The Cine Technician (1943 - 1945)

July— August, 1944 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN 69 NEW BOOKS REVIEWED Films, by Roger Manvell. Penguin Books. 9d. Topics for Discussion: No. 6: The Films, by S. B. Carter. Workers' Educational Association. 3d. The Art of Walt Disney, by Robert D. Feild. Collins. 30/—. Many of us bave been saying for some time i bat a good cheap book on films is urgently needed — a book which would place a general survey of film-making, its economics and technique, and its soi ial implications before the largest possible public. There are plenty of books about the film in all its aspects, but most of them are too dear to reach anything but a limited number of readers. At the present time we are beginning to think about post-war reconstruction and how war-time developments in the industry can be made to serve as a new foundation. But there is very little we can do without the help of the customers, and there's a lot the customers don't know. Before thc\ can understand what is happening now, what they are going to get from the monopolies, what they should get from the M.O.I. Films Division, and so on, they must know something about the tilings which have led up to the present state of itfairs. A Penguin or Pelican book is obviously one good way of making this sort of information ivailable. At ninepence a lime they are within •each of most pockets, the bookstalls and newsigents feature them, and all that's necessary :o insure success is that they should be readable. All of which describes what Dr. Manvell's book night have been — I won't say should have been, Mise what he writes a book about is, after all, Imsiness. The odd thing is that one has the mjiression that he set out to write just exactly he sort of book that is wanted — but he hasn't line it. On the first page appears a Guide to Reviewers and Readers, which says that the book ittempts to deal with the following: — Why do we go to the pictures and what we get for the money. Why films are like they are. Why they influence the way we live. Why and how they get themselves censored. Why the film can be called a new industrial racket .... Why America has cornered pictures . . . etc. Maybe the book does deal with all those points, lit unfortunately Dr. Manvell hasn't the sift of larity. He is not " readable." In fact, it takes great effort of concentration to get through the book at all. A film technician reading it will call it diletantte — if he doesn't use a more pungent adjective. Readers who belong to the class that just likes " going to the pictures " will be surprised, and probably annoyed, to learn that Dr. Manvell regards them as " culturally underprivileged." But some people may be taken-in by his air of thoroughness. The book is full of quotations, of classified lists, of definitions and interpretations, technical analyses, dates — and inaccuracies. Its inaccuracies are, to me, its most entertaining feature. There are too many to quote them all but, for example, we are told that Von Stroheim directed The Blue Angel and that John Watt collaborated in the making of Night Mail. We learn that Zolton Korda is an art director and that Richard Baxter (presumably the 18th-century divine) made Love on the Dole. He misquotes Grierson — • which is unpardonable seeing that he reads Documentary News Letter — and it was foolish, I Chink, to embark at the end of the book on a glossary — in which he defines no less than twelve technical terms. But had he not done so we should have been deprived of the information that " since light travels from screen to audience more quickly than the sound from the amplifiers, the sound precedes the image on the celluloid by some nineteen frames." For this alone it was worth while reading to the end. Penguin Books, Ltd., hility on their shoulders, of " books for the people. have a great responsi They are the publishers Is this their standard of accuracy ? How many other books have they published, with whose subjects we are less familiar, containing incorrect information? Would it not have been a sensible precaution, knowing that Dr. Manvell was not a film technician, to have had the proofs read by someone who was ? You may say that mistakes like these don't matter to the general public, and I might go a long way towards agreeing with you, but only if the book had any real critical merit. One has the feeling that Dr. Manvell has tried hard to be objective and realistic. Frequently he starts to talk about the really important aspects of film-making, but peters out, or gets distracted after only a tew paragraphs on to aesthetic considerations— where he evidently feels on safer ground. And so one is left with the impression that his book might possibly add up to something if one had time to take it all to pieces, put it together again in the right order and cut out