Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

94 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER New Documentary Films (continued from p. 93) Time and Tide. Paul Rotha Productions for M.O.I. Editing: Jack Ellitt. C.F.L. 15 mins. Bailey Bridge. Merlin Productions for M.O.I. Direction: Arthur Barnes. C.F.L. 11 mins. Subjects: The design and application of the Bailey Bridge. Marine salvage. Treatment: Films Division has made a practice since its beginning of commissioning simple films, each explaining some aspect of the war. By now there must be scores of them, and the units have not only kept up a high general standard of production, but usually manage to add some imaginative touch of exposition to each, which makes the difference between a humdrum job and a film of quality. Bailey Bridge and Time and Tide are not exceptions. The former contains an interview with Bailey, who demonstrates the principles of his invention w ith matchboxes. To see this is not only satisfying and amusing in itself, but one understands once and for all what the bridge is and why it has been important. The rest of the film, an almost too plainly photographed account of the process of erecting the bridge, gains correspondingly in interest. Time and Tide shows the raising and beaching of a small vessel sunk in harbour by the enemy. This time the process is explained with the help of homely and crude models of the simplest kind. They are used as one might use a salt cellar and pepper pot on the dinner table in order to explain a military manoeuvre. The effect is not only to interpret what might be obscure, but to enhance the effect of the other scenes which, in this case, are exceptionally well shot, though the action seems to have been covered insufficiently. However, gaps in continuity are neatly bridged in the editing, which is generally effective. The whole is busy, bustling, human and exciting. Broken Dykes. M.O.I, and Netherlands Information Bureau. Direction: John Ferno. M.OI. Theatrical release for August. 15 mins. Subject: When the British captured Antwerp from the landward side, German batteries on the island of Walcheren still commanded the approach to the harbour, which could not be used until they had been dislodged. The R.A.F. breached the dykes by bombing. The island was flooded and the Germans forced to evacuate. The people and their animals were marooned and had to be rescued. Treatment: John Ferno is surely one of the foremost documentary director-cameramen in the world. His photography in The Four Hundred Million and Spanish Earth will not be forgotten, and Broken Dykes is a worthy successor to these two famous films. It is a simple and closely observed account of the sufferings and fortitude of scores of Dutch families. The streets of their towns and villages have become sea-lanes requiring not only boats, but pilots who know the set of the current and the position of drowned land mines; the whole island has gone back to be at the bottom of the North Sea, and the houses arc merely rocks sticking up. All this and much more Ferno has recorded in a film which will be remembered when lots of others will have been junked. It contains as sympathetically photographed scenes of people as have ever been taken, and the faces of the people are the laces which Rembrandt and Breugel saw and recorded. Propaganda Effect: One can learn more about the sufferings of Europe from this film than from most of the newspaper accounts rolled together. POINTS FOR DISCUSSION CANADIAN AND U.S. PUBLICATIONS REVIEWED Agriculture and Consumer; Social Planning; Canada and the World at War; Education; 4 Film Catalogues published by the National Film Board of Canada. 1945. Canada in Action. Film Discussion Notes Nos. 1, 2a, B and D. The Canadian Council of Education in Citizenship. 1942—45. A Guide to Film Forums. National Film Board of Canada. 1945. the warmest admirer of the M.O.I. Films Division could not give it much credit for the publications it has issued or inspired, for there have been none, except a dim booklet on The Silent Village and a pleasantly got up book of stills published some years ago. Judging by the luxurious style and the huge circulations of the books published under the auspices of the Publications Division of the M.O.I, lack of paper cannot be the reason for the silence of Films Division, and one is forced to conclude that Films Division is uninterested. Yet surely it is the duty of a department, spending tens of thousands of pounds each year on producing good non-theatrical films and on running an efficient and far-reaching service of mobile projectors, to spend a few hundreds on printing and circulating material to help the public make the best possible use of the services available? Apart from anything else, it is astonishing that Films Division, which has to its credit one of the most imaginative and important nontheatrical film schemes in the world, should be so inarticulate about its own most notable achievement. Here is something of interest to every educator, administrator, Local Government Official, Welfare Worker, parson and Trade Union Official in the country, let alone hundreds of thousands of citizens in every walk of life. Yet so far as we know, Films Division has never published a single considered statement about the theory and practice of non-theatrical as it affects every man, woman and child in the country. All we get is, year by year, a mimeographed press statement consisting only of statistics set out in the driest possible way. Films Division has its own press office but rarely do the press have an opportunity of learning about non-theatrical programmes. Is Films Division above learning from the excellent Canadian pamphlets listed above, or even from the excellent pamphlets put out by its own offices in New York? For non-theatrical requires more than the enthusiasm of its regional film officers and the silent loyalty of the growing band of 23,000,000 people who attend its film's each year. Films — for all the enthusiasm of 23,000,000 people — arc not deposited on people's doormats like a newspaper. Their efficient and economical use requires, at least, attractive subject catalogues and discussion notes. The Canadian subject catalogues, each with a distinctive cover of its own, are pleasant to the eye. Inside, the pages are well laid out with succinct synopses. But the most interesting set of publications are those for "•film forums" or dis Labour's Film Forum. Vol. 2, No. 6. Nationa Film Board of Canada. 1945. How to Stage a Film Show. The National FilmL Society of Canada, 1942; reprinted in 1945. The Arts in Canada and the Film. National Film : Board of Canada. 1945. Children of the City. British Information Services, New York. 1945. The Fifth Year. British Information Services. New York. 1945. cussion groups. The Canada in Action series discuss one, two or more films in each issue. Each film is analysed; there are maps when necessary; notes on what to look for in each film are supplied ; there is a list of suggested topics for discussion, with a bibliography. The organisers of the films forums are invited to fill up ^ questionnaire in which they can express their opinions on the visual background material accompanying the films. To support the whole scheme, the National Film Board has issued A Guide to Film Forums suggesting ways o" organising them, and urging everyone to "make motion pictures the centre for your club or community activities". Labour's Film Forum is a publication issued monthly for Trade Unions and Labour Groups. How to Stage a Film Sho* consists of practical hints on 16 mm. projection and showmanship. The Canadian pamphlets listed above no: only suggest a penetrating sense of the public use of film which appears to be beyond the grasp of Films Division; they also illustrate the diversity of films now being made in Canada The finely printed The Arts in Canada and the Film describes and illustrates films on traditional songs of Quebec, folk music and handicrafts. Canadian landscape painting and Chinese Art Coloured illustrations show stills from Norman . McClaren*s fantasies, development of the technique he invented in Love on the Wing made for the British G.P.O. in 1937. We learn, too. that Alexieff, creator of the celebrated Night on m Bare Mountain is now working in Canada. Comparable with the Canadian discussHB notes is Children of the City issued by the British Library of Information in New York to support ' the distribution in America of the film of the same title. It is excellently got up, well illustrated.! with a last page of "discussion points". Why hasl not this booklet been issued in Britain? Or arel our own problems too unimportant to presen: to our own people? The Fifth Year by the British Library o" Information consists of a collection of \erse b> leading British poets on various aspects of the < war. illustrated by stills from M.O.I, films. Though films Di\ision has so far ignored.! even disdained the creating of a public conversant with the theorj and practice of non ' theatrical, and it has hampered its own work for lack of active, articulate and critical audience groups, kept supplied with discussion notes an,: questionnaires, it is still not too late to begin. Can a start be made forthwith.'