Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

DOCUMENTARY FILM NEWS ll«* up c be some months ago we reviewed in these pages J selection of new films from the National Film Board of Canada. The result of our critical remarks was a lengthy and explosive letter from the pen of Him Who Must Be Obeyed. For when Big Chief Jollyjaek waves his stick there is nothing to be done but dive into the nearest slit trench and scream for mercy. Now, sadder and wiser men, we again take up the pen. the pen. please God. of fairness, ace and understanding. A new batch of films from the same source has arrived, and rather belatedly we say our little piece. Stanley Jackson has made a little picture called W ho Hill Teach Your Child? It is not such a little picture, for it runs to four very substantial reels. The first three-quarters or so is a beauty. The idea is to emphasize the importance of the right sort of person taking up teaching as a career, and it is presumably intended for screening not only to trainee teachers and youth organizations, but also to the community in general, for its appeal is certainly directed to those who have children to be taught as well as to those who will do the teaching. Charming studies of children and pleasant, dramatic moments show that a lot of good work has gone into the film, and that Jackson knows what he is talking about. What a pity it is that when the story is apparently over and a pretty fade-out prepares us for the end. a dull elongated anti-climax starts, the significance of which completely escapes us. A contrast is played between the old type of education and the new, but it is scarcely successful and adds nothing to the message of the film. One feels that the boys in Ottawa have the idea that all material must be used somehow and that they haven't yet learned when to stop. The criticism of over length can easily be applied to many of their productions. Home Town Paper is also a likeable work on the publication of a local newspaper in the Okanagan Valley — or anywhere else for that matter. The gathering of domestic news of the type so vital to a country community, the births and deaths. the public meetings and auctions, is illustrated nicely enough, although to British audiences the theme is a trifle over-obvious. Again one gets the impression that discreet trimming could have made such a great improvement. There, of course, we are possibly falling into the mistake we made last time. Maybe, with more years of documentary behind us, we tend falsely to estimate just how much our audiences can cope with. But Canada should learn just a little more of the horrors of being boring. There is nothing boring about It's Tun In Sing, A perfect little gem of a picture about the Leslie Bell Girls' Choir, it has everything. So rarely does documentary attempt a film dealing intelligently with music or any of the skills attached to music, and when attempted so rarely do they succeed, that this reel amply makes up for any of the duller moments. It has good film sense, good film technique, and good honest humour. And that is one of the most precious of all jewels in the documentary movie. New Canadian Films It is a bit ol .1 jump to come to Bob Anderson's I e<l or.; oj Hostility. It is the psychological film with all the trimmings, Hie story of a girl's mental problems caused bj her unfortunate home life is handled much more smoothly and with much more confidence than the earliei / eeling of Rejection. Although the tempo i leisurely it grips as much as all the schizophrenic montrosities from Hollywood put together. Whether the message of the film would satisfy a psychologist depends, we imagine. upon the psychologist. Certainly Canada deserves great credit for the skilful and orderly handling of a subject which must be immensely difficult \s usual, the icing on any programme of films from Canada is the latest batch from Norman McLaren and his team oi fantasy merchants. His Fiddlededees and Hoppityhops and other flibbertigibets have a brilliance and a zest all their own. McLaren has developed himself into something unique, and all honour is due to Canada for providing him with a niche where he can mix colour and boogywoogy to his heart's content. It is tragic that Britain, which originated so much of Lye and McLaren form of abstract work, cannot now find even a tiny crazy corner for experimentalists to play around in. The thing which is as impressive as anything else in these new Canadian films is the great advance made in all the technical skills of filmcraft. It is not so long ago that we tain thought that we were the top in this type ol film. The documentaries that came her* from ( anada, or from most other countries for that matter, were to us imitations of a tvpc of movie exclusively our own I heir handling was heavy and laboured, their technique pool But now some of us feel, with a new and not altogether unpleasant sense of humility, that this one-sided state of affairs has gone for good, rake a look at the camera movement in the Bell singers film and McLean's photo graphy in Who Will Teach ) our Child? Listen to Kathburn's charming, simple and wholly expressive score to the same film, and the excellent recording of the girls' voices in the Bell choir — and it is none too easy to keep purity in the female voice when it goes up high — and you may see what we mean. I he Canadians have lost their terrible Transatlantic habit of making their commentators scream at the audience until it is bludgeoned into mute submission, and they write these same commeni nics with a skill which we rarely reach. Maybe some of the films are a wee bit too long; maybe some of the post-synching in // ■ Town Paper does look a little odd at times: but these chaps definitely have something, and if we don't pull our socks up a mighty long way we are going to have members of the Board coming over here to teach us our job. C o ne to think of it. the idea's not such a bad one at that J Happy JVerp Year WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF DOCUMENTARY TECHNICIANS ALLIANCE LTD DATA 2 1 so II 0 S (,> I x it I LONDON vm GERHARD 28 26