This is a wartime episode of the long-running "Passing Parade" MGM short series, narrated by John Nesbitt. This being produced smack in the middle of World War Two, it concerns itself with three discoveries that had a profound effect on the war as it was currently running: celluloid, safety glass and spider silk, interspersed with stock shots of war planes, soldiers and aerial bombs being dropped.
The series, and this one in particular, will strike the modern viewer as overblown and simplistic, but they provide a fascinating view into the attitudes of the period. That is one of the virtues of cheap shorts and B movies: produced too rapidly to be made immortal, they flaunt the habits of their day.
The series, and this one in particular, will strike the modern viewer as overblown and simplistic, but they provide a fascinating view into the attitudes of the period. That is one of the virtues of cheap shorts and B movies: produced too rapidly to be made immortal, they flaunt the habits of their day.