'He's digging his own grave with his knife and
fork,' a doctor says about Jack Harrison, the protagonist of this
short educational drama about obesity. 'A Way of Life' begins with
an extended sequence of childhood activity, running and playing,
which ends in a wedding, before beginning the story of Jack's early
married life and how his health is endangered by being
overweight.
After a dizzy spell while driving his taxi,
Jack is admitted to hospital for tests and found to be suffering
from hypertension, high blood pressure caused by obesity. He adopts
the hospital's recommended diet to lose weight, but soon begins
over-eating as before, affected by peer pressure, ideas about
masculinity, and his own rationalisation that he's 'meant to be
fat'. The films ends when, chasing his child's runaway pram, Jack
suffers a heart attack.
'A Way of Life' uses Jack's predicament to
address its audience directly, particularly in a sequence
displaying the calorific values of different foodstuffs and the
importance of regular, planned mealtimes. In another sequence,
overweight people talk about their experiences of discomfort and
isolation, prefaced by a doctor's warning that 'the fat person's
life can be extremely unpleasant'. The combination of the emotional
impact of Jack's story and direct information about nutrition
invites the audience to consider the danger to their own health
from obesity.
This video was made from material preserved by the BFI National
Archive.