Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

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132 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NEW BOOKS ON FILM Penguin Film Review No. 2. Penguin Books. \s. The second edition of the Penguin Film Review amply fulfils the promise of the first. Without being esoteric, it manages to deal in a serious style with many important aspects of the cinema both in this country and abroad, and it is gratifying to anyone interested in the progress of the film that there seems to be a wide public for intelligent criticism and analysis of the kind found in its pages. Those who are primarily concerned with the documentary aspect of the cinema will find much food for thought in the article by Basil Wright on 'Documentary Today'. 'Confusion of public thought', says Mr Wright, 'as to what a documentary film is doesn't matter much'. He goes on, 'if it is agreed that a definition of the documentary film is no longer really necessary, it becomes quite plain that documentary is not this or that type of film, but simply a method of approach to public information . (His italics.) It includes 'all known media of information, particularly films, film-strips, slides, radio, television, stills and illustrations of all sorts, the Press (daily, weekly and periodical in general), diagrams, wall-newspapers, pamphlets, books, lectures and exhibitions'. Other articles include a fascinating account by Thorold Dickinson of the painstaking search which he undertook to ensure authenticity in the African music for his film Men of Two Worlds, an informative description of the Moscow Script Studio screenwriting by Catherine de la Roche, the first part of a survey by Ragna Jackson, of the Scandinavian film, and a number of interesting statistics collected byH. H. Wollenberg. Informational Film Year Book, 1947. The Albyn Press, Edinburgh, 2. 10s. 6d. If you want to know anything about anything in the documentary film world, how do you find out? You ask your friends, you write letters, you read magazines and you still can't find out what you want to know — up to now that has been the position. At last the Albyn Press has come to the rescue with their Informational Film Year Book — the first of an annual series. Let all those in or around the documentary film world stand up, take off their hats and pass a vote of thanks. Here is a well-laid out objective source of information. Admittedly, it may not be completely comprehensive but it takes many, many steps in the right direction. The first half contains articles by such documentary figures as Grierson, Rotha, Wright and Forsyth Hardy and also chapters on the film in Scotland and Ireland. It is worth reading and most interesting to amateur and professional. The second half has a Buyers' Guide and lists of Organizations, Film Societies, Production Units Studios, Libraries, Publications, etc. There is a list of the documentaries made in the past year and some stills from these films. Buy this book and keep it carefully hidden — otherwise it will vanish. The World is My Cinema. E. W. and M. M. Robson. (Sidney an Society.) 12s. 6d. In 205 foam-flecked pages the authors put forward an almost unimaginably preposterous analysis of the cinema today. Their argument, as far as it is possible to disentangle it from the shock-headed language and spaghetti-snarled thought in which it is presented, seems to go something like this — if you can believe it. British films are no good; worse, they are a sinister, malign menace to our national purity, foully intended by their makers, who have 'a SadistFascist mental complex', to lure us all to Nazism and war. There is only one way out. We must insist that they shall be made according to the Christian ethic as set out in the Hays Code, which the authors compare with the Sermon on the Mount. It is because most American pictures have in the past conformed to this high moral standard that they have been so successful at the democratic polling-booth of the box-office, American pictures do not, we are given to understand, treat low, disgusting, unpleasant subjects with the bad taste shown in Champagne Charlie which is all about drink; are not obscene like Uncensored which contains two references to 'behinds' ; do not lower the sanctity of marriage and the home as Anthony Asquith did in Fanny by Gaslight; are not disrespectful to the flag like The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp; do not hold religion up to ridicule as was so shamefully done in Henry V. The 'Sadists and Schizophenics, pathological murderers and other subconscious disease mindedness' which besmirch the British screen find devilish advocacy in the writings of critics like Lcjeune and Powell, with their liking for the depraved Continental cinema, and originate partly in the gospel of sexual promiscuity preached by Engels in The Origin of the Family, and partly in the depraved philosophy of 'the aesthetes, the hedonists, the cynics and the vocal sadists deriving from the French and German schools' who apparently include Shaw, Wilde, Swinburne, James Joyce and O'Shaughnessy. Well, that's the gist of it. It will cost you twelve-and-sixpence if you want it. Or you can go to Hyde Park and hear the same sort of thing free, and get some fresh air at the same time. British Film Music: John Huntley. (Skelton Robinson.) Ms. 6d. Mr Huntley's survey of the music of the British cinema might be readily sub-divided into three sections. We have articles on most aspects of the field by Huntley himself — surely Muir Mathieson's most faithful and devoted satellite; we have some contributions by men prominent in the art of film music; and we have a biographical and index section of great value. Mr Huntley describes his work as not a discussion of theory but a statement of the facts. Perhaps it is a pity that a little more care was not taken in his collection of these facts. It might be said that in a book containing such a wealth of information some errors were bound to creep in. Still, in a volume in which the greatest value lies in the references as to who did what and when, such mistakes are small but important. For instance, the GPO Film Unit did not become the Crown Film Unit in 1939; Stricken Peninsula could scarcely be described as a production of the Army Film Unit, and Kenneth Pakeman did not compose the music for October Man. This last is rather a bloomer coming as it does from one who attended a lot of the recording of Alwvn's music. Somehow one gets the impression that the book would have been much better — and certainly much more accurate — had more time been devoted to proof correction. There is something of the atmosphere of a work rushed into press that is unfortunate in a reference work on so important a subject. If it comes to that Mr Huntley's description of the process of recording sound on film has a colourful naivete which would look better if technicalities had not been cast entirely away. Nevertheless, the book contains a vast amount of valuable information. The research involved must have been prodigious. It is fair and anything but patronizing to the documentary movement — and who are we not to be grateful for small mercies? If 17s. 6d. is a lot of money for a slim volume, well, we have some very chaste illustrations and a description of a music session by one of the orchestra which is pure joy. WORLD UNION OF DOCUMENTARY on June 8th and 9th, 1947, a meeting of individual members of the documentary film movement took place in Brussels. Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Holland, Jugoslavia, Poland, United Kingdom, USA and S. Africa were represented. After an exchange of views and information it was agreed to form a World Union of Documentary. A resolution, addressed to all workers, stressed the indispensable role which documentary has to play in the post-war world. The preamble said that documentary had not only to state all the problems but also to guide the peoples towards the solution of these problems. Work must be done which would secure the full expression of social, economic and cultural life through the medium of film. The resolution ended: 'The principal tasks confronting documentary workers are as follows: The fight against the enemies of peace and democracy; national, racial and economic oppression and religious intolerance; poverty and disease, illiteracy, ignorance and other social evils. And the fight for peace and reconstruction; independence of subject peoples; free intellectual and cultural expression: dissemination of knowledge, not at present available to all. Documentary film workers will collaborate with all international organizations working for the principles enumerated above."