The Cine Technician (1943 - 1945)

26 T HE C I X E T E C H X I C I A N Man! i— April, 104." indeed, have taken all the interest out of it. 1 tell this story because, in increasingly less crude forms, the same attitude persisted up till and including the beginning of the war. Film makers were always taking the " interest " out of a film by putting a love story, a happy ending, or some other falsification which they believed would appeal to the public. This attitude is now largely dead. Commercial producers and directors have learned by bitter experience — especially when dding films on service and kindred subject — that it simply will not do. They realise that they have an immense amount to learn from the documentary approach, not only in accuracy but in a true picture of the lives and work of the men they want to portray. Xow if the commercial film makers have, in such cases, had to learn from the documentaries, they too 1 think, though to a lesser extent, have had, slightly, to commercialise their attitude. By this, 1 hasten to add, I do not mean cheapen. There is nothing cheap, to mention only two examples, about Pat Jackson's magnificent Western Approaches, or Humphrey Jennings' deeply moving Silent Village, but I do not believe that if they were put into a film programme without any advance publicity that the average filmgoer would take them to be documentaries at all. I am afraid the ordinary public still hold the "How pins are made — Little Mrs. Water-wagtail-cloudscum-railway wheels" view of documentaries. I would just like to say, in case anyone thinks I am sneering at pre-war documentaries, that I have never held that view. Two of the films that linger most strongly in my memory are, on the side of what used, vilely, to be called "reportage": Arthur Elton's Housing — the most effective piece of propaganda I have ever seen — and, on the lyrical side, Basil Wright's exquisite Song of Ceylon. But the melancholy fact remains that there are still large sections of the public who shy like nervous mustangs at the very suggestion that a film is documentary, and paradoxical though it may sound, I think that in certain places at any rate, Western Approaches might be even more successful than I am confident it will be, if the advance publicity led the public to believe that the whole thing had been done in the tank at Denham with professional actors. They would then accept it for what it is, a thrilling story beautifully told and acted, and perhaps some of the knowing ones would laugh scornfully at their more naive friends who thought the waves were real, and explain to them the mysteries of back-projection. And this is really what I mean when I said that the documentaries had, perhaps, also learned a little from "studio" films — not that they had altered their approach to their material, or in any way deviated from the strictest truth, but that they tended t< organise that material more and more in the form that a commercial film might take. I have not seen the script of Western Approaches, and I gin b that much of the dialogue and detail was. in tact improvised on the spot, but I am sure that a shooting script made from the finished film would havi been leaped at by any commercial producer or director of imagination. But there does remain one fundamental difference between a film such as Western Approaches and a studio film on the same subject and that is not mere realism of detail. This can usually be satisfactorily supplied by the technical adviser — and what commercial director dares shoot a service subject without a technical advisor chained to the camera? Xonetheless, on this point, the documentary director has an enormous advantage over the commercial. By using real settings and people he has never got to won \ about the surface truth of his picture. That takes care of itself and leaves him free to concentrate on the telling of his story, whereas the poor commercial is distracted by a continuus conscientious fear of doing the wrong thing from the service point of view. Even the chained expert sometimes nods — and has been known to slip his shackles and disappear at a critical moment . No, the main difference is the question, " real " actors or real people. No one will dispute that where people are shown doing their jobs, real people cannot be equalled. In the Anglo-American air force film which I am just finishing, I continually used real people in real settings, not only for general action shots but for all sorts of bits and pieces. Xo body of actors in the world can convincingly reproduce an R.A.P. parade or a ground crew, let alone a group of American airmen playing soft-ball. Here, incidentally, the individual action and improvised dialogue was a sheer joy. Xo, the crux arrives when it comes to the main characters. I have nothing hut the highest praise for the acting in Western Approaches. It was simple, natural — a most difficult thing for an amateur to be — and, in one or two cases, supremely pood. It was always entirely adequate to the situation. But I still think that even in a film like this there is something to he said for the " real " actor. Sometimes without any sacrifice of outward realism his imagination will he so fired by the subject that he will give something more real than the real thing. That is to say. be will expri SS more of the man's inner personality, show us more tact oi his character, present us. in fact, with a rounder, more living figur :. And T do not mean only scenes which show him in his private life where the actor has the obvious advantage, and which was wisely avoided in Western Approaches, and were, indeed, irrelevant to the story, f will instance, if 1 may be forgiven for mentioning a film oi mj own, John