Documentary News Letter (1942-1943)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942 drive and initiati\e that obtained the formal ion of the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit . . . it was the introduction of Cavalcanti's professional skill and incredible film sense that raised the standard and reputation of British documentary.*' 1 sympathise with the ideals of British documentary, and there are occasions when the duty of a friend is to speak bluntly. One of its worst enemies is its own narrow parochialism which occasionally borders on intolerance. It is all too easy for the fervent propagandist to see little good in other causes and no fault in his own. (Hence, perhaps, the curious blindness which leads Wright to describe our omission of AeroEngine or Transfer of Power as an omission of the analytic film in general.) It is perhaps because of this (or perhaps it is merely an accident) that in a six-column review of Film and Reality no mention is made of the British Film Institute or the National Film Library which produced the film and whose pioneer work in collecting and preserving early films made its production possible. I mention this, not from personal disappointment, but because it hinges on to this matter of technique. Film and Reality was made for the National Film Library's Loan Section whose object is to encourage film appreciation, and provide material for its study. I happen to believe in the future and the value of film appreciation as enthusiastically as Basil Wright believes in documentary. Those of us in the film world who are idealists look on British documentary as a pretty big thing because it promises so much to our hopes. But when we get away from the charmed air of Soho Square and talk to ordinary film-goers in suburbs and provinces, and see the programmes they see, we are reminded that documentaries are still a mere droplet in the ocean of film production which floods the screens of the world. How is documentary to carry its message in the face of such rivalry? Surely the only solution lies in an enlightened public opinion. The cinema is the greatest popular art of our time. In the cinema he who does not satisfy millions will quickly be forced to use his talents elsewhere. This throws a heavy burden of responsibility for its future development on the cinema audience itself. If the possibilities of the cinema are to be realised and used to the greatest social good, audiences must become far more knowledgeable and critical. As Hitchcock said somewhere, the director can only go as far as his audience will let him. Fortunately the task is not a difficult one. People, especially soung people, are astonish nm I \ eager to learn. The film industry itself, with its curious notion that knowledge will destroy the cinema's illusion, and with its ersatz diet of fairy tales for film fans, is much to blame for the fact I that they have not already learnt far more. We believe that in tackling the problem of film appreciation we are tackling one of the major problems of our time, namely the relation of •■cinema to society. An audience critically alive : s Iwill no longer be at the mercy of every smart ";|Alick who can turn out a nicely-lit picture and a well-recorded track. And in particular, (although our concern, of course, is with the whole of the inema, and not merely with one part of it), such an audience will readily respond to the best the documentary movement can give it; and by that an technically the best. The result will not only be a demand for good documentaries, but also their showing will achieve, as it already does for the intelligent film-goer, an importance out of all relation to their footage. I believe, in short, that the roads pursued by British documentary and by the National Film Library in its film appreciation work (and. one might add. by the A.C.T. which has become a most valuable forum where technicians themselves can exchange ideas and experience) can and should lie in the same direction. Discriminating audiences will demand good films; good films will help to train discriminating audiences. It is in this faith that we made Film and Reality. It is in this faith that I earnestly hope that British documentary, before it is too late, will reverse its basic thesis to: "We are film-makers first and propagandists second." Otherwise I can see little hope for the success of their propaganda. Yours faithfully, ERNEST H. LINDGREN. Curator, National Film Library, British Film Institute. WRIGHTS REPLY There are one or two points in Lindgren's letter which call for a reply. Firstly, there is the alleged "contempt for technique" which Lindgren claims has permeatedallthecritical writingofthe British school in recent years. How Lindgren arrived at this conclusion is a mystery to me, though it may partly be due to the confusion between "technique" and "aesthetics" which is such a marked feature of his letter. I repeat unrepentantiy the phrase "mere aesthetics". Nothing, to my mind, could be worse than an approach to any art form which is self-consciously concerned merely with aesthetic considerations. Such an approach is not the job of the critic; still less so is it the job of the documentary film maker. The following points are not personal opinion, but fact :— 1. "We are propagandists first and film makers second" has been the basis of the documentary movement since its inception in 1929. Curiously enough this phrase does not mean that we are uninterested in film making. 2. Documentary, under the direct leadership of John Grierson, has, despite this "deleterious" motto, done more experiment with the film form than any other group in this country. 3. These experiments arose from a desire to use the film as a sociological medium, and the aesthetics of documentan arose from such a desire. Technically we needed to explore and exploit all the possibilities of the film. Creati\el\ we needed to put our message across as a living entity to our audiences. Hence another "unfortunate" slogan— "The creative interpretation of reality". These points I should have thought Lindgren, with his very wide and acute knowledge of the whole world of film, would have been the first to understand. But instead he tries to find contradictions in two statements in my article. The first, which incidentally he misquotes, is as follows: "The various earl\ experiments in sound were important not merely from the aesthetic point of view, but because they were designed to strengthen and clarify (not "classify" as Lindgren quotes me) the social angle." In other words we weren't trying merely to make beautiful noises. we were trying to say something important. The second statement, which is alleged to contradict the first, is that documentary tended "to sacrifice purely aesthetic considerations to the need for pungent comment and the imaginative presentation of facts and problems". This has been true of a number of very important documentaries. It is true of Housing Problems, The Nutrition Film and Children at School, for instance. Yet curiously enough. Housing Problems especially in its final sequence, has to me at least had a considerable "aesthetic" impact on all of the many occasions on which I have seen it. And what about that super-example of the unaesthetic subject, Target for Tonight? I think Lindgren has muddled his argument by identifying "technique" with "aesthetics". The words are not interchangeable. That Lindgren agrees on the point that to-day "The revolutionary technique is the only technique" naturally delights me, but when in the same breath he accuses us of "silly notions that technique doesn't matter" I am completely bewildered. No one in documentary has ever to my knowledge said or written anything of the sort. Such an idea is certainly not to be found in my article. As I have already pointed out, constant experiments in technique have always been, and will continue to be, one of the most marked features of documentary film making. Now we come to the second major point to which a reply is necessary. I was indeed astonished to find that Lindgren was in agreement with an extraordinary letter which appeared recently in the New Statesman. Grierson, like all great men, is well able to ignore attacks made on him from whatever FOR YOUR TITLES ANIMATED DIAGRAMS OPTICAL EFFECTS AND Precision Processing WITH A Prompt Service STUDIO FILM LABORATORIES LTD. 71 DEAN ST., W.I Telephone— Gerrard 1365-6-7