Love Letters and Live Wires (U)

Love Letters and Live Wires states in an opening caption that the Post Office produced "creative, exciting public information films" in the 1930s. And, unbelievably, it's not exaggerating. Night Mail, with Auden's poem and Britten's music, is the most famous example, but the other seven short films collected here are diverse, delightful and amazingly avant-garde, encompassing documentaries, a Dali-esque animation, a psychedelic op-art calypso, and a bossy fairy's Python- esque lecture on telephone etiquette.