Documentary News Letter (1940)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1940 FILMS AT THE NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR BY RICHARD GRIFFITH This article is an extract from Richard Griffith's survey of the films at the New York World's Fair. It is based on an exhaustive study which he has prepared for American Fihn Center and is reproduced now with the permission of "Films," a new American quarterly. Griffith is an American. FHE ONLY FOCAL exhibit of films in operation throughout the Fair was that contained in the Little Theatre of the Science and Education Building. This programme, supervised by PhiHp McConnell, is worth extended analysis. It made a valiant effort to gather and show all the most important films on its thematic subjects, science, education, medicine, and social problems, and therefore provides a key to the extent to which the motion picture is serving these activities today. Pare Lorentz's famous and popular government films. The Plow ihat Broke the Plains 'and The River, represent well what documentary has done to dramatise the conservation of national resources. Though they are romantic rather than scientific in approach, though the solutions they offer are not adequate, they do give full statement to their problems — a statement expressed, moreover, in terms of urgent need. The British documentary movement has sent a selection of films representing its approach to social problems as expressed in such subjects as nutrition {Enough to Eat?), housing {Housing Problems, Kensal House), local government {The Londoners), ind education {Children at School). Of unequal merit technically, these films indicate the magnitude of the task the British movement has tackled. The wide range of subjects reveals a disposition to present a complete picture of the modern effort ;o reorganise society on a scientific basis. Some of them, like Housing Problems and Enough to Eat?, have already influenced lational policy, and all of them have contributed to the reputation of the documentary film as an agency for bringing the jrdinary citizen in touch with the forces which govern his life. The Little Theatre's programme on social problems might ivell pretend to represent the best achievement of the docu■nentary film. The high standard here may be attributed largely ;o the fact that documentary technicians themselves are deeply nterested in such subjects. I Of all the government exhibits at the Fair, the British Pavilion probably had the best opportunity to gain prestige ;)y appealing to special groups of the film public. The British ilocumentary film is world famous, and educators, publicists, ind technicians have long been curious to see examples of its vork. Instead, only a small group of documentaries is to be |;een, and the selection is random. Song of Ceylon is there, and Shipyard and The Londoners are occasionally shown, but such iiistorically important pictures as Industrial Britain, Coal Face ind The Saving of Bill Blewitt are absent. Housing Problems imd Enough to Eat?, which are the most socially important, the nost influential, and the most British of these films, are shown iit the Science and Education Building but not at the national ;xhibit. In place of these, the Pavilion offers a heterogeneous ■ollection of travelogues and "interest" films, incompetent nough and dull enough to alienate the most passionately Anglophile group, much more a lay audience accustomed to he tempo of American films. So many of these pictures are below the lowest possible level of audience acceptance that one at first imagines them to have been selected at random by men who had never seen any of them. But repeated visits to the exhibit gradually reveal a motive for the choice, focussed in the British Newsreel which opens each programme. Before the outbreak of the war, the items in this reel were devoted almost wholly to such "events" as the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, the visit of Their Majesties to a children's camp, the opening of a garden party by the Duchess of Kent. Since the war was declared, the reel has displayed the might of the military. As with the newsreel, so with the rest of the programme : these unimaginative and rather pompous films on British landscapes, monuments and sports, project the England of tradition and stability. They summon the past to reinforce the present, saying with J. B. Priestley in "English Journey", "Damn you; I'm all right." The documentary movement in England has devoted itself over a period of ten years to dramatising the Britain of today. Whatever the success or failure of its more ambitious aims, it has never failed to do the primary job of urging the citizen to accept social responsibility. An excellent example of the way this job has been done under present conditions of sponsorship is contained in the new film. Men of Africa. Presented by the Colonial Empire Marketing Board, the film is intended by its sponsors as a defence of British colonial government. Using the same propagandist methods as those employed in the Hall of Colonial Administration at the British Pavilion, it tells how England is trying to raise the living standard of her primitive subjects. By medical care, by education, by scientific agriculture, tropical colonies and their inhabitants are put on an equal footing with the rest of the Empire. The film thus states that Britain's right to govern colonies is determined by the extent to which she fits them to govern themselves. In articulating this idea Alexander Shaw's direction has transformed the film from an apology for the British Empire into an inculcation of England's responsibility toward subject populations. Few of the important documentaries embodying this approach are at the British Pavilion, and the films actually shown there have little relation to England today. They are, in fact, wholly opposed to the function for which the documentary film has become famous. Nevertheless, the British Cinema is one of the best-attended theatres at the Fair. This may be partly accounted for by the fact that, even at its worst, the technical ingenuity of the British fact film is higher than the average of the Fair. Most popular of all films at the British Theatre are the instructional — Mary Field's and Percy Smith's Secrets of Life series, the Strand fi^lms of the London Zoo, and two remarkable engineering pictures by Arthur Elton, The Transfer of Power and Springs. Only in this category is the best of Britain's film work to be seen at its national exhibit.