Cinema Quarterly (1934 - 1935)

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exactly when to be majestic and when mischievous. She shows what acting can be, expressing volumes with the shrug of a shoulder, the drag of a limb; and, using dialogue brilliantly, she yet expresses much without words. We are left with the impression of an essentially solo performance. The camera does its work of photographing Bergner smoothly, sensitively and unobtrusively and Paul Czinner in his direction reveals that mastery over mood which made Der Traumende Mund memorable. F.H. SHIPYARD Production: Gaumont-British Instructional. Direction: Paul Rotha. Photography: Pocknall, Bundy, Goodliffe, Rignold. Length: 2,250 feet. The growing pains of documentary are shared in full measure by the documentary director. He is anguished by the perpetual conflict between the claims of form and content. The constructive use of sound introduces further complications; working to coalesce two independent mediums into an interdependent whole, he finds himself at frequent cross-purposes with all the theories he holds most dear. In point of fact, the documentarist probably suffers from a perverse kind of conservatism which urges him to cling pathetically to the technique of the last masterpiece but one. It is only in books and criticism that films like Turksib and Drifters fall into their rightful place as milestones necessarily past. There are signs, however, that documentary is about to pass from this indeterminate conservatism to a crazier and more dangerous world. To experimentation we can now add continuity of purpose and plan, on the basis of reportage plus lyricism, plus a strong sociological consciousness. On top of this let the director be as lunatic as he likes and plunge into that unexplored area where Marx and the Marx Brothers play nuts in May with Dostoievski. He will emerge rumpled, but with a masterpiece, and naturally he must be free to ignore the box-office (or rather the things behind it). This leads us to Rotha who, tied as he has been by influences beyond his immediate control, signals, nevertheless, in Shipyard, his emergence from the period of agonies and indecision. He tells of the building of the Orion — crack vessel for the Orient Line — not so much in terms of shipbuilding as in terms of Barrow and its people. Each stage of the ship's construction is put across in flesh and blood, and for all the steel-plates and girders and turbines and riveting and hammering, it is very much the men who stand up most in one's mind. Yet the emphasis is not pressed. Visually, the growing ship engrosses the screen. The sound is permeated with the clangour of the yard. But by cunning punctuation (in terms chiefly of dissolve 177