Documentary News Letter (1942-1943)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942 NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS Fruit Spraying. Shell Film Unit Direction: Kay Mander. Camera: Sidney Beadle. Production: Edgar Anstey. M.O.F 25 minutes. Subject: A survey of the equipment, methods and chemicals used by commercial fruit growers and nurserymen. Treatment: This is a film essentially for specialist audiences, and as such it can legitimately dish out nonstop information for two and a half reels. This information is certainly presented in a very orderly fashion so that it never becomes confusing and certainly never boring. If the layman does not retain much of it after one viewing, the film should be very helpful and instructional to the people concerned with the job. It is shot with a pleasing precision and economy. One gets the impression that the shooting has been disciplined to a nicety to very careful scripting. This makes for an efficient and almost slick production. If it also means that the film is cool and impersonal, concerned only with the processes, and never with the men doing the work, the answer seems to be, in this and all instructional films, that you can't have it both ways and that a compromise distracts from the main drive of the film and untidies it. The director must make up his mind whether he wants a tidy film or a human film. Fruit Spraying is extremely tidy. Winter on the Farm. Green Park Productions. Directed by: Ralph Keene. Photographed by: Erwin Hillier. Agricultural Adviser: Ralph Wightman. Musical Director: William Alwyn. Associate Producer: Edgar Anstey. M.O.I, nontheatrical. 15 minutes. Subject: The first of four films showing farmlife through the seasons in wartime. Treatment: This film is a delight to the eye. It has some of the most beautiful exterior photography that has been seen in recent years. Too long has the general public considered the land as a kind of lucky dip, and the people on the land as having plenty of grouses but little knowledge or training. Winter on the Farm puts farming in its right perspective, as hard and neverending work which demands as much skill as the making of an aeroplane or a lank. The construction is simple: a farmer's daily round of inspection introduces the different aspects of farm-life, some of which the farmer describes himself. This holds the film together well, and leaves the layman impressed by the number of ways in which land-workers need skill. Since the film has been centred round the people and work on a particular farm, and, presumably, for comparison the other three films of the series will also be made there, one would have liked to have gained a better geographical sense of the farm itself. This would have been achieved by a freer use of the true long shot, instead of a slightly repetitive and confining midshot. A hint of this feeling is already conveyed in one scene in the film (sheep in the foreground and a farm-cart passing across a field in the distant background), but it is not carried far enough. As it stands, (he film gives the impression that farming, even in winter, is a verj pleasant, almost a romantic, occupation. This is a pity, be cause it must tend to make the layman envy the farmer his apparently happy lot, rather than make him conscious of the complexities and obstacles which confront land-workers. One of the reasons for this very fine gilding of the ginger-bread was a bad stroke of good fortune, which gave the unit on location nothing but fine weather for their shooting. And, just as there are arguments in to-day's urgency against waiting for good weather when you have bad, so there are possibly even more against waiting for bad weather when you have good. But this is not wholly responsible for that impression. Partly, one feels, it is because the farm itself goes too well. We should have learnt more by seeing some actual problem or misfortune — a fox at the chickens; a dog run over; a sick calf: even one of the cows kicking over a bucket of milk in the dairy. Any one of these, or a better example, would have strengthened the film, by showing that Providence does not provide especially for people on the land. This main criticism, however, does not detract from what is a first-class film. A homely commentary, by commentator and farmer, and some really successful and pleasant music round off a well-made job which has gained immensely from its imaginative and distinguished photography. Propaganda value: Any film which increases our knowledge of the work and problems of a section of the community, will help to strengthen the nation's unity. And a film which carries this information as ably and pleasantly as Winter on i. the Farm becomes also an asset as a film. New Towns for Old. Strand Films. Direction: John Eldridge. Camera: Jo Jago. Script: Dylan Thomas. Production: Alexander Shaw. M.O.I. Five minutes., Subject: The re-planning of British towns afte. the war. Treatment: The film confines itself to one industrial town in the North of England. It shows what has so far been done — both good and bad — and details the essential problems which must be solved in the period of reconstruction after the war. Sensibly enough, the film aims not at the detailing of expert opinion but rather at making the citizenry conscious of their own responsibility as regards planning as well as of the difficulties volved. The style adopted is very pleasant, consists of a dialogue between two men as they walk through the various areas of "Smokedale' and discuss the things they see. One of the men takes the lead and is virtually the commentator as he has a particularly attractive Yorkshire ac cent, everything he says gets home with a punch — notably at the end of the film, when he turns abruptly to the audience and points out that the F realisation of the ideas of the planners rests entirely in our own hands. Propaganda value: Very good for the Home Front, particularly since the film makes it clear that plans for the future are bound up with the V war effort which we are all engaged in here and jj now. {Continued on page 95) PUBLIC RELATIONSHIP FILMS INCORPORATING EVERYMAN FILMS LIMITED New Address : 57 SOIIO SQUARE, LONDON, W.I Telephone: t. fit II AMI 7345 FILMS HEARING COMPLETION WE SI'I Ak TO I MM A VOI X. AND HEALTHY BELIEVE IT OH MOT Ministry of information t "vntral f'ounvil for Health Ednration Rod Cross and St. 'John War Organisation '