Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 4 1944 47 Movie Parade By John Huntly Jarty, Atten — shun!" A hundred R.A.F. trainees stand before a large drab hall larked Station Cinema. It has a small foyer, a ay box, and a few stills on the walls, but other ise it is no different from the rest of the uildings. "Stand at Ease!" A burly navigator-to-be oints to a photo of to-night's show and raises n up-turned thumb to his pal. It is Betty Grable ; 'oney Island is on. "Lead in, the front file." A wireless operator is reparing for a sleep. An L.A.C. with the dirty ip badge thinks these information things are a ead loss; he says so. "Follow on, the remainder." A flight mechanic lought the one about the shipyards last week as pretty good. His "oppo." thinks these civvies et too much money. "Cut out the smoking; this is a parade!" The ergeant considers this cinema business is a good icket ; he will probably be able to nip back to le mess for a natter with the new Warrant ifficer. In the projection room a fellow who used to ork at the Odeon is threading up. Bit of a bind, lese afternoon shows, especially with to-night's ;ature not checked yet. Blinking Yanks, too; ope that join in the second reel holds out. All le boys settled now. House lights — motor on — urtain — picture — sound ; he looks out through le glass port hole. The cinema is plain with distempered walls (a Drt of light colour) and harsh white lamps in a Use ceiling. The wooden floor slopes back and le seats are tip-ups. Fair sized stage, a few Dloured lights and a decent curtain; the place 'as once a hangar. The American Scene . . . I. Swedes in America. Tie speakers blare forth music ; the sound quality . good. "Who cares about bloody Swedes", says n A.C.2. A shot of Ingrid Bergman appears, ;lling us what the Swedes are doing in America. She's a wizard girl," says a Pilot who has now ome off "ops", "I saw her in Casablanca." In his home in Los Angeles, a director can nile, for he was right. Getting Miss Bergman ) do that commentary assured the audience's ttention. In the factory, in the Army, at home, at a ance, in the shops; we know what the Swedes )ok like in America. We also see that they are a emocratic people whose ideas are well suited to le American way of life. Miss Bergman bids us irewell. "Tame," says an apprentice fitter. What So Proudly We Hail . . . "Made for General Motors Ltd. by Sound Masters, Inc." hades of the Gas Industry! The Yanks have eard about John Grierson and don't see why ley shouldn't do it as well. Here is a good picire of an American family and the boys sit quiet nd absorb the factory and mother and the kids nd . . . "I knew that blasted join wouldn't hold" says le operator. Howls and whistles from the boys. >ver the sprocket, through the gate, over the brocket, into the sound, over the sprocket . . . lore howls and whistles. ". . . is the automobile factory where he puts in 5 day week . . ." On we go. "Not bad, that" is le verdict. "Too much flagwagging as usual" says a regular moviegoer. "Another of those March of Time commentaries" says another. Next comes The Home Place made by some American Agriculture Department. It is a tedious catalogue of American farms and houses and everyone is bored. You can tell by the restlessness. Common Cause by Verity Films. This is not Americans, but everyone. The cutting is clever and it gets its point across with a real sting. This is the stuff to give the troops, but those forced speeches always want watching. Finally, pure instruction from Beware, Butterfly Bomb About. "Grim things, them bombs" ... "I wondered what the b looked like" . . . "Not for me" . . . and so on. Everyone was deeply impressed. The attention to detail made the reconstruction real, the production made it clear, the direction gave it a punch. House lights, a rumble increasing to a roar as a hundred springs reassert their seats to the retracted position, and the boys file out into the sunlight. They have all learnt something (except those two who slept right from the start — been on the beer last night). Swedes in America was quite competent but it was too national and rather unimportant. What So Proudly was national as well, but it was treated with neat intimacy and aroused interest by "how the other side lives" angles. Common Cause was wide enough in scope but again the personal touch scored. Service audiences are also very appreciative of those little intimate details that make good documentary. Nothing is more fatal than the catalogue type of travelogue. The Home Place was a grim example, but loads of these travelogues make the same mistake. Photos in a book or lantern slides can give a catalogue of views and buildings. Perhaps after all the best use of the educational film lies in Butterfly Bomb. The educationals that spring to my mind are always The New Fire Bomb, Arthur Askey showing how not to sneeze, or watching a four-stroke engine in action. But then facts are more obvious than ideas, and Common Cause may have instilled a subconscious lesson equally as strong as Butterfly Bomb. At the larger camps, the cinema parades are gradually becoming organised, but a tremendous amount of improvement is still needed in the use of the 16mm. projectors. Here breakdowns are a regular occurrence and presentation often unimaginative. However the value of the film for the general education of the forces, along with discussion groups and information centres, speaks for itself. Service personnel always jump at a visit to the cinema in or out of working hours and with good material now coming from the studios the position of the educational film is slowly becoming stabilised. "Party, atten — shun! To the right — Dismiss!' New Soviet Films By Oleg Leonids by permission of Scientific and educational films constitute one ^of the most essential branches of Soviet cinematography, and aim to popularise and clarify scientific problems for students and schoolchildren. Such films have been extensively used in wartime as a medium of military training. They also serve a useful function in the army medical services. The screen shows major operations, newly-discovered methods of treating wounds, post-thesis, etc., which aid young doctors at the front to widen their scope of knowledge, to gain greater skill, and to restore the maximum number of wounded to the fighting ranks. Two hundred titles of technical-educational films are released annually in the U.S.S.R. Among others there are pictures on the use of trophy arms, on tank and sapper troops, on "Modern Medicine in the Patriotic War", "Injuries to the Skull and Brain," "Plaster Casts," "Physiotherapy," "War Medicine on the Western Front," A.R.P. training of the civil population. A series of educational films have been made especially for railway workers, under the auspices of the Cinema-Lecture Bureau of the Central Administration of the Educational Institutions of the People's Commissariat of Railways. The motion pictures, accompanied by lectures, may be seen at goods stations, in locomotive depot laboratories, and railway workshops. Many young people came to work on the railways during the war, and it was vitally important to improve their technical skill. In 1943 at one Moscow railway junction alone, over 500,000 people attended shows of educational films accompanied by lectures. Switchmen and signallers saw the whole switch and signalling system ; railway conductors got an idea of the cars, young engineers were shown the intricacies of the locomotive. There are films on the economy of fuel, on railway maintenance, on Soviet War News methods of speedy restoration of lines in liberated districts. Mobile cinemas with these films follow in the wake of the advancing troops of the Red Army. In addition to educational-scientific motion pictures "Glavetkhfilm" (Central Technical Films Administration) Studios are producing a number of so-called popular science shorts. They include, for example. Stage Stars, White Fang by Jack London, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov , and others. In Stage Stars produced by Valdimir Yurenev, the spectator will see the foremost actors of the Moscow Art Theatre working on a new production. The film on the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov will be of exceptional interest. It will give extracts from the most popular of his operas, performed by the best orchestras and singers in the U.S.S.R. in theatres of the multi-national peoples of the Soviet Union, in their native languages — Georgian, Kazakh, Russian, Tajik, Armenian and Ukrainian. The film is being produced by order of the Soviet government in connection with the recent centenary of the composer's birth. One of Rimsky-Korsakov's favourite pupils and followers, Boris Asafiev, composer and music critic, will collaborate in its production. Technical films have become very popular with Soviet audiences, and have received a high praise from the Government, which attributes great cultural value to this field of cinematography. Thus, The Depths of the Sea, and The Force of Life, produced by Alexander Zguridi, and cameramen Mikhail Piskunov and Gleb Troyansky, with the scientific advice of Professor Vladimir Lebedev and Peter Manteifel, were awarded Stalin Prizes. The central studios of educational-technical military films which during the war released a large number of these films on almost all branches of military science, were awarded the Order of the Red Star.