Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

22 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FILMS IN AUSTRALIA By Harry Watt, who has recently directed a story documentary in Australia Australia is a very film conscious country. It has always had a desire to make films about itself and in point of fact, more than sixty films have been made. Unfortunately very few of these have been of any worth. The reason for this is mainly that they have been made by well-intentioned but unskilled locals, and the culture and technical abilities necessary for the making of films was lacking. Another and perhaps more important reason for the failure, was a slavish desire to imitate the films of English and American type. Very seldom did they realise that the only way to create a national cinema was to create national feeling and atmosphere in their films. At present there are only two film makers of any standing in Australia. One is Ken Hall, the head of Cinesound Studios which, in addition to its production work, produces a weekly newsreel. Ken Hall has produced and directed about twenty features of all kinds. His biggest commercial successes, the "Dad and Dave" series, were slap-stick comedies about primitive out-back types, who are the equivalent of the American hill-billies. Many of these films are very funny, and have had considerable success in Australia and the provinces of England. They are disliked by the more intelligent Australian as misrepresenting their out-back folk, who are in fact the backbone of the country. Despite this, Ken Hall is a sincere and hard-working film maker. He is at present engaged on a film depicting the life of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith. This film is financed by Columbia, and is the first which American capital has made in Australia. The other film maker in Australia is Charles Chauvel. He has been struggling for many years on independent finance, and he has tried hard to put some of Australia's history and greatness on the screen. Unfortunately his scripts have seldom lived up to the size of his subjects, and the technical difficulties have made it impossible to get results commensurate with his ambitions. He had, however, one spectacular success, Forty Thousand Horsemen, a story of the Australian Light Horse in the last war. This got world-wide release because of the exciting action sequence at the end. Chauvel was given the job of making Australia's big war film, Rats of Tobruk, the story of the Australian divisions which held out so long in Tobruk. Unfortunately in an unhappy attempt to inject synthetic box office appeal into this picture, the story line got extremely muddled, and it had to be reckoned as a failure. These two films, Forty Thousand Horsemen and Rats of Tobruk, were the only two feature productions made in Australia during the war. Altogether Australia's film history in the war has been rather unhappy. Their Department of Information completely failed to make a film record of any worth of their great war contribu tion. Obsessed with newsreel technique, the Department officials practically ignored documentaries. Any attempts they made at film making were shoddy studio reconstructions. The only exceptions were one or two films made by Ralph Smart (who had been trained in Britain) for the Air Force, and one film of New Guinea called Jungle Patrol, made by Tom Gurr, a Sydney journalist. The reason for this was mainly that there were no film men of any worth recruited into the Department of Information, and the Civil Servants were so taken in by the pseudo-glamour of the commercial film that they held documentary in contempt. Yet the opportunities were endless. Amazing feats of ingenuity and enterprise were carried out in Australia without any film coverage. A highway to supply New Guinea was built right across Australia in a year. In Sydney, the world's largest dry dock was constructed under appalling wartime difficulties. In the unexplored north, air strips were cut out of the jungle in record time. And so on. To me coming from Britain, it was heart-breaking to see so many wonderful film chances thrown away. It was a heart-break also to find that responsible Australians felt this and everywhere one met a feeling of frustration and an appeal for help. Unfortunately the Civil Service had complete control, and I could do little. Now a National Films Board has been created. It is based on the Canadian Board which operated so successfully during the war. Unfortunately six of the seven members of the Board are civil servants with little knowledge of film. The Commissioner appointed is a journalist rather than a film maker, and although enthusiastic and sincere, he is not the teacher that is the first necessity for Government films in Australia at the moment. The situation here is very similar to the situation in Britain fifteen years ago — a large amount of goodwill, a small amount of money, considerable enthusiasm but no one to direct it. Owing to the Australian resentment of external criticism, I am afraid that the type of films that will be produced by the Film Board will be self-laudatory rather than self-critical. And of course the critical films are the more important ones if they are to teach citizenship. Subjects like soil erosion, conservation of water, reafforestation, etc., are crying out for films. Let's hope we get them. I am terrified that we will see kangaroos, Koala bears, and fields of waving wheat. Film-making facilities, apart from the natural one of fine scenery and sunlight, are exceedingly poor, and Cinesound Studios are a converted skating rink. The majority of equipment is homemade. It is amazing in its ingenuity, but the very fact that it is home-made tends to a lowering of standards. If you make something yourself, you are delighted if it works at all, and do not worry ft about the results it produces. The only othe. studio of any size is Pagewood, built in 1935, u Gaumont-British specification, to make the ill fated Flying Doctor. Britain, on this film, madi the usual hash of a goodwill gesture. Asked tc send out a production unit, she did not send he top technicians. The film was a fearful flop. Th< result was that Pagewood went bankrupt, th« equipment was dispersed and the first real chano of a film industry thrown away. This disaster wa: one of the things I had to live down. However Pagewood is still a good sound stage, and I believe that it could rise like the phoenix from its ashe Properly equipped, with up-to-date material, it could be the centre of a small industry. I believe that Australia can have successfu, film production provided it is kept modest and the right type of truly Australian outdoor sub jects are undertaken. With the present inflated costs in Britain, action pictures can be turned out in Australia at a third the British prices. U they are any good, a considerable amount of the production costs can be recovered in Australia and « ith improved flying facilities, artistes can be used there as easily as they can in the north of, Scotland. Also, for the first time, the outdoor action picture, which has been a monopoly of, America and the backbone of their industry, cam be challenged. The locale for subjects does not need to be restricted to Australia. Just as it was a> jumping-off ground to the whole of the East ia wartime, so it can be a centre for films in the Islands, in Indonesia, and Malaya. There can be no thought of an Australian Hollywood arising, but there is a great opportunity to establish ut least a small worthwhile industry which, apart from providing entertainment and employment, could help to establish in Australia the cultural roots it is striving for at the moment as part of the basis of its newly found national consciousness. What struck me most during my whole time ia Australia was how little we know about it. For one thing, it is a continent, not a country. It's socalled dead-heart contains some of the finest cattle country in the world. It has jungles (as thick as any in Burma) and permanent snow country. It has enormous skyscraper cities, and "ghost" gold towns now without an inhabitant. It has a capital, planted in the middle of nowhere, that is as yet strongly reminiscent of Welwyn Garden City. Altogether it is an exciting young country with a lot of faults but enormous potentials. Many Americans found it similar to what much of the States was like eighty years ago. It is a country we should know about. And film is the medium to use for such knowledge. Which all boils down to the fact that 1 liked Australia, and would like to make another film there. DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER Owned and Published by Film Centre Ltd., 34 Soho Square, W.I Annual F.ditorial Board: . subscription 6s. (published six Edgaf Ans(ev DonaId Tav|or Balk orders up to 50 com* for schools times a year) Arthur ...on John Taylor and Film Sonets Geoffrey Bell