在这部The People at No. 19短片片中,“It couldn’t happen to me,” shrieks Joan in stunned disbelief on learning from her doctor that she has contracted syphilis. In this postwar short for the Ministry of Health , director J.B. Holmes, who was instrumental in the development of the story documentary, draws on the quintessential ingredients of ‘women’s films’ to ram home the message that marriage and motherhood are the right path to follow. What’s curious here is that while contemporary commercial features would have necessarily deployed a clever euphemistic device to skirt around the unsavoury medical issue at hand, this pithy but potent family drama addresses it head-on, much to the dismay of poor wayward Joan. Typically for films of the time, however, it’s Joan who’s punished for her sexuality rather than her lover.
The expressive lighting and exaggerated performances – and the raging marital accusations and bread-knife brandishing that goes on behind closed doors at No. 19 – are closer to contemporary Gainsborough melodramas than to other, more sober, state-sponsored health warnings of the 1940s, which were invariably directed at male soldiers serving on the front.（Catherine McGahan）
Dramatised documentary about venereal diseases: Joan, pregnant, realises she has syphilis and must confront her partner Ken with this fact.
