Try to make yourselves a work of art

To the best of my knowledge, none of Powell and Pressburger's short wartime films involved a young, slightly overconfident Navy officer who goes home with a girl on shore leave and loses nearly two months in a night, because her family are gulls and time does not pass for them as it does for human beings, but that didn't stop me from dreaming about it. It was included with another nonexistent short as a bonus on the DVD of Contraband (1940), a seven-minute film in flickery black-and-white and that kind of slightly brass-faded color, having had to be restored from several different prints; her family looked like anyone else in pre-war suits and utility dresses, not fantastic or even maritime at all. There were no special effects, but in one sequence on the open water, rounding a buoy in a small sailboat, we saw the wings unfolded from their shoulders, hanging like a pilot's badge, the bright greyscale of a sunny day without Technicolor. They did not look real and were all the more convincing, because they were not trying to be. And his face on finding his ship gone from port without him—somewhere on convoy duty in the Mediterranean—like a man desperately dreaming, knowing he should wake up. Gulls are scavengers, but she wasn't predatory. Or if she was, it had nothing to do with him.

(Speaking of the Archers: I understand why Squadron Leader X (1943) is among the BFI's top ten Most Wanted, but I wish someone would find it already. On the bright side, it appears The Silver Fleet (1943) has just come out on Region 1 DVD.)

I think the Halloween party last night went well. We were missing some regulars, but on the other hand some people turned up whom I hadn't seen in months, and many pumpkins were eviscerated aesthetically. There may be photographs, if any of them came out. Today, I go back to spending too much of my time working.