The Cine Technician (1935-1937)

34 The Journal of the Association of Cine-Technicians Aug. -Oct., 1936 1 « "NIGHT MAIL." Interest, even picturesque interest, could no longer hold audiences accustomed to the rapidly advancing standards of movie. But the interest short served its purpose as a pointer to the future. If the technical emphasis could be shifted from reproduction to a creative use of the camera ; if the beauty spots could be replaced by matters of primary importance in the modern world, then the old corpse might take on a new and vivid life, and might even become a medium of contemporary interpretation. On this foundation the realist approach was built. The realist director beUeves that cinema, in its search for the material of entertainment, has overlooked a vast and rich field — the field of creative treatment of everyday events. He beheves that if you take observed fact as it is, without adding invented frills, and apply the technical devices of movie to shape that fact into film form, then you can bring to the screen not only a piece of good film, but drama rendered more dramatic by its authoritative stamp of truth. He believes that in the everyday working world — the factories, the offices, the homes — there lies the material for a direct and vivid presentation of the complexities and the problems of the community. Books and newspapers can describe, document, infer ; economists can theorise about money, goods and services ; politicians can preach and distort : but movie, by bringing to the screen the people and the things behind the printed and the spoken word, can present the fact. And because film is a creative medium, can present it with dramatic power. To change these beliefs from theory to practice demanded time for experiment in addition to finance and production facilities. To seek backing for production on any sizeable or semi-permanent scale within the industr\was idle. Initial efforts were hkely to be of a trial and error kind, and output slow and small. From the trade viewpoint the thing was an unimportant gamble, at an\ rate until it had proved its case : from the directors' viewpoint the bustle of the studios was ill-suited to the close analysis of movie which the first stages demanded. The field of propaganda provided the solution. In tlu description and dramatisation of the people and processes behind the surface familiarities of everyday life— the gasholders, the petrol pumps, the telephone poles— the director obtained clo,se contact with the daily work of industry and the social and economic backgrounds connected with it. At the same time the realist film offered the pubhcity officer a new method of public information concerning the work and the problems of his organisation. It gave him a new and powerful instrument of pubhc address. In making this alliance, the reahst directors made one conditionthat they should have complete creative freedom in the handhng of their subjects within a given theme. The reservation was an essential one, since an early sowing of the seeds of 'flattery in return for finance' would have reduced the reahst film to impotence at the outset. In effect, the securing of creative freedom released the propaganda' film from an advertising approach. It allowed the film itself to be the primary consideration. It replaced ballyhoo by exposition, and through exposition led to drama and even poetry. It made possible the extension of the central theme to outside material, thus opening up the perspectives behind the subject. It even ahowed of a critical approach to the subject itself. The Empire Marketing Board gave the realists a starting nucleus, and the E.M.B. Film Unit under John Grierson, produced among other films, "Drifters," "Industrial Britain," "The Country Comes to Town," and "Aero Engine." In 1934 when the Board was disbanded, the Post Office took over the Film Unit. Since that date the use of the reahst film as a means of pubhc infonnation and address has steadily expanded. The Ministries of Agriculture and Labour, the B.B.C., Imperial Airways, the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, the British Commercial Gas Association, the Orient Line and many other public concerns have made films to show something of their work and organisation in a vivid and dramatic way. And each different subject brings up new problems of approach according to the nature of its material. In the early E.M.B. days the film material lay in the ' products of home industry and overseas agriculture ; the problem was to relate them in terms of description of processes and events. Filming the Post Office involves bringing to the screen some idea of the complex and accurate organisation behind a world-wide communication system. The problem there is to show 'how things are done' rather than 'what is done.'