Blaze Busters (1950)

It’s not really a documentary this, more a collection of archive footage of some conflagrations that the courageous firefighters of the United States have had to deal with over the years. After some extensive training, these men have to battle everything from structural fires to chemical ones, on land and on sea, and always with the dangers of crashing masonry, unhelpful weather and toxic fumes to deal with. Some of the camerawork is quite impressive: clearly the cameraman wasn’t afraid to get up close to the flames either and in ten minutes we get a sense, from the comfort of our chair, of just how perilous a career fire-fighting is.