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The grimmest in tone of all Jennings' work and essentially a fiction film, The Silent Village is both a memorial and message.

The Nazis destruction of the Czechoslovakian mining village of Lidice in reprisal for the assas­sination of Heydnch, the 'Protector' of that occu­pied country, deeply shocked the Allies. Imagining the tragedy in a Welsh mining town, Jennings does more than just draw parallels, he reinforces the horrors of the war abroad by tran­scribing them over the familiarities of 'home'.