Documentary News Letter (1940)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1940 NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS SI Squadron 992. Production: G.P.O. Film Unit. Producer: Cavalcanti. Direction: Harry Watt. Photography : Jonah Jones. Editing: R. Q. MacNaugiiton. Distribution: Columbia Pictures. 25 minutes. By a business woman HERE IS NOT Only the best film which has been made about the war; it is a film which sets a new high spot in documentary, by achieving a perfect combination of fact, humour and dramatic story. And there is no petty spitefulness about the enemy. What a change is here. For seven months the newsreels have marched troops up and down the screen, turned out shells by the million and shouted that this was war. Squadron 992 penetrates far beyond this paraphernalia of a fight and tells us things which matter — what the men who have to fight do and feel, what men and women do when the raid comes. Squadron 992 is a unit of the Balloon Barrage in training in England. The Germans make the famous raid on the Forth Bridge, the squadron is ordered north and within 36 hours they have the balloons in position, guarding the approaches to the bridge. From these facts the film builds a terrific story. Starting with the everyday tempo of the training school, it gets, before the film is half-way through, to the whining speed of the German planes. The raid on the bridge has been magnificently reconstructed. Beside this, scenes from The Lion Has Wings are pantomime. Then, and this is one of the film's extraordinary achievements, with one climax in the bag, the long procession north of the Balloon Barrage trucks becomes, by day and by night, a strange triumphal journey through unmapped land. The excitement of all processions has been exploited to the full. For the first time we are allowed to get behind the fagade of uniforms and drill and see the quality of the men who happen for a time to be wearing uniform. The film concentrates on a few individuals ; their faces, their jokes and curses, their reactions to orders, give the world the assurance of men. They will go straight to the heart of the audience. How much of those overrunning commentaries, packed with facts into which too many documentary films have put the bulk of their message, are remembered? These men, who never seem aware of the camera, outdo all the actors that directors dress up in uniform. The film has a humour and a wit which is irresistible. Until now, humour and documentary have not been on very good terms. The men chaffing each other as they learn to sew, the greeting to a girl as the lorries travel north, the tramp who cannot get his lift, the aircraftsman who replies to a jibe about his speed of working with "We've built the bloody bridge since we've been up here" — these are just a few of the delightful incidents with which the film is packed. As for the photography, there are some sequences so lovely that I should like to see them many times over. Everything in the film has been conceived in terms of picture, so that the visual appeal comes again into its own, and sound and commentary take the supporting roles. What a brilliant touch to parallel the British fighter circling round a German bomber with a poacher's greyhound making closer and closer sweeps round a hare. There is one shot where the two planes roar low across the horizon while below them the hare with the hound after it are half silhouetted on the edge of the field. Many other things stand out vividly. There is the Forth Bridge itself, a gigantic symbol of all man has built, seen across the fields. There are the lights of the lorries flickering past in the darkness to the sound of Walter Leigh's gay march. The music of this film is as good as everything else about it. Squadron 992 was made for the Ministry of Information. May they commission many such another. For Freedom. Production: Gainsborough Pictures. Direction: Maurice Elvey and Castleton Knight. Commentators: E. V. H. Emmett and Vice-Admiral J. E. T. Harper, m.v.o. Cast: Officers and Men of H.M.S. Exeter and Ajax, Officers and Men of the Merchant Service, Will Fyffe, Anthony Hulme, and Guy Middleton. Distribution: G.F.D., Theatrical. 80 minutes. THE raison-d'etre of this film is, of course, the patriotic plus box-office possibility of cashing in on the first naval victories of the war, and it has come out not a moment too soon, for the more recent Scandinavian events may well rapidly eclipse the Plate and the Altmark in the public's mind. It is always interesting to watch the ingenuity with which this sort of production is padded out to feature length ; and in the case of For Freedom it must be said that the directors have done a pretty cunning job. The film falls into three categories — newsreel compilation, fiction story, and the reconstruction of actual events. Of these the newsreel compilations are, on the whole, the most successful. They are introduced by the simple means of casting Will Fyff'e as a newsreel chief ("Get it printed — and developed — at once!" he shouts across the labs). During the Munich crisis he gets the idea of making a newsreel history of the century in terms of conflict, and we see this run in a private theatre with "spontaneous" commentary by Emmett and Fyffe. Then comes news of the Munich settlement, and the newsreel changes to the actual events of Chamberlain's return being filmed by Fyffe's unit. (Here one notes how very peculiar, in retrospect, are both the looks and the activities of our political rulers.) At this point war being apparently off", Fyffe's son (a poor fish of an idealist) persuades him to make his newsreel history into one in terms of human achievement. Back we go to the private theatre, where it is viewed by the firm's representatives from all , over the world. (Opportunity for wisecracks between the Russian and the German, and all that.) This newsreel sequence is good. The plea for peace and progress is made with a genuine and passionate sincerity, although the visuals are a bit slim, concentratinu too much on the Malcolm He I Campbells and the Nuflields and not enough on' ^ you and me. Then there is a good dramatic pointJ *' when the projection is ended by the news that *'' Hitler has marched into Prague. ' * The war kicks off" with some of the finest shots' '*' ever screened of the Fleet at sea ; then we are* ^f^^ handed over to Vice-Admiral Harper, who com-' ^^ peres the stories of the Altmark and the Plate.' *"■ The reconstruction of the Spec's capture of the' * Africa Shell is very well done, and Captain Dove' ^l re-enacts the event with dry and amusing* ^^i humour. The actual sea-battle is noisy and ^^'^ exciting. But it lacks the clarity of the old Britisb' lit Instructional films such as Battle of Falklanc'i '"y and Coronel Islands. First-class animated models' ^^^ are needed to give the whole scale and tactics ol' *■ a battle of this sort. Here the models only pad ill W out, and add little to its clarification. The* "fi Altmark inc'idtni, badly and almost perfunctorily »)iJi done, follows ; and the film ends with Churchill*! Guildhall speech, while the by-now-forgotter' Fyff'e, crouched 'neath a sound camera, peen^'i' down from a Gothic embrasure with patriotii pride. For Freedom, judged both as box-office and a prestige propaganda, is in general a good ex' ample of its kind ; though it is perhaps a littl less than fair to Captain Langsdorff and his men As a postscript, one may wonder why it wa thought necessary to include in a newsree sequence a palpably faked scene of Nevil Henderson telling Adolf that we would fight oveff^^i Poland. Dundee. Production: Scottish Films. Direction Donald Alexander. Photography: Grahar Thomson. Distribution: Associated Britis Film Distributors. 19 minutes. By a science editor AS AN EXAMPLE of twenticth-ccntury socia;' pamphleteering Dundee is excellent. It is simpl, and straightforward. It shows how a film argue in terms of modern conditions as forcibl as the oratory of the nineteenth century si critics. It is the story of Juteopolis, of a town whio for one hundred years has lived almost entire! by and for jute, although its history is as old i that of Scotland and it was a town of weave long before the coming of jute. The industi started from the wool of the Highlands and lati used the flax, which the Dundec-built ships an Dundee traders brought from the Baltic. Into th weavers' city came the jute from India, and tl skill of the weavers transformed a seemingly h tractable fibre into textiles. Jute has meant tt prosperity and the menace of Dundee. The film uses the device of the conversatioi on a ferry boat crossing the Tay with its con plement of men and women bound for work, give an account of the economic and soci problems in "braid Scots", and sometimes luri' terms. We hear how the City grew in respoft to the demand for mill and factory hands, ar how the women workers became more importa: