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Film

Night Mail (1936) and Whisky Galore! (1949)

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Just imagine: it's wartime in Scotland, and whisky rations have run out. Miraculously, the day is saved when a ship runs aground with a cargo of 50,000 cases of the stuff. Based on the true story of the wreck of the SS Politician off the Outer Hebrides islands in 1941, Whisky Galore! was a hit film for London's legendary Ealing Studios. Its shameless endorsement of Scotch, however, led one producer to call it "the longest unsponsored advertisement ever to reach cinema screens the world over." In keeping with the mid-century product-placement theme, Night Mail is a promotional vehicle for the modern wonder of rail-based mail service, commissioned by Britain's post office. As shots of industrial progress whiz by, the film's narrator magisterially recites a W.H. Auden poem: "And none can bear to hear the postman's knock without a quickening of the heart / For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?"

- Audrey Mast
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