Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

!)()( I Ml-. VI \R\ I II M M-.NNS NEW FILMS FROM CANADA Bronco Busters. 16mm. Sound. Running Time: 10 minutes. Produced 1946 by the National Film Board in the Canada Carries On Series. Theme. A break in the hard life of venturesome and unventuresome cowboys while they compete in or watch (respectively) the annual Calgary Stampede (rodeo). Comment. Bronco Bu\tei \ siarts as ii ends. with scenes of horses roaming Alberta's foothillswith here and there a cowboy having a hard life . . . 'The Calgary Stampede draws spectators from all across the continent to watch top-notch riders pit their skill against the strength and cunning of the four-legged outlaws." We see the spectators at the end of the draw, so to speak. looking at the exhibition of agricultural machinery which is part of the Stampede, and settling into their seats. The show begins: wild horse riding, calfroping, bramah bull riding, and the bulldogging. make up the main events. Final event of the big show is the chuck-wagon race. 'We see the wagons loaded with all the supplies needed by men riding the ranges, pelting along to the finish line .... When the last event is over, back to the ranges go the ranch hands and the wild horses. Bronco Busters ends as it started, with scenes of horses roaming Alberta's foothills.' And there's really very little else to say about it. Any film about animals, horses in particular, gets by, because, however static the film, the animals can be counted on to move — usually with a superb grace and beauty. Here the movement of the bulls and calves and horses (sorry, 'fourlegged outlaws') may not be so graceful, but is fast and unexpected enough to create an interest in what is a pretty ordinary piece of film-making: a film which might have been made anywhere in the North American Continent. It obviously loses some visual interest from being shown in black and white when originally made in colour (owing to shortage of prints): but in black and white it merits no more than the term 'programme fill-up'. (The quotations are from the National Film Board's information sheet.) Tomorrow's Citizens. 35 mm. Black and whiteSound. Running time: 10 min. National Film Board, Canada Carries On series, 1947. This film purports to 'examine ihe qualifications of contemporary educational method and polio in the light of an age that has released new natural energies, to be used for or against mankind". All that in ten minutes. Of course, it docs not succeed. It has bitten off more than it can chew, and suffers from severe indigestion, with its accompanying wind. True, the problem with which the film deals — whether our own inventions will destroy us — is of supreme importance, but a journalistic approach to it, which is by turns slick, shallow and smug, is using the methods of the alchemist to solve problems of unclean physics. The film, in fact, does the very thing it is intended to discourage; it applies pre atomic thought to the atomic age Let's Look at Water. 16 mm. Black and while. Sound. Running time: 20 min. Produced 1947 by the National Film Board for the Department of National Health and Welfare. \ straightforward, not very ambitious, account of how a Canadian city's water supply is purified. The opening sequence reviewing the ways in which water serves all forms of life is more than a little banal ai times. That water is used for drinking and washing hardly needs to be stressed to any, audience, however specialized. But when the film gets on to describing how a municipal supply is gathered, purified and distributed it does summarize with adequate clarity a number of facts that should be stored somewhere in every citizen's mind. They would perhaps remain longer in store if more reliance were placed on visual demonstration and less on the expository power of the implacable voice which is becoming a characteristic of many Canadian films. Klee Wyck (Canadian Artists Series No. 5). 16 mm. Colour. Sound. Running time: 15 min. Produced 1946 by the National Film Board. Klee Wyck is the name the Indians gave to the late Emily Carr, a Canadian painter who, we are told, found her inspiration 'in the towering forests and dying Indian culture of British Columbia". In this film the camera pans up firtrees and down totem-poles, across wooded ridges and over Indian villages. It tracks into one canvas and away from another. Seldom does the eve have a chance to rest and take in either the scenery or Miss Carr's work. The director has been faced with that most difficult of all problems, how to make a motion picture on an essentially static subject, and the peripatetic camera is his solution. But in choosing it he falls out of the frying pan of dullness into the fire of obscurity and confusion. Third Dimension. 16 mm. Black and white. Sound. Running time: 19 mins. Produced 1946 by the National Film Board in co-operation with the Sculptors' Society of Canada. This is a survey of modern Canadian sculpture. The principal sculptors of the Dominion are seen at work, and the methods they use are outlined in terms understandable to the lay observer. There is a detailed demonstration of the method of making a plaster cast from a claj original, and another of the stages by which the clay figure is built up. In fact, the emphasis is principally on the mechanical aspects of the ait and there is something lifeless about the film as a result Why, one wonders, don't the sculptors tell us something about the complexities and fascinations of working in the round, explain what the) are aiming at anil show how the* achieve it ' Surely there can't be a standing order in Ottawa that no one but the commentator shall open his trap. Montreal By Ni«ht. Produced b. the National I ilm Hoard in the ( anada ( arncs on Series Theme, One of Canada's most rapidlv expanding cities at night in all Us facets Ol 1 rench and i lish, industry and art. historic rid modern'. Comment. There are sonic strange claims (apart from the above) made in the \ itional I ilm Board's information sheet about this averagefilm: 'The film approaches Montreal at night show mi thai 40 per vent of the population is bilingual .... I sing the floodlights and filming places nevei filmed before, the picture achit unique effects in its documenting ol Montreal The ( anada Carries On unit of the National I ilm Board has made a film on upcoming Montreal, using a technique never applied in the filming of that cits before.' While it may be perfectly true that as fa l is Montreal is concerned some of the effects may be unique, and the technique new. merely because no other film has been made in this way about this particular city at night, it would be as well for the writers of these 'blurb sheets' to realize that this kind of film has been as competently, and often more imaginatively, made about practically e other major city in the world. Such claims can only do a disservice to the technicians who made the film and to the film itself, since the audiences in the 60 different countries to which it is being distributed will expect something out of the ordinary. Viewed as a modest little film about a strange city, it is pleasant enough, if uninspired; but lacks the warmth of contact with the city's inhabitants which would have been achieved by recording their voices as well as their faces [| takes us to the usual haunts of any city at night the amusement park, the night clubs, the deserted offices and business centres cluttered up with the debris of the day, the social clubs, the suburban homes, the resting factories, the busy newspaper presses. But after all that, Montreal as Montreal remains much of a mystery nor are we much nearer to understanding what Canadians arc or feel or do. Just another 'programme fill-up' This film shows up the limitations of 16mm.. on which size it was viewed, because night photography suffers most from a bad print or mediocre projection equipment and both are more common to sub-standard than to 35 mm. film making. Condition Improved. Produced by the Canadian National Film Board for the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the Department of National Health and Welfare. 16 mm. B. and W. 33 mins Theme. The part played bv sarious forms of occupational therapy in the treatment of injury . disease and mental illness Commem Occupational therapy is now generally accepted as an essential adjunct to rapid recovery after accident oi illness \s a comprehensive surves of the many kinds o\' remedial exercises used todav. this film does a useful job. I he treatment is simple and straightforward, but it may be questioned whether such a survev. which consists essentially of a series of linked examples, is really the most convincing approach to the subject, foi ui attempting to covet such a widefield details ate glossed over and there is little time available for the siudv oi individual cases Ihe best sequences are those dealing with th< o>vcrv of Children aftei infantile patalvsis and (he treatment of stammering and neurotic conditions. In these the dim really com.. but thev ate tantalizing in their brevity and each could have provided enough material foi a full length film on their own