There’s something dreamlike about the footage used in this episode. Suffused with light and colour, it feels like a memory plucked from the back of someone’s mind. The impressions of a half-remembered day from long, long ago.
We witness no great life event here. No notable slice of history. Just a couple with young children, at home on a weekend afternoon. Somebody comes to visit – are they friends or family? – perhaps to see the baby for the first time. Two women laugh their way through an impromptu high-kick routine. Are they sisters? Best friends? The grown-ups talk and laugh among themselves. The kids play outside.
An ordinary day, in other words.
And yet, how captivating the mundane can be. Some of the loveliest images are all but throwaway. The pretty young woman sitting next to the window, her face illuminated by the ochre glow of the magic hour. The flickering tones of the small boy in his Sunday best, staring warily at his infant sibling. The plane that glides overhead, cutting silently across a winter-blue sky…
I know nothing at all about the people in this film – only that it was shot in Detroit, sometime in the 1940s. The footage was labelled ‘WWII-era’, which would make sense from the clothes. In a section that doesn’t appear in this episode, we catch a brief glimpse of a man in uniform – was he visiting home, while on leave from the army? Was that what made the occasion worth recording on precious colour film stock?
Who knows. But perhaps this is a case where not knowing is actually better. Let these people stay spectres. Beautiful fragments of someone else’s memory.
This footage is part of the Prelinger Collection at Archive.org, and is in the public domain. The song is ‘Days Like Honey,’ performed by Sue Verran and written by Tom Quick. It is published by Audio Network.
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