The Cine Technician (1943 - 1945)

32 T H. E C I N E T E C H X I C I A N May — June, 1944 NEW BOOKS REVIEWED Penrose Tennyson, by C.T. A. S. Atkinson. 8 6d. Pen Tennyson was not the sort of person whom one forgets. He had a special kind of vitality which was very enduring and I am sure that many of his friends and colleagues often catch themselves thinking with sharp surprise that he is dead. This biography of him by his father fills in many details which we could not know, particularly of his childhood, and adds a little to our appreciation of the variousness of his character. But it is perhaps too personal a book to recommend to those who never knew Pen, and the character which emerges has not quite the robustness of the original. Adding one's own knowledge of him to the history in the book it is interesting to trace the growth of his character with its mixture of energy and sensitivity, of a joyously rebellious nature very content with his more conventional background. I remember him most vividly in his first weeks at The Bush in the days when old Etonians were far less common among us than they were in Mr. Baldwin's cabinet — or was it Mr. MacDonald's? We wondered, and so did he, how his manners and mannerisms would go down ; and he professed himself determined to "live down" Eton. That he succeeded there can be no doubt. Those who professed themselves unable to stick him at any jjrice became his warmest friends and admirers and he managed through the real generosity of his character to be a real and interesting person and a promising director. Michael Gordon The British Journal Photographic Almanac. Henrj Greenwood, 5/ (cloth), 3/6d. (paper). While the current shortage of materials has inevitably restricted the activities of the professional and amateur photographer in the full expression of his medium, the war has given an impetus to the development of its potentialities in the scientific and technical field. That these potentialities will be open to everybody to turn to his profit or pleasure in the post-war years is one of the encouraging messages of the current I iril isb Journal Photographic Almanac. Battledress appears actually to have improved this admirable handbook. Thus, while it has been found necessary to omit certain relatively unimportant matter, a complete revision of the rest of the contents has allowed space for an enlargement of the formula? section — particularly in regard to developers — and to augmented data on the more scientific applications of photography, such as oscillograph recording. An entirely new and extremely valuable feature has been introduced — a glossary of technical terms. Here are explained many terms, both photographic and chemical, which are continually cropping up in current literature but for which a definition is often far to seek. Among many interesting articles is one by Mr. H. W. Greenwood putting forward a reasoned plea for the rationalisation of recipes and formula?. Other featured articles deal with the photography of wild flowers, the photography of lightning, enlarging from small films and photography in the school physics laboratory. An " Epitome of Progri s> " describes new methods, processes and gadgets for the most varied branches of photography. while the advertisement pages are tempting enough to make any enthusiast's mouth water for the feast of opportunities ahead ! The book is further enriched by the inclusion of a pictorial gravure supplement whose range extends from a dramatic British Official photograph of the looting by the fascists of freed Catania to G. L. Hawkins' leisured study of " Polperro." My own particular favourite is J. E. Lugton's beautiful child portrait. "Athenae." To sum up — every photographer, amateur and professional, should get the British Journal Photographic Almanac (1944) — and keep it by him. J. Dooley CORRESPONDENCE " Gaslight " Sidney Cole and his fellow technicians, who worked on Thorold Dickinson's film, Gaslight, may like to know that not quite every copy of it was destroyed; one is being preserved in the vaults of the National Film Library, evidently the only copy now in existence. This in no way effects the main point of the impassioned protesi which lie made in your last issue, but it may be some small consolation to him and his co-workers to know that all traces of their work have not been lost. — Yours faithfully. EENEST LINDGBEN, Curator. National film Library.