Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER 117 The second list of 'Red' films? Well, I will only tote that it includes The Pride of the Marines, Margie, and The Best Years of Our Lives. I do not think it can be a matter of indifference o us if a large part of Britain's American diet :omes to us following this sort of 'screening'. Please note, it is not anti-American to make his point. All decent folk in Hollywood are findng the courage to hit back. Thirty thousand atended the Wallace meeting, where Katherine rlepburn forcibly denounced these goings on. i4edy Lamarr, Edward G. Robinson, Charles 'haplin, John Garfield, Emmet Lavery (Screen Writers Guild president), are only a few of the nany who have done so in writing. But if we ihow what we think of such tendencies, it will help the ones resisting over there. Their emiloyers will think twice if anti-working class, inti-united nations, propaganda effect their export revenue. It is incontestable anyway (at least incontestible by honest folk) that the British people need :he screen medium for its own ideas. All the more while it is threatened with the cited threats. It needs it for more than entertainment. However important relaxation and diversion in the •nidst of austerity may be — if they rate 80 per :ent, 90 per cent, or even 95 per cent of screen ime, they do not rate 100 per cent, which under :he present exclusively profit-motived structure of :he industry, tied and penetrated by American export interest, is what Britain is getting. Even radio has a third programme. And where on any British screen (except the negligibly few and tiny specialized cinemas) does any imported film other than an American appear. In Prague last year 28 cinemas were running British films at one time. Every town and village was running some. Find me one ordinary regular British fan who has ever seen even one Czech film. And what about the cinemas as news? Would we stand for our newspapers being owned threefifths by Americans and two-fifths by one magnate with American connections? And yet we take exactly that situation in news film. Is it conceivable that if cinema had been invented even as late as broadcasting — cinema with its infinite possibilities for national education, national expression, international cultural get-together and get-to-know-each-other — it would ever have been allowed to get into the largely foreign and exclusively profit-interested stranglehold that grips it now? That is why the unions are pressing their proposals, which fall mainly into two categories. Proposals for getting a fairer share of boxoffice money and screen-time for the films that are made; tidying up and enlarging quota, re first feature and supporting quotas, bigger role for shorts, changed booking customs — relaxing of bars, increase of longer runs and return runs for British films. Proposals for strengthening independent production as against the monopolies with their big American interests; films bank, 4th (documentary) circuit, municipal cinemas, government ensured studio space, etc. And a Films Council with strengthened powers to oversee these measures and also to ensure that the class-prejudices of the producers no longer deprive the industry of the benefit of Joint Production Committees. But remember none of these things will come willingly from the film business, dominated as it is by interests keen on most of them not coming to being. And none will come spontaneously from a government, facing copious problems, jammed up with necessary prospective legislation, and grasping at the chance to escape more trouble by a line-of-Ieast-resistance patching job whenever it can. Only to the extent that public opinion — a particularly organized forward-seeing opinion with the TUC (that is, the non-film unions) in the first place — can be brought to understand the plain and simple fundamentals ar stake will the government be moved. And remember, there will be plenty of active publicizing scoundrels taking refuge in the matchless intricacies of the structure of the film business (blinding 'em with science) to damp down any feeling that changes are needed. So those who want Britain to have its own film business, and for that film business to play the worth-while role in the community that it can, have a busy time ahead of them. Hard work, but that's the job. A LETTER FROM CO I FILMS DIVISION ON NON-THEATRIC4L DISTRIBUTION sir: The article by 'Technician' in the April-May issue of dnl, claiming to give inside information on non-theatrical distribution, frankly sets out to be a one-sided statement. Broadly, Technician's view is that a film when delivered from the hands of the production company may be technically irreproachable ('let us assume the studio has done its work perfectly' is the cheerful hypothesis from which he starts) but that everything is likely to go wrong from this point on. It would be a fairer statement of the whole case to say that the quality of 16mm. film shows in England needs to be raised by the exercise of greater care and thought at every stage of the whole business. And it must start at production. To do the production companies justice, we are long past the stage at which everybody connected with film-making sedulously avoided seeing (or hearing) films in 16 mm., and kept up his self-respect by a fantasy that his films were being distributed in 35 mm. There is still a long way to go, however. Meanwhile, we shall not make the journey any quicker by indulging in all-round recriminations—the projectionists blaming the recordists, the recordist blaming the laboratories and the laboratories blaming the documentary producers. We undoubtedly need in England more opportunity for experiment in production for 16 mm., more up-to-date recording equipment, better laboratory equipment, more first-class projectors, and so on. As to what COI can do to assist in the general improvement, the answer is that several things are being done, (a) COI is considering the possibility that future contracts on films intended primarily for 16 mm. use should have a clause providing that they will not be accepted until a 16 mm. copy has been approved, (h) Proposals have been made for an extension of the existing system of viewing 16 mm. prints, on delivery from the laboratories, (r) New projectors arc on order. (d) A special drive to tighten up the technical inspection of the mobile units is in progress. Undoubtedly more could be done if COI had more staff and more money, and if the flow of equipment available for purchase were more copious. Incidentally, if Technician's criticisms had really done justice to the title Tnsidc Information ' which his editors have bestowed upon him, he would have admitted the difficulties which his brother-technicians have to encounter in securing equipment; and it is really unfair of him to suggest that a COI projector is not serviced until it has run to a standstill. One final point: the implications of Technician's concluding paragraph is that all or most COI shows arc given to rural audiences in \ illage halls. The rural audience is, in fact, no more than ten per cent of the total COI non-theatrical audience and there has reccntK been a new drive to cut out those rural shows which do not attract satisfactory audiences. If Technician could spare time to sec a Srst-clasa show. given by means of a tip-top 16 mm. projector, in a good factory canteen, or the assembly-hall o\ a school where a vigorous parent-teacher association meets to sec films on children's health, or even in the best o\ the village halls, he might be convinced that it is not onl) the production studio which can, on occasion, do its work with sonicthing reasonably near to that perfection for vv Inch his soul obviously lo J R. Wit I I Wis Film ■ . cot