Cinema Quarterly (1933 - 1934)

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TWO INDUSTRIAL FILMS ROADWAYS. — Direction: Paul Rotha. Photography: Jack Parker. Produced by Paul Rotha for the B.S.A. and Daimler Companies under the supervision of Western Electric. HUMBER-HILLMAN. — Direction: Jack B. Holmes. Photography : Jimmy Rogers. Produced by Steuart Films for the Humber-Hillman Car Company, Together these two films indicate a new spirit in advertising films. They are directed with sincerity, a rare thing in this side of the business. In common with all advertising films they suffer from concessions made to the advertiser. For instance, Rotha's film shows every process in the Daimler works, thus leaving little space for emphasis or construction within the limits of his two reels ; while Holmes has had to omit the final assembly of cars and jump straight into the open road from the chassis assembly in order that the film should be perennially useful to his advertiser, that is to say, so that the advertiser can tack on shots of his new models each year. Both films are concerned with motor car manufacture, but the virtues of one are by no means the virtues of the other. Roadwards has two themes. First there is the story of the country and industry linked by roads and the factory providing the means of getting to the country; and secondly, more importantly, there is the story of the workmen who make the cars, the workers behind the machine. For the first time we have a commercial advertising film interested in humanities. The most significant sequence in the film is in the smithy, the drop-hammer forging, where Rotha has enlarged on the process, creating imaginatively and not hurrying on to the next stage. The fault of the whole film is the snip-snap from one process to another that makes the film run instead of marching and building. It constitutes, however, a real advance on Contact, there being a greater appreciation of movie values, though the drop-hammer forging sequence is the only one in which Rotha has given himself a chance to construct. Pictorially the film is full of good looks, the lighting of factory processes being imaginative and controlled. Jack Holmes' picture is a solid initial job, but he is yet to master the whole bag of movie tricks. To advance in documentary he must learn to build upon themes. He must be more interested in the man behind the machine, in the internal aspect rather than the external. On the whole his film has been more thought out than Rotha's, but his form approximates too closely to symphonies (vide John Grierson, Cinema Quarterly, Vol. i, No. 2). It is not enough to hang your film on the idea of the song of the wheel. Humber 64