Tawny Pipit (1944) User Reviews

Well worth whistling about

[ptb-8 · 7/10 · 3 April 2004]

Truly beautiful and atmospheric British film made in rural UK during WW2, Tawny Pippit shows the delicate balance sought during a dangerous time. All the adjectives apply as it is charming and delightful and especially emotional given the war was raging and this gently kind film offers an insight into the human condition. Other films like A BOY A GIRL AND A BIKE or the 1959 version of THE 39 STEPS allow international viewers to really appreciate the Brit humor of the countryside. There is a German film made in the alps late during the war about a shepherd and the fauna and flora as a paradise balance to the war raging nearby (I don't know its title) and TAWNY PIPPIT is almost a British counterpart. Young viewers might find it all a bit Dad's Army, but mature viewers will get the lovely feeling this films wants you to have.

It Could Only Have Been Made in England and Bless Them For It

[joe-pearce-1 · 8/10 · 27 August 2015]

In the early days of American TV, what with the battles raging between the major studios and the new and growing industry, almost the only films available for showing on the new medium were fairly obscure Poverty Row movies (often from defunct studios) and films from Great Britain. From 1950 up to the time that the major Hollywood studios got into TV (say 1955 to 1957) young Anglophile film lovers like myself were privileged to view dozens and dozens, probably into the hundreds, of British-made films, both big and small, and by doing so gain a lifelong love for classic British acting styles, whether practiced by Eric Portman over there or by Ronald Colman over here. One of the films that was always listed in those days was TAWNY PIPIT, yet I never saw it until last night, mainly because when I, as a kid, saw the film listed, I had no idea what 'Tawny Pipit' meant - was it a condition? a place? a liquor? - and I was still unfamiliar with its lead actors, so I never watched it. I missed out on a lot.

This is a delightful film, one that could only have been made in England, showing a whole town - indeed, a whole culture - coming together to protect a bird - the Tawny Pipit - and its eggs, when this bird alights in one of its fields, only the second known incidence of the Pipit visiting Britain to hatch eggs. Since it is a wartime film, the patriotism rings both feverish and proper, and we quickly realize that the town has taken up the fight to protect the Pipit and its eggs not just for the Pipit's sake, but as a show of the rightness of the English Way of Life as against that of the Dreaded Hun (and they are called that several times), this even to the point of having something of a town celebration for the passing through of a Russian female sniper who has supposedly killed a thousand of the Dreaded Hun. Lucie Mannheim, a displaced German-Jewish actress, plays the short but showy role for all it is worth.

A few points regarding the actors. 1) Niall MacGinnis, our erstwhile young hero, played mainly tough seafaring types through much of his career but was immortalized on film for his absolutely iconic performance as Karswell, leader of a devil-worshiping cult in CURSE OF THE DEMON - one of the finest performances ever seen in a horror film. 2) Lucie Mannheim, our Russian heroine, was also the woman who gives rise to all of Robert Donat's consequent problems in THE 39 STEPS, when she is stabbed in the back shortly after meeting him; she was also the wife of that wonderful British actor Marius Goring for some 35 years. 3) Rosamund John, our leading lady, is, at this point in her career, almost unbearably pretty - not beautiful, but with a prettiness that rather transcends beauty - but she is known only to veteran Anglophile film lovers and had no international career. And 4) Bernard Miles, thanks to his acting, directing, producing, etc. (most especially on the stage) was actually created a Peer of the Realm - Lord Miles - before Laurence Olivier rose to that exalted status.

Anyway, this is a simple, lovely film, and if you could tear the kiddies away from their computer games long enough for them to develop an interest in something so laid-back and simple, they might benefit from it. I just did, and it's 65 years since I first decided to NOT watch the movie at their age.

There is nothing scrawny about our Tawny!

[hitchcockthelegend · 7/10 · 12 November 2013]

Tawny Pipit is written and directed by both Bernard Miles and Charles Saunders, and Miles also stars in the piece. It also stars Rosamund John, Niall MacGinnis, Jean Gillie, Christopher Steele, Lucie Mannheim, Brefni O'Rourke and George Carney. Music is by Noel Mewton-Wood and cinematography by Eric Cross.

The village of Lipsbury Lea suddenly springs to life when it is discovered that a pair of rare Tawny Pipit's are nesting in one of the local fields. As outside forces threaten to destroy one of nature's great achievements, the villagers rally around to stand defiant in Mother Nature's corner.

Dated? Yes absolutely. Even twee? For sure. Unsubtle propaganda? Too right mate! Wonderful? Yes indeed.

Anyone would think we were fifth columnists!

The Brits were great at this sort of thing, at showing a slice of old fashioned life, where quaintness rules the day and nature's wonderful pastures envelope an assortment of colourful characters rallying around for a collective cause. Tawny Pipit is basically a metaphor for standing up to the bad guys, in this case during war time, Nazi Germany. The message is simple, if we stand together then you shall not have her!

All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small.

The backdrop is quintessential Britain, a place of rolling hills, country lanes, of one public house, one grocery shop, one post office, one vicar who actually serves a purpose to the community and one copper who no doubt gets around on his bicycle. Into this British ideal comes those villagers, each with their own ticks and traits, be it stoic men of straight backs refusing to bend an inch, or pretty ladies doing their bit for the cause - such as stopping tanks in their tracks! And of course pesky villains who would gladly steam roller a birds nest or filch the eggs for financial gain. You shall not pass, unity is powerful. Doesn't matter if it's 1944 or now, it's whimsy with relevance and it's a jolly good show. 7/10

nostalgia in the slaughters

[steve-1241 · 2 October 2006]

A film that I have only recently discovered. I taped it late one night and copied in onto another tape cutting out the adverts. What a marvelous little film this is with the subliminal message that nobody is going to change the English village way of life. I made a point of visiting Lower Slaughter yesterday and the village is identical to how it was 62 years ago. The mill wheel and the bridge behind it remain the same, great film, great location and a marvelous slice of social and cinema history. I am sure that I saw a Tawny pipit in the distance.Unlike the Titfield Thunderbolt which shows an England that does not exist anymore this great film shows locations that remain the same to this day.

What we were fighting for

[Kym_Y · 7/10 · 4 February 2005]

The real essence of this delightful rural comedy: Civlized societies defend their weakest members and value every person, including eccentrics.

Remember that in the '30s, many people saw totalitarianism as being the new. organized, "efficient" way - whilst western Europe was disorganized. The West's governments were seen as being to hidebound and conservative, lacking answers to the chaos of the Depression.

Tawny Pippit showed that our "old-fashioned" system had the right stuff, because it valued freedom, the right to be different and protection of the weak, and showed that countries facing challenges can succeed, even if seeming dis-organized, through shared morals & commitment coming from the people themselves and not dictated - it proved that in the end, good government is the servant of the people.

Pip Pip Pipit.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 6/10 · 29 August 2013]

Taking a look at some DVDs that my dad had recently picked up,I was surprised to discover that he had recently got hold of a rare British Comedy filmed during WWII. With being in the mood to see an easy-going British Comedy,I decided to grab my binoculars and go on a search for the Pipit.

View on the film:

Whilst the screenplay by writers/directors Charles Saunders and Bernard Miles, (who also gives a good supporting performance as Colonel Barton- Barrington) is pretty heavy on the patriotic side of things,the writers smartly give the movie a huge amount of natural charm,which along with a fine,growing romance between Hazel and Jimmy,gives the film an irresistible warm atmosphere.

Using side angle shots to show the rustic filming locations in the interior scenes,Miles and Saunders set the film against the beautiful background location of the Cotswolds town Lower Slaughter,which along with giving the movie a near mythical atmosphere,also gives Broome and Bancroft's interactions with the residence of the town a strong realistic feel.

Despite the movie itself not featuring the birds that it is named after, (who were instead played by "stand in" Meadow Pipit birds) each of the cast members give wonderful performance's,with the pretty Rosamund John giving Hazel a sweet charm,and Niall MacGinnis giving Jimmy a great spit'n polish side,as Jimmy and Hazel do everything to keep the Tawny Pipit safe from harm.

Propaganda film, made late in WWII. Rural subject/setting. Light comedy

[yates-1 · 7/10 · 6 May 2001]

Shows rural England in a very nostalgic light and obviously intended to "cheer up" the audience after 5 years of war. Contains interesting elements within a small setting -- the alliance of the people (not just government) with the Red Army/Soviet ally; a decorated Royal Air Force pilot convalescing after serious injury; Land Army women and evacuation of children away from big cities. Suggested that the people of small communities working together can influence government and large organisations (such as the Army) to protect a small but significant environment in which a very rare bird was nesting in a nearby field, (believed to be the first time in living memory). Beautiful countryside, suggested to be the Cotswolds in Oxfordshire or Gloucestershire, but sadly no location was given for where filming actually took place.

Why We Fight

[boblipton · 6/10 · 25 June 2017]

When convalescing RAF pilot Niall MacGinnis and his nurse, Rosamund John, are out bird watching in rural Gloucestershire, they spot a Tawny Pipit -- not just one, but only the second nesting pair in English history. They rouse the entire village to protect these visitors in a wartime paean to British kindliness and back-country values.

Bernard Miles and Charles Saunders co-direct from a script of their own devising. Miles also acts in heavy make up as a wheel-chair bound military man. It's a well-told story, but very heavy-handed in its subtextual message, as the local Church choir sings a composition about the birds, and later regales a visiting Soviet sniper with "The Internationale", in a sequence in which Miles gives her his old machine gun and Land Girl Jean Gillie wonders if she would be as good a shot were the old Land of Hope and Glory invaded.

I can't help but compare this to the sort of movie that Ealing would become famous for; this comes off as beating the matter to death, with few of the oddly endearing eccentrics that Ealing would use to make its central theme clear. Still, it's very watchable throughout with some good performances.

Bird In The Hand

[writers_reign · 9/10 · 30 October 2016]

This is a quintessentially English film bursting with charm, warmth, and, Yes, decency. It's very much along the lines of Quiet Wedding and Brief Encounter but whilst they extolled an England that never really existed Tawny Pipit was shot in Lower Slaughter and is hardly changed more than a half century later. Rosamund John, one of the finest actresses to grace British films in the 1940s is breathtakingly lovely with a youth and naivety totally absent from her 'Toddy' in The Way To The Stars which she shot only a year later. Only the British could make - or indeed obtain finance for - a film in which an entire village unite to ensure that the eggs of a rare breed of bird are allowed to hatch. Pure enchantment.

Precursor to the Ealing Comedies

[JamesHitchcock · 7/10 · 9 November 2023]

The tawny pipit (Anthus campestris) is a species of bird found, at least during the summer months, throughout much of continental Europe. They are, however, rare visitors to Great Britain. This film describes what happens when a pair of the birds are discovered breeding in the English countryside. (Probably somewhere in the Cotswolds). The residents of the nearest village join forces to protect the birds, both from the Army (which wants to use the field where they are nesting for military training) and from the War Agricultural Executive Committee (which directs that the field should be ploughed, even though the farmer is happy to allow it to remain as grassland to protect the birds).

"Tawny Pipit" was produced by Prestige Productions, not by Ealing Studios, but has a lot in common with some of the later Ealing comedies such as "Whisky Galore", "Passport to Pimlico" and "The Titfield Thunderbolt". These films all tell the story of a tightly-knit community (Scottish island, working-class London neighbourhood, English village) united against the forces of authority. The real villains here, however, are not the soldiers, nor even the bureaucrats of the "War Ag". (In 1944 the film-makers would not have wanted to run down a body seen as making a useful contribution to the war effort). The villains are a group of egg collectors working, with the aid of a corrupt official of an ornithological society, to steal the eggs from the tawny pipits' nest. In 1944 collecting bird's eggs was still legal- it was not banned until the passing of the Protection of Birds Act 1954- but was regarded as a reprehensible practice by many naturalists, especially when rare birds were involved.

This was one of the first British films to have a nature conservation theme, but because it came out in wartime this was combined with a patriotic propaganda theme. (Few British films made between 1939 and 1945 managed to avoid the subject of the war altogether). The battle to save the tawny pipits is conflated with the struggle to win the war. The leading lights in that battle are a wounded hero of the Battle of Britain and his nurse, and an elderly and eccentric retired Colonel makes a speech comparing the pipits to the foreign refugees who have come to Britain to escape the Nazis. The villagers also receive a visit from a female Russian soldier on a goodwill tour of Britain. Audiences would have been left in no doubt that the war was being waged in the interests of a fair deal for all, even pipits.

I am a keen birdwatcher and nature lover myself, so I am going to be biased in favour of any film made to support the conservationist cause, especially if it involves birds. "Tawny Pipit" is perhaps not a great classic to compare with the three Ealing films I mention above, but it is an amiable and enjoyably nostalgic comedy about English rural life during the war. 7/10

Not a goof. Much is made in the film of the differences between tawny pipits and meadow pipits (Anthus pratensis), a common resident British species. Meadow pipits, or "titlarks" as they are known in the local dialect, have spots on their flanks and breast, while tawny pipits do not. The birds we actually see in the film all have spots and are obviously (at least to a birdwatcher's eye) meadow pipits. During the war, however, it would have been impossible to obtain tawny pipits from German-occupied Europe, or to travel there to film them, so I cannot claim this as a goof.

ye olde england

[doloresmyatt · 8/10 · 20 July 2017]

I have seen this film a few times over the years on TV and the best thing I liked about it is the pub scene where the man from Suffolk berates the people in the pub from Norfolk for being slow to act and refers to a time in the history when Suffolk were fighting an enemy while Norfolk people were still talking about doing something.this type of thing was quite common in England in the past and you were branded what type of person you were from where you lived in England and no doubt Ireland Scotland USA etc.

But it's not actually a tawny pipit !

[coeli-3 · 26 October 2001]

The film was largely shot in Lower Slaughter and is a fascinating historical record of the Cotswolds during WW2. Today Lower Slaughter is a much visited village; the buildings are largely unchanged and the mill wheel still turns, if only for show. In "An eye for a Bird" 1970 Eric Hosking, who was the ornithological advisor for the film wrote : "It was decided that it was quite impossible to contemplate filming an actual tawny pipit; it nests mainly on the Continent where the war was raging. It was decided to photograph a pair of ordinary meadow pipits and keep to shots which showed the back view only; the tawny has a plain breast and the meadow a speckled one, but their back plumage is very similar."

Cried Like A Baby

[rewolfson · 10/10 · 16 November 2019]

The best of cinema, a simple story brilliantly made. Complete suspension of disbelief, Tawny Pipit plucks every human heart string and ones I didn't know I had. The sheer naturalism: I wasn't audience, I was a member of the community, joined for the protection and nurturing of a small nest of Tawny Pipit, a bird that had only nested once before in the history of Britain. This grand act of nature, representative of the heroic nature of the British people, in City and in Country, at the height of WWII, still unites us after 75 years to preserve together what is just and good. There is no pretense to this wondrous film. Every scene reflects humanity as sharply today as was necessary to win the war against the Axis then. I cannot give this picture enough stars. This is NOT modern substance-less flash; this is everlasting story telling: simple, direct and resonant. Bravo!

Tawny Pipit was filmed in Gloucestershire

[HanShann · 20 May 2001]

Tawny Pipit was filmed in and around Bourton-on-the-Water, in Gloucestershire. I know this because my mother is one of the children, front and center, in the church choir scene. She was one of those children evacuated from London, and living with her grandparents during the war. I have been searching the world for a copy of this on video, but apparently it has never been been released to video. I sure wish it was. My mother is now 65, and would love to possess it as a memento of her childhood.