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Savings Cavalcade

An entertaining wartime promotional film for the National Savings campaign thatshoehorns in three variety acts.

Promotional 1943 17 mins

Overview

An entertaining promotional film for National Savings that shoehorns in three variety acts. Life in the Home Guard can have its dull moments, so while on guard duty three members reflect on the value of National Savings (as you would), thus introducing into the proceedings George Robey (comic patter), Stanley Holloway (comic monologue) and Pat Kirkwood (trilling a song). No, it doesn't make sense, but it's fun nonetheless.

The large-scale sequences showing soldiers leaving for the front at a railway station and the end of war celebrations in Trafalgar Square are taken from the film Cavalcade (US, 1933), possibly accounting for the title of this film. This government film is a public record, preserved and presented by the BFI National Archive on behalf of The National Archives, home to more than 1,000 years of British history.