Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

DOCUMEiNTARY NEWS LETTER 25 DOCUMENTARY IN DENMARK Denmark was once one of the principal film producing centres in Europe. Her films were famous all over the Continent. The arrival of sound greatly curtailed the industry, for outside Denmark the Danish language is understood only in Norway: it is not generally comprehensible even in Sweden. Whether it is because of traditions handed down from silent days, or whether it is because the Danes are naturally a frugal and efficient people, they have managed to make the production of Danish studio features pay their way in spite of a language group of less than eight million people. And even though the highest budget dare not exceed £15,000 (shades of Gaby Pascal!), some of the films surpass the standards reached by British features costing ten times as much, witness Carl Dreyer's Vredens Dag (Day of Wrath) and Den usynlige Hcer (The Invisible Army), a film on the Danish resistance movement directed by Johan Jacobsen, who formerly worked in Britain with Strand.* Denmark also has a flourishing documentary industry. As in Britain, but unlike most other European countries, Danish documentary looks to the Government and, to a lesser extent, to industry for sponsorship. In consequence there has been some sort of economic continuity with the excellent double result that Danish documentary workers have been able to gain experience and a certainty of touch, and the Danish Government has a cultural asset of great national and international importance. Finance for the films comes partly from a tax on cinema receipts which is devoted to cultural ends including film production, and partly from grants from Government departments and national associations for films to serve particular and usually more specialised needs. Distribution is handled *Vredens Dag was reviewed in D.N.L. (Vol. V, issue 50, p. 103). Both films will shortly be presented in London at the Academy cinema. both theatrically and non-theatrically. Each cinema is compelled by law to devote a small proportion of its screen time each month to a short — usually 10-minute — Government reel. In this way a system has been developed not unlike the British 5-minute film scheme introduced so successfully early in the war. Non-theatrical distribution is hampered by a shortage of projectors, but since the firm of Petersen and Poulsen builds an excellent 16 mm. sound projector, Denmark may presently find herself well placed in this respect. When the Germans invaded Denmark, the feature and documentary film technicians were in two minds. Should they cease work completely, thus abandoning their screens to U.F.A. and the enemy and destroying — perhaps irredeemably— something peculiarly their own? Or should they attempt to keep their industry going, attempting to maintain their film culture intact without allowing it to be diverted to serving the interests of the Germans? The Danish technicians, like their comrades in France, decided on the latter course. In addition, they developed an underground film movement, secretly recording life under the Germans. They even managed to export material to England via Sweden, and many technicians played an important part in the powerful Danish underground movement. Films made for public distribution during the occupation were confined mainly to studies of national institutions and industries, though a few practical films were made on such subjects as road safety and health. Most of these films seem today a little strange and remote, for the Nazis made both public service in any genuine sense and personal expression in any profound sense impossible. Since the liberation, Government sponsorship has enabled the Danish documentary movement to avoid — at any rate in part — the aestheticism which has diseased other documentary schools all the way from Prague to Paris. The fact that Danish films are made to serve a public purpose has kept them practical and healthy. The relationships between film makers and the Government and the choice of film subjects reflect social problems already familiar in Britain. Take, for example, the twenty-five Government documentaries under consideration, planned, or in production at the end of 1945. They include films on drinking water, on the reception of refugee children from Holland, on safety in industry, on the railway postal services, on lighthouses, on American visitors in Copenhagen, on the problem of the shortage of domestic help, and on the relations between the citizen and the army. Films already circulating tackle road accidents, blood donors, child welfare, salvage and a dozen other subjects as familiar in Britain as they are in Denmark. It is not possible here to do more than to isolate a few examples of films for special notice from the eighty completed between January, 1941, and December, 1945. All are beautifully photographed: they dance with light. Their musical accompaniment is nearly always effective, and Kai Rosenberg is in the front rank of documentary composers. To British taste music is sometimes introduced where none seems necessary — as in Hagen Hasselbalch's excellent film on the life cycle of a toad — Tudsen. Sometimes, too, there seems to be a clash between music and picture. Soren Melson's pleasantly conceived Kutter H.l\ (Sailing Boat H.71) is not improved by a flippant jazz score, to which however the film is most ingeniously — almost too ingeniously — cut. Indeed, many of the films display remarkable virtuosity in their editing, though this very virtuosity is sometimes self{continued on next page) New NonTheatrical Films {continued from page 24) Library of Congress {American Scene Series). O.W.I. 19 mins. An enquiry about copyright provides an opening link between a mobile library truck in the Virginia Hills and the Library of Congress. The film is then mainly an account of the history and facilities of the Library, with its six million books and pamphlets and four hundred and fourteen miles of shelves. There are scenes showing reading rooms, air-conditioned store rooms, filing systems, Chinese writers in the Oriental Division and mechanical devices for transporting request slips and volumes. Original manuscripts and documents, like the Declaration of Independence, give an opportunity for a discussion of the beginnings of American democracy. Early newsreels from the Library's cinema archives are included and sociologists in the field are seen recording Negro and hill billy folksongs. This film would make a useful item in any programme on Civics and the Social Services. Training in Mechanised Mining. Production: Films of Great Britain for M.O.I. 26 mins. This clear and well-made account of the work of the Sheffield Mines Mechanisation Training Centre deserves the widest possible showing to audiences of those engaged in, or about to enter, Ithe mining industry. Additionally, it has con siderable interest for people concerned with industrial training in other fields. The Centre was the first of its kind in the world, and for planning and equipment must, one imagines, be unrivalled. After stressing the human factor in mechanisation, the film opens with an account of welfare conditions and of the financial provisions made for men nominated as trainees from collieries all over Britain. There are specialised courses lasting from one to four weeks, but the film concentrates on the six-months' course for men with little previous knowledge. A thorough acquaintance with applied electricity is rightly stressed as the basis of training in mechanisation, and instruction is given in all the relevant aspects of D.C. and A.C. operation. In the fitting and machine shops, the trainee learns to interpret blue-prints and cope with the repair and erection of machines. He is taught electrical and oxyacetylene welding. The most spectacular side of the Centre is in the model galleries; the extent to which these simulate realistically working conditions is shown by cutting in actual underground scenes for comparison. Galleries are devoted to typical workings and mechanised set-ups, Roman Pillar, Long Wall, Duck Bill, etc. One gallery carries signalling devices. The whole treatment is interesting to the lay spectator, who will derive from it a reasonably adequate notion of mechanised mining. Land Drainage. Production: Realist for I.C.I. Director: Brian Smith. Photography: Cyril Phillips. 20 mins. Sugar Beet (Pt. 1 : Cultivation: Pt. 2: Harvesting). Production: Blackheath for M.O.I. Director: Ralph Cathles. 24 mins ; 12 mins. These agricultural films are workmanlike and efficient. Land Drainage is interesting both to layman and farmer. It shows how the water table in a typical catchment area is controlled through various types of drainage. The animated diagram work is exceptionally good. The agricultural film has to achieve, for discussion group audiences, a compromise between plain instruction and the more discursive techniques employed in adult education. This film carries plenty of useful fact, and, at the same time, has a pleasant human quality. Two Scientific Film Societies report, incidentally, that they have found it a very acceptable item in their programmes. The two parts of the second film concentrate on the methods and equipment used on the average farm with about eight acres devoted to sugar beet. They deal with the preparation, drilling, cultivation and harvesting of the crop.