Harry Watt

Harry Watt (born October 18, 1906 in Edinburgh , Scotland, United Kingdom , † April 2, 1987 in Amersham , England) was a British director of documentaries and feature films.

Life

Watt had studied at the university in his hometown of Edinburgh. After graduating in 1929, he went to Newfoundland (Canada) and worked there as a miner, waiter and balloon seller. Back in Great Britain, he continued to try his hand at various activities, including a. as a demonstrator in a London department store. In 1931, Watt joined John Grierson's film production group, the Empire Marketing Board (EMB), which would later become part of the General Post Office (GPO).

Initially employed as a simple employee, Watt also assisted the famous documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty in his production of The Men of Aran from 1931 . Together with Basil Wright , Watt was able to present his first own work in 1936, and in the early phase of the Second World War (1939/40) he also collaborated on two films with his no less renowned colleague Humphrey Jennings . Until he switched to entertainment film in 1942, Watt also served the GPO as production manager (1939–42).

Harry Watt made his feature film debut at the beginning of 1943 with the 68-minute short war film Nine Men set in the North African desert sand . Watt, who moved to Australia in 1944 , presented the two most lavish works of his entire career with Das große Treiben and Goldgräber , which identified him as a talented narrator of adventure stories. The first large film portrayed an episode from the time of the Pacific War, when a Japanese invasion was feared in Australia in 1942: the famous 1,600 mile cattle trek across the Australian outback. The big hustle and bustle became the first film on the fifth continent to be recognized in the rest of the world and was also a box office success. Thereupon Harry Watt staged another exciting adventure story with Goldgräber , which, however, should no longer evoke the response like the previous film. For the filming of the national park and ivory robber drama Black Ivory  - Great Britain's greatest box office success of the 1952 season - Watt traveled to Africa and stayed on the Black Continent for the next adventurous story, the thematically not dissimilar strip of West Zanzibar . Both films impressed with their nature shots.

In 1955 Watt returned home to England and worked for a year (1955/56) as a producer for Granada TV . In 1958 he directed the 50-minute documentary People Like Maria on 16 mm for the United Nations . In the same year he returned to Australia to direct the thriller To Hell with Sidney , a story with four escaped convicts who want to blow up the harbor of the Australian metropolis Sydney at the center of the action. Watt's last production for the movie was to be the youth film The Boy Who Loved Horses in 1961 , the story of a friendship between a boy and his friendship with a Lipizzaner stallion.

Filmography

until 1942 short and medium-length documentaries, then feature films

• 1936: Night Mail (co-director)
• 1936: 6:30 Collection
• 1936: Big Money (co-director)
• 1937: The Savings of Bill Blewitt
• 1938: North Sea
• 1938: Health in Industry
• 1939: The First Days (co-director)
• 1939: Squadron 992
• 1940: London Can Take It! (Co-director)
• 1940: The Front Line
• 1940: Britain at Bay
• 1941: Target for Tonight (also screenplay)
• 1941: Christmas Under Fire
• 1942: Dover Revisited
• 1942: 21 miles
• 1943: Nine Men (also screenplay)
• 1944: Fiddlers Three
• 1946: The Overlanders (also screenplay)
• 1948: Gold digger ( Eureka Stockade ) (also screenplay)
• 1951: Black Ivory ( Where No Vultures Fly )
• 1953: West of Zanzibar ( West of Zanzibar )
• 1958: People Like Maria (documentary for the UNO)
• 1959: To hell with Sidney ( The Siege of Pinchgut ) (also co-script)
• 1961: The boy who loved horses ( Den hvide hungst )

literature

• The world encyclopedia of film, assoc. editors: Tim Cawkwell & John M. Smith. London 1972, p. 288

Web links

• Harry Watt in the Internet Movie Database (English)