Documentary News Letter (1940)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER AUGUST 1940 ■■alt:; WAR BY NEWSREEL Reprinted from Film News, published by American Film. Center liti :iij fTDRiES by foreign correspondents of American 013 lewspapers are trimmed to suit political and Ors nilitary needs, but the journalists have the y I jrivilege of seeing a little, asking questions and vriting their own stuff. Newsreel correspondents lave no such advantages. Foreign cameramen mployed by American newsreel companies, ■*injfiaving a peculiar war-time value, find themselves n the army and American cameramen find themielves at some distance from the news. Peace lews is shot by young boys. The drafting of American-employed foreign ;ameramen leaves them for the time being in he 2 I dubious position on American pay-rolls, and their films, shot under military orders, have definitely become army or government handDuts. Should a cameraman of one company )btain independent footage, he must share it ''t?' with other companies more or less equally. S'jBSince all films become official, no matter who oes the camera work, competition, when it ixists at all, is more in the shipping than the .hooting. ;rii 0113 Some differences exist between the countries ijlM n or near the war. In Germany all film projjfl iuction is under the Propaganda Ministry and 10 outsiders are taking pictures. Always cameraTiinded, Germany has given the filma high place '"^'* n military and propaganda strategy. It is said :;. ' ;hat Germany has more cameramen in the war Ifli :han any other country, and certainly there is no hortage of reels favourable to the Nazis shipped Toni Berlin via Lisbon and Clipper to the United States. Most of this material becomes available ^'?-^o all American newsreel companies, the largest ecipient being Fox Movietone which still has ^ German company, Foxtonendewochenschau. The American company knows little of the situation of its German company ; no money has been obtained by Fox from Germany in many year; and although large quantities of film are itollBreceived from Foxtonendewochenschau, their iource is the Propaganda Ministry. All cameraTuen are in the German army, and, it is underitood, have the same status as regular soldiers, '■■ "pbeing in fact just that. jjoUB] German war-newsreels, thematically Nazi, ippear as dehumanised, machine-age spectacles, , , icrrific in fireworks, devoid of the realities of Tiutilation and death. Tanks and aircraft destroy ^^* :nemy fortifications. No one is hurt. From a lOti' listance, a town is gutted by bombs. No one is ;;\tiU cilled. Blasted, smoking, elegant ruins emerge. The spirit is heroic. The mood is the mystic nevitability of the march of the German Tiachine. To obtain German Films, American newsreels ire required by contract to submit to German restrictions on presentation and commentary. [The Nazis, thus, through a long range control over cutting, editing and titling, prevent their propaganda from being used against them. Not always, however. An instance of propaganda turning on its maker occurred toward the end of the Polish campaign, resulting in a newsreel scoop. Films of the Westerplatte Battle (the mopping up of Poland) were joyfully shipped out of Germany to the agents of the American companies in Holland, and were relayed on their long roundabout journey to the United States. One agent, previewing the films in Holland, concluded that they were the worst possible propaganda for Germany in America. Chancing the loss of the film altogether, he flew to London arid put the German propaganda into the Lion's mouth. The British propaganda minister agreed with him that the German reel was good British propaganda, and passed it. Flown directly to the United States, it gave his company a five-day shipping beat over the other four companies. To be sure of the effect, the American editor tagged on Polish pictures of the human side of the Nazi spectacle. Most Allied pictures counter German heroics by stressing human appeal, portraying body horrors and refugee misery. In England some initiative is permitted on non-military subjects. In the war there may be different pictures of the same thing, but all cameramen are given a prescribed subject to shoot. As a result, competitive interest has languished there too. Fox controls British Movietone News; Paramount, British Paramount News. Others are served by Gaumont. Before the recent German invasions, independent work was done in Holland, Belgium and Norway. Two Paramount men were evacuated from Namsos with the British troops, as was Fox's British Movietone cameraman. All American newsreels have active offices in Stockholm, and several men are roving through the censor-laden Balkans and Italy. Before the war three American companies had exchange associations with foreign newsreels, and to a limited extent these arrangements still prevail. Paramount and Fox once owned foreign language reels in many countries. Both lost money on the proposition, but found that it helped in coverage costs and in booking American features programmes, including news, in those countries. Most of these reels have folded up. Not only are no outside cameramen allowed in Russia, but no films on the invasion of Finland have been made available through sale or exchange by Russia on that unpopular enterprise. Newsreel companies regard the absence of Russian government films as remarkable in view of Russia's well-known interest in films and the noting of cameras among Russians in films from the Finnish front. Paramount once hired a Russian cameraman who was decorated by his government for his work; later he was sent to jail for fifteen years during one of the purges. Russia seems uninterested in the kind of fragmentary propaganda that is possible in newsreels, caring only for feature pictures with the full thesis. The Clipper neutrally packs German and Allied reels side by side at Lisbon, both sides providing hundreds of thousands of feet. Editors on this end complain of too much expensive and useless footage. Large amounts are said to be either too obviously propagandist or monotonously repetitious. The amount of incoming footage, too, is oat of proportion to the one-reel, twice-weekly release of the American companies, making the newsreel relatively the costliest of current films. All companies hope for better picture. Every British ship, it is reported, carries a 16 mm. camera, and therefore, naval pictures are shot in the smaller size. Blowing them up to 35 mm. results in loss of quality. None of the war film material from any country is technically good. Films are shot with hand cameras, under adverse circumstances, and are duped six or seven times before reaching the exhibitor. The first actual fighting pictures came through in May, best of which were of the naval battle for the control of Norway. Naval and refugee material has been superior to land fighting films. The most spectacular land pictures were those shot early in the war on the conquest of Poland. March of Time, which is not interested in spot news, has had crews in London and Paris shooting war background. A half-million feet of film have been stored up on the Allied home front, showing industries, war preparations, rehearsals, manoeuvres, etc. Although some of their men were drafted, they are still shooting. The company expects to obtain actual fighting material by purchase. Stories are planned on " France at War" and "England at War," the latter chiefly about the fleet. Two camera crews are in the Far East ; one is en route from the Dutch East Indies; another is in Hong Kong. Despite the limitations in coverage which prevent the newsreel from showing many phases of the war, the films now reaching the American public do perform a useful function in giving a visual sense of war conditions. And although much good spot news is held back by censorship offices, this vvar is getting unprecedented film coverage. When it is over we shall probably have the opportunity of seeing it in detail on the screen — shot by shot.