Ships and Men
1944 · 18m · Canada
Directed by Leslie McFarlane
Genres: documentary, historical, war
Tones: contemplative, tender
During the Second World War, Canadian shipyard workers build a merchant vessel from hull to launch while trainees at a seamen's school prepare to crew it on active service at sea.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1944 NFB doc about shipbuilding and sailor training sounds like pure wartime propaganda, but McFarlane somehow manages to make the mundane ritual of labor and preparation feel genuinely elegiac—it's what *doesn't* happen that makes this sting.
McFarlane's formal restraint here—the way she lets the parallel montage of construction and training speak through rhythm rather than narration—places this squarely in the documentary lineage of Grierson and the social realist tradition, a model of structural clarity that still rewards close viewing.
The decision to intercut the ship being built with the men being trained, mirroring their readiness in identical pacing, transforms what could've been dutiful wartime footage into something genuinely moving—that formal echo does all the emotional work.