Documentary News Letter (1942-1943)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942 documentary has been the introduction of dialogue sequences, using sometimes raw material, sometimes actors, sometimes a mixture of both. Yet, in the extract from North Sea, Cavalcanti gives us a sequence which might just as easily have been shot in the Drifters period as in 1938, whereas the great wealth of dialogue material in the film (e.g. the conference in the cabin) obviously had an absolute claim for representation. Similarly the historical importance of Rotha's Contact is hardly great enough to justify its inclusion if it is to mean the omission of the same director's Shipyard, in which the sociological approach and also the use of sound is far more representative of both the aims and the development of the realist movement in Britain. Other selections in this sequence are more a matter of personal choice. I myself think that Cavalcanti has done less than justice to Rien Que les Hemes, Turk-Sib, Drifters and The Spanish Earth. But others may think otherwise. There is one other omission, and that is the analytic film dealing with mechanical or scientific processes or with their theory and practice— a genre in which Britain has, in its documentary movement, done pioneer work. No reference at all is made to such films as Aero-Engine, Transfer of Power or Airscrew. As regards the Final Section, which is entitled "Realism in the Story Film", 1 confess myself entirely baffled. I agree in some respects with Cavalcanti's contention that: "To-day the theatrical film still holds a prominent place in the cinema, but has undergone no fundamental change since the days of The Assassination of the Duke of Guise and The Lady of t/ie Cornelius. Film technique has been developed mainly by seeking to represent reality. Because the filmmaker's material is not make-up and scenery, but photography and sound-recording, the best work in the cinema has been done by those who have remembered what the first inventors never doubted, that the essence of cinematography lies in its power to represent reality." But I find it difficult to reconcile the structure and choice of his last section with his thesis. It begins beautifully with a magnificent sequence from Stiller's The Old Manor. Then comes the river crossing from The Covered Wagon (speaking personally once again, I would have chosen, from the point of view of realism, the Indian attack on the encampment — do you remember the horse going over the cliff?) Then — after a perfunctory morsel of Mix— we are treated to three comparisons. The first is between Eisenstein's mutiny sequence from Potemkin and a stagey version of the same thing made in France by Ferdinand Zecca in 1907. The second depicts the clearing of the court room during the Dreyfus investigation, as done by Dieterle in Emile Zola (1937) and by George Melies (c. 1900). The third contrasts a scene from Love from a Stranger (Britain 1937) with Sarah Bernhardt in The La.lv of the Cornelias (France 1912). I am no doubt very dull in the head, but I do not see how these contrasts add to the argument. Zecca's Potemkin is as wildly funny as you might expect; Eisenstein's mutiny scenes are still dramatic, dynamic, and the whole sequence is still an absolute classic of cutting. But if, as I take it the contrast needed is between theatricalism and realism in the story film, the argument surely can only be effective if two nearly contemporary works are chosen. A big sequence from a de Mille super would have been a reasonable contrast. The scene from Emile Zola is apparently chosen not for its essential interest, but because it matches the scene from the Melies' film. Zola was a magnificent film, but this sequence, torn from its context, means very little in terms of realism or anything else. Finally we have Love from a Stranger — a sequence put in to show that films are still sometimes no more than photographed stage plays. Could we not have taken this for granted? The sequence is merely boring and forms no sort of contrast to the historically interesting excerpt from the Bernhardt film, which might well have been included in the first section. The film is not yet over. To conclude it we are given three extracts from story films, presumably because they are notable for their realism. Of the first two of these— Kameradschaft and Le Grande Illusion — I do not think anyone could complain. But why the troopship sequence from Farewell Again? For myself at least it formed a depressing, lamentable, and very bewildering ending to 9,500 feet of impressive or stimulating material of all sorts. Film and Reality is too important a work to be glibly dismissed with faint or frantic praise. And whatever I may have said about it I am certain that it does, despite the faults I have stated, form a remarkable document which will be of great use to students and to all others interested in the realistic approach to cinema. It would be interesting to make a parallel job called Film and Reality No. II, which would be devoted, not to aesthetic considerations, but to a study of the sociological approach combined with the new developments in technique which arose from the desire of realist film-makers (especially in Britain, due to Grierson's genius) to find more vivid means of expression. Himself a pioneer in this field, I am certain that Cavalcanti would agree, and would, this time, consult his contemporaries more freely on the selection of the relevant material. II. TODAY AND TOMORROW Not the least valuable aspect of Film and Reality lies in the fact that it is bound to stimulate many of us to consider the present state of affairs in the development of the realist film, and to look a little way into the future. Cavalcanti's survey very properly stops short before September, 1939 . . . Since then we have had two and a half years of war in which needs as well as conditions of film-making have changed very considerably. All available personnel has been pressed into the urgent needs of wartime propaganda and wartime information. Output has increased enormously. When the war began documentary was no longer in its experimental stage. Realist traditions had by then been firmly established, and the results of the experiments of the previous ten years had been crystallised into several different styles. Nevertheless that static stage, which in any movement is the prelude to complete necrosis, had in no sense been reached. On the contrary, in the years immediately preceding World War II the realist movement was beginning to concern itself firstly with larger and broader treatments of subject matter, and secondly with an increased use of dramatic incident and dialogue (cf. The Londoners and North Sea, to give but two examples). In some senses the gulf between the documentary and the realistic film story was narrowing. Not only had the British realist movement begun to influence film-makers in other countries (most notably the U.S.A., where a vigorous documentary movement was by now established) but also there was, in the studio world, a recrudescence of that realistic approach which had flared up all over the world in the mid-twenties but which had been thoroughly smothered by the coming of sound. The realist workers in those days were increasingly occupied with internationalism. It wasn't mere chance which found Cavalcanti in Switzerland shooting the material for We Live in Two Worlds, or which found Grierson and myself, in the same country, discussing with the International Labour Office plans for world production, distribution, and international exchange of all films of sociological content. By 1939 the realist movement was all set for a series of major developments. Where do we stand now? I am not one of those who believe that war essentially stifles all creative impulse, although I am certain that it limits it. To this it is, I think, correct to add the rider that discipline is good for the creative worker, provided the discipline comes from the right quarters and with the right motives. The motive for making wartime documentaries will be regarded by no one as other than sensible. Indeed, the most striking thing about the last two years of realist film making has been that— if only for lack of any official lead — the documentary workers have evolved their own discipline and done all they can to impose it on themselves. There has, in other words, been no diminution of the basic documentary thesis: "We are propagandists first and film makers second." Literally hundreds of films have been made during the past two years, and it is perhaps only too easy to forget that their widespread distribution, both in the cinemas and non-theat;icall>. has given the documentary film an audience coverage infinitely larger than anything it had attained in peacetime. The urgencies of the moment make for simplicity of construction and treatment. Only in a few major efforts (e.g. Target for Tonight) is it possible to elaborate the script and involve oneself in the complications of a large number of interrelated incidents. 1 would sum up the existing situation first by claiming that documentary has no cause to be ashamed of its wartime record. Its workers. often under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, have fully carried out the jobs that needed doing. But secondly, I feel that this is no time for complacency. I think all of us feel that much of our production is not up to that level of achievement which we have always set ourselves. Is it enough to satisfy the demands of official sponsors, however well we do it? It is surely our job, as pioneers (and such we have always been) to be a step ahead of the rest. Now, and for the remainder of the war, the keyword is "Urgency". Today the realist film needs to achieve greater punch. It must be active. It must without fail and without pause devote itself to the urgencies of the moment with the same dynamic emphasis which marked the revolutionary period of the Soviet film. The social experience of documentary is ideally suited to this propaganda task, which is, firstly to impel immediate and all-out action in the direct crisis of war, and secondly, to pave the way for the post-war drive : both these aims being completely interwoven. (Continued next page)