Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

28 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 3 1944 NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS The New Crop. Green Park Unit of Verity Films. Direction: Ken Annakin. Camera: Geoffry Williams. Associate Producer: E. Anstey. M.O.I. 20 minutes. Non-T. Subject: The afforestation of Britain. Treatment: This film follows the usual line: trees — the demand for timber caused by the war — science stepping in — the future of timber in Britain. All very neat and nice. Beautifully photographed, slickly directed, nothing omitted, except perhaps clear thinking. Even the commentator seemed to get a little tired of his rigmarole towards the end of the second reel. Perhaps the formula is getting a little stale through over use, or perhaps to-day's audiences deserve something tougher. The conclusions drawn towards the end are just a little too Utopian for the amount of information given in the earlier part of the film. Soft-wood growing seems certainly to be a get-rich-quick procedure, but while covering vast tracks of Britain with pine and spruce may be a road to prosperity, it will surely bring with it fresh problems. Somehow the case is too glib, the solution too easy ; one is almost forced to suspect a snag, rather as in those shiny American magazines whose advertisements promise you the millenium if you travel by a certain railroad. One knows that the iced water tap wouldn't always work and the panoramic windows be often obscured by plebeian dirt. The case for State Control of forests is well put, but here again the film fails by taking the whole thing too smoothly and making it sound too easy. Whichever way you look at it there is something slightly sinister about a pine or spruce plantation and in a strange way this is reflected in this film. There is something wrong somewhere and without knowing more about the whole subject it is difficult to know what it is, but it is there just the same. Propaganda Value: Good informational stuff, beautiful to look at, but as has been said above, a bit too easy for audiences, who can stand something less predigested. Cotswold Club. Strand Films. Direction: Charles de Lautour. Camera: Cyril Arapoff". Associate Producers: E. Anstey and D. Taylor. M.O.I. Non-T. 12 mins. Subject: The work of the Village Garden Produce Association. Treatment: A retired bank official has gone to live in a village and he finds it difficult to get to know people. He tells his story in the first person, and as proof of the fact that he finds it difficult to mix with the villagers, we see a long shot of a church after the Sunday morning service, with all the congregation walking one way and he and his wife walking sadly away in the opposite direction among the tombstones. He goes on to tell us that there was not enough food to feed one of the neighbour's pigs and how the schoolmistress wrote to the Ministry of Agriculture who sent down a fellow to organise a Garden Produce Association in the village. Thus the banker got to know everybody, the pig was fed, the villagers increased their production of vegetables and also learnt how to market them. The deliberately naive approach to the subject somehow docs not quite succeed in its purpose. One never quite believes in the village and its people, although it is nicely shot and the people themselves come across quite well. Perhaps this is because the film has an air of playing down to its audience, and the subject is treated very much from the outside. Propaganda Value: Should be useful for showing in villages that have not heard of this particular scheme of the Ministry of Agriculture. Children of the City. Direction: Budge Cooper. Camera: V. Suschitsky. Production: Paul Rotha. M.O.I, for Scottish Education Department, Scottish Home Dept. 30 mins. Subject: Child delinquency. In Scotland in this instance but, fundamentally, the problem this film states could be anywhere. Treatment: In the spate of short films now being made, few are memorable. Perhaps through overuse of a formula, or lack of real, honest feeling on the part of a director, or through official wet blanketing, most do their job and are soon forgotten ; some are not remembered long enough to be even forgotten. Children of the City comes as a healthy shock, a reminder of the power of the documentary film. Absorbingly interesting, telling its story in terms of people, of real live people and not lay figures, it yet makes its points as clearly as though it had been made of diagrams. And when it is finished it leaves the mind not dazed or doped but working fast. The film tells the story of Alec, Duncan and Robbie, three boys in Edinburgh who break into a pawnbroker's for a lark and find themselves taking money from the till when the police come in. An escapade has become a crime. (How Jean Vigo would have liked this sequence with the small boy in the old-fashioned picture hat posturing in front of the mirror!) The day arrives for their appearance before the Juvenile Court, and as they and their parents meet to go together to the Court, we see something of their backgrounds. Alec, the ringleader, from a slum room, with a father whose dark history of pre-war unemployment has demoralised the large family. Duncan, whose father is away at war, from the home where his mother struggles overhard to keep things nice. Robbie, who has a squint, from a good working-class home. These are the three boys, Alec, dark and lowering ; Duncan, fair and defiant, and Robbie, the youngest, puzzled but undismayed. Their mothers typify their home lives ; Alec's mother is feckless and worn out ; Duncan's is nervy and bottled up, and Robbie's is matter-of-fact and unimaginative. The Juvenile Court in Edinburgh, which seems a fairly sensibly run place, takes each case in relation to the child and his background of school and home. The verdicts are given. Robbie is aged ten. Perhaps his squint is at the bottom of his troubles. His case is to be held open while he attends a Child Guidance Clinic. Duncan, aged 13, who has a good intelligence record but a bad school attendance, is to be visited at regular intervals by the probation officer. Alec, aged 13£ is another matter ; he has been in the Court before and is the ringleader of the younger ones. His home life gives him no help, so he is sent for a course of disciplining at an approved school. A bmcvolent eye will be kept on all three of them for the next year or so. Perhaps it sounds a bit grim in print but it comes to life all right on the screen and appears a reasonable ad hoc solution of the problem, under existing conditions. We see Robbie at the Child Welfare Centre starting his treatment, we see the probation officer calling on a reluctant Duncan, and we see Alec busy at the approved school. That is the end of their story in so far as it concerns the film. The practical side of the matter has been looked after as well as possible. But these boys are only three of a whole generation which often nears the borderline between play and crime, a state of: affairs accentuated by the conditions of war. , Now the camera, moving over overcrowded playgrounds, over gangs of children playing in mean streets, poses the real problem. Children get up to mischief because there is no proper outlet for the bursting, surging, creative energy within them. Schools are only open for a certain | number of hours per day and a certain number • of days per week. It is these free hours, playing a large and important part in a child's life, which make the problem. The film suggests there ought to be play centres, organised activities of all kinds, scope i for unorganised activities, too. (During this • sequence the film takes a swift skate across the thin ice of fascism when it refers, pictorially, to the A.T.C. and other pre-Service organisations). | Thus we have a human problem related to a general one and a suggested and admittedly only j partial solution. This is one of the strengths of the film. There is no easy thinking or finding of a glib solution. But our attention has been held by this story of Alec, Duncan, Robbie, and our I minds have been made to work on the problem thes represent. The film has done its job, the job I more films should do and it has done it in a I purely visual and cinematic way. The com1 mentary is particularly well written and sincerely | and sensibly spoken. The director's handling of! the people is excellent, and the cameraman has I equalled her with the photography. They have I made a film of which they can well be proud. Propaganda Value: No one seeing this film can I fail to be affected by it, and after seeing it, to | think. Danger Area. Producer: Sydney Box. Director: Henry Cass. Scenario: Inez Holden. Camera: Raymond Elton. Production: Verity Films. M.O.I. Non-T. Length ; 20 mins. Subject: A rush job in a munitions plant. An urgent Admiralty demand for a shell filled with a new type of explosive has to be met at short notice. Treatment: The story is told largely in dramatic form, with dialogue. The basic idea is, of course, the race against time, with addition of the danger element arising from the handling of a new explosive of uncertain temperament. There is an especially dramatic sequence concerning the dismantling of a fuse; this is shot with a nice sense of suspense and lighting. Throughout the film the direction is sincere and straightforward, if at times a little raw. Perhaps not enough is made of the workers themselves, whose admirable acting could have taken more footage against that devoted to the experts in charge. But in general the film does a good job in portraying the atmosphere of a munitions plant — the elaborate precautions, widely spaced buildings, and the deliberate slow unhurried movements of the personnel. Propaganda Value: Good. (continued overleaf)