Canadian Film Weekly (Aug 2, 1944)

August 2, 1944 Canadian FILM WEEKLY Canada and Hollywood movies —of America in particular —-sometimes reflect a silly inconsequential outlook on life. Often they do not reflect a purposeful society but rather a neurotic, meaningless society which is all dressed up and has nowhere to go. That is the really bad thing about the movies. To some, movies are the ‘film business’, which is to say a business like any other, making profits. Profits depend on the box office and a carefully calculated estimate of what people in the theatre are hungry for — sex and heroism, comedy and adventure, day dreams and romance. The bad side one has also to expect in this world. When you are looking for an escape from the drab, who is to say where inspiration stops and cheese cake begins, where vitality stops and vulgarity begins, where enjoyment becomes foolish and only successful in repressing vitality? This is the first problem in film criticism and no one should jump to fast conclusions as to what is what. Some over-righteous critics don’t know vitality from a hole in the ground and think everything is vulgar which is not respectable and sedate. You will find a dash of bawdiness and coarseness in the greatest art. If you deal with life honestly, you deal with complex relationships of cause and effect. * * * ya it comes to movies, good or bad, Canada is a dependency of the United States. By far the greatest part of the film product comes from Hollywood. The biggest chain of theatres 4s under the suzerainty of New York. The newsreels are made up in New York. I do not mean to say this is a bad thing, because with all its confusion of thought and purpose, the United States is a great and wonderful centre of human energy. “The technical skill of its films is astounding, and the creative ingenuity behind them is enormous, But it is well to face the fact that the skill and ingenuity, the images, the characters, the stories, the themes, are defined by others. The evaluation of what is good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly, is done by others. We can shout as we like about this new nation we are building: we can be proud as we please about the Canadian ‘thing’; but when it comes to the movies, we have no emotional presentation of our own, It is another nation’s effort and pride we see on our screen, not our own, We are on the outside looking in. "Canada and This Movie Business’ In Canadian Affairs John Grierson of the National Film Board writes about Canada and Hollywood. “What he says,’ the introduction states, “will start you thinking and will probably start an argument. According to the introduction: “Most of us wouldn't mind having a nickel for every hour we have spent at the movies—or even for every hour we've spent TALKING about movies. Through them we get most of our entertainment and a good deal of our news and education. But as far as movies are concerned Canada up till now hasn't been much more than a colony of Hollywood. That's why many Canadians have * been asking the question: Will Canada ever amount to anything in this movie game? Why not a Canadian Hoollywood? We have talent. We have a good deal of technical skill. But are the stakes too high? Could we ever produce anything better than a cheap imitation of the American product? Would it be worth the effort? His claims: (1) There is a way in which Canada could play a part in the production of first-class feature pictures. (2) There is what he calls a going on right now in Canada. ‘non-theatrical’ revolution im movigs (3) Canada is already becoming a world leader in the production of a new kind of film—which can exist side by side with the Hollywood feature productions and which is playing a part on the job of building a better Canada.” Presented here are some of the interesting points made by Mr. Grierson in the article entitled “A Film Policy for Canada.” tS loins indeed is another probjem you can argue among yourselves. It is good or bad that this should be so? Is it necessary for a nation to have its own popular expression of its own loyalties, its own faith, its own pride? As we become more and more an important nation in the world, must we build our own film industry as an expression of our own life and a safeguard of our own national identity? Or is this just old-fashioned nationalistic nonsense? Is it not the curse of the nations that every of them should be so insistent on its own unique and special yirtues? Isn’t there another world of loyalty, faith and pride in which national barriers do not mean a thing ? I mean the world in which all men need identically the sams things—houses and families and a creative job in the world to do— and what is the difference between the Joe Doakes of this world whether they come black, white, or yellow? What is the difference whether a film comes from Hollywood or Timbuktu or Saskatoon so long as it is about the life of man as it is lived and dreamed in common everywhere? * * * W* shall have to be practical, and there are some practical things to consider before you decide the answer. Let me say first of all, the Canadian movie distributors and theatre operators, sometimes referred to as our film industry, are a loyal group of men. They depend for —_ their living on American production; many of them are directly dependent on American contracts and American controls; so far as their work is concerned, they live and breath in American terms, but none the less they are Canadian citizens and within the limitations of their trade, are anxious to serve their country. Since the war broke out, they have given their theatres and their screens generously to the war effort. Unlike newspapers which charge for war advertising, they do not charge for screen space. Until the war began, there was very little Canadian film they could show. The government made a few films of an industrial or scenic type and so did Associated Screen News, Montreal. But there was in no sense a ‘flow’ of production. The situation has changed during the war because the government has taken a vigorous hand in the matter. Canada today turns out short films for the theatres in a regular flow—short two-reel informative films about Canada and about world affairs that affect Canada. By and large, the showmen are supporting them with a true appreciation of the fact that the Canadian film industry cannot continue to live exclusively on foreign materials. * a * dl "ees question most often asked me is why Canada does not make her own feature pictures. An attache in the Soviet Em bassy put it to me the other day. He wondered why we allowed our feature artists like Deanna Durbin, Walter Pidgeon, Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer, Hume Cronyn, Alexander Knox, Ned Sparks ——all of them Canadians originally—tto work for the benefit of another country. It is an attractive notion, this pbuilding up one’s own local Hollywood, but how difficult it would be to execute. * * * r Neleemy there not other possibilities for the development of Canadian film production? I think there are, and far more practical and possible than this dream of a Canadian Hollywood. One way is for Canada to make its feature films in New York or Hollywood. We might build up in either centre a com-. pany for the making of Canadian films with an associate producership in one of the big international companies. Given a Canadian producer of the standing of say Hal Wallis or David Selznick, there would be nothing to prevent a program of four to six Canadian films a year, nor the building up around him of a team of actors and writers drawn largely from Canada. Simpler still is the notion that the United States must increasingly appreciate its international obligations and give a quid pro quo for the benefits it receives abroad. It takes nine million dollars a year from the Canadian market and what does it do in return? It provides profitable entertainment, yes, but what besides? What can be asked of Hollywood, and is increasingly being asked, is that it should, as a mat-~ ter of policy, spread its net wider in the search for its themes. Hollywood, on the whole, is glad to respond if it sees a way to do so without prejudice to the essentially commercial nature of its enterprise. Canada has done fairly well, but not well enough, in recent years in the allotment of Canadian subjects. Hollywood has given it films like “Corvette,” “Royal Northwest Mounted Police” and “Captains of the Clouds”. If Canada is sufficiently imaginative in the ideas it presents to Hollywood; if it develops a more intimate system of contact between the film industry in Toronto and Hollywood producers, the record must grow, * * * PCLT woop is presently cooperating with the Canadian government and the Canadian film industry in the production of war loan appeals. It is sending its stars north to focus attention (Continued on Page 18) el