3 minute read
Reviewed by Kingsley Sampson
BOOK REVIEW THE SALVATION ARMY AT THE MOVIES
Reviewed by Kingsley Sampson
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Rob Kinnon-Brettle. The Salvation Army at the Movies, (Manchester, UK: Kinnon Publishing, 2020), 180 pp., ISBN. 978 1 8382228 0 2.1
Cover of The Salvation Army at the movies
The story of The Salvation Army’s Limelight Department in Australia at the turn of the twentieth century has been well told over the years, especially given the fact that the Limelight Brigade is regarded world-wide as a pioneer in the motion picture industry. What has not been so well told is the way in which The Salvation Army has appeared in motion pictures over the last 120 years. This lack has now been put right in Rob Kinnon-Brettle’s newly-published book The Salvation Army at the movies. The book provided a catalogue of over 500 movie and television films in which The Salvation Army appeared or was mentioned, either as in a documentary featuring some aspect of the Army’s work or by providing the story line or characters in a fictional movie or by way of a brief cameo or even a fleeting reference. The criteria for inclusion are not spelled out but film, television and video productions are featured. The first two-thirds of the book lists films with a Salvation Army mention produced between 1897 and 2017. These are listed by years and grouped into decades. Of note is that there are only five or six years since 1900 where no film was produced that had some mention of The Salvation Army. In this catalogue, each film is named and then followed by a generally short synopsis. The final third of the book contained an alphabetical list of films, a list of actors who have donned Salvation Army uniform or some variant, names of Salvationists or Salvation Army bands who have appeared in films and a topical index.
In reading through this book, the following things will catch the reader’s attention: 1. The fact that so many movies with a Salvation Army theme or character or reference have been produced over the last 120+ years.
Reference citation of this review: Kingsley Sampson, “Book review, The Salvation Army at the movies”, The Australasian journal of Salvation Army history, 6, 1, 2021, 84 – 85.
1 At the time of publication of the AJSAH, the book was available from Kinnon Publishing via email: kinnon_publishing@yahoo.com
2. How the early Salvation Army in particular provided such a rich vein of stories about sin and redemption for commercial movie producers. They got the Army’s ethos right, even if simply used for dramatic effect or commercial appeal. 3. The prolific production of documentaries by The Salvation Army in Sweden in the 1920s and 1930s. 4. The production of several films produced about the Army’s work in India. 5. The changing role of the Army as portrayed in movies – from searching for the downand-out to pointing people to a better way of life to raging against the demon drink to Christmas carolling. In some respects this parallels the changing public face of the Army over the years. It is hard to cover everything in a book of this nature and there will be gaps. The author recognised this and, in his foreword, invites people to supply him with details of films which may have been overlooked. These could be a full-length movie, a scene featuring the Army or something as simple as a Salvation Army band playing carols in a background soundtrack. For a start, two New Zealand television films “A Place to Go” (1974) and “Missing” (1975), and a late 1970s film about the Army’s Chikankata mission station in Zambia could be added. People with an eye for detail will notice things that escaped the proof-readers. For example, wreakage for wreckage (pages 42 and 133) and seen for scene (page 34) but such errors do not spoil the value of the book. As this book was essentially a cataloguing of movies in which the Salvation Army is mentioned, there is further scope for someone to undertake an analytical study of the way in which the Salvation Army has been portrayed in movies, the themes that have been featured and the changing emphases over the decades. This book would provide a very valuable resource for such a study. Overall, I was impressed with the book and by all the research which has gone into assembling this extensive coverage of the topic. I commend this publication to all who have an interest both in the way the Army has used films itself and in the way in which others have portrayed it.
