Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FILMS OF 1945 !'!■: C Owing to shortage of space we have fallen behind with film reviews. Below we endeavour to correct the fault by giving brief notices of as many as possible of the films which we have missed. The fact that the notices are necessarily short does not mean that the films are any less important than ones previously reviewed at greater length; in this rapid tour we have only time to note the salient features. The following notes are edited from material supplied by several reviewers. Firstly we would like to note the establishment of two new directors who are fulfilling their early promise. Ken Annakin and Budge Cooper, whose films are reviewed below, have shown in the past that they were directors whose work would be interesting to follow. Annakin 's quick, rich, pictorial sense made his films a pleasure to watch, and Budge Cooper's warm and sympathetic handling of people gave her films a very moving quality. To these directorial capabilities, they are both adding a growing maturity and understanding. Fenlands and West Riding (Green Park) are directed by Ken Annakin and most beautifully photographed by Peter Hennessy. To his feeling for the patterns of the countryside Annakin is adding an awareness of people and their ways of living. Fenlands is a lovely and informative film about that part of England where man fights a peipetual battle with waters. Notable sequences are those in which a man goes duck shooting with a strange miniature cannon, and the rebuilding of the flood-holding banks. The synchronous part of the film is not so deftly handled and there seemed no very good reason for ending the film on a note of visual lamentation, but these are minor points and do not spoil an excellent job. It is worth noting, in connection with the commentary, that the East Anglian dialect seems to be more easily understood the most. In West Riding, Annakin has caught the solidity of Yorkshire with great skill and this survey of its people and their work and play is, apart from a certain tendency to meander, a warm and satisfactory picture. Also from Green Park comes The Proud City, made for M.O.I. ; Make Fruitful the Land, and Farmer's Boy, both made for the British Council. The first of these, partly by commentary, partly by direct speech from Lord Latham, Sir Patrick Abercrombie and others, gives an impression of the huge scheme prepared by the L.C.C. for the re-planning of London. Unlike many films it is most interesting when it utilises models and animation to show what is proposed. More of this and a little less of conventional shooting would have led to a more practical and useful contribution to a theme which should interest all Londoners. Proud City, directed by Ralph Keene and produced by Edgar Anstey, is an excellent introduction to the subject of building a new London. Make Fruitful the Land is a Technicolor excursion into agriculture and the rotation of crops. Although it is always pleasant to look at, the film rather falls between two stools, being neither technical enough for teaching purposes nor simple and interesting enough for entertainment. The diagrams were very fresh and pleasantly drawn by W. M. Larkins but were not particularly well worked out as far as the animation was concerned. Briskly and efficiently Farmer's Boy, directed by Peter Price, tells us what goes on at an Agricultural Training College. It is very neat and crisp and does a useful job in emphasising the scientific approach to farming. From Halas-Batchelor comes a Technicolor film called Handling Ships, made for the Admiralty. At first thought, animated drawings would seem the only means of showing precisely the right and wrong ways of bringing a ship into harbour. But if the pictures are really to teach they must be slower and smoother than is humanly possible by this method. Hence the technique is used here of combining models with drawings, so that the ships move smoothly and the wind and tide are represented by symbols. Except for a few fancy feet at the start, every part of the film is insistently lucid. Ingenuity is rigidly controlled; not a shot nor a colour effect is superfluous or over elaborate. Handling Ships is a first-rate example of a training film technique, which could be used with equal success for other subjects. A short teaching film, How a Motor Car Engine Works, made by Verity for the Ford Motor Co., is also successful. It explains entirely by cartoon the function of the cylinders and pistons in making a motor car go. The animation, by T. R. Thumwood, is excellent, and the film is extremely clear and easy to understand. It also has the virtue of making you want to know how the other parts of the engine work. Altogether a first-class job, directed by Max Munden. For Horizon Films, Max Munden directed Song of the People. The script for this film was written by Munden and Paul Potts and the music is by Spolianski who has contributed one of his usual lively scores. It is a very odd film indeed and many people will find it rather irritating because of its lack of style or sparkle. The message of the film, which was made for the Co-operative Movement, is that workers must unite and the film tells, roughly, the story of the growth of the working class movement by means of re-enacted sequences from history (the most hazardous of all film endeavours), and a sound track worked out in terms of chorus and music. By the mere fact of its bravely breaking away from the more accepted manner of presenting such a subject it succeeds in being entertaining and impressive. The total result is slightly marred by the fact that some of the sung words are inaudible but this is a minor point and does not prevent enjoyment of half-an-hour of something new and fresh. From Verity comes Chemists at Work, a competently made but purposeless film. It belongs to that tiresome category of films. The Tour Round the Works. It is impossible to believe that there was not an excellent story to be told in the place where M & B 693 and Mepacrine are made, to mention only two of the products of which we are given the usual irritating glimpses. In much the same manner, only this time in Technicolor, we are given a look at the optical glass industry in Let's See. Our reviewer could recall very little about this British Council film except that it was very nicely photographed and the colour was good. Another film. Steam, directed by Jimmy Rogers, with music by Clifton Parker, was commissioned by Messrs. Babcock and Wilcox for overseas showing to technical audiences. A brief history of the process of steam raising introduces the planning of a modern plant together with the use of its components. These are shown being manufactured and finally, assembled into a giant "high head" unit. The film is a modern saga of steam raising and richly deserves the superlatives that Hollywood is wont to bestow on its own successes. It is a pity that the excellence of the photography and setting should be marred by the monotony and stridency of the music. Steel made for the British Council, and superbly well photographed in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff, turns out to be just a smashing advertisement for that particular colour process. Steel manufacture is a natural subject for colour fireworks and here we get a display that stays on the retina of the mind all the way home on the bus, and, indeed, much longer than that. Unfortunately the commentary hardly gets to the mind at all, so the meaning of steel to the community, and of British steel to the world, is not much illuminated. Papworth Village Settlement (World Wide), directed by James Carr, is one of the most interesting films we have seen for a long time. It tells the story of the tuberculosis settlement with special emphasis on the rehabilitation of the patients. It is so skilfully made that it looks extremely simple but it is a simplicity that covers a thorough knowledge of the subject and results in a clear and moving exposition of the problem, its treatment and the results. It is an excellent story most warmly and happily directed. From Realist comes The Plan and the People, directed by Frank Sainsbury. This presents the human angle on the L.C.C. plan for London. Heart warming is an abused epithet but that is what this film is. Plans on paper are all very well but eventually people have got to live in the plan. Here is the ordinary fellow's viewpoint in a series of human and understanding sequences. The enemies of the plan are presented in rather a grotesque light but the picture of their machinations is fair enough. Certainly the ordinary people shown in this film deserve the best of all possible plans. All the skilful film-making in the world cannot completely save a poorly-conceived idea. A Soldier Comes Home, a fifteen minuter for the Ministry of Information, made by Gryphon Films, is apparently intended to warn waiting wives and husbands returning from the wars that they may have to face a period of psychological readjustment. Everyone has done their best to put this theme across but the basic idea was obviously never very clearly worked out and what might have been a useful film turns out to be an emotionally muddled rough sketch for a film yet to be made. At the beginning of this series of reviews we mentioned the name of Miss Budge Cooper. Her film is called Birthday (D.A.T.A.), produced by Donald Alexander and photographed by Suschitsky. Its subject is how a baby is born and this is slightly mixed up with the problem of infant mortality in Scotland. Budge Cooper is rapidly proving that she is one of the best directors of ordinary people that documentary has produced. But despite her sympathetic handling of people the film is not successful. It starts off by explaining what a bad state of infant mortality there is in Scotland and how many mothers and children die each year. It then, without a break, explains how simple a process birth is,