The GPO Film Unit was originally set up to make short documentary films about the work of the Post Office, although it was later to widen its remit by making films about other aspects of British life. "SS Ionian" falls into the latter category. There is no suggestion that the ship in question is a Royal Mail ship, and if it had been the film would doubtless have mentioned the fact. (And in such a case the ship would have been known as the "RMS" rather than "SS" Ionian).
The film follows the Ionian on a voyage through the Mediterranean, from London to Cyprus via Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria and Haifa (in what was then Palestine). The whole thing, in fact, is a bit dry. We learn what cargo the ship is carrying (telegraph poles, cement and beer), and how long it takes to travel from one port to the next, and we see endless shots of goods being unloaded at the docks, but we never learn anything about the men who actually crew the ship, or even anything interesting about international trade.
So why was the film ever made? A clue lies in its date, July 1939, only two months before the outbreak of World War II. It shows, in fact, the Ionian on her last peacetime voyage. (She was to be sunk on her first wartime one in November of that year). All the ports at which she calls were at the time part of the British Empire. (Apart, that is, from Alexandria. Egypt had officially been an independent state since 1932, but even here Britain still retained much influence and special interests). At virtually every stop the Ionian makes we get a view of a British warship in harbour or some other reference to the role of the Royal Navy in the region.
So what we have here is a disguised propaganda film, designed to reassure Britons that they still ruled the waves and that if war with Germany were to come (as most people by this time knew it would) then the Navy would stand firm to defend a part of the world which was vital to British commerce. The point is made that the Ionian has a Greek name and a comparison is made between Britain (the top trading nation of today) and ancient Greece (the top trading nation of antiquity), with the implication that Britain today stands for civilisation in the way that the Greeks once did. Other parts of the British film industry were doing something similar at this time. Powell and Pressburger's espionage thriller "The Spy in Black", also from 1939, is ostensibly set in 1917 but carries an obvious subtext that British naval power had helped to win the First World War and would help to win any Second if Hitler were mad enough to challenge the might of the Empire.
When war did come the Film Unit, and this film's director Humphrey Jennings, were to be well to the fore in making propaganda films which no longer needed to be disguised. Films like "Squadron 992" and "London Can Take It!", which are quite openly about the war, retain their interest today because of the light they help to shed on British social history during the conflict. Whatever the hidden agenda behind it may have been, however, "SS Ionian" today seems like little more than a dull account of how they shipped telegraph poles, cement and beer round the Mediterranean.
The film follows the Ionian on a voyage through the Mediterranean, from London to Cyprus via Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria and Haifa (in what was then Palestine). The whole thing, in fact, is a bit dry. We learn what cargo the ship is carrying (telegraph poles, cement and beer), and how long it takes to travel from one port to the next, and we see endless shots of goods being unloaded at the docks, but we never learn anything about the men who actually crew the ship, or even anything interesting about international trade.
So why was the film ever made? A clue lies in its date, July 1939, only two months before the outbreak of World War II. It shows, in fact, the Ionian on her last peacetime voyage. (She was to be sunk on her first wartime one in November of that year). All the ports at which she calls were at the time part of the British Empire. (Apart, that is, from Alexandria. Egypt had officially been an independent state since 1932, but even here Britain still retained much influence and special interests). At virtually every stop the Ionian makes we get a view of a British warship in harbour or some other reference to the role of the Royal Navy in the region.
So what we have here is a disguised propaganda film, designed to reassure Britons that they still ruled the waves and that if war with Germany were to come (as most people by this time knew it would) then the Navy would stand firm to defend a part of the world which was vital to British commerce. The point is made that the Ionian has a Greek name and a comparison is made between Britain (the top trading nation of today) and ancient Greece (the top trading nation of antiquity), with the implication that Britain today stands for civilisation in the way that the Greeks once did. Other parts of the British film industry were doing something similar at this time. Powell and Pressburger's espionage thriller "The Spy in Black", also from 1939, is ostensibly set in 1917 but carries an obvious subtext that British naval power had helped to win the First World War and would help to win any Second if Hitler were mad enough to challenge the might of the Empire.
When war did come the Film Unit, and this film's director Humphrey Jennings, were to be well to the fore in making propaganda films which no longer needed to be disguised. Films like "Squadron 992" and "London Can Take It!", which are quite openly about the war, retain their interest today because of the light they help to shed on British social history during the conflict. Whatever the hidden agenda behind it may have been, however, "SS Ionian" today seems like little more than a dull account of how they shipped telegraph poles, cement and beer round the Mediterranean.
