Waters of Time

This cinematic ode to the Thames, ever-pulsing through London, is lush, lyrical, lovely… One of a raft of documentary shorts produced as official contributions to 1951’s Festival of Britain, it was sponsored by the Port of London Authority, with Basil Wright directing at his production company. Wright was a veteran of the 1930s British documentary movement, known for the delicate lyricism he had perfected in his 1934 film The Song of Ceylon (also available on BFI Player). Though nothing like so ambitious or experimental, this film does carry distant echoes of that earlier masterpiece and makes for rewarding viewing.

In a pattern familiar to many films in the sponsored documentary tradition, Waters of Time blends the pragmatic with the poetic. There are prosaic informative sequences explaining the presence, maintenance and use of docks and locks, and the role of workers, boats and cargo in the mosaic that is London’s vibrant economy, but these alternate with romantic, elegiac ones musing on the mystic links between the city's vibrant present and distant pasts, the river remembering them all. In the final ten minutes or so, time itself seems to slow down and the Thames becomes almost trancelike.