Two Film Shows.

This year the B.A.R.C. and V.S.C.C. again held their annual film shows, The former had some 2,000 members at four sittings of its Midnight Matinees at the Curzon Cinema. The films shown included a Stanley Schofield survey of B.A.R.C. races at Goodwood, Crystal Palace and Aintree, the Shell-Mex and B.P. documentary of the .Nurburgring, nostalgic with still and action shots of the pre-War German G.P. cars but not a patch on Monkhouse’s rendering of this theme, the Rootes Group colour films of the 1954 Alpine Rally and 1955 Monte Carlo Rally, with Sunbeam Alpines winning “Cups of Gold ” in the former, a rather sickly Moss-the-hero sequence, some Movietones of motor sport and bathing-beauty parades, the latter of great technical interest, and, finally, the best film of the night, the Mercedes-Benz “Pioneers Of Progress” film with commentary in English, showing the return of Mercedes-Benz to racing with their sucesses at Reims and Nurburg anid defeat at Silverstone.

When we came out, at 1.30 a.m. it was snowing, but on the run home over slippery roads we reflected that, with the Midnight Matinees over, Spring, and a return to motor-racing, cannot be far away . . .

The V.S.C.C. bioscope show filled Hammersmith Town Hall to capacity on February 15th. Whereas the seats in the Curzon were softly-sprung, as befitted owners of modern sports cars, the Curzon had provided harder seats appropriate to his vintage-car-owning members. The bioscope had rather a task competing with the length of the hall but a very good evening’s entertainment was provided. We saw the excellent Shell-Mex & B.P. film about motor-race marshalling, which every club official and marshal to do with motor-racing should be compelled to see, a Firestone film of the American veteran-car Glidden tour, various amateur films of V.S.C.C. and the great Anglo-American Rally, the latter in glorious technicolour. and the B.P. film of 25 years’ racing at the Nurburgring, when we again heard the commentator describe a “still” of Caracciola’s 1926 Avus G.P. winning straight-eight Mercedes as a P3 Alfa-Romeo! There was also at film of 1907 bandit-catching involving Veteran cars and motor-cycles, which received the loudest applause of all.