Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

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20 DOCUMENTARY FILM NEWS reading for the month NEW BOOKS ON FILM Sound and The Documentary Film: Ken Cameron. With a foreword by Calvalcanti. (Pitman.) 1 5s. Od. For all the literature on films, there are still very few books on how they are made, other than specialized textbooks. Though the documentary movement has been particularly prolific in publication, till now directors, cameramen, cutters, and soundmen do not seem to have thought it worth while to describe their work in detail. One might suppose films grow on bushes, or are dropped down chimneys by storks for all the public attention their makers give to the creative processes of making them. For this reason alone, Mr Cameron's book is particularly welcome, and what he has to say is given weight by the fact that he is not only the best soundman in documentary today — his work includes both Listen to Britain and Instruments of the Orchestra — but also one of the best soundmen in the British film industry. The first part of his book, introduced by a foreword by Calvalcanti, who is both a little patronizing and a little bad tempered, deals in a clear workmanlike way with the use of sound in films, the functions of the sound-recordist and the difficulties peculiar to his particular branch of film production. It is always interesting to listen to an expert describing his work in simple terms, and in this case we hope that Mr Cameron will be heard also by those of his colleagues who film monthly review the magazine for the intelligent film-goer containing articles on scriptwriting documentaryfilms producers directors film-fashions treating the film and film-making os art price 9d. from all newsagents or 10s. per annum post free from Precinct Publications 50 Old Brompton Road SW7 make up the rest of a film production team, and for some of whom the sound track is still only an irritating accessory. He recognizes, too, that a recordist's work does not end at the mixing panel, but should embrace both laboratory work and reproduction. The second part of his book is a simple technical account of the electrical, mechanical and photographic principles of recording. The third part is a glossary of technical terms. There are many illustrations and line drawings. Making the Movies. Jeanne Bendick. (Paul Elek Ltd.) \2s. 6d. Here is yet another addition to the library of volumes which explain the production of a film from the script to the sneak preview to that presumably dwindling number of people who do not know. The book is illustrated by the author with a large number of somewhat childish drawings of equipment and processes of the film world, but while it contains a fair amount of accuracy of description, everything is treated with such ingenuousness that one seriously wonders whether it is intended for purely adolescent consumption. Although no printed reference appears to its possible American origin, nevertheless the terms used, and indeed the spelling of many of them have a distinctly Transatlantic flavour. It is scarcely fair to grumble at a work which does so little harm, but it seems a great pity that paper and time and money should be wasted in printing a book which attempts so much and yet achieves so little. Film, a Reader's Guide. Roger Manvell. (Cambridge University Press.) Is. This essay and bibliography form part of a series issued by the National Book League. Manvell's introduction is a short but precise account of the main points one should pay attention to if one is interested in the cinema. The list of books should provide a useful guide for the new reader. Unfortunately, many of them are out of print, though they can be found in libraries. Also there are a number of important books not available here in translation which have had to be omitted. Aspiring translators and publishers please note. Freedom of the Movies. Ruth Inglis. (University of Chicago Press — agents, Cambridge University Press.) It seems a pity that writing was invented so long ago. We can only vaguely imagine the effect of the dawning power to transmit knowledge in permanent form from one person to another. But we can see this power as vital to the first great 'cultural revolution'. The invention which foments our second 'cultural revolution' — photography, however, is still very much with us. With motion, colour, and sound added, we get the film. Seen by most to be one of the greatest social forces of our time, photograph) is becoming generally known as a new way of speaking to one another, as a was of using machines to help us think and talk more deeply. (Sometimes, of course, it just helps us talk more.) Yet a second truth is no less important; film is a form of expression which only groups of people can use. Even the simple black and white snapshot can only be made after camera and photo-film makers have co-operated; and the subject has to co-operate before the trigger can be pressed. Club facilities (such as darkroom and enlarging apparatus) are commonly used even by the amateur. Thus photography is a group activity. And film making is a group activity — with a minimum group size, apparently of the order of a million or so people. (A community below this size — like Andorra or Luxembourg — seems too small to have a film industry of its own.) Because film making is this kind of group activity, freedom, in the commonly accepted individualistic sense of the word, is one of the things it is conspicuous for not having; the conception 'Freedom of the Movies' is thus in an important sense a contradiction in terms, and the book which Ruth Inglis, of the American Commission on Freedom of the Press has written, sets us pretty clearly on the path to that conclusion, without itself stating it very clearly. 'Freedom of the Movies' is largely an account of the censorship of films as it has grown up in the United States. Two things may come new to many; firstly, censorship both in America and Britain is a procedure imposed by the film industry itself. "The economic necessity of mass audiences has made the industry eager to please everyone', and profits cannot be risked at the hands of unpredictable pressure groups. Secondly, the censorship boards seem to have no statutory authority. Any film, censored or no, may still be the subject of litigation on the grounds of slander, libel, obscenity, sedition, or similar. The Commission on Freedom of the Press sets out six recommendations in a Statement. The first of these gives the flavour of the whole: The constitutional guarantees of freedom of the Press should be recognized as including motion pictures. The growing importance of the documentary film gives fresh emphasis to the need. This reviewer, irresponsibly perhaps, finds the unrelieved comprehensiveness of the "sociological" style a strain. The only relief comes from that mood of levity induced by reading the Production Code itself, quoted in full in its present form. But apart from this the book fails to satisfv because it does not recognize that there is wanted today a deeper, more complex conception of 'freedom' than served in earlier times. One does not demand that the sociologists should be inspired to provide this, but they must know wc require it to come into existence. DFN COMPETITION No. 2 Mam people grumble at the programmes dished up in the ordinary commercial cinema. Here is the opportunity to get rid o( some of the pent-u:1 venom. Competitors are invited to write a letter of remonstrance to a cinema manager whose programmes are not to their taste. Letters should be limited to 200 words and entries should reae i the 1 dnor before March 1st. The usual prizes of a guinea and half a guinea are offered and results will appear in the April issue.