Wakefield Express: the portrait of a newspaper

Commissioned to celebrate the Wakefield Express newspaper’s fiftieth anniversary. It presents the history and the daily operation of the paper and devotes a central sequence to the subjects which occupy the reporters on the Express and its associated newspapers, the communal life of a group of towns in the West Riding of Yorkshire. We see a training session of the Wakefield Trinity, the local rugby team, and a school concert; a constituency political meeting and the launching of a ship; a carnival in Pontefract; the unveiling of a war memorial in Sharlston. But there is nothing of the impartiality of the “general survey” about the film’s approach: it brings enough concern to the communal activities to view them, in turn, with affection and irony, exasperation and respect. Commentary by George Pootts; camera by Walter Lassally.