Documentary News Letter (1941)

44 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1941 SECRETS" 1919—1940 By MARY FIELD, M.A. IT IS TWENTY-ONE years since Bruce Woolfe made the first of the short nature films that, in the Secrets of Nature and Secrets of Life series have been appearing steadily in the cinemas of the world ever since. Considering the film business is now about forty-five years old, two contradictory views can be held about this twenty-one years' record ; the first, one of surprise that there is no other such example of tenacity and continuity of purpose to be found in the film world, either here or abroad ; the second, one of equal surprise that, in as brief a period as forty-five years, one type of picture can have persisted for twenty-one of them. Either way, the record provokes surprise and can hardly be due merely to chance or luck. Good reasons for the steady success of the "Secrets" must exist and can probably be deduced from internal evidence in the history of the films. They had no planned beginning. During the Great War Bruce Woolfe was temporarily "lost" by the British Army and, until he was "found "again, put in a good deal of time at a soldiers' institute where he came across a copy of Gilbert White's "History of Selborne". He read it through two or three times. When the war was over and he came back to film-making at Boreham Wood, the country roads down which he walked every day — for Boreham Wood was real country then — looked difii"erent in the after-glow of Selborne. It was as though his eyes were gradually opening and he caught glimpses of a new and unguessed world about him. Animals, birds, insects, plants, the bushes in flower, the pond by the wayside, were no longer unidentified parts of the landscape but were exciting entities with a secret life of their own. He looked up books of natural history. He added to his essentially unscientific knowledge. An ordinary walk was now a rich and stimulating experience. It was an experience he wished to share. He determined to make some nature films. His production company was British Instructional Films and it started its first "Secret" in 1919 with the life-story of the garden spider. It was made by Charles Head, of whom Bruce Woolfe had heard tell as a man who photographed insects. Edgar Chance, at that time, was thrilling the world of naturalists with his research work on the life history of the cuckoo. He agreed to collaborate on a film about the cuckoo. Bruce Woolfe himself, with an amateur colleciion of tanks in an old army hut, succeeded in recording the life-history of the caddis worm. The first three "Secrets" were made. But, as every one in the film business knows, it is one thing to make a film and another to find a distributor for it. All Wardour Street turned down the "Secrets" as the sort of thing the public don't want to see. The "Secrets" started their career as a flop and a flop they remained until, in 1922, New Era films was started to market a ^ther flop, Bruce Woolfe's Armageddon, the first of all war films, which again the existing renters could not fancy. Under Gordon (now Sir Gordon) Craig the New Era company was started to distribute both unwanted features and unwanted shorts, and they were distributed to some purpose. But three shorts were not enough for a series ; Craig needed six. Three more were hastily added from material that could be collected quickly. Skilled Insect Artisans, Infant Welfare in the Bird World, and the first Zoo secret. Hands versus Feet. So Set No. 1 was launched into the cinemas of Britain. And were they the sort of thing the public didn't want to see? They were not. In their first year, 1 922, five sets of "Secrets" were made and distributed — thirty reels in all. 1923 saw another thirty released. Faster than they could be made they could be marketed. Charles Head and Oliver Pike, who had both helped on the first series, worked against time to get the pictures out. So did everyone in British Instructional Films. So did everything to do with Secrets of Nature — except nature. That kept on at its accustomed pace. As a result few of these early films dealt with any story taking a longer period than four to six months to develop ; there was no time then for long or complicated life histories. Sixty nature films in two years temporarily glutted the market. No one at that time could believe in a continuous success for the series and, rightly enough, they had been determined to make the most of what they considered a temporary boom. So, 1924 saw only six "Secrets" produced and, in 192'5, no new subjects were added to the series. This luU was partly due also to the fact that British Instructional had moved to a far larger studio at Surbiton, and other and larger production plans occupied the staff". For 1926 is a turning point in the history of the British film business and marks a change also in Secrets of Nature. So with the series of 1924, the first period of the "Secrets", comprising sixty-six subjects in all, may be said to be over. These first sixty-six had been made with an old Prestwich camera, and later with a wooden Debrie. Under Bruce Woolfe's LMTifying supervision, skilled naturalists, and camera men who hardly knew a sparrow from a chicken, had worked on the series. The pictures were edited in the style typical of the old "interest" films; one scene, one title, though one or two sequences, such as the fight between the scallop and the starfish, were well cut. To give variety they were printed on every kind of tinted stock imaginable, so that some reels looked like a roll of oddments from the ribbon counter. The old orthochromatic negative gave practically no sense of texture to the subjects; but everx.film was alive and vital, fuU of drama, was utterly unscientific, and each carried out the originator's aim — to interest peop':".,in the world of nature about them. In short they were grand entertainment.