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THE EUROPEAN CINEMA
from the British home-market. Not all his films are worth noting; some should perhaps be forgotten; but from his producership have come : The Foreman Went to France (Charles Frend, 1942), Next of Kin (Thorold Dickinson, 1942), Nine Men (Harry Watt, 1943), Dead of Night (1945), The Overlanders (Harry Watt, 1946) and Hue and Cry (Charles Crighton, 1947). These unpretentious films at least represented a style, a freshness of approach. They were British in character, although they had many faults of self -consciousness and adolescence. They were fundamentally sincere pictures and had a purpose.
Mention also should be made of Sydney Box as a producer, since The Seventh Veil (Compton Bennett, 1945) established him as a maker of reasonably budgeted pictures. Nothing as yet produced by him for Rank has reached high level, but films such as Holiday Camp, Easy Money, and The Brothers, suggest that he is interested in subjects set among the ordinary British scene. He lacks, possibly, good directors; but his pictures are perhaps preferable to the pseudo-art prestige films.
It seems clear in an overall estimate that Britain has still much to do to put her film house in order. Costs of production have got to come down, speed of making has got to be increased without sacrifice of technical quality, labour has to be less restrictive where creative processes are involved, and above all, film-makers — writers, directors, producers — must find stories from out of the living experience of the British people and not rely on the romantic past.
Which brings us to documentary. Its thesis, its growth, and its purpose are too well-known through the writings of Grierson and Rotha to require comment from me.1 Its products are by now part of the intimate experience of all British and many American readers of this book. But it is necessary to point out that documentary was the most important, and almost the only, British contribution to
1 Documentary Film (Faber & Faber, 1939) ; Grierson on Documentary, edited by Forsyth Hardy (Collins, 1946).
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