Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER 151 'Time for Enquiry' is the title of an article by John Grierson published by the Albyn Press in 'DOCUMENTARY 47'. We give below a few of the main points, but we hope that readers will read the whole article. Comments are welcomed — as an introduction we give : A good deal of gloom surrounds the British documentary operation in this summer of 1947. 1 think the situation is urgent and warrants an immediate official enquiry if a great national asset is to be saved from damage, and most important needs of the State in the field of information are to be imaginatively fulfilled. But first let us see the problem in proportion. The complaint takes various forms. Something— the best ones say — is going out of documentary, and in fact why are they so full and why did we not make such a show at Brussels as we once did with the Song of Ceylon and sundry other minor masterworks of the moment? Far too many units, it appears, are going into instructional work in plain avoidance of the difficulty of revealing in dramatic or poetic or other creative form, the stubborn social material of the day. The films are slack for lack of fire, and so are the boys who make them, runs the criticism. There are shocking stories of people of talent doing nothing for a year and losing their competence. Production procedure lacks the tempo which is essential for creative work and there are endless dying delays as between the film makers, the sponsors and the people of the Treasury. Committee production, I am told, has raised its ugly head to the point where films are killed in the script by bureaucratic indecision. It is said that the economies and administrations of the units are not always as orderly as they might be, and that many of their efforts could be better co-ordinated. It is doubted in some quarters whether production by thirty to forty units with separate overheads and sometimes insufficient resources can represent an efficient system. I therefore suggest that the solution does not lie outside the terms of public sponsorship but, on the other hand, lies in deliberately and patiently working to make that sponsorship an imaginative sponsorship. This is where the emphasis should now lie. Criticisms which do not recognize this task, and defections which are merely impatient, do not greatly help. There is criticism on both sides. The units charge the sponsors, and particularly the Government sponsors, with a lack of decisiveness and a lack of imagination. They say they have lost the conception of a total driving plan for the use of the documentary film in the urgent service of the nation. The sponsors, on the other hand, say that the film makers are too independent by half and cannot be relied on to deliver efficiently or even to deliver what they have undertaken to deliver, and finally that the boys are so full of small politics these days that nary a one of them has time to throw his cap over a steeple. I agree when people say that, without imaginative support from the sponsors, imaginative films are impossible. I even sympathize a little when people talk of throwing up the Government relationship altogether and re-discovering their freedom. But I still conclude that it is a suicidal attitude and not realistic, either socially or aesthetically. The situation calls for a new measure of mutual confidence and a new measure of leadership on both sides. As for the documentary people, I would have them count their blessings, even if they find their rations short. Where elsewhere has the documentary idea been so richly maintained even when a good deal of formless stuff which neither taught nor revealed was passed off in its good name? Where elsewhere have so many companies been maintained in such continuity of public work that they have come to expect it, no matter what administrative shapes they gave themselves? As for the sponsors, they are fortunate at this time to have a EXTRACT FROM GRIERSON school of film-makers at their disposition who, whatever their foibles have made a profession of this realistic field of cinema and have remained faithful to it. With better organization, they represent an essential asset to Britain at this juncture, because there is much in these days of change which the British public needs to clear its vision and strengthen its will for the job ahead. Perhaps the documentary people are not at the moment so vigorous in new ideas as they might be, but who, pray, is? The gap created is a spiritual one which is evident everywhere. The documentary people are part of a larger picture, and there is no great difference between the frustrations of the COI and the frustrations of the units who think they are afflicted by it. Neither are yet at the stage of seeing where the positive way of the public will flies, and who can blame them when the leaders themselves flounder in equal uncertainty? I would say that the so-called 'dullness of documentary' is not yet a disaster. Only its defection from the service of reality could be. In this matter, the documentary people have, of necessity, to look to the brightness of their creative weapons and the methods by which they work. The situation calls for an examination of what they are doing on every level of talent to take the documentary film beyond the level of mere technical proficiency and into the world of imaginative interpretation. They cannot continue to live on the word 'documentary' itself, nor on its successful contribution to educational theory, nor on its reputation of practical achievement in the hard days of the war. I do not want to push the point too far in a difficult situation, but I do not like the loss of direct and confident relationship between the artist and the Government official; and I am bound to think that if something is going out of documentary, it is because something has gone from its essential underpinnings. Ground has to be made up. A notable understanding of the needs of the nation is the first condition of a positive, fresh and imaginative contribution toward their fulfilment. The second condition may lie in recognizing the need to reorganize the documentary business, and radically, from an administrative point of view. There was never a time when anyone could say of the documentary people that they took personal advantage from the work they did, or served their own comfort. I have been told a hundred times over that this was silly and that we could never hold a group together on such a basis. But the documentary people did so, and, even when my friend Lejeune speaks dividing words now, this she must allow. Where Miss Lejeune has something, and where I must at this moment speak out, is in saying that now is not the time for complacency. I do not think the documentary people can afford the independent luxury of so many units. I do not think the> can afford the present high cost of films. I do not think they cm afford the present laboriousness in which a film is conceived, or the present tempo in which it is made. We cannot afford it for the simple reason that we are shooing our sponsors away. Short of a proper enquiry, I have myself no conclusions to oiler. I simpls want the documentary film in Britain to be even better in the public service than it has been before. I want the documentary group to be in the vanguard of the national effort and an example of good sense and discipline in the creation of the future. Above all, I do not want the documentary group to wait around for things to happen to it from the outside, when now. as i( has always done, it can write its own brave ticket. It requires, however, a special effort; and I think now, and not later, is the time for it.