Business screen magazine (1938)

British Documentary Films ^y ^ Paul Rotha OFFER AMERICAN BUSINESS SOME NE\^ OPPORTUNITIES Foreign Editor of Business Screen Apart From the commercial success of films like the Private Life of Henry VIII, which was largely made by non-British technicians, and the popular crime films of Alfred Hitchcock, the one important contribution made by Great Britain to the world of cinema is the deyelopnient of the documentary film. .Although protected by Goyernment tariffs, the British film industry has always adhered closely to what was thought to be the Hollywood system of film production. Many British film producers have done their best to prevent their films from looking British. For the most part, familiar aspects of national life have been avoided. Instead, the British film has presented a make-believe world which is alien to the British character. There has. morever. never been an English a\ ant-garde movement. But the growth of the British documentary film is something unique in film history as a subsidized form of film production. In 1927. the British Goyernment set up the Empire Marketing Board. Its mission was to ""bring alive" the tradition of the British Empire in terms of its contemporary activities. Its aim was to dramatize the statistics found in ""Blue" books and trade reports. To do this, well-known painters, writers, architects, and publicists were enlisted to propagate the "Buy British" campaign. John Grierson, a young Scotsman who had just spent three years in the United States studying, among other things, the art of social science, persuaded Sir Stephen Tallents at the Board to add films to its activities. In 1928. the Treasury commissioned Grierson to make a film about the Xorth Sea Herring Fleet, although he had no practical knowledge of fihn making to that date. ♦ Drifters was the first example of the British documentary method of film making. Made at trifling cost, it was a dramatic account of the labor, danger, and romance of the men who worked day and night at the herring catch. Its traditions lav in the films of Robert Flaherty I Xanook of the North and Moana i and the Russian cinema I Potemkiii and Mother I . \\ ithout using a story or professional actors, Grierson took real people and real endeavour and caught the bravery of labor and the poetic drama of the storm at sea. As a result of the successful reception of Drifters in the public theatres, where it was shown on the strength of its "entertainment appeal," the Board asked Grierson to form a film unit. Around him Grierson grouped young men and women drawn from the fields of painting, journalism, education and social science and who would work on a collective basis. The aim was to produce not one film at a time but a steady flow^ of fihns to depict every phase of British and Empire life which came within the scope of the Empire Marketing Board. Best-knowTi of these was Superb casting distinguishes the film Scene from "A Job in a Million" !\orlh Sea" made by the Post Office Film Unit Industrial Britain, to make which Robert Flaherty himself was engaged and upon which most members of the L nit worked. Because of their human appeal and because audiences had been starved of films showing authentic British life, many of these documentary films were presented in the l)ublic theatres where they created wide interest. The Press, also, realized that there was an attempt at a sincere portrayal of British national life on the screen at a time when so much of Britain's screen space was occupied by American product. \^ here the Goverimient led, public utility bodies and industrial concerns were quick to follow. Contact 1 1932 1 was made for the Imperial Airways and Shell-Mex oil: The Voice of the World (1933) for The Gramophone Company. Through the Board's connections abroad, Grierson was able to arrange for members of his Unit to travel. Basil Wright brought back a series of films from the West Indies and was soon to depart for Ceylon to make the prize-winning film The Song of Ceylon (1935) which was produced for the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board. ♦ .\lthough subsidized, these films should not be confused with commercial advertising films such as are produced in great numbers in England and America. The documentary film was the outcome of a public relations movement and came about as a result of a desire on the part of the Govern 2^