened in
thousands of cinemas across Britain and is likely to have been seen by tens of millions of
people. The film promoted not only the concept of public dining, but also a newly created
brand. Until early 1941 British Restaurants had most often been called „communal feeding
centres,‟ a bureaucratic name that Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared to be
„suggestive of communism and the workhouse.‟22 Released just months after a new name
was adopted, Eating Out with Tommy Trinder sought to raise the profile of the British
Restaurants by demonstrating the benefits that the scheme brought to both consumers and the
State.
In the film, popular music hall comedian and newly-minted film star Tommy Trinder treats
his fiancée‟s family to a meal at the Byrom British Restaurant in Liverpool. Noting somewhat
pointedly that the food available at the British Restaurant is superior to that cooked by his
prospective mother-in-law, Trinder also explains the benefits of the establishment – namely
savings of time, food and fuel – and shows that communal dining is a Good Thing for the
community. Further, British Restaurants fulfilled an ideological function. Winifred Williams‟
diary entry regarding a trip to a British Restaurant in 1943 provides a glimpse at the sense of
communal purpose fostered by the establishments:
Black coats and blue overalls seemed to mingle without being aware of their
difference in status. This is a very democratic place, I thought, looking to see what
my neighbour‟s paper was saying about Stalingrad.23
Despite the democratic and egalitarian ideals of the British Restaurant, Trinder is allowed
to dominate the film, and it is his interest in and approval of the Restaurants which is
supposed to persuade Britons to make use of them. Trinder‟s everyman star persona is central
to the film‟s attempt to appeal to British consumers, for whilst his fame lent his
recommendations a degree of glamour, his working class, wisecracking image foregrounded
both his own and the Restaurant‟s ordinariness, and thus rendered more believable his
boosting of such an establishment.
In the film, Trinder plays himself. He is first seen whilst performing on a music-hall stage,
and it is his position as an entertainer, as a public figure, as public property, which helps to
make both familiar and exciting the public space of the restaurant. Indeed, so comfortable
does Trinder appear in the British Restaurant that the film leaves the viewer with the
impression that patrons could reasonably expect to dine alongside a star of stage and/or screen
should they choose to eat there themselves. Trinder‟s final line reinforces the linkage between
his stage act and the act of eating, for when he delivers his catchphrase – „You lucky people!‟
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– straight to camera, the restaurant and the stage are conflated, the act of public dining shown
to be just another enjoyable public performance, one which all could consume and participate
in.
The British Restaurant to which Trinder takes the family Jones is presented and described
as being safe and enjoyable for „Mr Jones, Mrs Jones and all the other Joneses.‟ Attempting
to persuade British consumers to overcome a deep-seated reluctance to dine in public, the
British Restaurant is presented as a place where individual, family and community could
come together to enjoy a good meal and celebrate a sense of shared belonging. Within this
arrangement, though, the family remains paramount: the Joneses, previously seen eating in the
privacy of their own home, retain their close familial bond when at the restaurant. When they
dine publicly, however, the family is surrounded by other people – most shots of family
members contain unidentified co-diners in the background – and is explicitly positioned as
part of the wider community that constitutes the nation.
The cleanliness and convenience of the British Restaurants are also much in evidence. In
contrast to the tight, static shots which dominate earlier sequences set in the Jones‟ house, the
British Restaurant is constructed in wider, more expansive shots by a more mobile camera
intent on communicating notions of space, energy and purpose. The scale and nature of food
preparation is also shown, with huge, gleaming metal machines operated by single members
of staff wearing spotless white uniforms, pointing to the efficiency of modernity and
demonstrating the savings gained when industrial methods are utilised to cook for hundreds.
As if aware that the continual emphasis on the mechanistic nature of large-scale food
production might encourage viewers to regard the Restaurants as sterile and impersonal, the
film takes pains to point out the alimentary benefits of the system as enjoyed by the
consumer. The sequences in the Restaurant contain shots of the meals taken by Trinder and
his in-laws seemingly designed to speak to a hungry audience composed of cinemagoers eager
to fill their bellies. Although such shots clearly served a promotional purpose, they were not
mere fantasy; in reality, many of those who ate at the Restaurants were pleasantly surprised
with both the quality and – especially – the quantity of food on offer. Frank Edwards, who
kept a diary for Mass-Observation, was clearly impressed with the „exceedingly generous‟
amount of food dished out to patrons and assumed that the establishments‟ evident popularity
could be ascribed to the size of the portions and the efficiency and pleasantness of the staff.24
(Predictably, not everyone was so impressed. Frances Partridge described Swindon‟s British
Restaurant as „a huge elephant-house where thousands and thousands of human beings were
eating … an all-beige meal,‟ whilst a Conservative MP insisted that „one needs to be British
to “take it” in a British Restaurant.‟25 However, whilst such critics might sneer at the food,
they also point to the essentially communal nature of the British Restaurant experience.)
The food that Trinder and his in-laws enjoy is presented via high-angle, point-of-view
shots that mirror similar shots seen earlier during the sequence set in the family home.
Presenting food in a subjective manner, the small, mean portions one might find chez Jones
are contrasted with the much more satisfying meals available in the British Restaurants. Such
a contrast is intriguing, for at one level it seems to suggest that the rationing system is
incapable of adequately feeding the nation. However, I think that a different interpretation is
more useful: the British Restaurants are promoted as part of the rationing system, not as being
entirely separate from it. The film therefore showed that those who chose to fully participate
in the rituals of group consumption and the national diet could expect to eat properly, whereas
those who continued to hold onto their pre-war gastronomic expectations might go hungry.
Although the largest British Restaurants were often expansive, they were unable to
match the factory canteens for size. Indeed, in Millions Like Us the works canteen seems to be
almost as large as the machine shop where the film‟s protagonists work, a point noted when
similar establishing shots are used to introduce both spaces. In the film, Celia Crowson
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(Patricia Roc) is conscripted to work in a factory which manufactures aeroplane parts. Whilst
there, she comes to terms with her separation from her biological family by positioning
herself within a familial community of fellow workers. It is only when she accepts her new
life – and, by extension, her position within the wartime economy and her contribution to the
nation – that she blossoms, gaining confidence and finding love with Fred Blake (Gordon
Jackson), the RAF sergeant who she marries. Millions Like Us returns time and again to the
idea that during the war the individual is best defined as a member of a wider community and
that the curtailment of a certain amount of personal freedom is both desirable and necessary if
the war is to be won. The film does not shy away from confronting the disruption that the
conflict is causing – both to individuals, their families and British society in general – but
through its repetitious use of inclusive imagery declares that a collective approach can not
only compensate for the disruption of pre-war familial norms, but replace these peacetime
certainties with the stability offered by new forms of communalism.
It is therefore not surprising that the factory canteen is important within the film, for
by setting scenes in this location Millions Like Us declares its intent to present viewers with a
“realistic” representation of wartime life and in so doing underlines the idea of communality
so integral to the film‟s message. By normalising the temporary intrusion of extraordinary
events into ordinary lives, the film suggests that it is possible for the factory to temporarily
replace the emotional sustenance more usually offered by the family. However, as a familial
and familiar environment, the canteen also operates as a space in which the continued
importance of the personal can be demonstrated. Operating as a massive family dining table,
the canteen provides, within a factory dedicated to wartime production, a place where an
individual can express personal emotions.
The first of the canteen-based scenes is interesting in that it establishes the factory‟s
refectory as a busy place, a site of energetic consumption integral to an environment dedicated
to tireless and continual production. The majority of the scene is dedicated to a conversation
about the sartorial intricacies of Celia‟s forthcoming wedding to Fred, an event complicated
by clothes rationing. Whilst Celia seems somewhat embarrassed by the prospect of discussing
her honeymoon attire in the canteen, in the presence of co-workers she has only recently
befriended, the intimate ambience created by the shared act of eating establishes a small
personal space within the collective ideal of the factory and makes permissible the potentially
delicate subject of what underwear to don on the wedding night. Yet the scene is careful to
allow this private conversation to take place within a carefully established collective
framework, for in the three establishing shots that precede the conversation, Celia‟s friend
Gwen Price (Megs Jenkins) moves through, and is obscured by, hundreds of workers, thereby
positioning the film‟s protagonists as being part of and defined by the wider community in
which they work.
In the first of the three shots, Gwen receives a tray of food and walks into the main space
of the canteen before becoming lost in a crowd of fellow diners. The sole individual that the
viewer is expected to recognise loses her identity and merges with the gestalt entity of the
factory community. There follows a cut to a high-angle shot of the canteen in which Gwen
remains unidentifiable. This second shot not only demonstrates the size of the canteen but
also insists that the viewer understand the film‟s main characters as part of a larger group of
anonymous but equally important co-workers. The table at which Gwen and Celia sit, eat and
discuss their lives is just one amongst many; the film‟s narrative might easily have focussed
on characters seated at another table. In the third shot, Gwen‟s arrival at the table is framed by
those already seated nearby, making it clear that the meal Gwen eats in the company of her
friends is also eaten in the presence of the rest of the canteen, standing here for both the
factory, the war effort and, by extension, Britain as a whole. In this way the canteen is shown
to be a space in which the individuality so often associated with consumption can be
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expressed in such a way as not to threaten the collectivity of the nation at war whilst at the
same time suggesting that there is still space for an appropriate private life within the public
realm of wartime production. By sharing their mealtime, the women further the communal
ideal, demonstrating that it is possible for private desire and public duty to coexist.
At the end of the film, another scene set in the canteen provides the emotional climax of
Millions Like Us. Following her marriage to Fred, Celia takes her new spouse and carefully
selected underwear to the coast for her honeymoon before moving to private lodgings in order
to embark on a life of connubial bliss. Soon after the wedding, however, Fred is killed in
action during a raid over Germany. Celia, alone in a house that had so briefly represented both
her present and her potential future happiness, is for a short period completely isolated by her
grief. Whereas before her loss Celia has almost always been shown as a member of a larger
unit – as part of a marriage, a family, a friendship group, a workforce or, indeed, a nation –
after Fred‟s death she is shown on her own, the lingering shots of her solitude communicating
her lack of energy and purpose. However, this isolation is temporary, for in the film‟s final
scene, Celia comes to realise that despite the loneliness she feels as a result of her loss, the
community for which her husband was fighting, and for which she has been working
throughout the film, can provide her with emotional support. Although it is not surprising that
Millions Like Us ends with Celia‟s reintegration into the wider (national) family, the fact that
this reconciliation with the communal ideal occurs in the factory canteen speaks volumes
about the prominence of food in British culture and the importance of gastronomy to notions
of the British community during the war.
Having started back at work after a short period of compassionate leave, Celia‟s return to
the factory is represented not by a shot of her at her machine, but instead by her entry into to
the canteen. Celia‟s grief does not privilege her, though, and she queues (in democratic
wartime fashion) to receive her food, before she enters the canteen proper looking for seats
and companionship amongst the tables. Celia finds her friends at a table surrounded on all
sides by other workers, placing her once more into the heart of the community. As the women
eat, they listen to and join in with a singer who performs popular music hall songs on a stage
which has been set up in the canteen. When the singer launches into „Waiting at the Church,‟
a song played at Celia and Fred‟s wedding reception, Celia looks like she is about to break
down. Gwen, who is sat next to Celia, glances nervously at her friend, and prompts her friend
to join in the masses chorus. Hesitantly at first, but soon with growing conviction, Celia joins
in the singing, as if understanding that in order to face up to the challenges of the present and
future she can take strength from the past. Setting this scene in the canteen, though, ratchets
up the emotional tension and adds a degree of poignancy to the scene. Celia, whose private
grief is still almost overwhelmingly raw, is forced to confront and accept her loss in this most
public of settings, but is also made to realise that, as a member of this wider community, she
is not entirely alone. Gaining emotional sustenance from the compassion of her new-found
family of co-workers, and physical sustenance from the meal that the factory has provided for
her, Celia comes to recognise that Fred‟s death, no matter how painful for her personally, was
a sacrifice made on behalf of the nation, and that it is her duty to rejoin the battle and fight for
the community as represented by the canteen‟s collective gustatory ideal.
Films like Millions Like Us and Eating Out with Tommy Trinder are testament to wartime
attempts to establish a communal gastronomic paradigm by positioning state-sponsored group
dining as a vital component of the war effort, as a way in which British consumers could
contribute to and understand themselves as a part of the national group. However, within a
heavily regulated wartime society, other films preferred to glorify the personal, using
narrative, aesthetic and emotional excess to remind viewers of the pleasures of individualism
and sensuality. In some costume films and melodramas, food was mobilised as an element of
a more general fantasy, offering the illusion of escape from the harsher elements of the
Richard Farmer
Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 12, (2008)
10
government‟s regulation of food, clothing and the right of Britons to pursue pleasure at the
expense of the needs of the community. Such films presented consumption – not only of food,
but also of clothing, and perhaps most importantly of pleasure and sensation – in ways which
offered a contrast to the idea of wartime Britain being a nation of consensual, communal
consumers.
Whilst the costumes and the emotional excess evident in these films have been
commented upon elsewhere,26 the films‟ use of food has attracted less interest.
Representations of consumption in this sequence of films are also worthy of mention. For just
as one industry insider could insist in the immediate aftermath of the conflict that costume
melodramas needed to be understood, in the context of wartime and post-war poverty, as
offering „an escape from the drabness of this present day world of clothes coupons and
austerity,‟27 so too, I would argue, did continued food shortages contribute to an audience‟s
understanding and enjoyment of the film. The appeal that extravagant on-screen costumes
held for cinemagoers tired of clothes coupons is obvious; less immediate, perhaps, is the pull
that images of unrestrained and unapologetic consumption had for patrons sick of the sight of
their ration books and fed up with governmental appeals for stoical self-restraint and an
ascetic utility lifestyle.
The Wicked Lady was released in late 1945, just after the war but whilst the rationing
system was still in fully operational. The film tells the story of the adulterous affair between
bored-Restoration-housewife-cum-transvestite-highwayman Barbara Worth (Margaret
Lockwood) and the dashing bandit Captain Johnson (James Mason). Compared to the dull
worthies that surround them, Barbara and Johnson light up the screen, their relationship
setting the tone for the rest of the film. So natural and impulsive is the lovers‟ passion that it is
introduced through the association of two essential pleasures of the flesh: food and sex.
Having met during a violent robbery, Barbara and Jackson repair to the Leaping Stag, a
country inn with a name suggestive of mating and the hunt. The tavern is full of highwaymen,
bandits and ne‟er-do-wells, but despite its association with a single (criminal) industry, this is
no works canteen – the roistering atmosphere is dedicated to hedonistic, self-indulgent
consumption not worthwhile state-dictated production. Having eaten, Barbara and Jackson
consummate their relationship, establishing a pattern in which food and sex are linked. The
most blatant and satisfying association of these two pleasures occurs soon after, when Jackson
describes his passion for Barbara:
When I‟m with you it‟s like enjoying a meal prepared by the Gods. I eat and eat until
I can‟t face another morsel. Then I look at you again and before I know it I‟m
clamouring for another helping.
Barbara‟s ambrosial qualities aside, describing such wanton and unrepentant sexual
freedom in terms of overeating takes on additional meaning when it is remembered that
Britain‟s food was still heavily regulated at the time of The Wicked Lady‟s release. The film
thus presents both a coded critique of rationing and a challenge to conventional modes of
morality, presenting food and sex as twin acts of consumption – as pleasures in which
contemporary British society was unable or unwilling to (openly) indulge. The unapologetic
foregrounding of sex, however euphemistically, helps to establish The Wicked Lady as a film
which celebrates the physical aspects of human existence, prioritising sensual experientialism
above the rote-learned, dutiful catechisms of “conventional” State-regulated asceticism.
That said, The Wicked Lady presents the lovers‟ relationship – so obviously sexually
enjoyable for both parties – in a relatively chaste manner. This in itself is not surprising, given
censorship norms at the time. What is more intriguing is the fact that food, so often discussed
in association with sex during the course of the film, is also largely absent from the screen.
Indeed, most of the food shown on-screen during the film has restrictive, workaday
Richard Farmer
Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 12, (2008)
11
connotations, whilst the indulgent and sensually satisfying meals are referred to but not seen.
Corporeal gratification is thereby displaced into the realm of fantasy. Within the escapist
framework of this melodrama, food and sex are both largely unrealisable pleasures, but no
less enjoyable for that, for pleasure enjoyed in the imagination is unlikely to disappoint. In
The Wicked Lady the idea of food is linked to the idea of sex, and the entrancing way in
which both are positioned, as representations of freedom, individualism and unapologetic
indulgence, provides the film with much of its sensuality.
Food is also used in Madonna of the Seven Moons (1944) to distinguish between
“normality” and “fantasy,” between duty and excitement, between the State‟s right to dictate
consumption and the pleasure of self-expression. The film examines the two, diametrically
opposed personalities which emerge after an Italian schoolgirl is attacked and sexually
assaulted. The first half of the film details the life of Maddalena Labardi (Phyllis Calvert),
respectable wife and mother whose life in Rome is defined by self-denial and her commitment
to the church. Mid-way through the film, however, a stressful incident triggers a change and
Maddalena is transformed into her alter ego Rosanna, who moves to Florence to live as a
thief, free spirit and sexually active mistress of underworld kingpin Nino Barucci (Stewart
Granger). Unable to resolve the conflict between respectable self-restraint and free-spirited
sensuality, Maddalena/Rosanna dies in a conclusion which proposes that if they are to live
happily, individuals need to negotiate a position somewhere between these extremes rather
than destructively embracing just one or the other.
Whilst Rosanna‟s life in Florence is sensually satisfying – both for her and, I would
suggest, the viewer – the life from which Maddalena escapes is staid, respectable and dull.
More, it is notable for its familiarity: to all intents and purposes the Labardis are British.
Despite living in Rome, Maddalena and her family act as if their house is in the Home
Counties: the family has British friends, speaks and writes in English (as opposed to Italian,
the written language of choice for Rosanna and her criminal cohorts), and has sent its only
child to be privately educated in England. Thus it is from a notably British existence that
Maddalena flees when she becomes Rosanna and escapes to Florence. It is easy, therefore, to
see Maddalena‟s rejection of this proper, respectable, restrained lifestyle as a rejection of
Britain, or at least of those elements of wartime Britishness which encouraged consumers to
sublimate pleasure and associate denial with virtue.
Having worked to transplant a microcosm of British society to the Roman suburbs,
Madonna of the Seven Moons provides the Labardis with an essentially food-free lifestyle.
The family consumes endless polite little cocktails but the Labardis‟ cook insists that „the
only meal anybody‟s likely to get in this house is a piece of my mind,‟ a feast described as
„indigestible.‟ By contrast, in the “foreign” Florentine mis-en-scene, food is not merely an
afterthought, something to be displaced and dismissed, but rather a central component of the
milieu, for the viewer‟s introduction to the San Gimiano district in which Rosanna and Nino
live contains not only a fruit stall but also old ladies peeling potatoes and plucking chickens.
The freedoms that Rosanna enjoys in Florence, and which the film suggests Maddalena is
unable but subconsciously yearning to enjoy in Rome (read: Britain), are physical, sensual,
and vital. Once in Florence, Rosanna makes up for lost time and sets about enjoying both
Nino‟s manly charms and all manner of different foods – for instance she is seen both tucking
with great gusto into a massive platter of tagliatelle and munching an apple with lip-smacking
relish. Casting off the shackles of her repressed Romano-British existence, Rosanna rejects
attempts to straightjacket consumption in communalist terms and instead looks upon eating as
a sensual adventure.
Rosanna and Nino‟s disorderly and unconventional passion for each other, and for life and
sensation more generally, is celebrated in such a way as to conjure Rosanna‟s Florentine
fantasy as a world of unrestricted consumption, a world where individuals are free to indulge
Richard Farmer
Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 12, (2008)
12
themselves without the explicit approval of the State. When the pair‟s criminal existence ends
violently, as surely it must in a 1940s melodrama, it becomes clear that Madonna of the Seven
Moons has celebrated Rosanna‟s rejection of conventional mores concerning sex and
consumption with far greater conviction than it has condemned her impropriety: for while
Maddalena/Rosanna‟s inability to reconcile the two halves of her personality is shown to have
cost her her life, the film also asserts that appropriate self-indulgence and the enjoyment of
physical sensation (in terms of sex and food) are crucial if an individual is to live contentedly.
Both Madonna of the Seven Moons and The Wicked Lady proved to be hugely popular, and
as such would seem to suggest that the British population harboured the desire to escape from,
or at least to fantasise about the escape from, restriction, regulation and the relentless
promotion of potato-based meals. Whilst many Britons were prepared to tolerate communal
consumption and a State-regulated diet as aspects of the war effort, others, it would appear,
dreamt of the day when excess and individuality might again be celebrated, when eating
would be regarded primarily as a pleasure rather than as a duty. This was especially true as
the war entered its final years and the prospect of victory became more immediate. Whilst the
country had been fighting for its very existence, shortages and rationing were easy to justify;
when Britain began to look forward to its post-war future, an increasingly large number of
people came to regard rationing and food-control with an increasingly sceptical eye.
Representing consumption without restraint in a largely positive manner, both Madonna of
the Seven Moons and The Wicked Lady suggest that self-indulgence and the gratification of
individual desires could be enjoyable and, what‟s more, should not necessarily provoke guilt.
As such, they ran counter to the communal sumptuary paradigm which the rationing system in
general and Ministry of Food publicity in particular worked to advance. However, although
government in films like Eating Out With Tommy Trinder, commercial features like Millions
Like Us and the Gainsborough melodramas all used food in different ways and to different
ends, the fact that all can be understood as having made valid contributions to contemporary
discourses concerning the politics of gastronomy, consumption and state control suggests that
the government was successful in foregrounding food as an important element of wartime
culture. The food fight which took place between Tommy Trinder and The Wicked Lady was
significant not so much because of the different agendas that each party advanced, but
because these films and many others like them ensured that food became as much a part of
British wartime cinema as it was of British wartime life.
1
Margaret Butler, Film and Community in Britain and France: From La Regle du Jeu to Room at the Top (I. B.
Tauris, London: 2004). Butler describes communal imagery as being „intrinsic to British wartime culture,‟ p.
11; James Chapman, The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda, 1939-1945 (I. B. Tauris, London:
1998). Chapman has observed that „images of the British at war presented through the cinema were a powerful
and dramatic means of constructing the people as united in their common struggle.‟ p. 254
2
R. J. Hammond, Food, 3 vols. (HMSO, London: 1951-62), quote from Vol. I: The Growth of Policy (HMSO,
London: 1951), p. 58; Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls, and
Consumption, 1939-1945 (Oxford University Press, Oxford: 2000).
3
See, for example, Jane F. Ferry, Food in Film: A Culinary Performance of Communication (Routledge,
London: 2003); Anne L. Bower (ed.), Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film (Routledge, London: 2004); Gaye
Poole, Reel Meals, Set Meals: Food in Film and Theatre (Currency Press, Sydney: 1999).
4
The rationing system and the huge sums spent by the MoF promoting its work ensured that food was an
important cultural theme during the war, whilst cinema attendance increased by nearly 50% between 1939 and
1945. For statistics, see H. E. Browning and A. A. Sorrell, „Cinemas and Cinemagoing in Great Britain,‟ in
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 117:2, 1954, p. 134.
5
The National Archives (TNA): INF 1/214: “The Strategy of Food,” 27 January 1942, p. 13.
6
18 July 1940. Parliamentary Debates: House of Commons, 5th Series, vol. 363, col. 527.
7
Robert Boothby, quoted in Manchester Guardian, 21 September 1940, p. 9.
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8
3 February 1944. Parliamentary Debates: Commons, 5th Series, vol. 396, col. 1405; TNA MAF 138/162:
„Notes for the use of the Accounting Officer on the Ministry‟s Vote Appropriation Account for 1943-44,‟ p.
25; Report from the Committee of Public Accounts (HMSO, London: 1945), p. 180.
9
In a memorandum dated 5 August 1943, the BBC described the MoF as having gained the „position of wouldbe dictators.‟ Quoted in Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume III: The War
of Words (Revised edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1995, First published 1970), p. 37, n. 145.
10
R. J. E. Silvey, „Listening in 1940,‟ in BBC Handbook, 1941 (Hazell, Watson and Viney, London: 1941), p.
79.
11
Lord Woolton, The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Woolton (Cassell, London: 1959), p. 251.
12
TNA MAF 102/59: The letter from “E. M. L. T.” of Bristol is discussed in an undated summary of
correspondence.
13
“Food Facts” No. 119, week of 12 October 1942.
14
TNA MAF 75/67: „Work of the Publicity Branch, 1939-50,‟ p. 7; MoF Bulletin, No. 141, 5 June 1942, p. 1.
The MoF estimated that it had printed 12 million fewer leaflets as a result of British consumers retaining “Food
Facts” columns.
15
TNA MAF 75/67: „Work of the Publicity Branch, 1939-50,‟ pp. 3-4. Only papers with a circulation of more
than 5,000 and with a maximum advertising rate of 6d per single column inch per thousand circulation were
employed to carry MoF advertisements. On occasion, the MoF would cease to place “Food Facts” in
newspapers whose advertising rates were not considered to be justified by circulation. William Mabane, 29
July 1943. Parliamentary Debates: Commons, 5th Series, vol. 391, col. 1813.
16
TNA MAF 138/161: „Notes for the use of the Accounting Officer on the Ministry‟s Vote Appropriation
Account for 1942-43,‟ p. 22.
17
TNA MAF 75/67: „General Account of the Work of Public Relations Division, 1939-50,‟ p. 5.
18
TNA MAF 138/161: „Notes for the use of the Accounting Officer, 1942-43,‟ pp. 22, 24.
19
MoF advertisement S.101, week of 30 September 1944 promised cosmetics-starved women that cabbage „does
remarkable work in clearing the complexion, making cheeks pink, lips red and infusing you with fascinating
vitality.‟
20
For example, the £130,000 spent on promoting potatoes in 1942-43 was believed to have brought about a
500,000 ton increase in sales compared to the pre-war average, with many of the potatoes being prepared and
consumed in ways suggested by the MoF. TNA MAF 138/161: „Notes for the use of the Accounting Officer,
1942-43,‟ p. 24.
21
See, for example, The Times, 22 August 1942, p. 5; 7 March 1946, p. 6.
22
Memo from Churchill to Woolton, 21 March 1941. Reprinted in Winston Churchill, The Second World War,
Volume III: The Grand Alliance (Cassell, London: 1950), p. 663.
23
Winifred Williams, quoted in Juliet Gardiner, Wartime: Britain 1939-1945 (Headline, London: 2004), p. 586.
24
Diary entry by Frank Edwards of Birmingham, 13 February 1943. Quoted in Sandra Koa Wing (ed.), Our
Longest Days: A People’s History of the Second World War (Profile, London: 2008), pp. 155-6.
25
Frances Partridge and the unnamed Conservative MP are both quoted in Gardiner, Wartime, pp. 586, 178.
26
See Sue Aspinall and Robert Murphy (eds.), Gainsborough Melodrama (BFI, London: 1983); Sue Harper,
Picturing the Past: The Rise and Fall of the British Costume Film (BFI, London: 1994); Pam Cook,
Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema (BFI, London: 1996).
27
Mark Ostrer in Kinematograph Weekly, 20 December 1945, p. 64.
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Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 12, (2008)