Plot

An anti-smoking film in detective story style, aimed primarily at the nine-to-twelve age group. Five children, their curiosity provoked by their friend Jim, a teenage cigarette chain-smoker, set out to discover why people smoke.

Contents

Segment 1 Opening credits. A teenage boy, Jim, offers cigarettes to five younger children. He coughs as he speaks, and the children ask him why people smoke, and 'what's so grown up about smoking?'. Jim looks like he cannot really answer their questions, throws them a box of cigarettes and walks off. The children all take a few puffs of a cigarette, but cough and pull faces. They do not understand why people smoke, so go off to find out why. A male narrator says that Jim smokes 'because he's a sucker'. The children find a man smoking whilst waiting at a bus stop and follow him onto the bus. The man cannot smoke on the bus and becomes agitated. The children watch him with interest, the girls remarking that 'it's silly to smoke'. The children go to the park and play with a man flying a kite. However, he is also attempting to light a cigarette and the kite falls to the ground. The children look at him, disappointed. Time start: 00:00:00:00 Time end: 00:05:00:07 Length: 00:05:00:07

Segment 2 The children are hanging around in front of a newsagent's, when a woman tries to enter. It is closed so she tries to buy cigarettes from a machine, which turns out to be broken. She finds a cigarette butt in her bag and smokes that, the children looking on, disgusted. They try to find Jim to ask him again why he smokes. Whilst running around, they encounter the Smoking Machine, a clear box that is smoking a cigarette. The children can clearly see the effects of smoking - the opening is bunged up with nicotine and tar, and the inside of the box is smoky and yellow. The children wonder why adults smoke, one girl saying, 'My Mum says it's to stop her getting fat'. The narrator however, says this reason is 'very stupid, especially as Brenda's mother's as fat as ever'. They go to find Jim again and follow him into a cinema. Inside, everyone is irritated by cigarette smoke from the smokers in the audience. Time start: 00:05:00:07 Time end: 00:10:23:19 Length: 00:05:23:12

Segment 3 The children cannot find Jim in the dark but watch the film, an old silent film featuring children smoking. The narrator explains that years ago, people did not realise that smoking was unhealthy and that they could kill. They see the smoking machine again in the cinema. In the evening, they try to find Jim again, and chase him up flights of stairs in a tower block. He quickly becomes tired and stands coughing violently. They ask him again why he smokes and he says that he started and now cannot give up - he's addicted. He offers them cigarettes again but they say no, and say he is nothing more than a smoking machine. They leave him, and he fades away and is replaced by the Smoking Machine. Time start: 00:10:23:19 Time end: 00:15:05:07 Length: 00:04:41:13

Скриншоты