The Cine Technician (1943 - 1945)

56 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN Mav — June, 1943 made up for in greater sureness of touch, more warmth in handling people and a finer sense of proportion in what matters most in this life. Most people are poor judges of their own attainments and tend to disparage their most valuable contribution in favour of something which is important only to them. And so we'd willingly see all the camera angles and artistic cutting of Tell England go in favour of any one of those fine human scenes in We Dive at Dawn. And those two reels of the attack on the Brandenburg and subsequent depthcharging are pure film-making at its best and prove he's been learning all the time, since the days of Tell England. Tony enjoyed making We Dive at Dawn a lot. It was a good subject, a fine cast and technical crew (with a particular pat on the back for Jack Cox) and they had full Admiralty co-operation. They spent a long time on location, together with John Mills who has the leading part, watching submarines and crews at work, and when .the} came to work in the studio they had everything built to scale, which caused a few headaches but made sure the sets would look real and the cast act real. The total result is as good a picture of real people doing a real job as we've had. They'd noticed in Scotland" the far-off abstracted way in which the officers gave their orders in moments of excitement, and determined to try and reproduce it on the screen ; after searching for the key to it for some time, Tony and John Mills came to the conclusion that it was because their minds were always working one move ahead of the actual order they were giving, and with this clue to work from John Mills gives his best performance yet. In fact all the crew of the "Sea Tiger" are first-class, and this is an interesting development for Tony. He doesn't mind admitting that he doesn't get on too well with actors usually ; he's a bit scared and uneasy with them, and, as he puts it quite kindly but very truly " there's very seldom any relation between talent and intelligence," but on We Dive at Dawn, partly because of the subject and partly because must of the cast were old friends with whom he enjoys working. the people were the real strength of the film — which is a good augury for the future. Incidentally, since then he's tried his hand at directing his first stage play — Flare Path— by his friend Terence Rattigan. Ee enjoyed doing it verj much, particularly the lack of the long waits you're bound to gel in film production, and he's found that doing a stage play has helped him to get on much C with actors'. \n\ way, let's hope he carries on \\ ith this newfound warmth of human touch, without losing anything in the waj of technical finesse. It would be nioe, for instance, to have him cut his ovs a films again, and heaven alone knows the} could often do with a bit of attention from him on the musical side. Recently he's rather had to let that go by the board, though on Pygmalion he and Arthur lionegger worked together very well and happily and made a very good job of it musically. Tony distinguishes three kinds of film music: background music (a general atmospheric noise drooling on as a background to dialogue, etc., and just making a nuisance of itself), imitative music (where you get a descending trill on the flute, for instance, to accompany a man running downstairs, which can be quite helpful in comedy) and true film music, that is music which is an integral part of the film, without which the film would mean nothing, or very little. When you ask him to give an example of this last sort ot music he somewhat apologetically produces a sequence from one of his own films, Dance, Little Lady. This is the sequence immediately following the two lovers' first sight of each other, which in the book was a series of charming little love-scenes. Instead of trying to reconstruct these scenes (which would have taken much too long) Tony achieved the same effect by following on the music of the ballet, where they met, with a few bars of Tschaikovsky's " Swan Lake " music, and carefully cutting to the beat of that music idyllic scenes suggestive of young lovers' meetings and outings together. This was a proper use of film music, where the shots would have meant nothing without the music, and the two blended perfectly into a whole which gave in thirty seconds a result which would have taken the best part of a reel of dialogue, and not halt so vivid at that. Tony has no particular plans for the future, beyond to keep on making films and to keep on making them better. He'd like the chance of making the film version of Flare Path, if it is filmed, as Terence Rattigan, its author, is a great friend of his. And some day he'd very much like to have a shot at filming Conrad's Lord Jim. which with its simple theme of " coward makes good" he thinks would make a very fine film if done properly. lie's been a member of A.C.T. ever since he heard about it eight years ago, and for the past seven of them, until the last Annual General Meeting, was our President. I expect pretty well all of you have heard all about the controversy which caused him to resign from the Presidency then, and no doubt you have strong views about it one wax or the other. The real issue, to some of us. from which the controversy arose (though most of (lie arguments took place on other subjects) was the status and future of A.C.T. in a rapidly changing world. (Asquith. ot course, insists that the issue was the powers and behaviour of the General Council in relation to local members and their committees. In his opinion they behaved in a die