Volkswagen have had consistently brilliant TV adverts for as long as I can remember, but Night Driving is one of their finest.
The ad is beautifully shot, and Richard Burton’s narration of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas works so well with “ Don’t Blow It” from Cliff Martinez’s Solaris soundtrack that it’s as if they were written for each other.
I will admit to having watched this advert more than once whilst I was waiting for my new Golf to be delivered.
The full text of Under Milk Wood is available from Project Gutenberg, but here are the sections used in the ad, although you may not sound quite as sonorous as you read it.
And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.
Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cockle-women and the tidy wives.
Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organ playing wood.
You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.
Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.
I love night driving, especially around London as the city comes to life, but then just as quickly falls asleep.