Film

London Can Take It!

A nine-minute propaganda documentary from 1940 capturing London under bombardment during the Blitz. Made for American audiences, it's a portrait of civilian defiance narrated by war correspondent Quentin Reynolds—stirring, earnest, and deeply of its moment. Essential for understanding how a nation at war spoke to itself and others.

TMDb rating3.3

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Fires Were Started1943

Humphrey Jennings's masterpiece of the London Blitz, following firefighters through a single night of raids. Visual poetry about ordinary people under extraordinary pressure, made by the same documentary unit that produced London Can Take It!

But Shot in black and white with non-professional actors, the pacing is deliberately slow and contemplative rather than dramatic or fast-moving.

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Battle of Britain1969

An all-star recreation of the aerial campaign that preceded the Blitz, with genuine period aircraft and a sweeping score. Captures the scale of the threat and the stakes that made London's survival matter so much.

But Nearly three hours long and occasionally melodramatic in the way 1960s epics were, with plotting that prioritizes spectacle over character depth.

Battle of Britain poster

Dunkirk2017

Nolan's visceral account of the evacuation that left Britain alone and vulnerable—the event that gives the Blitz its context and terror. Immersive sound design and interlocking timelines create genuine dread.

But The narrative is deliberately fragmented and the dialogue often inaudible, which some find more exhausting than involving.

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Night and Fog1956

Both are short documentary essays made in the immediate aftermath of European total war, wrestling with how to represent civilian experience and national survival. London Can Take It! celebrates resilience; Resnais asks what price civilization pays for it.

Alain Resnais's shattering 32-minute documentary about the Holocaust, using camp footage and present-day imagery to confront what total war and total mobilization can become. A direct moral reckoning that moves beyond national pride into human guilt.

But It is extremely difficult to watch—designed to be, in fact. The juxtaposition of beautiful colour photography with atrocity footage is intentionally destabilizing.

Night and Fog poster
More like this (8)

The Crown2016

Season two includes the Blitz and the young royal family's experience of it, offering a different angle on the same moment. Lavishly produced and a useful counterpoint to working-class accounts.

But It's a drama, not a document—scenes are invented, and the emotional beats sometimes override historical accuracy for narrative satisfaction.

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Churchill2017

A character study of Churchill during the darkest hours, with Gary Oldman delivering a magnetic performance. Explores the loneliness of leadership and the weight of decisions made in the dark.

But The film is more intimate drama than sweeping history, and some find the interior focus claustrophobic rather than illuminating.

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In Which We Serve1942

Coward and Lean's wartime morale-booster about a British naval destroyer and its crew. Made during the war, it captures how the British imagined their own sacrifice—propagandistic but genuinely moving.

But The propaganda intent is transparent and the sentiment can feel overwrought to modern eyes, especially the naval sequences that drag at times.

In Which We Serve poster

War Horse2011

Spielberg's epic about a boy and his horse across the First World War and into occupied Belgium. A clear emotional through-line and visceral battle sequences that show why the generation that fought the Blitz had already been scarred by war.

But The emotional manipulation is heavy-handed and the film's scope sometimes overwhelms the intimate story at its core.

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Darkest Hour2017

Gary Oldman as Churchill in his first month as PM, finding the resolve to keep fighting when surrender seemed rational. A political thriller as much as a war film, tense and character-driven.

But Oldman's performance, while stunning, sometimes dominates the room—his Churchill can overshadow the historical moment it's trying to illuminate.

Darkest Hour poster

Mrs. Miniver1942

An American film about a British family enduring the early war years, made to rally American sympathy for Britain. The climactic church scene is propaganda, but it works because the characters feel real before the moment arrives.

But The film is transparently designed to move American voters and occasionally tips into sentimentality; the pacing is stately by modern standards.

Mrs. Miniver poster

Threads1984

Both are British films addressing attack on the homeland and civilian vulnerability, but Threads strips away the defiance and courage narrative to ask what actually happens to bodies and minds when infrastructure collapses.

A British docudrama about nuclear war arriving without warning in Sheffield. Shot like a documentary, it applies the same unsentimental gaze London Can Take It! turns on the Blitz to the nightmare of the Cold War.

But It is relentlessly bleak and ends with no consolation. The famous scene of firestorm and the aftermath are traumatic and not cathartic.

Threads poster

The Act of Killing2012

Both use documentary form to explore how nations and individuals tell stories about violence and trauma, but Killing inverts London Can Take It!'s premise entirely: instead of the courageous civilian, we see the perpetrator confident in his own mythology.

A documentary where Indonesian death squad leaders recreate their own mass murders for the camera, speaking openly about genocide. A profound meditation on memory, propaganda, and how perpetrators tell their own stories.

But It asks you to sit with killers as they rationalize atrocity; watching can feel complicit, and the film does not resolve that discomfort.

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