The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

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November 1955 CINE TECHNICIAN 165 Shorts & Documentary Section Steve Cox Writes : Commercial TV must take pride of place in my first Report. Congratulations to our members at National Screen Services whose TV Advertising Commercial, for G. Street & Co. Ltd., of Old Broad Street, London, " plugging " OXO and using the popular television puppet " Sooty " and Harry Corbett, gained the Premier Award at the International Advertising Film Festival, Monte Carlo, which was held in September. The award was all the more praiseworthy because the film was an all-British achievement, with no American influence on the advertising agents for a change. It was shown in competition with 79 other Commercial Films, both European and American. Film credits on the series are: Producer, Donald Smith; Director, Norman Hemsley; Lighting Cameraman, Norman Johnson; Operator, Brian West; Assistant Camera, Robert Rymer; Sound Recordist, Charles W. Green, A.M.Inst.B.E.; Sound Camera, Stan Nelson; Editor, Christopher Brunei; Assistant Editor, Joe Bremson; Makeup, Harry Davo; Projection, A. E. ('Curly') Lovell; Assistant Projection, Ian Hart; Studios, Telefilms and Recorders; Laboratories, Studio Film Laboratories and N.S.S. Perivale. Well done, boys, carry on the good work. This, too, must be said to those of the Shell Film Unit whose film The Rival World obtained First Prize in the Industrial Section at Venice. The Rival World received the Work and Technique award and the Shell Film Unit were commended. The film also received the Diploma of Merit at the Edinburgh Festival. Shorts members had the opportunity of seeing this at our periodical film show at the C.O.I. Theatre on the 27th October, 1955, alon?: with other very interesting films, namely: Mr. Mensa Builds a House (Gold Coast Film Unit). Festival in (Continued on page 169) THE DEAD HAND ON HOLLYWOOD THE deadening effect of the pro-* ceedings of the Un-American Activities Committee on the United States Film Industry is sharply brought out by Adrian Scott, writer and producer, in an article in the " Hollywood Review " for September-October. Unnumbered thousands who may be blissfully unaware of it are nevertheless " blacklisted " in the motion picture industry, whose clearance system applies to new applicants for employment as well as old. In a survey limited to persons who are known to have been regular studio employees before being "blacklisted" or "greylisted", the "Hollywood Review" states that the blacklist includes 214 motion picture craftsmen and professionals who are now barred from employment in the motion picture industry. They include 106 writers, four producers, 36 actors, six musicians, three dancers, four cartoonists, eleven directors and forty-four other craftsmen and professionals. They became unemployable by failing in one of several ways to " co-operate " with the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities : The "greylist", the "Hollywood Review" adds, includes hundreds of studio craftsmen and professionals who are partially unemployable; that is whose employment in the studios is limited in varying degrees. They became greylisted for failing to repudiate (convincingly) activities such as support for New Deal or Independent political organisations. Other activities leading to the greylist included union activity such as signing a nominating petition for a blacklisted person and contributing to a strike welfare fund, also expressing disapproval of informers, and, of course, opposing the Un-American Activities Committee in various ways. Adrian Scott, in his article, stresses that the conclusion is inescapable that the immediate victims of the blacklist, those who refused to submit to the demands of the Un-American Activities Committee, were not its ultimate target. " It was the liberal," Scott says, " who would remain employable that the Committee was after; and the ultimate objective was the elimination of the liberal's ideas from the screen. In this object the Committee largely succeeded. By succumbing to political conformity, the liberal film-maker has accommodated to cultural conformity. He has been ' duped ' — indeed, not by his left-wing colleagues, but by his own employers, who promised him that once the industry cleaned house, once he was rid of associates who might subvert or corrupt him, he could go on to make great humanist pictures. " It didn't turn out that way. The house-cleaning swept out his own ideas along with the men and women with whom he worked." Scott adds, " What concerns us is the future of the liberal — the decent American who wants to make decent American pictures. " Today a clean new wind is blowing across the nation. The McCarthyite blitz has been definitely retarded and in their struggle to preserve their civil liberties the American people have recently won some significant if not yet decisive victories. Most important of all, the prospect of a lasting peace seems brighter now than at any time since the cold war began. " The change in the political climate is only beginning to be felt in Hollywood. There is no reflection at all in the current product. Reaction's eight years of siege and assault have immobilised the Hollywood liberal ... he feels himself alone in a company town. " That is not to say that the Hollywood liberal is beyond recovery. A great democratic upsurge in the country would certainly help to restore his morale. But the liberal will not recover his initiative as artist or citizen until he fights the very thing that brought him to this pass, the blacklist, for the blacklisting of other men was in essence the blacklisting of his own ideas. Unless the liberal squarely faces up to this fact, and acts upon it, he is not likely to create the kind of motion pictures that once gave him stature."