1936: The World Premiere of a Documentary about a Mail-Delivery Train

February 4, 1936

The British documentary film Night Mail, recounting a rail-based postal delivery service that spanned both England and Scotland, had its premiere. This screening took place at the newly opened Cambridge Arts Theatre in Cambridge, England. A little over 23 minutes in length, this GPO Film Unit documentary was directed and produced by both Harry Watt (1906-1987) and Basil Wright (1907-1987). The film focused on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway mail train. Night Mail specifically covered the segment of the route between London’s Euston station and the Scottish city of Glasgow. 

The locomotive featured in Night Mail was Royal Scot 6115 Scots Guardsman, which had been built in 1927 and is shown in the accompanying image from the documentary. In depicting the train’s nighttime run as a traveling post office, the film showed such unforgettable external shots as the locomotive clattering along non-stop at high speed even as postal employees grab up bags of unsorted mail for handling on board and hang out bags of sorted for retrieval by others along the route. (There are also interior shots of the mail being sorted on board, but that footage was actually filmed in a studio.) 

Night Mail long ago became a classic and has served as both the inspiration and standard for many documentary films produced in the decades since. Night Mail is further distinguished by two men who each ultimately became artistic legends. Both of them lent their considerable talents to the last several minutes of the film to underscore the train’s important mail-delivery mission.

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), a leading figure of British classical music during that era, provided the musical score for that section of the film. W.H. Auden (1907-1973), who is now widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of the 20^th century, prepared a poem exclusively for Night Mail that is narrated along with Britten’s music and depicts the Scots Guardsman as “Snorting noisily as she passes/Silent miles of wind-beat grasses.”   

Image Credit: Public Domain

For more information on Night Mail, please check out https://www.postalmuseum.org/blog/iconic-night-mail/

This documentary is available for viewing at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTEZ25sQGmc