Documentary News Letter (1942-1943)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942 FILM OF THE MONTH Shors. Produced at the Ukrainfilm Studios, Kiev . Direction: Alexander Dovzhenko. Photography: Y. Ekelchik. Music: A. Kabalevsky. Shors is a particularly welcome film at this time. Not only does it provide a badly needed key to getting free drinks (wangle your friends into asking "What's Shors?") but it's just about the finest sort of film anyone could wish for in wartime. It's a film about war and fighting, but, much more than that, a film about what people fight for. For the richness and fertility of their native land, for love, for warmth of blood and warmth of feeling, for the pleasure of living and the dignity of dying. Dovzhenko is one of the few men who, like Beethoven, all the time talks naturally and unaffectedly about everything in capital letters— Love, Death, Strife, Fertility. The story of Shors is set in the Ukraine in 1918-19 when the local Bolsheviks had to drive out first the invading Germans and then Petlura with his White Guard and armies of intervention, but after the first three shots it's perfectly clear that the film is going to be much more than a slice of re-enacted history. It opens with a typical Dovzhenko landscape, a sloping field of sunflowers shimmering in the sun, with two blooms right in front of the camera. Suddenly there is a shell burst among the sunflowers, then another, and all at once, under your very eyes, the opposing armies push up through the sunflowers and get to grips in a hand to hand struggle among the riches of the earth they're fighting for, with the Ukrainians using their bare hands to ram down the throats of the invaders the same corn and sunflowers they came to steal. There has never been anything before quite like these first shots and the whole opening sequence, with its warmth and violence, for setting the mood of a film. The nearest to it was the opening reel of La Bete Humaine. This is the first film of Dovzhenko's we've been allowed to see publicly over here since Earth. There seems to have been a bit of hankypanky about him one way and another, as Ivan, his film of the building of Dnepropetrovsk, never got beyond the bonded film stores, and Aerograd, his later anti-Japanese one about fighting on the Manchurian border, which was very good according to American reviews, never got here at all. Anyway, it would be a good idea for the Soviet War News Film Agency to fetch it over now and let us have a look at how the Russians deal with the Japs. Dovzhenko is certainly an amazing director. He has the most individual touch of any: if you put him on to shooting the life of the ant I guarantee you'd recognise his style after the first few shots. This individual quality, a lyrical. poetical feeling of warm blood, fertility, love for the soil and joy of living, combined with a great atmosphere of folk-lore in the telling of the story, is, I'm willing to bet. quite unconscious and unsought for by Dovzhenko himself. 1 should say that realism (which he certainly gets) is what he goes for in his shooting, and the rest is just a by-product. It is rather pathetic and amusing to see poor old Eisenstein, after months spent on careful historical research and delving into the records and religious ritual of the time, so as to get the true folk-tale spirit into a seven hundred years' old story, come out with that dreary schoolbook exercise Alexander Nevsky, whilst Dovzhenko in a couple of minutes on the screen can turn a realistic tale of modern battle into true and authentic folk-lore. He's certainly helped by his cameraman, Ekelchik; the photography throughout the film has a marvellous shimmering, luminous quality, particularly in the exteriors, that it is a bit difficult to account for. It's something like the old orthochromatic or modern infra-red effect, with the foreground bright and glazed in the sunshine and the background lowering off into darkness — it must be something to do with the light in the Ukraine. And, of course, it works specially well on Dovzhenko's particular favourites, horses. This film, like Earth, is full of horses; three riderless horses galloping through the wheat, horses sheering off as the shells burst, and coming with their flanks gleaming right across the camera, close-ups of men and horses, a horse standing appreciatively by as his master and friend have a drink together, horses in the charge, with the camera panning with their, not the riders", heads. And the sound too is fine, a very good score from Kabalevsky and full volume on the sound effects, so that you think you've never really heard a shell burst before. The story of Shors, inside the story of the liberation of the Ukraine, tells, somewhat on Chapayev lines, of the friendship between Shors. the efficient young party-member and commander, and Bozhenko, a tough rowdy bearded old lad magnificently played by I. Skuratov. The film in a pleasant loosely-constructed continuity alternates between large-scale spectacular action sequences and intimate dialogue scenes. The action sequences are beautifully done on a scale of production that makes Cecil B. de Mille look like a quickie merchant — the opening sequence with its shot of one horseman cutting another down ; the battle of Chernigov, with the thousands of tiny figures advancing over a snow-covered landscape that reminds you of Breughel, and the astonishing tracking shots with the cavalry; the fraternising with the German troops; the retreat through the cornfields with dying Bozhenko carried on the shoulders of his men and the horizon black with the smoke of burning villages; the entry of the Bolsheviks into Kiev and, shot with perfect economy, what it meant to the inhabitants— the release of the prisoners from gaol, the pained reaction of the bourgeois as they look down from an upper window and complain of the Bolsheviks, like W. C. Fields's wife of the burglars, that they're singing; the reunion of the soldiers with their families, and the two children rubbing a place in their cellar window to look up at the troops riding by whilst their mother lies dying on a pallet behind. And the intimate dialogue scenes are. in their way. just as good— the village wedding feast with the cheerful interruption of the troops and the handsome young gunner making a speech about love, bearing off the bride for himself and giving an old peasant woman the long awaited opportunity for a quite irrelevant deunuciation of her old man ; Bozhenko, particularly old Bozhenko, with his studied address to the bourgeois citizens ol Kiev, his quick, flattening dismissal of an officer prisoner, his corrective healing of his henchman Savochko and their drinks and reminiscences together afterwards, his map-reading course with Savochko, and his broken-hearted grief when he hears of the killing of his wife. All this is done with such a broad sweep, with such a sense of warm blood and warm feelings, with such a natural peasant touch about it, that the film leaves you with a firm conviction that lite is a pleasant thing, the Ukraine a fine country, and the Russians bloody good lively lads. There are just two things wrong. The continuity is loose anyway, though that is quite pleasant; but on the top of that whole actions and sequences have obviously been cut out and the film as it is shown now presents a horribly mutilated appearance, particularly towards the end. I don't see why we shouldn't be allowed to see films as they're meant to be seen, it looks as though half an hour has been cut out of Shors. Then there's Shors himself: I'm afraid he's not a particularly pleasant character; efficient and forceful enough, but in his scenes with Bozhenko revealing himself as a nasty young prig. In fact the "policy" scenes in general all have a slightly unpleasant flavour, quite out of character with the generous human quality of the rest of the film. No doubt both the savage cuts and mutilations, and the intrusive sermons on behaviour and policy spring from the same cause: never mind, Shors is absolutely first class and nobody should miss it. INDUSTRIAL TRAINING FILMS IN U.S.A. exclusive distribution rights to the Government's biggest civilian training film project, some sixty films produced by several commercial producers for the U.S. Office of Education, have been awarded to Castle Films (30 Rockefeller Plaza, N.Y.C.). The films are intended as visual aids in training machine shop workers and shipbuilding craftsmen. Ten films on shipbuilding are included in the programme. The distributing company announced that five pictures on the machine shop would be released by November (last) and twenty subjects, in groups of five, by December (last). Prints are not rented, but sold to interested organisations, among which are educational and vocational training centres. The first two films in another training film programme, similar to the Office of Education's. have been announced by Burton Holmes Films Sponsor is the South Bend Lathe Company. The series (16 mm., sound, colour) is based on the book, "How to Run a Lathe," and the films are to be used in conjunction with the book. Object is to speed the training of lathe operators in defence industries. Titles of the completed films arc The Metal Working l.athe and Plain Turning. Rental is free, borrowei paying transportation. A new and unusual series of films on arc welding is being produced by Raphael G. Wolff, Inc. These films are in 16 mm., sound, colour: designed for teaching. The arc flame is shown and explained in a simple manner through live action photography combined with animation. Direction is by Paul Satterlield, who directed the Walt Disney riveting picture.