Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

CONTENTS NEWS LETTER A WAR TO BE AVERTED LETTERS FROM RUSSIA EDUCATIONAL FILM NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS PROBLEMS IN PRODUCTION OF U.S. NAVY TRAINING FILMS assignment: india by Maurice Lancaster P FILM GRAMMAR _» by Arthur Elton to F1LM SOCIETIES "^ D.N.L. ANNOUNCEMENT 1 2 3, 4 5, 8 6, 7 9, 10 11 U. i 1 $vi $ £Y VOL. 5 NO. 1 ONE-SHtttlWtT TMS ,','.'■1 :.JM A WAR TO BE AVERTS OF MODERN ART Most films are produced to make dollars and pounds, but selling films is selling ideas, not groceries. When the film salesman has his profit safely in his pocket, the ideas begin to work on men's minds. From the conflict between profit and ideas spring most of the current controversies on the future of the film industry ; controversies that have now become a matter of public concern. There appears to be considerable danger that a situation of hostility might arise from the present uncertainties regarding the future of the British Film Industry in relation to the powerful combines which, from Hollywood and New York, are in a position to launch an attempt at world monopoly. It would be a thousand pities if such a conflict should arise, for it is something which ought to be avoidable in terms of international good sense. But the situation is beginning to look serious. People are getting perturbed. It is being said that there is no reason why the British people should be brought up on American culture, simply because American finance dominates our film industry. It would be so fatally easy, say the pessimists, for the Government to consider the British film industry on a comparable level of importance with the manufacture of, say, luxury leather goods — a source of revenue from foreign markets to be used as a bargaining counter when allocation of post-war markets is on the Anglo-American agenda. The Government might think it smart business to sacrifice our claim for film markets in exchange for a wide distribution of Australian wool or British blankets. To appreciate fully the dangers of such a policy we might well consider the history of the Catholic Church. Catholicism, like Hollywood, has always been looking for new markets for old ideas. And wherever Catholicism found a market it left behind, not only its product, but an obstinate deposit of residual ideas. Today a growing number of people are beginning to feel that Hollywood has done, is doing, and will do the same, and that not always consciously and deliberately, but always effectively, the American motion picture has spread and is spreading throughout the world an ideology which, whatever its suitability for American domestic consumption, is inappropriate to all peoples. It is being pointed out that the American film may have raised standards of cleanliness throughout the world, that it may have encouraged us to wash and clean our teeth, to revere the physical beauty of our women and to keep our grape-fruit in refrigerators ; that it may have publicised a moral code at once salutary and sentimental, but that its encouragement of materialist and individualist philosophies is out-of-date in relation to developing European cultures. To the foregoing we must hasten to add that we have not yet succeeded in making the British film industry a medium of expression for the British people and the British view, though it is nearer to it than at any time before. The problem is complex. Solutions which have been proposed are contradictory and cut across normal political alignments. There is a need for objectivity and freedom from old prejudice. The Board of Trade must watch with jealous eyes the buying into our industry, both at the production and showing ends, by American interests. Two Acts of Parliament have already been needed to loosen the American hold on British film production. It is difficult for the British film industry not to think of this conflict in national terms. Yet is it not rather a financial fight between groups, the stronger of which is at present American? Following this line of thought, what is our answer to those supporters of Rank who argue that the building up of a strong centralised British film industry is more likely to achieve success against the American colossus than a number of small, independent British groups which in this industry inevitably speak with dissentient voices? Should not our independent producers of second-rate comedy, hoping to hoist their dividends with their .Union Jacks, examine their heads as well as their hearts; and reflect that patriotic righteousness still provides no justification for bad musicals? . Rank's supporters in their turn must consider whether centralised financial control by a single individual with strong sociological persuasions does not ultimately and inevitably mean centralised dictatorship of subjects and ideas. Meantime the problem remains ; and the highly divergent views of the industry and the high levels on which the financial conflict is moving, make it essentially a problem that cannot be solved without official Government help. If the British people are, as we believe, entitled to a just proportion of the world's screen time, it is all the more necessary that the Government, no less than the trade, should negotiate on a level which takes into full account the value of the film as a medium of international understanding. It is not merely a matter of international trade, nor merely a matter of our own national culture. It is a matter of seeing to it that all nations which engage in film-making (and what nation should not?) are in a position to make their own contribution to world screens. As it is, it looks as though we have made up our minds to engage on purely bilateral negotiations and manoeuvres. Yet it is pretty clear in most other fields that the structure of a world society must from now on depend on multilateral conceptions. In our efforts to safeguard our own national culture in terms of film we should not forget the many other nations with equal claims. We might consider speaking for others as well as for ourselves, and so bring to our dealings with the United States film industry a conception which will overstep national boundaries and make a real contribution to the world planning which must follow this war.