‘I leave you these films as a memory of the way I lived…’
Aged 10, Harry Birrell began recording his life on a cine-camera – footage that has been turned into a remarkable documentary. Cara Mcgoogan reports
When Harry Birrell bought his first home in the Fifties, he wanted a place where his family could watch the footage he had accumulated over the decades. Films of his time in London as a young man; an officer in Assam during the Second World War; and a father and husband in Scotland. So, when he and his wife, Joan, bought their house in Giffnock, Glasgow, Harry built a cinema, knocking two upstairs bedrooms together and installing a projector in front of a 25-person seating gallery.
“It was always incredibly charming and beautiful,” says his granddaughter, Carina. “He used to put on little film nights. He’d invite friends and neighbours around [and] serve gin and tonics.”
But even with a home cinema, a lifetime of filming meant there were reams of footage Harry’s relatives hadn’t seen when he died in 1993, aged 74. A quarter of a century later, Carina, 34, an actor and producer, has turned the archives into Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War, which traces his travels through the mountains of Nepal, battles in Burma, and picnics in the Highlands. Bodyguard and Game of Thrones star Richard Madden narrates with passages from Harry’s diaries.
“He created a little treasure chest and I couldn’t live with myself to not do something with it,” says Carina, who went through 400 reels and diaries stored in six rusty trunks in the garden shed. In so doing, she discovered another side to her grandfather. As a child, she watched the home movies Harry put on Betamax and VHS – but his life before and during the war remained locked away or consigned to his memory, as was the case for so many of his generation.
“I realised there was a whole mass of stuff I had no idea even existed,” says Carina. “The wartime footage is the most beautiful.”
Born in 1918, Harry was given his first cine-camera at 10. It was a rare toy and he didn’t shy away from the responsibility of recording the nuances of his time. He moved to London in 1938 with dreams of working in the film industry, writing to production companies with the help of his grandmother. But practicality got in the way: his father had died in the First World War and his mother, a widow, needed support. He trained as a surveyor.
Footage from this time shows Harry swimming in London’s lidos and picnicking in Sussex. “I was doing a lot of the same things he liked to do,” says Carina, who lives between London and Scotland. “I felt connected to him, given that I was too young to have really known him.”
The early films show his first forays in romance: his admiration of a beauty named Barbara, who married someone else, and Anne, with whom he fell in love while training with the military in Scotland as the Second World War approached. No sooner did he declare his love for Anne than he was sent to fight.
“Every generation thinks they live in politically, socially and economically difficult times, but we aren’t having our lives uprooted overnight and being sent off to war,” says Carina. “You’re on this beautiful journey with him, then he’s suddenly gone. I felt how much we take for granted.” Carina was unable to find Anne, but discovered Barbara had died during the Blitz. Harry was to report to the Gurkha Rifles in Assam, and spend the greater part of the war in a hilltop training camp near the Burmese border. With his background as a surveyor, he was in charge of creating maps in dense jungle and behind enemy lines. “I feel myself rather fortunate being an officer in the survey,” Harry wrote in his diary. “You got to know politicians and princesses, for they all wanted maps.” He told the military he needed a film camera for mapping, which earned him a constant supply of reels, an extra weight he carried with him. Snapshots from Harry’s war show morale-boosting sports days with the Gurkhas, and burning dead bodies of Japanese soldiers in Tamu.
“He has this unbreakable dedication to capturing things on film,” reflects Carina. “He didn’t take for granted the people he met and experiences he had.” Unearthing this part of Harry’s life showed Carina how like him her younger brother and cousin are in their love of adventure. And in that same spirit she tracked down the family of Freddie Fort, his best friend during the war. Freddie’s daughter, Caroline, “had no idea this sort of footage existed”, says Carina. “To see him young, healthy and as the person he was before he developed dementia and died was moving for her.”
After the war, sweeping shots of Nepalese mountains were soon replaced with children jumping on beds. He met Joan, and had three children, Johnny, Anne and Judy. Harry continued working as a surveyor and, save for a few clips on terrestrial telvision, never made money from his films. His prize piece of work was a three and a half-hour biopic called Looking Back; he wanted the film broadcast on the BBC, but refused to cut it down at their request. Instead, he hired the Glasgow Film Theatre and invited everyone he knew.
Films of Love and War premiered in the same cinema this year.
With age, Harry lost his eyesight and became the person Carina remembers – “a lovable, frail, blind old man, so different to the person in the films and albums of his youth”. He was happy to spend his time directing comic videos his grandchildren acted in. But Carina can’t help but think how difficult losing his sight must have been.
“Film was the great love of his life, it was intrinsic to his happiness and sense of adventure and humour,” she says. “To not be able to do it anymore must have been a compromise to his identity.” Before he died, Harry told his children, “I leave these films as a memory of the way we lived... Look back on your memories, but there is so much in your life to look forward to.”
Carina’s film has taught her the importance of documenting life. “People don’t think their stories matter if they haven’t done something extraordinary,” she says. “But there’s value in sharing what day-to-day life is like in a particular era.” The house in Giffnock belongs to a new family, who have replaced Harry’s projector with a widescreen TV. His equipment, meanwhile has joined collections at the National Library of Scotland and Scottish Screen Archive.
And Carina isn’t quite finished with Harry’s footage yet – there’s still life in her grandfather’s reels.
Harry Birrell Presents Film of Love and War is on general release in cinemas now, prior to future broadcast by the BBC. For more information, visit harrybirrellpresents.com