Documentary News Letter (1940)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JULY 1940 13 DOCUMENTARY IN THE UNITED STATES Wet h ,S. Film Service Fights for Life ith The Plow that Broke the Plains and The iver, made in 1936 and 1938, the U.S. Film ervice established itself in the leadership of the merican documentary film world. Two events ist month spotlighted that leadership: test rease of its maternity film. Fight for Life, and the ction of the House Appropriations Committee 1 striking out of the Federal Security Agency's udget a request for funds to continue the Film ervice on a permanent basis. The premiere of Fight at the Belmont Theatre 1 New York City brought Pare Lorentz the riticai applause to which he is accustomed. With few exceptions the toughest row of critics in the t.S. liked it, the New York Post declaring: There will be no better motion picture made in 940." Time gave it a featured review in prefernce to important Hollywood releases, adding isult to injury with, "It makes even such topotch Hollywood medical pictures as Men in Vhite and Dr Ehrliclfs Magic Bullet seem unreal nd stagy". Sharing the honours with Lorentz' ■icture making, was the heart-beat scoring of omposer Louis Gruenberg. The premiere was a eai event in filmdom, signalising full public ecognition of the documentary film form. As a documentary, however. Fight had other ritics to face; and a few days later the picture tirred a medical controversy. Some of Lorentz' tatistics on mortality in childbirth were called ito question. And the picture was said to be ruelling, cheerless, depressing to prospective lothers. A woman columnist wrote: "I thought he film Birth of a Baby . . . too full of sweetness nd light. Pare Lorentz has gone to the opposite xtrcnie. Indubitable artist that he is, he has for he sake of dramatic sequence, magnified the angers of childbirth." Other similar criticisms v'ere summed up in the statement : "The fault of he picture is the inculcation of fear as the result if erroneous statistics." Such criticisms, if valid, were damaging, .orcntz defended his statistics, and the mood of he picture. But the medical problem was clearly lot a matter for reporter-dramatist Lorentz to rgue. The dispute raised a general problem in he production of medical and other scientific ilms : Where does the scientific responsibility lie? ■ilm makers do not possess authority in all the ciencesthey treat of; they must, therefore, have 4idvisers who in the event of a dispute, may be appealed to. In a letter to the New York Times March 24), Lorentz finally laid the burden on 'aul De Kruif, upon whose book of the same itie, the picture was based. The question of the eff"ect of Fight is difficult to esolve. A World Telegram reporter refuted the mputation of fear, citing several unfrightened vomen patrons at the theatre. No final answer is likely short of a special study in audience reliction. Most of the picture's critics agree, howver, that it establishes powerfully, effectively and alidly its central thesis: the needless death rate n childbirth. At the present time Film Service has in production two shorts and one feature length film : Power and the Land (Joris Ivens — REA), which has been shot and awaits commentary and scoring; Robert Flaherty's AAA picture which needs more seasonal shooting; and Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), Lorentz' feature on industrial unemployment, upon which shooting is expected to be resumed. Another Dark Rapture? The adventurous Armand Denis (Dark Rapture), who recently returned from a ten month Asiatic expedition (previous trip African), reports that he has 40,000 feet of negative on primitive peoples and animals. Accompanying the Armand DenisLeila Roosevelt expedition was the writer Hassoldt Davis. The dramatic purpose of the trip was to photograph the ancient and almost extinct practice of snake worship in Burma, a ceremonial in which a priestess dominates the living snake god, at present a 14-foot King Cobra, incarnation of the Naga deity, by kissing it three times on the head (Life, March 4). The expedition worked chiefly in Burma, but visited also India, Nepal (second American expedition ever to enter that country, according to Denis), China and Africa. Among the Burma pictures are elephants hauling four-ton logs in teak forests : the remains of 5,000 pagodas in the dead city of Pagan, capital of Burma from 200 to 1200 A.D. ; and primitive oil wells from which crude oil is removed in buckets. The expedition spent three weeks on the Yunnan highway, primitively constructed life-line of China, where they observed some disintegration of the famous road due to monsoons, and saw hundreds of American trucks stuck in the mud. The trip was interrupted by the war; but three months were spent in Africa photographing lions and rhino in Tanganyika. Return was made by freighter from Cape Town via Trinidad to Boston. Cutting and editing of the film are now under way. Educational Film Institute Valley Town, a study of machines and men, is the title of a new film produced jointly by the Educational Film Institute of New York University and Documentary Film Productions, Inc., which will be completed by the time this appears. The film was directed by Willard Van Dyke ; film plan and commentary by Spencer Pollard. Running 33 minutes the film is documentary in nature with music by Marc Blitzstein. Although there are some re-enacted sequences, no professional actors were used. The picture is an analysis of the relation of technological change to employment; and the need for a solution to the unemployment problem created by new machinery is demonstrated. Another film to be produced by the Educational Film Institute on the subject of agricultural surpluses in relation to the food needs of the country will be directed by John Ferno. The Institute has done the research and the filming group will soon be on location. Joris Ivens has been engaged for some time on the script of a story on economic frontiers, and it is reported that he departed during the second week in May for shooting on location in the West. And So They Live and The Children Must Learn, first two completed productions of the Institute were well received at previews held during April. Under Way At a recent meeting of the Association of Documentary Film Producers, announcement was made of productions under way among the members. A feature film on civil liberties, produced by Frontier Films and photographed by Paul Strand, is now in the silent cutting stage. It combines the documentary technique with re-enactments by some of Broadway's best troupers. Also a Frontier production and also in the cutting stage is White Flood, a scientific short on glacier formations photographed in Alaska by William Osgood Field, Jr. A second issue of Datelines is in preparation by Laura Hays, Jean Lenauer, Julian Roffman, and William Welles. Elaine Basil and Leo Seltzer have begun shooting on a film contrasting the merit and spoils systems for the Municipal Civil Service Commission. Planned as a 35mm. three-reeler, it will be shown next summer at the World's Fair. John Ferno, Willard Van Dyke, and Julian Roffman have had their cameras in Kentucky for the Educational Institute of New York University and are now cutting in New York. Sweden Travelling the Middle Way in Sweden is the pertinent title of a new film completed jointly by the Harmon Foundation and the Co-operative League of U.S.A. Inter-Learning "Too often in the past," spoke Mr Ivens to the Association of Documentary Film Producers, "documentary films have been one-man jobs. The ideal, of course, would be that each member of the crew have a distinct function of his own and be able to co-ordinate it with the functions of the others." In the interest of such co-ordination, ADFP has been sponsoring educational forums where cameramen, directors, writers, and editors may learn from each other. In January and February three sessions on editing dealt with the relation of the editor to the other members of the production, with the visual cutting of an expository theme and the psychological cutting of a dramatic theme, and with the editing of sound in relation to picture. Consecutive planning by Helen Van Dongen called for the screening of seven examples, and for talks by Joris Ivens, Paul Strand, David Wolff, Lothar Wolff, Edwin Locke, and IrVing Lerner.