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DEFINITIONS IN CINEMA
CLIFFORD LEECH
I fully appreciate David Schrire's insistence on exactitude of terminology,* for the two chief causes of confused thinking in criticism are the use of an inexact terminology and the incursion of political and religious prejudices into the domain of the critical intelligence. By all means let us clarify the meaning of "documentary," but Schrire is sailing under a full canvas from the rocks of vagueness which are Scylla into the Charybdis which is prejudice.
" If cinema is to mean anything it must serve a purpose beyond itself, have some justification other than its own very medium," says Schrire. This might be questioned, but let it pass. He continues: "If that is true, there is one purpose above all others that is of paramount importance to-day — that of making a living." And here assuredly I must part company with him. By all means let us make films of our distressed areas (it is well that our civilization should know the truth about its decayed teeth), but there are many things in life, both good and bad, which rival hunger in importance. The fear of death, the joy of mating, the conversation of friends, the glory of achievement, the tedium of routine, the quiet normal horror of egocentricity — all these are of as much importance in the life of every individual man or woman as the problem of how to eat and where to sleep. I see no reason why the term "documentary" should be restricted to the presentation of the most obvious of man's interests.
Schrire, inconsolable, admits that it is probably too late to exclude Flaherty's pictures from the documentary class. Then let us not attempt to establish artificial distinctions which have not been recognized in the past and cannot be recognized in the future. Instead, we may find it instructive to make a classification of documentary films according to their two basic features: the nature of the material and the approach to that material.
Here, then, are some definitions:
"A documentary film is one which sets out to convey an impression of a phase of contemporary reality." Perhaps the words "or past" should be added after "contemporary." I am in favour of widening the definition rather than narrowing it, but historical films have so far had little to do with reality. Categories other than documentary include the fantastic (Caligari, Warning Shadows, The
* "Evasive Documentary," Cinema Quarterly, Autumn, 1934.
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