Documentary News Letter (1940)

tide i in HE DAY war broke out, I was in Hollywood. I suppose veryone will remember that day in minute personal detail. '■^m ; was the same on August 4th, 1914. We all sensed, like a cloud n the mind, that here was the end of one epoch, the beginning lis.i break iomo reel 10 23 on DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1940 BROADCAST TO CANADA By JOHN GRIERSON, Canadian Government Film Commissioner, made from Ottawa on November 30th, 1939. Reprinted by permission of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The text has been slightly abridged. P^mi f another, and all our personal worlds might never be the "i^. ime again. On August 4th, 1914, I was on the coast of the Scottish 'wftebrides and the war was very near. I spent the whole day matching the trawlers and the drifters breasting the tide, 'MS uffing their way back in hundreds to become mine sweepers, :*Oiil nd anti-submarine patrols. But on September 3rd, 1939, 1 pli) 'as in Hollywood, 6,000 miles away from the Scottish coast, kh nd the seat of war. No mine sweepers or anti-submarine atrols. Only white yachts, gliding along on a smooth blue acific. California was sunning itself on the beaches and [oUywood was behind me, the city of unreality, Stardust and eople's dreams. Yet instead of feeling a world away from the war, I felt no istance at all. I knew very well that there beside me in Hollywood was one of the greatest potential munition factories on arth. There, in the vast machinery of film production, of ameta leatres spread across the earth with an audience of a hundred inecu lillion people a week, was one of the great new instruments If war propaganda. It could make people love each other or UK si late each other. It could keep people to the sticking point of ihe iM urpose. done; And that is how it is in our modern world. Like the radio «2iiiii !nd the newspaper, the film is one of the keys to men's will. Niilof. |nd information is as necessary a line of defence as the army, police! he navy and the air force. The leaders responsible for the ;iobiil londuct of war have to ask new kinds of questions. Which imerap kation puts its case insistently and well and makes converts tnoili ind allies? Who arouses the national loyalty? Who makes receive, purpose commanding? Who mobilizes the patrol ships of the uman mind? These are vital considerations among stateshen today. In the past ten years European politics have seemed ' 0 turn on the effect of propaganda and every nation has been f ighting for command of the international ether. Even the issue lealifijt |lf the war may turn on the skill and imagination with which s froffli pe formulate our aims and maintain our spirit. ;liool fi That was three months ago and today the film is being ; ^ear. Inobilized hke the newspaper and the radio alongside the . ,...r flighting forces of the nations. Even Hollywood, far from the 'attlefront, was immediately affected. I never saw so great a curry in my life as that first week of war in the chambers of loUywood's magnates. A third of their world market had anished overnight or become completely uncertain. Who new when the bombs would be raining from the sky and laking theatres in the European cities untenable. The blackl^jvetiiiuts had driven people from the screen romance to sit waiting ■tiy their radios for the latest war news. Hollywood was so nervous that it had a new idea every day. The first reaction was to draw in its economic horns, make cheaper pictures, intensify its American market. There was some talk of forgetting its international role and going all American. You will see the result of that policy soon in more pictures of North American history, more pictures of South America. Hollywood even began, in a sudden burst of light, to remember that Canada was a North American country, and I am pretty sure you will see more Canadian films from Hollywood, from now on. There was another school of thought in Hollywood which remembered the last war and how the frothier kinds of entertainment had prospered. So you heard a great deal in these first days about stopping serious pictures and giving people nothing but light-hearted ones — to permit them to forget their worries. Give them more fluff was the way Hollywood described it. But not for long. The more modern school of production, the younger men, argued vehemently in every studio. They said, I think wisely, that people would be asking more questions in this war, and that this policy of froth and fluff would be an insult to the intelligence of the people. I confess I was greatly interested to hear how seriously these younger producers talked — the men like Walter Wanger. There is no question of avoiding world responsibility, no desire whatever to forget the war and make a false paradise of neutrality. In Wanger's office, we installed a ticker service from the United Press and daily we sat around it, reading the war news, considering how best the film might serve mankind in this new situation. Everyone was for going into propaganda of some kind, but everyone I noticed was for avoiding hatred. No Beast of Berlin and other childish exaggerations this time, they said.* And through all their thoughts I noticed there ran the theme "Let us do something to keep the decent human values alive. Let us so maintain men's sanity that when it comes to peace, we shall know how to make it stable." Well, that was three months ago. Hollywood has decided on its pictures of America. It has seen how the public has accepted such war-time pictures as U Boat 29 f and Thunder Afloat. It will give the people who read so much war news, the visual drama of battles in the air and on the sea. Here and there, I do not doubt, there will be frothy films to make you forget. And, watch for them, there will be the occasional film which tries to keep us sensible and sane. But the warring nations have had to be much more direct. They have reached out, at once, to make the film their recruiting sergeant. In the newsreels they have made the film an instru * Nevertheless an American film, Hitler, Tlie Beast of Berlin, was trade shown in London on 2/3/40. t American title of T/ie Spy in Blaclc.