Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

12 DOC I MEN I \RY FILM \KV\ S Realist Tradition in Italian films -con tinned from page 6 of poetic and realistic, other moments recall his Furia. the saga of a sex-starved wife of a horse-breeder who is the Italian counterpart of Miss Blandish. Another film with a racial theme is Alberto Lattauda's Without Pity, featuring John Kitzmuller. who played the negro GI in To Live in Peace. Lattauda's best-known work is his 1945 documentary The Italian Army in the Liberation of the Country. Of the directors known to us through films publicly shown in this country. Luigi Zampa is in process of completing Children of Chance for a British company; Rossellini is preparing the Rome sequence of A Tale of Five Cities; while Vittorio de Sica has just completed The Bicycle Stealers, with a largely non-professional cast. The film, the story of an Italian workman who has his bicycle stolen, has been bitterly attacked by L'Osservatore Romano (The Vatican newspaper) because it pokes fun at the holding of Mass. ( iood intentions are such a novel state of the mind in the cinema that one may be forgiven for falling into the great error of thinking that i all a film needs, but as the hardening tradition of realism in the Italian cinema is formed into a more mature whole, more sure of itself the cinematic design of the Italian film is becoming stronger and abler. There is the quality of life in these films, there is a truth beside which a so-called human document such as Monsieur Vincent qualifies for Madame Tussaud's. Film in Educational and Social Life — continued from page 4 schools where a beginning has been made in the teaching of film appreciation parallel with the teaching of literary appreciation. You may say that there are not enough good films — films suitable for the purpose. That argues a pessimism which I do not share. For if you turn not to the deliberately educational cinema, but to the vast cinema of liction about which I began by speaking, there are enough serious, beautiful and exciting films, there are enough aesthetically stimulating passages even in unequal films, to form the basis for a hundred courses in the study of the screen. The Continental cinema and the America classics, Eisenstein and Rene Clair, Griffith and Chaplin— and today we have at last something of our own to offer. We have our versions of English classics — for the cinema reverts, overmuch indeed, to its early reliance on literary originals. We have our Dickens films. We have our Shakespeare films; and. whatever the controversy over Henry V and Hamlet, these two have taught us to look again at Shakespeare (the I rench, that acute race, realized before we knew it ourselves that Olisier had given us something new here: not a photographed si, me play, hut film-theatre). And we have a small group of simple and moving fiction films which, learning from the documentary, have set before us in terms at once realistic and poetic the life of our own country and our own people. Let us by all means use the cinema for factual instruction. But let us also use it to educate in the broadest sense i i word: to prepare and equip for life, and to do it tli rt, which is itself the distillation Ol hie CORRESPONDENCE February 15, 1949 DEAR SIR, Referring to the polemic published in your last issue, I would be grateful if you would publish the following extract from my lecture* on Len Lye's work. 'There is a gap of six years between Tusalava and Colour Box. I was then Grierson's right-hand man at the GPO Film Unit and I remember that Len Lye came to see us and said that he wanted to make a film without a camera. It took a lot of his personal charm to make us listen to him, but when he had explained what he wanted to do both Grierson and myself were convinced that he could do it. Grierson, that king of show-men. would not miss this opportunity. Furthermore, it sounded frightfully simple.' I hope this will put a stop to an obvious and slightly unpleasant mis-construction of what I said in the lecture. Yours sincerely CAVALCANTI * Published in 'Sight and Sound' . DEAR SIR, Hoping, one day, to have a firm understanding of film art behind me I always make an effort to see the critics' point of view. But in the case of Paisa I just could not enthuse with them. Even the public seemed against me, for it has obviously found something' in Paisa to keep it so long and so successfully at the \. demy Cinema. So i'eter Brinson's article Rossellini and Ls. Paisa provided the necessary support for me to persist in my opinion. \s Peter Brinson says. Paisa is the work of a master — a master of the documentary technique. It surprises me that this fact alone should have attracted the public, because none could admit to having been moved by the film. And after all its subject should move us. The subject and the technique cancel each other out. Paisa has for its subject Emotion. The emotional impact of two peoples thrown violently together; the emotional reaction of the Italian. from urchin to priest, to the American soldier; the emotional reaction of the American soldier, from negro MP to OSS leader, to the Italian. Yet the way in which Rossellini has treated this subject has led critics to judge the film as a documentary of a military advance. Else why the childish carp about the anti-British attitude ' Readers of doi i mimari fii m news need no reminder that documentary is the objective technique which appeals to the brain in presenting facts and problems which can only be settled by clear thinking. When a director's subject is Emotion he must appeal to our emotions, he must make us feel. No one can feel when the cold-blooded wall of perfect documentary is down between the person and the subject. No one. not even Rossellini. can documentalize Emotion. j. ellis park What they say about W@SOa® WW& pictures ♦GOOD HEALTH ' 'The film will remain as a lasting memorial of the authority's notable administration and as an inspiration to the new regional service.' LOCAL GOVERNMENT JOURNAL 'Intelligent and comprehensive.' CINEMA ♦THE CRAFTSMAN ' '—a magnificent film.' NEWS CHRONICLE ' — fascinating insight into the life and work of R.E.M.E.' SCOTSMAN 'Documentary treatment at its best.' FILM USER TAKEN FOR GRANTED/ ' — The best film, however, was "Taken for Granted' (Reporting a show of films on Local Government) PROGRESS World Wide Pictures Ltd. LYSBETH HOUSE, 10a SOHO SQUARE, W.I Telephone: GERrard 1736 7 8