Documentary News Letter (1940)

16 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1940 BOOK REVIEWS The Film Answers Back. An Historical Appreciation of tile Cinema. E. W. and M. M. Robson. John Lane, The Bodley Head. Ms. 6d. SETTING ASIDE, as not being worth discussion, the book's main thesis that anything from Hollywood must a priori be good movie, the particular allegations levelled at the German film-makers in pre-Nazi days are too serious to be left unchallenged. The thesis puts a subtly plausible argument that the German film of the years 1919-27 was a reflection of a degenerate '"intellectualism" directly conducive to the growth of Nazi ideology. Film after film is quoted as heralding the Nazi mind. Despite the fact that Caligari was a film of small influence as far as its theme was concerned, the label "Caligarism" is coined to describe most of what has been called by reputable critics the Golden Age of the German film. Happily some of the people responsible for these "degenerate" films are now at hand to confirm that these allegations are mischievous, inaccurate and disrespectful. Whatever critical opinion may be held towards the German films of this period — Caligari, Destiny, Waxworks, Warning Shadows, The Last Laugh and the famous rest — they must at any rate command respect for their creative sincerity. They did not, however, as this book first implies and later contradicts, achieve a wide showing in the German theatres. More important, the post-War German intellectualism was not, as the authors think, a new thing arising out of the War but a hangover from movements in painting, music, theatre and literature that developed around 1911. The ages of the artists concerned confirm this. Such an attack on the individual creative work of men like Pick, Mayer, Leni, Robison and Lang is both libellous and unwarranted. If given the power, it would seem that the aulhors, because of their gullible argument on "social" pretexts, as well as their skill in bending facts to fit their thesis, would burn the creative work of the German cinema with as much zest as Dr Goebbels burnt the books of the Weimar Republic. Factually, the book makes remarkable reading. The Arbuckle case is misreported ; a fundamentally wrong analysis is given of the Potemkin Odessa Steps sequence; Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov is described as a "story dealing with love troubles in Russia immediately before the war" ; Pola Negri's Carmen and Diihany are treated as difTercnt films from Gypsy Blood and Passion when they were, in fact, the same films with foreign titles. Such statements as Scarface being the first of a gangster cycle, together with many wrong credits (Ludwig Berger instead of Lang as the director of Destiny, Murnau instead of Dupont for Vaudeville, St Petersburg and not Mother as the first Pudovkin film to get English showing, Karamazov and not The Living Corpse as Otzep's first non-Soviet film, Ingram's Magician as being Hollywood Instead of Frenchmade, Constance instead of Norma Talmadge being the lead in Sniilin Thru, among many others), suggest that this book, which we note has been well received by several responsible critics, is as valuable as this typical extract : "Between the woman of 1908 and 1938 there is not thirty years' difference but three thousand years. And the change has been advanced as well as recorded, step by step, first by Mary Pickford, then by the luscious, sinuous vamp of the Theda Bara and Lya de Putti type, who disappeared to give way to the Elinor Glyn 'It" girl, Clara Bow, who was in turn supplanted by the Gloria Swanson type. Then came the Garbo and the Dietrich and the full-hipped Mae West who, in turn, have led to the much more individual and realist women of the American screen today." Deanna Durbin, Judy Garland and Jane Withers, please note. War Begins at Home, Mass Observation Editors : Tom Harrisson and Charles Madge. Chatto & Windus. 9s. 6d. MASS OBSERVATION is Documentary's newest cousin on the Public Relations family tree. It was not inappropriate that democracy's self-examination should have begun with Market Research into the citizen's home, with painstaking investigation of what he or she liked to eat and wear and use for decoration. Out of Market Research came the new publicity, no longer a haphazard affair, but based on the known habits of carefully graded samples of population, according to age, sex and economic level. Into this widening field burst early in 1937 "poet and newspaper reporter Charles Madge and explorer and biologist Tom Harrisson", bringing a new addition to the technique already popularly associated with the American Dr Gallup, insisting that it was not enough to record the answers to formal questionnaires. Attention, they said, must be given to overheard conversations, the difference must be noted between what people say in public and in private, between what they think and what they do. As scientific as claiming to measure public opinion would be an attempt to read between the lines, to bring the science of anthropology hitherto used only on aborigines, to bear upon the mass-observed characteristics of the British people. In this fashion the present book studies Britain going to war. Anthropologically, it claims not to draw conclusions: inevitably, it draws just as many conclusions as are necessitated by the bias of the Editors. In spite of this everybody has a great deal to learn from this book, particularly the politicians and the Press. The Press claims to represent Public Opinion, and the politicians study the behaviour of the Press, and think they have got a fair angle on to the will of the people. Yet, according to Mass Observation, at the end of August only one person in eight looked upon the Press at all favourably, and as for the politicians, all their attempts to influence the people by publicity campaigns have shown how badly out of touch they are — gas-masks, the blackout, saving, food and rationing, cinema closing times, being obvious examples. Also it appears that in normal times only 0.3 per cent of overheard conversations deal with politicsanyway. To clear up this confusion, and to replace the imaginings of the higher-ups. Mass Observation puts forward the documented views, in public and in private, of ordinary persons. Diaries, overheard conversations, results of questionnaires, factual censuses, speeches by politicians, posters, are all analysed and brought to bear on the present issue. This book claims to be democracy expressing its opinion about the war, and since this is a war for democracy, somebody had better pay attention to it. How War Came. Raymond Gram Swing. Nicholson & Watson. \0s. 6d. RAYMOND GRAM SWING is kuown to US as an American Commentator for the B.B.C. Back in America he does the same kind of job for the United States audience. There is, however, a slight diff'erence of emphasis. Normally, he speaks three times a week over Station WOR, and consequently he has more time for details. He therefore chooses to commentate on the news as it comes along. Often he is talking about the news that is still hot on the front page. During the days immediately prior to September 3rd he was on the air three times a day. Those were days when events were moving faster than most men could think, and it was Mr Swing's job to help the man-in-the-street to think and think clearly. By relating the hot news to the main trend, by interpreting the sometimes bald official statement, by analysing the seemingly commonplace and by evaluating the seemingly catastrophic, he kept a level and watchful judgment before American listeners. His new book is made up of his talks from March, 1939, to the outbreak of war, and to us it is a valuable and compact statement of a critical period. Being some 3,000 miles further away from the crisis area, Mr Swing was ablei to be more objective. His book is much more than' merely a diary of these days, but it is a diary in. an important sense, for it retains all the uncertainty of these times. It is no mere collection of smart prophecies. Through all the talks runs the thread of hope that war might yet be averted and Mr Swing will remind you of many things that seem to belong to a world longer dead than six months. He will remind you that we once believed in the possibility of an Anglo-Soviet agreement, that we did not always know that Italy would be neutral, and he will remind you that many men thought that September 3rd was the very eve of annihilation for millions of civilians. But this book is important because Mr Swine has thrown a perspective round the close-uf events of six months. Because he was doing thi; for an American audience his perspective is £ wider one than is usually available to th< Englishman-in-the-street. This is valuable. Anc the book becomes important as a picture of wha many Americans must think about the war about European politics and about Britain. Historians had better put this book on thei shelves because it is a picture of our times in ; special sense: it is an account of what democrati' radio had to offer the citizens of America ii 1939 during a crisis of wide world significance. ■ ^ m FI LoeJ mi Mill ]im W k no M. Kerai JSlf fcfiai Mac to Coil «aii