Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER S5 nor does the girl find any noticeable Fulfilment. The 'Organization' is left in despair, most of the characters expose their smallness of spirit (it is not without significance that only the priest comes across as a character complete in himself) and the rain gives place to snow. Nor can the film claim the diplomatic immunity of High Tragedy. The incompleteness of the supporting characters destroys hope o\' that. No true tragic issue is allowed to mature. At the best it is Hamlet with no one but the Prince. I am here less concerned with detail than with the over-all conception of the film, but the fact must be faced that the rather alarming sympathy which most critics have felt with the mood of this picture, has blinded them to an exasperating unevenness. There is some extraordinarily poor acting (notably from the policemen) and levels of characterization and accents of speech arc so variegated that we have no consistent atmosphere of Bellas! or any other real place. The sequence Vi i ill the mad painter and the disreputable doctor (a half-character this, if ever there was one) belongs in another film — or perhaps constitutes another short film in itself. For suddenly at this point all attempt at realism goes by the board and we nave a stvli/ed setting which might almost have come from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. And why has there been no reference (in any review 1 have read) to patches of dialogue couched in the embarrassing terms of cheap sentimental melodrama? Mr. Mason does all that is asked of him and my expectations were keenly aroused by his early appearances as the rebel leader. There were signs here of humour and depth of feeling. But once he is wounded he has to become a vague, inhuman religious symbol and the brief dicker of healthy vitality which he had given to the film dies out. Indeed I maintain that there is only one thing in this devitalized film desen ing the adjective 'great' and that is Alwyn's musical score. To sum up. The idea that Odd Man Out can be regarded as a sort of Hymn to Charity is so much mumbo-jumbo concealing the real truth that it is an escape' film in the profoundesl sense. In itself that is not important. But let us watch carefully to sec that in periods of cold, discouraging weather we do not too readily accept the view that the defeat of all humanity's aspirations is not only inevitable but aesthetically admirable. If we are to have here in post-war Britain our own particular brand of Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism, let us at any rate recogni/e it for what it is. WHAT HAPPENS AT THE MOVIES? we readily assume that the film occupies a large part of daily life. Evidence obtrudes on all sides: miles of queues, acres of posters, the fan magazines on the bookstalls with their tittle-tattle of the stars, and the daily conversations of millions. But until comparatively recently little of this evidence has been collected and examined with real sociological intent. Because cinema-going is heaviest in the English speaking countries, it is appropriate that the sociological study of the film should have originated in the U.S.A., and been developed more recently in this country'. Eaber & Faber are to be congratulated on their new series of film studies on this subject which started with Margaret Thorp's America at the Movies. This book, first published in the U.S.A. in 1939, is one of the best of its kind. Brimming over with facts which must have cost a great deal of effort to collect, it is well written and extremely entertaining. It sets out to follow the sociological ramifications of the film in America, primarily at the level of its influence on dress, behaviour and personal habits and opinions. It presents an astonishing variety of information which is ready to hand about the incredible doings of film-fans on the one hand and the Hollywood film companies on the other, about film morality, the Hays Code and the lobbyings of sectional interests of the American public eager to thrust their idea of what is right and proper on the rest of the world. Since Hollywood films still occupy two-thirds of the world's screen-time, much of this is of immediate relevance to us all. Most revealing is the picture given of the star-cult. There are straight commercial aspects such as the fact that the sale of skates in America went up 150 per cent when Sonja Henje, the skater, became box-office, or the advertising of this star's hair-style, or that star's way of dressing and of such things as 'Judy Garland dresses that will give any voung Miss the "swing and smartness" of this famous M.G.M. star'. Then there's the evidence of how millions of Americans dress, eat, decorate their rooms a la Bette Davis or Clark Gable. How millions more solemnly lap up the emotional wash prepared by the fan magazines. 'Gary Cooper is so darned humble and honest about himself he still to this day doesn't believe he has a thing any other guy hasn't', and similar touches of common or uncommon humanity. The best thing about the book is this evidence which it provides of how films and in particular the stars in them have givrn a badly needed focus to the hopes, desires and ideals of at least one continent of emotionally starved humanity. At the same time one should remember that there is another side to this influence. If a film can raise the standards of dress and make-up and send people to the public libraries to read the books on which various films are based, the achievement is a positive one. J. P. Mayer's Sociology of Film goes a step beyond the superficial effects of the film on the outward forms of behaviour and attempts to find out a little more about the mass-psychological influences at work. He is not content to collect existing evidence. His book is made up for the most part of specially prepared documents detailing the individual reactions of a selected number of children, adolescents and adults to films. The work originated in the first place from an inquiry which Mr. Mayer undertook in 1944-5 on behalf of the Rank Organization into Children's Cinema Clubs. The result is however, disappointing. Despite the author's excuses in the introduction, the book is unnecessarily heavy and undigested. The opening chapters expound the theory of the film as a popular art with copious side references to the Elizabethan and Greek theatre. But is it really necessary to parade such an array of learning to convince us? When the author at one point quotes Tacitus and insists that 'we could fill many pages, if not a whole book with similar quotations from Cicero, Livius. Plutarch, Polybius, and many other Roman classics' one's instinct is to duck and rush wildly for cover. Quotation of this kind is also adduced in support of the contention that the cinema is the modern version of the 'bread and circuses' phase in a society's development. Then follow a collection of essays by a class of schoolgirls, replies to a questionnaire put out by the Picturegoer and various other reactions obtained from workingclass children. A certain amount of this material is of undoubted psychological interest. It also makes one wonder how literate people really are in this country. But as a method of trying to represent a mass phenomenon it is of questionable value. The documents arc not sulfide representative of the various classes, occupations, age-groups, etc., for any findings to be at all valid as a sample survey. On the other hand the not prepared in a sufficiently imaginative or interesting vvav to pass as individual social documents in the sense that Pilol Papers, foi example, or even certain documentary films, irv to present a mass problem in the light of one individual example. It is difficult therefore to see how \ti Mayer can justifiably go on to draw conclusions from his evidence and propound various remedies such as State censorship, State distribution of films, etc. These may well be the correct solutions, but we do not need to read through 200 or more pages of unrepresentative reactions, to agree with him. Despite these limitations in the methods he has chosen to use, Mr. Mayer is nevertheless doing useful work if he can succeed with this book and with the second volume which is promised, in drawing attention to the need for developing the sociological study of the film. At the same time there is another line of approach which has not been tried to any great extent. Elsewhere in this issue there is a study of the French film, La Grande Illusion, by a Dutch psychiatrist. He approaches the problem of the film's mass psychological effect via an analysis of the film itself. He attempts to show how a film which ostensibly sets out to create new social attitudes, in this case anti-war feelings, in fact falls a victim to the old attitudes against which it tries to evoke resistance. In certain respects, La Grande Illusion, is an exceptional case. Few films can equal it artistically and few set out so obviously with positive social intentions. Nevertheless, it is true that the majority, if not all, films do have quite concrete social relations of this kind. In themselves and in the people, situations, or things that they depict, they are at all times either confirming or rejecting current social values and attitudes whether they set out to do so consciously or not. And it is of considerable importance to realize that we are being 'got at' in a social and political sense, in moments when we are most relaxed and unsuspecting. Through the analysis of actual films, through the investigation o\' individual reactions and through the collection of the more easily accessible facts which Margaret I horp has drawn attention to. it should slowlv be possible to build up a rather more coherent picture of what all this cinema-gomg is about And do not let us underestimate the importance of work of this kind. It is not only essential to our understanding of the business of making and showing films; it is also intimately bound up with many of the problems of present-day society. America at the Movies by (Faber and Faber. 1 2 Sociologj of i -iim bj i P Mayer I illhl . I V) M ret 'I horp