Documentary News Letter (1942-1943)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942 MS LETTER MONTHLY SIXPENCE VOL. 3 NUMBER 4 APRIL 1942 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER stands] for the use of film as a medium of propaganda and instruction in the interests of the people of Great Britain and the Empire and in the interests of common people all over the world. DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER is produced under the auspices of Film Centre, London, in association with American Film Center, New York. EDITORIAL BOARD Edgar Anstey Alexander Shaw Donald Taylor John Taylor Basil Wright Outside contributions will be welcomed but no fees will be paid. We are prepared to deliver from 3—50 copies in bulk to Schools, Film Societies and other organisations. Owned and published by FILM CENTRE LTD. 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON W.l GERRARD 4253 PROPAGANDA OR AESTHETICS? We publish below a letter from ERNEST LINDGREN, curator of the National Film Library (British Film Institute), on the subject of Basil Wright's review of Film and Reality which appeared in D.N.C. for March. Lindgren's letter is followed by a reply from Wright, and the matter is also referred to in "Notes of the Month." THE EDITOR, Documentary News Letter. 34 Soho Square, W.l. SIR. In the generous review which you gave to Film and Reality, Basil Wright makes a number of criticisms to which 1 have no intention of replying in detail. Cavalcanti is fully capable of defending his own work, if he feels any defence is necessary. If, as Wright concedes, the film is stimulating, then from our point of view it is a success. If opinion differs as to its composition and conclusions, this is simply because we are dealing with a very live subject and not with some academic corpse. I may perhaps be permitted to comment on two points of fact. Firstly, Wright complains that in dealing with British documentary Cavalcanti has "almost ignored the dynamic use of sound" ; in fact, out of a total of six extracts from British documentaries, three are selected to illustrate exactly this, as the commentary in each case makes clear. Secondly, we are told : "there is one other omission, and that is the analytic film dealing with mechanical or scientific processes"; in fact, this genre is represented by examples from the work of Charles Urban, Bruce-Woolfe, Mary Field and Percy Smith, Dr. R. G. Canti, Dr. Russell Reynolds and Jean Painleve — six examples in all. Extracts from Aero-Engine, Transfer of Power, and the like were omitted because their success depends largely on a clever use of animated diagrams, and we did not regard diagrams as falling within our already vast province. Really, however, what 1 wish to comment on are the larger issues raised in Wright's article, and especially those which go deep down into the future of the documentary movement. It is plain that Wrighfs main quarrel with Cavalcanti arises from the latter's alleged underestimation of the sociological importance of modern (especially British) documentary, and overestimation of film technique, which is belittlingly called "mere aesthetics". Again and again in his review Wright reveals this contempt for technique which, under Grierson's influence, has permeated all the critical writing of the British school in recent years. To me it seems that this view is thoroughly pernicious and rests on an entirely false distinction. It is a widespread heresy, not confined to the film world, that what one says and how one says it, are two different things. Professor Joad in a recent Brains' Trust session argued that Shakespeare's line, "Come away, come away, death." etc.. contained exactly the same thought as Ah girl has jilted me and I want to die". although the second was commonplace and the first so lovely that it sent shivers down his spine. To me this is nonsense. Art is the communication of experience. These two quotations give expression to entirely different levels of experience, and so sa> entirely different things. When .load equates them, he merely reduces them both to the lowest common denominator. But once you do that to Shakespeare's lines, you ha\e destroyed, not merely their form, but their content. In any work of art. the content lies in the form. This appears to me the most elementary axiom of art criticism. It is the failure to appreciate this axiom which leads Wright to make such confused and e\ self-contradictory statements as ( 1 ) "The various early experiments in sound were important not merely from the aesthetic point of view, but because they were designed to strengthen and classify the social angle." (2) British documentary films tended to "sacrifice purely aesthetic considerations to the need for pungent comment and the imaginative presentation of facts and problems". The realist film, says Wright in his programme for the future, must "devote itself to the urgencies of the moment with the same dynamic emphasis which marked the revolutionary period of the Soviet film." But were the highest achievements of the Soviet cinema attained by labelling technique as "mere aesthetics" and despising it? On the contrary, as we all know, they devoted the greatest attention to purely technical experiments and the working out of a sound critical theory, laying the foundations for all subsequent film criticism. Eisenstein's preoccupation with "mere aesthetics" is far greater than Cavalcanii's has ever been. Pudovkin similarly. There is a theory that technique can be left to look after itself if only one is sincere and has something really vital to say. I cannot believe that such a fine craftsman as Wright is not aware how nonsensical this is. In the National Film Library Loan Section we have two films, both made in Germany at the same time on the same theme: Kameradsehaft and War is Hell. Was Pabst really sincere? Recent rumour tends to deny it. But to-day Kameicidu In/ft is still as vital an utterance as ever, while War is Hell has already become a museum curiosity. To-day it is still a real joy to watch Night Mail, with its superb cutting and imaginative uses of sound, while many other documentaries it would be unkind to name, with messages no less sincere or important, are mercifully consigned to limbo. I hope by the way that no one will construe me to be championing mere technical virtuosity, which simply represents the opposite extreme of this same heresy that one can in practice separate thought and expression, form and content. 1 have the greatest sympathy with the sociological aims of the British documentary movement. When Wright says, "I believe absolutely that the revolutionary technique is the only technique," he sounds a resounding bugle call for the future. I devoutly hope that British documentary may keep its ideals untarnished, for it is one weapon we possess against the lowering threat of coming disillusion. But if that weapon is not to fail in our hand, those on whose work it depends must get rid of these silly notions that technique doesn't matter and can be dismissed as "mere aesthetics". I believe that Uarrv Watt, in his recent letter to the New Statesman, has given the fairest comment on the whole business. "It was Grierson's