GPO films: Postman Pat, Evelyn the twerp

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GPO films: Postman Pat, Evelyn the twerp and love letters to the mail

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We Live in Two Worlds is a fascinating collection of short films produced by the General Post Office Film Unit in the 1930s

A fascinating collection of experimental short films produced by the GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit in the 1930s has been released as a DVD boxed set. We Live in Two Worlds shows the teeming morass beneath surface appearances, where postal worker bees shuttle hopes and dreams back and forth.

The GPO Film Unit had directors such as Len Lye, Harry Watt, Basil Wright, Norman McLaren and Humphrey Jennings, composers such as Brian Easdale and Benjamin Britten, the poet W.H. Auden, the author J.B. Priestley, and producers such as the Brazilian Alberto Cavalcanti.

From 1933, for seven years, the unit produced arty educational films on how the Post Office worked, until wartime redefined its duties. Sometimes they had sound, sometimes not. They were mildly amusing, had a certain naive charm and were delivered in a pastiche of animation, mini-drama and mythic poetic gushes.

In Job in a Million, a 13-year-old boy in a navy blue uniform and pillbox cap learns how to deliver telegrams on the trot and pass his final examinations with top grades and a pension at 60.

“Now the Night Mail is crossing the border/ Bringing the cheques and the postal orders/ Letters for the rich, letters for the poor/ The shop on the corner and the girl next door.” The famous classic Night Mail, a collaboration between Auden and Britten, makes it romantic that 40 workers scooping millions of letters into nets leave Euston at 8.30pm daily on the travelling Postal Special.

Or here's a taste of N or NW. “Dear Jack, I was furious with you. You were simply beastly.” “Dear Evelyn, who was that stranger you were with? You are impossible, an absolute twerp.” See the dilemma happily resolved with a timely letter, set to tunes by Fats Waller, including I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter. The title N or NW shows how easy it is to write the wrong address.

Directory shows how in 1937 the London telephone directory contained enough paper to circle the globe. Articulated metal cups, whirling conveyer belts, grabbing claws and blades zip through the ever-expanding London directory. Women juggle, men struggle with 56 tons of ink - enough to fill a swimming pool.

Love on the Wing is an animated novelty, drawn by Norman McLaren with music by Jacques Ibert. A chalk letter-man turns into a chalky blinking eye, which gyrates into a dancing figure, a heart, a snail, snapping scissors, a dancing man, a woman, then a prancing hand chasing a flying letter, which morphs into a spinning, sexy couple and finally into a flying Royal Air Mail envelope - all at breakneck speed and in wild colour.

The Horsey Mail is set during a storm on the east coast of Norfolk. Seven hundred yards of sea wall have collapsed. There are floods everywhere. So Postman Pat goes to rescue Mrs Stokes, whose bed is surrounded by ducks swimming in 5ft of water. Postman Pat rows her the 15 miles to Horsey High Street to mail a postcard to Farmer Fred.

Here's a good one. A sailor and his pretty girlfriend kiss goodbye on the station. “Don't forget to send me the football papers,” he shouts from the train. Out of a thousand letters, we follow the one that chases HMS Incredible from port to port, connecting in Bermuda. Sailor Burt opens the paper to a photo of laughing sailors surrounding three embarrassed, cheeky boys - mini-sailors, aged 3, 4 and 5. It was worth the three ha'pence Burt paid in excess weight, but the picture remains a mystery. A typical GPO ending, so goofily remote to modern eyes that it's occult.

Now things get mysterious and intense. The Tocher (Scottish for dowry) is a film ballet by Lotte Reiniger to “Themes on Rossini”, arranged by Benjamin Britten for a small orchestra. Another silhouette film, it features Angus in a handsome kilt. He is shunned by his fairy fiancée Rhona. But with the aid of goblins and a GPO savings account, he manages to ingratiate himself with his fairy fiancée's family and they live happily ever after, thanks to his savings. Camp and surreal.

In The Fairy on the Phone, a fairy walks along the telephone wires, telling you how to make a call. Lift the receiver and first dial three letters, followed by four numbers: “GER 1234”. Speak clearly and distinctly. Thank you, distant subscriber, for being so attentive. Goodbye.

Buy this box set and enter the twilight zone of 22 films from 1936-38. You'll get technical marvels, simple smiles, insights into manpower when it was still elegantly organised and trips across the country with the love letters of a nation.

We Live in Two Worlds: The GPO Film Unit Collection Vol II is released by the British Film Institute (http://www.bfi.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)