The Spirit of '45

"A powerful, unabashedly pro-socialist documentary of England's postwar transformation from a working-class hellscape in the 1930s. Endemic poverty and Dickensian squalor are upended by Clement Attlee's 1945 Labour Party landslide over the patrician Winston Churchill. What follows is the nationalization of the mines, railways, postal service - and the jewel in the crown, the National Health Service, which made medical care free of charge. THE SPIRIT OF '45 masterfully collages first-person accounts of prewar England with archival footage that exposes the disparity between everyday reality and the myth of the Greatest Empire on Earth." -Karen Cooper, Director, Film Forum