Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 1944 ASSIGNMENT:— INDIA by Maurice Lancaster On the Indian trip which he describes, Maurice Lancaster, British representative of "March of Time", was accompanied by cameraman Bob Navarro. W^e met in Simla on Sunday, July 13th, 1941" The last time I had seen Bob was on the previous December 13th, in the black-out at Euston when he took the train north to begin his voyage to Equatorial Africa; since then he had crossed the Equator six times by foot, by car and by air, had travelled many thousands of miles in Darkest Africa with the Fighting (then Free) French, eventually landed up in Cairo and flown down to India to join me. I had come the other way round — first going to Halifax by convoy, then down to New York, and flying from there to Singapore via Honolulu and Australia. "What is the assignment?" Bob asked me, "India," I replied. "Do you know anything about it?" "No", he said, shaking his head. I had already been two weeks in India, arriving in Bombay just as the monsoon broke. This had not encouraged me greatly, as our Producer, Louis de Rochemont had said, "There's not much you can do about the monsoon, it just comes out grey on the film, sheer waste, better try and plan your itinerary so that you can avoid it." So, after talking solidly about India, its problems and our problems with ten different people daily, all of whom told me a different story, none of whom would eat the same food and worse, few of whom would take a drink, I set off through the washed-out countryside in the Punjab Mail, armed with a copy of The Rains Came, to find out what the great minds of the Government of India had to suggest in the rarefied air of Simla. Bob and I soon decided that we had better go and see things for ourselves before we began actually to shoot. So, we left Simla and made a short tour to Delhi, Allahabad, where we stayed with Mrs. Pandit Nehru's sister, and then, after a hideous 24-hour journey, to Wardha, where we had an appointment to see Mr. Gandhi. Gandhi was at the time one of the few Congress Leaders who was not in gaol. Appointment with Gandhi We were exhausted after our train journey, hot and dirty, also needed a square meal. Young men in the white Gandhi cap met us at the station and we piled into the ancient green Ford, the only twentieth century vehicle in Wardha, and were driven to the guest house. The guest house is used for visiting Congressmen, but was at this time empty. The first thing they asked was, "Have you got an appointment?" One of the first things I had done after my arrival in Bombay was to send by special delivery my letter of introduction to Mr. Gandhi, and had received, a few days later, a postcard (whenever possible he uses this means of communication so that the inland revenue will not benefit by the extra cost of a letter in an envelope), saying that he would be pleased to see us any day except Monday, that being his day of silence. There was no problem and after they had telephoned to his village at Sevagram, we were told to present ourselves at 4 p.m. We were then shown our rooms and had a (wash, after which a meal was served on a sort of ipatio. There were various places set, that is to !>ay some grass mats were placed on the stone floor, and then there were two absurd little tables and chairs, obviously for our use. We protested against these and they were removed, and we squatted on our haunches on the floor with the rest of the company, and set to with our fingers to appease our very hearty appetites on a meal of vegetables and gye with chappattis, which were served on a large green leaf for a plate. Soon the legs ached very painfully from the squatting, but we held our positions until the meal was over. No Electricity Later in the day, arrayed in our cleanest white shorts and shirts, we got into the old green Ford and motored over the dusty track for a few miles until we saw ahead a collection of mud houses — very uninspiring to look at. This was it. Our thoughts immediately turned to pictures, and we began to ask such questions as where the electric light was in all the houses and model school. Electric light, said they, Gandhi leads the same simple life as all the poor peasants of India. We have no such thing at Sevagram, nor do we have any plumbing. With these problems uppermost in our minds, we were ushered into the house, or rather the room which was the house. Seated on the floor and spinning all the time while he talked, was the old man, surrounded by people who were listening to him and who occasionally asked him a question — their shoes were all outside. In a very still voice he asked us to wait a few moments, and we listened to him ; then he turned to us and in the same still voice asked what he could do for us. We explained the purpose of our mission, sought his advice and suggestions. He listened most politely, and turned us down flat. That is to say, he said : "You can have everything in Sevagram but me". We protested that without him Sevagram was nothing, but without avail, and having accepted his invitation to stick around and make ourselves thoroughly at home, told him that we would return at some future date. The next day we went to Bombay which we had decided on as a base. Here we collected an Eyemo from New York, and some tropically packed raw stock and started to work. We soon found that, charming as the Indian people are, they are not the easiest people to make a film about. Set up a camera in the street, you are immediately surrounded by a milling throng of thousands and soon the police have to come and break it up, and if you have not the right passes, will whisk you off to gaol until you explain yourself. Also, few of the policemen have any English, so that is no use explaining to them: far better to go quietly and hope that you will find a sympathetic white inspector at the station. Passes in English are of little use, as few policemen read English. Our many Indian friends were most interested in our work and helped us to line up some of the sequences. However, invariably all the actors stood in a line and gaped at the camera, although it was explained to them what action was required, and that most important, they must act as if we were not there. Our well-meaning friends would shrug their shoulders and say, "It is of no use, Indian people will always look at the camera, otherwise they are not sure that you are taking their pictures." Bob, however, would take his camera out alone or with me and spend hours just stalking the natural bazaar shots that we got in Delhi and Calcutta and Bombay. This involved the usual patience of Job. We would have to wait around sometimes as much as an hour intent on one particular shot which we might want, and at the same time, performing the difficult task of not being at all interested. Then when the action involved happened, it was a question of having enough anticipation to stop down, focus, of having the right lens in the camera to swing round and get the fleeting ten second shot that was to prove so useful in the final editing of the film. Indian feature pictures are I suppose, the longest in the world, anything over thirteen thousand feet. They have many studios, some well equipped, but are a little happy-go-lucky about the technical details — or, they are over cautious. There is one true story of a lab. where some sound film was being developed ; outside was a notice in nine languages — "Silence — sound film being developed". Bob was in constant terror whenever a coolie picked up his camera. Invariably he balanced it on his head; then would ensue a violent scene in which the coolie would have the camera pulled off his head, and have it more or less forcibly hung round his neck by the straps. Nineteen Thousand Miles Our assignment took us in all eight months, during which we travelled 15,000 miles by train, and 4,000 miles by car. 26,000 feet of raw stock were exposed mainly through the Eyemo, though a Newman was also used as a reserve camera. Apart from occasionally developing a few hundred feet in Bombay, all the material was shipped by sea to New York, a voyage of at least five weeks, and we had no complaints that any of it did not arrive in first-class condition. The tropically packed film we received from New York was immediately stored at Kodak's, who had a very good installation for keeping raw stock, and all kinds of photographic materials. In normal times, India is Kodak's third largest market for raw stock, due to the length of film involved in shooting an Indian feature film, and they have ample storage space, properly controlled for humidity and temperature so that the stock does not deteriorate. When we were on the road, Bob took the precaution of shipping every thousand feet back to Kodak as it was shot to be stored by them until such time as there was sufficient to ship. Likewise, they were shipping us raw stock in small batches wherever we were in India. We found Mr. Quirbet, the technical head, who was one of the vintage cameramen of England and France, a great help and friend to us. After endless talks we did at last get Gandhi to allow us to bring the camera near enough to him to make some shots, but the climax of our experiences with him was at the Congress party meeting, held after the congressmen had come out of gaol, and soon after Japan had come into the war. A special "Pandal" was built at Wardha and people came to the meeting from all over India, Bob and I were the only Europeans present. The Pandal was a large hall built of cocoanut matting, and completely porous. If the (Continued on Page 10)