British Kinematography (1950)

wain i^'Aorh AugUSt, 1950 WATSON-WATT ! SCIENCE AND THE INDUSTRY 43 the like (to quote again from the editorial pages) " can have no bearing on him " (the artist), and whether, at least, " the two factors (can) be kept apart ". It is a singularly abstract view of the facts of life to suppose that the art of the artist, and the livelihood of the artist, can safely be kept apart. If they are, he is at least as likely to repine into premature mortality as into glorious immortality I have said that there are at least two kinds of art in the film industry ; they are the two which are juxtaposed in the aphorism that " It is art to conceal art ". Like all good aphorisms this one is equally true in its reversed form (for which I claim the copyright) : " It takes art to reveal art ". I believe that the less " clever " but the clearer way to express these two equally true ideas is to say : " It is desirable that the artist be enabled to express his artistic mind without the technique used obtruding itself on the attention "; and : " It is the purpose of every artistic technique to enable the artist more fully and more economically to express his artistic mind ". Need for Scientific Research The particular confusion pervading the advice which Sight and Sound offers me is the assumption that analysis is unnecessary and undesirable because it is one step towards re-synthesis ; that it is not worth studying separately the mechanism of lung or heart or brain within the human body because the body is so much less useful if any one of these three organs be detached from it. Art, science, craft, finance, organisation, distribution, exhibition, sales, are all organs of that still living organism, the moving picture industry ; the industry may well die if we remove any one of them ; it may well die if we fail to study each of them severally on our way to the more difficult task of understanding them jointly. The thesis which I hope to develop here is that we must have more scientific research in the moving picture industry. My hopes of sustaining my thesis depend, among many other things, on a paraphrase from one of our better publicised philosophers : "It depends on what you mean by ■ the moving picture industry * and by * scientific research ' or, for that matter, by ' science ' ". What is Science ? Science has been defined by another of our philosophers as " The conscious unification of diverse elements ". Perhaps I may be allowed to dilute this extract of meat into a palatable beverage, by saying that the primary purpose of science is to attain the most compact and most comprehensive presentation of the common factors in apparently diverse things. But the everyday meaning of science in general goes as far beyond this partial definition as the definition goes beyond the bald dictionary description of science as "ordered knowledge". Science comprises amongst much else, a habit of mind and of method, as well as a continually growing stock of ordered knowledge. If that be " science ", then good technology applies the same habit of mind and method to the utilisation of the stockpile of ordered knowledge. The ordered knowledge is at once the (temporarily) end product of a cultural process and the raw material of a technological process, the control of the resources of nature for the use and benefit of mankind. Without good science we can have no good technology ; without good technology we could have had no motion picture industry ; without more science we may well find that we have no British motion picture industry. The motion picture industry is a complex of arts, sciences, technologies and administrative and organisational techniques. It is not, like all Gaul, divided into three parts, production, distribution and exhibition, for these three parts are served by a great network of ancillary industries : equipment manufacturing and like organisations providing appropriately designed and formed material, and personnel training organisations attempting — not yet adequately or wholly