Documentary News Letter (1942-1943)

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DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942 the period. Here we want not history but a perspective on history. And we get it. The war is signalled simply by one thing which is strictly relevant to the story of metals — the Allied Blockade cutting Germany off from her supplies of raw materials. A fast moving sequence builds up to an analysis of the point at which Europe cannot supply the weight of metal needed for the Nazi war machine, and the need for the mineral wealth of the Urals is shown to be one of the factors in the attack on the U.S.S.R. (just as in The Battle for Oil, the wells of the Caucasus are shown to play a similar part). So the film comes full circle back to the great Laurentian Shield, with its metals, some old and some very new, pouring out the materials to win the war now and to build a new world of peace in the future. Note that through forceful presentation of the facts, allied to an imaginative line of ideas expressed through visuals, The Strategy of Metals leaves its audience not merely stimulated but also having assimilated an important story; not a collection of incoherent facts, but a story which can be remembered and can clarify many hitherto disorganised news items read in the paper or heard on the radio. Note too that the film is, in trade parlance, "gripping entertainment". The Strategy of Metals is but oneexampleofthe series. The other items do not necessarily follow ts structure, but they all tell a coherent and dramatic story. The events of World War II have in nearly ill cases moved faster than the propagandists. But it is noteworthy that the series of films under eview have kept pace with events better, probibly, than any other films. This is chiefly because hey are the result of hard thinking and careful Dlanning ; and it is only in the case of War Clouds n the Pacific that events have almost entirely jutstripped the film, whose makers, during summer, were hardly in a position to foresee he loss of Hongkong, Malaya. Singapore, and he attack on an unprepared Pearl Harbour. Nevertheless War Clouds in the Pacific :ontains some remarkably interesting sequences. Dne, stressing the importance of the Aleutian slands as the stepping stones between Alaska md Japan, leads into a final sequence depicting he great activity which is going on along the Vestern Seaboard of the New World — the air outes striking ever Northwards to the new >ases of Alaska. Incidentally the animated maps a these sequences are striking examples of the ise of this technique, which is also very much o the fore in Battle for Oil and Strategy of Hetals. By using maps shaded to represent elief and also depicted as a segment of the ';lobe rather than an arbitrary square from dercator's Projection, they get an effect which is iar more accurate as regards the sense of size and %'stance, and which has at times almost a real>tic effect — the latter being heightened by supermposing moving clouds faintly in the back;round. In War Clouds in the Pacific the conrast between Mercator's Projection and the ;lobe is very adroitly used to punch home the eason why the Aleutian Islands are of vital trategic importance. The visuals of these Canadian films depend irgely on the intelligent use of library material. t is indeed difficult to realise that nearly all the naterial used by the National Film Board is lso available over here. Nor is it merely a quesion of availability; it is far more a question of choice of material and the skilful cutting of it. In general it may be said that no commentary phrase in any of these Canadian films lacks an appropriate visual. In other words they have not forgotten that the picture must tell the stor> as well as, and in partnership with, the sound track. Two especially notable examples of this use of brilliantly cut librarj material are to be seen in Churchill's Island, and This is Blitz — the former an early 1941 production and the latter completed early in 1942. Churchill's Island was not made with an eyeto circulation in Britain. It was rather made to bolster up Britain's reputation overseas at a time when it was sagging rather dangerously; and it certainly paints a picture of us that is more than flattering. It has a technical interest over here, firstly because it so largely draws on material from British propaganda films, and secondly because it shows the special uses to which that material can be put. The most exciting sequence in the film, for instance, is built up as follows: — The Nazis blast their way across Europe, France falls, the channel coasts are manned by Germans. Using sensational German newsreel material accompanied by a transcript of Hitler's speech threatening Britain with destruction, a fearsome tattoo of danger and aggression is beaten out, culminating in shots of E Boats approaching Dover cliffs (alleged) and the huge cross-channel guns firing. But, as the last gun fires, the film cuts abruptly to the A.F.S. man from Watt's Dover Front Line leaning nonchalantly against a parapet and saying "We see the flash, count 60, and bang! there she is". This single shot demolishes the Nazi panoply in a manner which could not be achieved in any other way, particularly since there was such a lack of aggressive film material about England. This is Blitz contains an amazing visual analysis of the Blitzkrieg technique, using Poland as an example. In broad outline it brings the chapter-headings of F. O. Miksche's book "Blitzkrieg" to life, and for this alone it must be of especial value in the U.S.A. today, where the citizenry are wanting to learn about war in real earnest. The one weakness of this film arises in its second reel (each of these films is two reels long) owing apparently to the lack of satisfactory counter-attacking material of a blitz variety from British sources. This will no doubt be very shortly remedied. This is Blitz and its companion pictures Forward Commandos and Food— Weapon of ( om/uesi are significant for special reasons other than those already mentioned. When the National Film Board first started its production activities it had to face the fact that the United States was still, in name at least, a neutral country. This rather difficult situation (particularly difficult because of the instinctive tendency for Canada and the U.S.A. to tie up together more and more) was ingeniously enough exploited by Grierson and Legg, as may be seen from the earlier films already referred to. But today the new batch of films makes it clear that the Film Board is now in a much freer position. The tendency to identify the national interests of the U.S.A. and Canada as a vital part of the War effort of the United Nations is a noteworthy aspect of recent productions. In Food — Weapon of Conquest, for instance, there are two sub-titles which gain immensely by antithesis. One is a statement by Morgenthau of U.S.A. indicating that one of the major problems of New World agriculture must be the supply of adequate food after the war to a Europe whose food supplies and transport systems will have been dislocated. The other (referring to the use of starvation or semistarvation by the Nazis) is a quotation from Hitler in which he stales that no action, however cruel, is unjustified in wartime if that action accelerates the conclusion of the war. It is actually around these two themes thai the food film is built up. Like This is Bin: it contains scenes (all the more eloquent because they are so sparsely used) which depict in full horror the effects on ordinary people of the Nazi war system. Over against this it puts the enormous possibilities of a scientifically planned New World agriculture system acting on an international and co-operative basis. There is no space further to detail the specific examples of the propaganda approach of the Canadian films. To sum up their main achievement, it is probably just to say that thev are not merely interpreters of policy but actually the pacemakers of policy; and this remark is a tribute not merely to the makers of the films but to the far-sightedness of one of the most powerful of the United Nations, the democracy of Canada. The fact that this series of films is having a considerable box-office success in the theatres of Canada and the U.S.A. makes it more than probable that they would have a similar success in this country. Their propaganda and informational value is certainly important enough to make it an urgent matter that the present regulations under the Films Act should be amended to enable them to achieve Exhibitors' quota, and thereby normal distribution on the screens of Britain. SIGHT and SOUND SUMMER NUMBER Articles on: — CHILDREN AND FILMS RUNNING A SPECIALIST THEATRE WHITHER THE SHORT and NEWS FROM NEW YORK 6(1. Published by: The British Film Institute, 4 Great Russell Street, London, W.C.I.