History of Form: Analysis of Night Mail - 1936 Royal Mail Train Delivery Service

Night Mail was the first of it's kind in terms of Short Film with a documentary styling.

The 'Night Mail' shows the struggle and processes gone through by the Royal Mail Train Delivery service all the way across Britain from South to North. It was on of the most critically acclaimed films to be produced within the British documentary film movement.  By 1936, film output at the GPO Film Unit was divided between the production of relatively routine films promoting Post Office services, and more ambitious ones experimenting with the use of sound, visual style, narrative and editing technique. Night Mail is firmly in the latter category. The GPO was a division of the UK General Post Office which was set up to produce sponsored documentary films on the activities of the Royal Mail Service.

The film features rhyming verse - spoken by PatJackson - was written by W.H. Auden, who also acted as assistant director. This looked effective and was one of the more ambitious techniques used by the GPO film unit. 

The film begins with a voiceover commentary describing how the mail is collected for transit. Then, as the train proceeds along the course of its journey, we are shown the various regional railway stations at which it collects and deposits mail - this is fairly conventional of documentary dialogue - using the 'voice of God' technique in terms of commentary where the audience never see the commentator but he is present throughout.

As the train nears its destination there is a sequence - the best known in the film, in which Auden's spoken verse and Britten's music are combined over montage images of racing train wheels. This is the best known part of the film as it is one of the earliest uses of rhythmic editing, the words are spoken to the rhythm of the wheels racing down the track and the two fit together.  

Although the narrative is concerned with issues of national communication and integration, the thematic centre of the film is more closely linked to representations of the regional environment. This elevation of the regional above the national is reinforced by the portrayal of the railway as separate from the metropolitan environment, and little attempt is made to link the railway and its workers with the city. The film also channels representations of modern technology and institutional practice away from an account of the industry of postal delivery, and into a study of the train as a powerful symbol of modernity, in its natural element speeding into the countryside.