Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 3124 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| GREEN FINGERS | 1948 | 1948-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Colour Sound: Silent Duration: 12 mins 47 secs Credits: Cyril and Betty Ramsden Subject: Urban Life Family Life Agriculture |
| Summary Made by Betty and Cyril Ramsden, this film shows the couple, with the help of their brother-in-law, Leslie, tending to their garden through the seasons at their home in Headingley, Leeds. The couple were semi-professional filmmakers filming both for pleasure and taking on commissions from companies such as the Yorkshire Evening Post. |
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Description
Made by Betty and Cyril Ramsden, this film shows the couple, with the help of their brother-in-law, Leslie, tending to their garden through the seasons at their home in Headingley, Leeds. The couple were semi-professional filmmakers filming both for pleasure and taking on commissions from companies such as the Yorkshire Evening Post.
Title-A Ramsden Film
Title-Green Fingers
Title-Spring's Promise
The film opens with a shot of a sunny garden with lots of green grass and a path down...
Made by Betty and Cyril Ramsden, this film shows the couple, with the help of their brother-in-law, Leslie, tending to their garden through the seasons at their home in Headingley, Leeds. The couple were semi-professional filmmakers filming both for pleasure and taking on commissions from companies such as the Yorkshire Evening Post.
Title-A Ramsden Film
Title-Green Fingers
Title-Spring's Promise
The film opens with a shot of a sunny garden with lots of green grass and a path down the middle. There are lingering shots of snow drops in bloom. Betty's brother-in-law, Leslie puts on his gardening boots, and in the next shot, he is digging in a flowerbed. As he bends over to work, he looks through his legs and puts out his hand in a hand shake. Cyril and Leslie throw white powder over the flowerbeds, and there is a brief shot of a boot compacting mud around a plant. Close-ups are taken of orange flowers, and there is a shot of a box being removed from the flowerbed to reveal rhubarb. Leslie comes out of a shed with a bundle of twigs and piles them up. He then stacks some wooden boxes. This is followed by lingering shots of cherry blossom trees and of some other trees in the garden. Cyril mixes cement and puts it between some slabs on the garden path.
Title-Summer's Glory
This scene opens with a shot of Betty right in the middle of a flowerbed full of flowers. Cyril walks up the garden path with a bucket of water and a hose. He starts pumping the water and Betty wets him with the hose. He then does the hosing himself. This is followed by scenes of the whole garden including the rockeries, the trees and the lawn. Then there is a shot of the side of the house and of more flowerbeds.
Betty and another man walk down the garden path towards the camera. Cyril starts up a lawnmower with a hand starter. Betty trims the edges of the lawn and there is a shot of a butterfly on a flower.
Title-Autumn's Harvest
Green apples are on an apple tree. Betty gathers apples from the tree, and then she pulls weeds from the flower beds before wheeling a wheelbarrow full of weeds up the path.
Title-Winter's Cloak
Cyril is outside wearing a winter coat, he blows on his hands. The garden is covered in frost, and there are close-ups of the frosty plants. Cyril sweeps snow off a path and that is followed by a brief shot of a leafless tree. He makes a snowball and throws it in the direction of the camera. Very heavy snow has fallen in the garden, and Cyril can be seen shovelling snow from the front of the garden. The house is covered with snow, and large icicles hang from the house. Cyril holds two large icicles in his hands and licks one of them. Betty shovels big lumps of snow from the path and piles it to the side. She leans on her spade.
Title-The Bitter End.
Context
This film was made by a husband and wife team of filmmakers from Leeds, Betty and Cyril Ramsden. They began making films in 1945 and continued into the mid-1960s. During this time they made over 50 films, mostly in 16mm film kodachrome. The films are remarkable for their technical quality, composition and broad subject matter. As well as family and holiday films, there are a wide range of documentary type films and some fictional films done with a light humour. Their film collection was...
This film was made by a husband and wife team of filmmakers from Leeds, Betty and Cyril Ramsden. They began making films in 1945 and continued into the mid-1960s. During this time they made over 50 films, mostly in 16mm film kodachrome. The films are remarkable for their technical quality, composition and broad subject matter. As well as family and holiday films, there are a wide range of documentary type films and some fictional films done with a light humour. Their film collection was made the subject of a BBC/Open University television programme, Nation on Film, made in 2006, narrated by Sir David Jason. Cyril worked as a dentist, with Betty becoming the administrator after working as a teacher. It is most probable that they lived in the same place as their dental practice, and that this is where this is filmed. The building, at 174 Otley Road, Leeds, is still a dental practice, now known as Far Headingley Dental Care.
They both made films, together and individually. Although not professional filmmakers they took their hobby very seriously. Cyril was a founding member in 1945 of the Cine Group of Leeds Camera Club and Chairman until January 1952 when he resigned upon being elected President of Leeds Camera Club. As members of the club – becoming Leeds Cine Club in 1965, and later renamed Leeds Movie Makers – they won many certificates for their films –for more on the Ramsdens see the Context for Humber Highway (1956). In all probability, judging by the amount of snow seen in the film, this was made in 1946, and over into the winter of 1947, as there wasn’t much snow, if any, the following two winters. It isn’t entirely certain who the other couple are in the film, although it is most probably Betty's sister Eunice and her husband Leslie Fear, who appear in two of their other films from the same year. Their love of gardening and of flowers, as demonstrated in this film, is further illustrated by a series of films they made alongside other members of Leeds Camera Club Cine Circle of the annual Flowers for Leeds competition sponsored by the Yorkshire Post in 1952, 1955 and 1957 – see the YFA catalogue entries for Flowers for Leeds. These films reveal just how much enthusiasm, and imagination, many Leeds folk put into gardening after the war. This was a period when gardening as a hobby really took off – see the Context for In my Garden (1953). From the point of view of winter, this year was of course famous for being the coldest and one of the harshest winters experienced in the British Isles. It was also the snowiest winter in the century, and for perhaps back to the middle of the previous century. According to Martin Rowley’s highly informative meteorological website (Historical weather events, References), “The winter continued at its most savage in March, 1947, hitting particularly hard at a time of fuel and food shortages after the second World War. Significant adverse effects for upland farmers, such that many abandoned their way of life, most notably in Wales & the North of England.” Blizzards had produced drifts up to 15 feet high, with some 2 million sheep perishing. And as the snow melted, this combined with high rainfall; causing one of the wettest winters on record (although it looks as if 2012 will easily eclipse it). All of these when there were coal shortages, and hence some power cuts, and severe rationing for fuel, clothing and food. Through all this the Ramsdens, as again witnessed in this film, seem to encounter everything with good humour – see also Ramsden New Year's Eve Parties (1950s) and the Context for that film. The appearance of lupins early in this film (as the name might suggest), only adds to the humour for those who know of Monty Python’s Dennis Moore sketch. References Historical weather events |
