Night Mail (1936) UNABRIDGED FULL DOCUMENTARY

ARCHIVAL REUPLOAD
At long last, the famous and beloved classic is finally here! Until now, only remixes of the rap from the end were on YT, so I took it upon myself to upload the full 23-minute film.
It seens the reason it wasn't ever uploaded was because although it's clearly in the public domain, some copyright troll tried to put it in Content ID, so I had to dispute their claim.
File source: archive.org/de...
More info: en.wikipedia.o...

[@Decopunk1927]

I've had a great idea for a scene in an adventure movie. The main characters need to get somewhere with a strict deadline, so they hitch a ride on a TPO. The sorters all chant Auden's lines as they work, and they even let the protagonist swing the mailbag out.

[@puppets.and.muppets]

it wouldnt work.

[@jonathanwhalley8471]

A classic indeed! I believe the production team had used up most of their budget and so employed two students, W.H.Auden and Benjamin Britten, to write the poem and the music. The poem, Night Mail, is an absolute gem using the ryythm of the wheels and appears in many anthologies. I remember being taught it at school. The film also broke new ground in that it allowed working men to speak unscripted. It may sound stilted to modern ears but this was pioneering stuff! Add to this the superb footage of a railway system that has faded into history and you have a wonderful record of times past.

[@kenstevens5065]

I heard that there were financial problems some years ago. You can't believe it nowadays. It is quite cleverly produced all the same. A different world back then.

[@kennethlaycock4724]

No whimps,or mental anguish. A cohesive workforce Just get on with the work in hand

[@johnbewick6357]

@@kennethlaycock4724 Well at least, thats what we see. Great film though.

[@esmeephillips5888]

​​@@kennethlaycock4724Auden was not a student but a schoolmaster. He was 29, and left the GPO unit after a few months, complaining that he could not get by on £3 a week. He was an assistant director as well as a scriptwriter, organizing one complicated shot of mails being assembled at Crewe (actually Broad Street). The film was very popular as a support item in cinemas, introducing a large non-literary public to Auden's verse. A few months later, aged only 30, he was given the King's Gold Medal for Poetry.

[@georgen9755]

The entire school and engineering colleges have only the records who are I believe in the production team whose names are replicated in every institution and university as a result folks who work for minimum wages are kicked out ...... fun game after all god didn't create everyone with Spanish eyes woes of studying post graduation and graduation ........... five hundred million letters via this mail .........

[@tango6nf477]

Young people these days often wonder how we managed before the days of automation and computer technology. Well this explains it, we managed very well the whole process using nothing more technical than telephones, pencils and paper and of course the magnificent people. It could almost make you cry to think all this, including thousands of miles of railway have now gone.

[@Dad-Gad]

Yes , like sending post with the Pony Express instead of texting someone , so much easier .

[@stephenfraser4948]

Those were the days!

[@mnfrench7603]

There are those who ‘yearn’ for a simpler time, but they also want free WiFi.

[@nedludd7622]

@@Dad-Gad Yeah, nowadays ignorant people can send dozens of messages per day to express their thought. Yes, singular because it is always the same one. In yesteryear, people only sent messages when they actually had something to say.

[@andrewwilliams2353]

@@Dad-Gad ah yes, of course there are far more job opportunities in texting as opposed to the old mail service. Look at all the working men employed doing a job they could take satisfaction from in this film. I've been a postman in the early 80s and although the pay was poor still it was a job. Who could say there's any job satisfaction in sending a text - especially when the sender can't spell or comprehend the function of punctuation

[@BibtheBoulder]

KZbin was made for videos like this. Top quality, thank you so much for posting....

[@allenra530]

This is marvelous. My maternal Grandfather was a postal clerk in the USA, on the Great Northern Railroad in the states of North Dakota, Montana and Washington. He met my Grandmother on the train, running across western Montana and Washington state and contrived to obtain her name and contact information before they reached the terminous. That was in 1898.

[@greghill7759]

A pioneering documentary that introduced us to Auden, Britten and Britain's earliest Rapper!

[@SirReginaldBlomfield1234]

👍🤣

[@Dallas-Nyberg]

Here, in Australia, it was known as the Traveling Post Office. TPO services ceased operations here on the 19th September 1975. I worked for the Post Office back in the late 1960's - early 1970's. I can still recall dropping off and picking up mail bags at the local railway station. There is a railway museum near where Iive. There is a TPO rail carriage in their collection.

[@Bigbro28]

I missed out on the TPO’s so did my time in Redfern in the 80’s.

[@jeremybarker7577]

They were also called Travelling Post Office in Britain. One interesting point was that they had a letterbox on the side where you could post letters but you had to add extra postage (and if the train wasn't going to part of the country where your letter was headed it would probably be delayed a day or so).

[@martinsims1273]

There's a preserved railway in England (the Great Central Railway), where they have a restored, working GPO mail train & all the lineside equipment, and they do regular run-by's to demonstrate it.

[@ifferoddities4307]

A marvellous glimpse into a time before, when things still worked properly and people were dedicated to their communities... Thank you for uploading this.

[@TPelican8250]

As a viewer from across the pond I found this fascinating and someways very moving. A time that seems long past and yet not really all that long ago but my the changes we have seen in that time!!

[@renderizer01]

"...not really all that long ago" relative to what? The Battle of Hastings? The Bill of Rights? Battle of Britain? FIFA World Cup 1966? I know what you mean but... This film is from 1936. It's 2023. Another thirteen years and it's been a whopping hundred years since the film was made. That's three generations. And yes: an awful lot of things that have changed since...

[@smallfeet4581]

​@@renderizer01 1936 but it could have been later , I remember buildings etc like that and I was born in late 50s , some of it reminds me of my childhood , I remember the signal boxes and watching from a bit away the signalman pulling the levers

[@chrismayne1775]

One of the few raps I can understand! 😄😆

[@jonesthestone]

Same here bud, you in your sixties?

[@markstarmer3677]

@@jonesthestone I am sir. It’s the only one I could understand.

[@soultraveller5027]

the only rap

[@colinwhyte3402]

Thanks for uploading a classic. I often think about the massive changes, that was just around the corner in 3 years from when this film was made. How many of the people that are in this film were alive in 1945. Remember, the past generations

[@robertmarsh3588]

Thank you for posting this wonderful film.

[@silondon9010]

Royal Mail is now being turned into a Gig Economy job with brutal attacks on the terms and conditions of postal workers, the race to the bottom has begun 😢

[@silondon9010]

@@PaulaKelly-s9c All New Royal Mail entrants on just above the minimum wage now and a 3 hour longer working week, we have a two teir workforce, the race to the bottom has begun

[@paulfisher8753]

@@PaulaKelly-s9c I was a unit rep for 5 years then an area rep for 27 years, its sad to see how its been managed since privatisation. I got out in2020, if I`d stayed in I think I would of been sacked...Still the public got what they voted for...

[@redtobertshateshandles]

Join the Union.

[@silondon9010]

@@redtobertshateshandles The union accepted these terrible conditions unfortunately

[@marstondavis]

This was just fantastic. What a great system The Royal Mail had to get that mail out, sorted and delivered on time. You could tell one of the bosses was pissed that there would be a four-minute delay. Four minutes!

[@smallfeet4581]

Four mins was a bit late in those days , unlike today 😂

[@johnday6392]

Amazing. Everything is working so well, and not a bloody computer in sight!

[@robertdesantis6205]

That's why everything was working well 🙄

[@CARLIN4737]

Nope see earlier post. Paper and pencil or chalk and using ones brain. Unlike today?

[@rjglennon2219]

Isn't it amazing the mail back then was probably quicker than it is today

[@tommyfred6180]

i can send a letter to my relatives in Scotland from my home in London and it will get to it in 4 or 5 days. its amazing being alive in this technically advances time like these. :)

[@joline2730]

I posted a letter in County Durham to Stoke on Trent and it took TWELVE days to arrive ‼️‼️🤬🤬🤬

[@tommyfred6180]

@@joline2730 yep thats the modern post office for you mate. you should have walked it over it would have been quicker. :)

[@Decopunk1927]

@@tommyfred6180 Top Gear once raced a Porsche Panamera against the Royal Mail from Scilly to Orkney. The letter beat the car by a few minutes.

[@tommyfred6180]

@@Decopunk1927 yep i remember seeing that and it was a bit of a giggle mate. but even then people posted comments on the top gear web page complaining they could wait weeks for a letter to get delivered from just down the road. the fact that the system works well 90% of the time. is no reason, with the billions of pounds the post office gets, to not complain about its unreliability. remember even by the post offices own reckoning they are misplacing, delaying or losing some 4,000,000,000+ items a year. pre war less then 1% of letters arrived late and they had almost no losses. the post office cost less than 20% (as a percentage of the GDP) than it does now. employed about the same number of people. but wages, in real terms, are now less than half what they got even in the 80s. as well as being a staggering 70% less than they got in the 1930s. its like cheering because your front door lasted twenty years before it needed replaced. but the school down the road front doors are two hundred years old and still going strong. we have lowered expectations to the point crap is considered an expectable industry standard and jobs providing less than a living wage is ok.

[@frasermitchell9183]

Those like me who remember the "clanking" one heard as a locomotive moved along, wonder at how Britten captured this in his music. The poem by W H Auden has that wonderful line "tugs whooping down a glade of cranes". The tug whistles you heard where always a series of "Whoops". Sadly we'll never hear them again, so my memory will die with me. Then there is that wonderful final line - "for who can bear to feel themselves forgotten" I first saw this film in about 1954 at a Saturday cinema for children where I lived with my family in Tadley, where the estate for the Aldermaston atomic weapons establishment was set up in 1951.

[@20chocsaday]

That poem alone a real gem. Any time you feel bad about the mail this brings you to admire the workers who handle it.

[@fulknerra6116]

that 'clanking' was the result of wartime and austerity cuts in the maintenance budget. a well adjusted locomotive doesn't clank.

[@kennethlaycock4724]

Forever in our hearts and minds.

[@davidjones332]

Even though we know it was a hard and dirty job for the train crews, porters, postmen and those sorters working in rattling and swaying TPOs in the middle of the night, there's still something romantic about a night mail train that just isn't there in an automated sorting office or a 44-tonner thundering down a motorway. It's depressing to think that nearly ninety years later we pay a fortune to Royal Mail so they can line their shareholders' pockets and get a far less reliable service.

[@mikec7108]

Well done ! A real classic.

[@johnmehaffey9953]

Just love this documentary and years ago searched the tube for it, got different versions but not the real one, thanks for posting it

[@Bigbro28]

Ah, the ‘Good old days’. Thanks for an outstanding doco. 🐨🇦🇺

[@jeffk19]

Really love this stuff, and the print is just excellent!

[@allanegleston4931]

Earlier this year, Royal Mail announced that it would cease its rail operations by October. That time has come. The single route left running - Daventry in the West Midlands to Glasgow - is a withered arm of a service that is almost as old as the railways themselves.

[@kevanhubbard9673]

Although there's hardly any left now mail trains use to come under class 1 head codes when I worked on the railways.Class 1 is fast passenger and mail with class 2 being slow passenger.Although class 9, which was added for Eurostars,was later used for fast passenger too.0,3, 4,5,6,7 and 8 were light engine, empty stock,civil engineering and various speed of freight.

[@RUOKH]

SIMPLY CLASSIC. Thank you for sharing.

[@benjaminrush4443]

As a Yank from New England, one of the most efficient US Postal Operations was the Railroad Postal Service. As it would be, the USA downgraded the rail service for highway driven vehicles and eventually abandoned American rail postal delivery. Thank you.

[@Decopunk1927]

Same

[@sgabig]

Passenger rail service had been partially subsidized by the government paying for mail cars - so when the government stopped using mail cars - it became economically challenging for rail companies to compete with air travel

[@benjaminrush4443]

@@sgabig Understandable. Thank you.

[@m.lecollie3565]

Once upon a time when steam was still king of the rails!

[@edjones7709]

Stil is.

[@marchellabrahams]

This was wonderful. Thank you.

[@anthonywillis5249]

I had heard a lot about this film, I only ever heard the “But she is on time” bit. Nice to get the whole context. Considering the equipment they had then I felt it was quite advanced in its cinematography. Also, would the fast paced part of the poem could go down as the first recorded “rap”. After all is not that what rap is, poetry set to music.

[@quantisedspace7047]

Betjeman was a rapper, or a wrapper ? I'd never thought of it like that before !

[@TheSuperHarrygeorge]

Wow thank you very much for this upload.

[@tjena5772]

Decopunk 1927, you beauty! Where did you dig this one out from? I happened to watch this one as a graduate student in mid 1970s in India as part of the topic Documentary in a Film Appreciation Course. The smoke of the rattling track sound trying to match the cadence of Auden haunted me till now when I accidentally bumped into your KZbin channel. This is a documentary that set the gold standard in documentary making together with two or three legendary docus in cinematic history. Basil Wright and Harry Watts are legends to all those who know a bit of history and aesthetic of cinema. Perhaps Auden penned his Night Mail for this documentary. How difficult will it be for the present generation to understand the Mail system, and of course WH Auden!

[@Decopunk1927]

Well, when I was a child I had a book about famous trains, which quoted the poem in the page header for the West Coast Postal. The memory was recently unlocked whilst writing some train-related poetry of my own, which lead me to the documentary's Wikipedia article. I then immediately looked for it on the Internet Archive.

[@annettewillis2797]

Thank you so much for posting this complete version of Night Mail. Such an insight into 'the mail must always get through'. It is definitely worth watching John Grierson's other brilliant film Drifters, as well.

[@braised44]

Hard workers..... and efficient! Can we find any workers like that today?

[@puppets.and.muppets]

do they get a house today ? or do you expect work for nothing ?

[@joegoldman3065]

You can find those workers easily just go to the office of world-beating firms like apple Microsoft and Google there's a reason those firms are on top and it's not because they have better chairs or better desks

[@leoseries]

Learned the poem as school nearly seventy years ago, I can still remember it word for word but cannot recite it at the required speed towards the end.

[@walkingtheboogie]

I doubt many people could. It's breathtaking.

[@glenngroves6322]

Thank you for up loading this film bring back good memories of working on the dowm TPO from Eusten in the late 80s .Had to train at the mount for 6 mouths

[@CARLIN4737]

Same i was at KEB St Pauls. Trained at Old Street. 500 cards into the frame with a very small percentage allowed for error. Loved being a postman in late 80s London. learnt every street EC1 to EC4 /City of London.

[@jsa-z1722]

THANK YOU FOR THIS!!!🎉✅🏆🥇🎖️

[@esmeephillips5888]

The GPO Film Unit could not afford to record live sound on film. All the dialogue in exterior locations is 'wild' and post-synced, which is why speakers are mostly in long shot, facing away from the camera or with hands concealing their mouths. The sequence of sorting on the TPO was recreated in the studio, though.

[@nigelemery5159]

What a wonderful reminder of days gone by. A world that no longer exists. I have seen before many, many years ago and enjoyed another look, there is always different that catches the eye, the supervisor in his 3 piece suit, the caps worn by every member of the track work gang, even the young men looked old unlike today, the pit head wheels in action as the train sped by,smoking chimneys and much more.

[@rocktapperrobin9372]

Thanks for the upload, I’ve never seen the unabridged version before. Mail trains - at leadt passenger trains with a mail sorting coach attached - were still running in the 1980’s. Don’t know when they ceased to operate, just note that (snail) mail nowadays tends to arrive at my address up to a week after it was posted.

[@peterknight6535]

They ceased in the UK in 2003, a sad day for the Post Office as they lost a lot of knowledge and experience. Most men too EVR, few went into the office.

[@kenneth2656]

Excellent its like another world back then.

[@joline2730]

Thanks for this educational nostalgia - wonderful ‼️👍👍✔💯

[@PukUK-fj8ct]

Thank you so much!

[@t.p.mckenna]

The GPO Film Unit was based in a former Victorian school at the end of Blackheath Grove in South East London. The building had a small assembly hall just big enough for them to build a mock up of the sorting carriage interior, loaded on a spring base. By the time of the Second World War, the unit was repurposed as the Crown Film Unit and became a producer of public information films to support the war effort. There was a real sense of poetry to these films.

[@elcastorgrande]

Classic. An all-time great.

[@richardbrown1189]

Fascinating piece of history. I had never seen it all the way through before. Interesting that only a tiny part of it towards the end is the W H Auden poetry which is all that is usually seen when Night Mail is featured in other documentaries.

[@richardjones186]

What a great documentary! I remember seeing this in Film School back in '78.

[@beeskneesplees]

This is great!

[@SMWBraden]

Excellent! Thanks for posting this.

[@qmsarge]

Good to see this video back. I had watched it a couple of times and then it vanished. Now from the description I know the reason. Indian Railways too had a similar system RMS (Railway Mail Service) , with a similar purpose and postal crew doing the sorting during the run etc. This system now is abandoned.

[@ceanothus_bluemoon]

Fabulous! Been a while since I saw it...always a great re-watch. So sad that RM has now all but done away with mail trains in the name of progress.

[@NormanAllen-ps9ju]

A wonderful and captivating film about mail on the railroad in England ! A very well done film !!

[@888ssss]

what a great time to be alive and british !!

[@calebmumby5803]

I've had this on DVD fantastic film thank you

[@jimcrawford5039]

One had an unorthodox stop in 1963! Great film and very historic.

[@neville132bbk]

Well done, sir-- that was enjoyable. I suppose we had a mail carriage at least for the NZ Post Office, but never seen hide nor hair of one preserved. I remember in 1962,, being in Form 2 /Yr 8 then, that on about the third page of our "Poems of Spirit and Action" there was most if not all of the poem.

[@solohoh]

Loved it, thanks

[@grahamgillard3722]

How could Hitler ever imagine he could defeat that sort of efficiency!

[@redtobertshateshandles]

Racial superiority of all those Nordic Germans. Lol. All three of them.

[@stephenhall3515]

That is an excellent and poignant point. Three years after this pioneering masterpiece was made most of the men we see would have been in uniform -- like it or not.

[@gwishart]

@@stephenhall3515Probably not as many as you think. Post Office and railway workers were reserved occupations. Although they could volunteer for military service, many of them were rejected because it was felt that their civilian jobs were more important to the war effort.

[@peterbamforth6453]

Excellent a nostalgic look back in time to when life was simpler and we produced everything ourselves: now china america and india are causing all the pollution.

[@p.istaker8862]

The loss of life must have been immense without Hi-vis clothing.

[@philip]

Thank you for posting this.

[@jeffk19]

Also love the earliest rap song I am aware of at 20:00.

[@bfcmik]

Rossini wrote a rap section in the Marriage of Figaro in 1816! It is part of the aria, "Largo al Factotum" (Cavatina)

[@terrysharp4555]

fantastic film and fantastic poem. Highlighting the way the post used to get sorted and delivered

[@edjones7709]

The days when things worked as they should - and men worked as they should and a letter would arrive after the day it was posted. What went wrong?

[@davidhoyle6626]

@@edjones7709 Conservatism.

[@JP_TaVeryMuch]

Now that there's such little mail left Spotters of these trains are bereft Spotters of the locos, Spotters of the carriages, Spotters of the white fluffy bottoms of the hares, I guess. Most have faded, More have gone. Please come back, you did nothing wrong!

[@MrButtonpresser]

Magnificent. Still a wonderful insight into rail and the mail.

[@JugSouthgate]

The big take-away from these documentaries is how many PEOPLE were needed to do all this. They all had to be trained, equipped, and paid - plus many more that you don't see.

[@allanegleston4931]

its amizing how the post figured out how to set out and recive mail whilst at speei.

[@BlueBaron3339]

I owe a massive thanks to the people who have commented on this video. As I began watching it, it made no sense at all, but after reading the comments, I could appreciate what I was watching.

[@matthewspencer7948]

I love this movie, it’s a wonderful memory of how the steam days of the mail train were before times take place, it would be wonderful to see the steam mail train back in service again, with permission granted that is

[@moggridge1]

Brilliant!

[@nigelphillips7405]

I worked for the GPO and then royal mail for over 30 years but could never get on the TPO's and was there when they were stopped and the mail service in this country has gone downhill since, soon to hit rock bottom!!!!!!!

[@peterknight6535]

Why couldn't you get on them? They were crying out fro men (and women) from London, especially on the Special.

[@nigelphillips7405]

@@peterknight6535 Because I didn't live in London, the nearest TPO was Derby and you had to have a relative already on there to get you on.

[@peterknight6535]

@@nigelphillips7405 Ahhh, the Derby - Bristol - Derby. Now I understand what you mean.

[@nigelphillips7405]

@@peterknight6535 yep, did manage to do overtime at EMA at the weekends tho' segging on a Saturday night and unload and load the planes on a Sunday, all long since gone! I took ill health retirement in 2014, glad I did, don't know what you think about what's goin on now?

[@peterknight6535]

@@nigelphillips7405 Not a lot. I parted company with R.M. in 1995 after 30 years, pleased I did now I see whats happening..

[@kimmarsh5387]

Love the scene of the mail pickup and drop at speed. Characters indeed.

[@wataboutya9310]

That was great!

[@scottchobotar8513]

Thank you.

[@bruceboatwright7488]

Super! Is that a track pan @3:15, also visible a few seconds earlier with the track gang. Very enjoyable film.

[@Frida3728]

Excellent, Thank you

[@tommysweeney690]

This is awesome😂

[@havingalook2]

Fascinating. All those wonderful jobs. Certainly a past era.

[@crosscastle100]

Great movie

[@seriagungnurastarlight]

Respect with all my heart👍👍👍

[@michaellowe9744]

Excellent. Thanks.

[@ithewonder]

Now i know what happened to my crystal cut vase i ordered...it's half over Carnforth lol

[@peterknight6535]

Doubt it, fragile items were not despatched via the "appo"

[@ithewonder]

@@peterknight6535 It's called " light humour" wasn't mean't to be serious, i mean why would i post a vase by Royal Mail knowing it would be a jigsaw at the other end. Tut...silly me...

[@TheRealBoroNut]

The modern Post Office version: Horizon's on and working fine, the balance is wrong so it's a crime. Ten thousand daily is short by plenty, (not sure how in a village of twenty). Can't make it match with a calculator so chuck 'em in the clink and we'll sort it later. Okay, some died, but it's not our loss, and I've got me bonus, so I don't give a toss. OH NO an enquiry in December! What a stroke of luck that I can't remember.

[@marciebalme588]

very good

[@caseyjonessnr1200]

GPO Films at their very best.

[@conniewojahn6445]

So, how do those heavy leather bags get back to where they came from? Amazing that postage on 500 million pieces of mail could pay for all those workers, supplies, the train. Government subsidized?

[@Decopunk1927]

Presumedly they'd fill the mailbag with the outgoing mail and put it back on the hook the next day

[@seriagungnurastarlight]

Amazing! Very efficient👍❤️

[@srfurley]

I wouldn’t have wanted to be inside a TPO vehicle when a bag came in.

[@vernongoodey5096]

In just under 90 years we have gone from this to the recent scandals in the Post Office. I’m lucky I started work when the Pension scheme included the Post Office, Civil Service and the Telephones BT . But within a few years all new starters were forced into a new PRODUCT that is completely useless!

[@richardlitwin4046]

All thanks to the uploader who went to the trouble of disputing the copyright claim.

[@johnmortley153]

Now we wait 5 days for a first class letter!!!!!!

[@davidtraugot1405]

I loved the rap toward the end!

[@captainianr]

Has anyone mentioned the band Public Service Broadcasting who made a cool song out of this? ‘Night Mail’

[@UtilityCurve]

The rhymes set to music are unarguably rap, decades before it was "born" in the U.S.!

[@bookmanswake1d]

Beautiful

[@siobhanlewis2706]

Nice video. Just a few wierd entries in the transcript, though... at 6:00 "... must be old Fred's coupon night" is written as: ' must be old Fred's Cuban knife'! Surely not... not old Fred!

[@Decopunk1927]

Yeah, that's the transcript that came with the archive.org download

[@Ireallymissmymind]

Anyone else notice the bloke at 8:03 with the Hitler moustache? - 3 years before the day he would shave it off if he knew what's good for him.

[@SirReginaldBlomfield1234]

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@jacobmoss6830]

Those royal scots (pural because it must have been a collection of shots of various trains), were in fine form pulling that postal train.

[@kenstevens5065]

I read once that in the Crewe platform scene one of the workers collapsed and died off camera.