Documentary News Letter (1940)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1940 STORY FILM OF THE MONTH MR SMITH GOES TO WASfflNGTON IF THE ANGELS wcrc tempted again to take sides in a world war, and decided to come to the aid of our Minister of Information, their first instructions would send our official propagandists scurrying off to substitute the remaining bookings of The Lion Has Wings with immediate showings of Mr Smith Goes to Washington. Not because The Lion Has Wings is a particularly bad film, and not because Columbia Pictures sent Mr Smith to Washington to say anything whatsoever about our immediate national troubles. Not even because Mr Smith is concerned to flatter the existing phase of the democratic method of government for which we are fighting. But director Frank Capra has made the screen's best piece of pro-democratic propaganda by revealing democracy as open to more exploitation and abuse than Dr Goebbels could readily invent in ninety minutes, and yet as being inherently susceptible of transformation into something to make you cheer your head off when it is seen with the vision, and quickened with the vitality, of any man "who has learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose". The phrase is Mr Smith's. In the person of James Stewart he goes as a profoundly unsophisticated Senator to Washington and is criminally exploited by his State's political racketeers. He uncovers their hypocrisies and is faced with a choice between serving the political machine or being destroyed by it. Mr Smith will not submit, is framed on a false charge, broken and disgraced. And all the other Mr Smiths who stayed at home are likely to go on being exploited and abused; their public funds filched and wasted ; their press controlled by corrupt politicians ; their police employed as a racketeers' private army. The film shirks none of these growing pains of democracy in evolution, and the agony of them is sufficient to drive Mr Smith beyond the acquiescent cynicism of his friends into a black despairing hatred of the system of government he has idealised. And then the brooding interrogation of Mr Abraham Lincoln in stone (assisted by Jean Arthur, since Mr Smith and all of us need also the warmer stimulation of flesh and blood) works the democratic miracle upon Mr Smith. He is reminded that Abe also had his racketeers, that such parasites on the body democratic are not big men but "just throw big shadows", that laws and constitutions are made in the long democratic run by the Mr Lincolns and preserved by the Mr Smiths ; and it is up to men of their kidney to use those laws and constitutions, not as phrases to be reverently recited, mere words memorable and dead, but as weapons to fight with and tools to build with. So Mr Smith goes back to the Senate and, using his democratic weapons, fights and breaks the corrupt political machine. Mr Smith Goes to Washington is a remarkable compound of qualities. In theme reminiscent of Mr Deeds Goes to Town, it is in every way an advance on the earlier film. Brilliantly cast and with magnificent dialogue, it is almost completely free of Capra's former weakness for smart-aleck sentimentalities. No film has estahn lished its background with greater authenticity and no film has built to a more powerful climax. Yet amidst all its excitements it contrives quite naturally and palatably to explain essential details of the American system of government which even an instructional film for jurists would have found none too easy to handle. But these are details. Here is a film that opens a window on to something worth fighting for. Here is a film which reveals an opportunity which dictatorship, whether from the right or left, whether home or foreign-made, would take away from us — the future opportunity to send, not only our Mr Smiths to Washington, but our Mr Browns to Westminster, to build our system of government the way we want it built. Thank you, Mr Smith. FILM OF THE MONTH FOR CHILDREN GuUiver's Travels. A Paramount picture. Production : Max Fleischer. Direction : Dave Fleischer. Cert. U. Reviewed by an educationist Gulliver's travels may have been satire a few hundred years ago, but today it takes a lot of work to find it anything but one of the world's best stories. Children love it : at least they love to have it told to them. Which is to say that the essential story is the first thing and the fantastic detail the next. Let's not worry about satire: the thing's a fairy tale. Max Fleischer got that bit right anyway, but in order to make his fairy tale palatable to grown-ups he had to introduce boy and girl as Prince and Princess. This childish intrusion is going to bore the children but considerably less than most films do, sO let it pass. Nobody except the Film Society is going to compare it with Snow White, so let that pass too. I prophesy that the children are going to like the colour, shout with glee at Gabby, the bizarre little town crier of Lilliput, and quake with him when he discovers Gulliver on the beach. They will shriek with delight at the Heath Robinsonish engineering feat of trussing up Gulliver and pulling him through the streets. The film is full of the kind of incident which children like ; the discovery of Gulliver's watch, the firing of the pistol, the table-top cabaret and the conquest of the Blefcscu fleet. They won't have time to mind the music or the love story. On the whole Gulliver is almost as good as you would wish it for a Saturday morning. That is my guess. What two children did think of it xomes next. Reviewed by a schoolboy GULLIVER'S TRAVELS dcscrves the very highest of praise; it completely fulfilled my expectations. It is as prolific in songs and laughter as was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. To single out any figure for individual praise is not an easy task, but of some, however, mention must be made. Gabby, the town crier of Lilliput, though of secondary importance to the plot, is by far the most comic person in a land of comic people. The two kings, Bombo and Little, have all the characteristics of stage clowns, but their lack of regal dignity only adds to the wealth of humour. Gulliver does not really justify his position as the central figure until the end of the film. Then, however, he atones for this by uniting the warring countries of Lilliput and Blefescu for ever. It was not only the Lilliputians who were sorry when Gulliver sailed his boat away into the blue. Reviewed by another schoolboy ON THE WHOLE I liked Gulliver's Travels, mosi of it making me roar with laughter. I thought the storm scene very good, th( lighting effects beautiful, and the scene when; the Lilliputians looked for Gulliver while actu ally standing on his chest the funniest. The tw( kings taking fingerfuls of icing off the weddinj, cake, and the binding of Gulliver amused mi very much too. I liked Gabby, the town crier, and the littli Blefescan spy most, while the great wealth of de tail on every object impressed me tremendously I did not like the Prince and Princess at all, a they seemed unnatural and obviously drawings whereas Kings Little and Bombo appeared ver human, and I would have been quite as happ with a less fortunate end for the pair! Altogether I think Max Fleischer, theproducei did well, but that Disney could have done better r on this page next nuonth THE STARS LOOK DOWN THE WIZARD OF OZ