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DOCUMENTARY FILM SINGE 1 939
period up to 19 14. Based on contemporary material, it provided a fascinating and witty comment on its time. More recently, the same director's La Vie Commence Demain was a commendably ambitious attempt to interpret the problems and prophecies of the atomic age, but technically its confused editing and amateur camera interviews with such personalities as Sartre, Gide, Picasso and Le Corbusier failed to give shape and force to its vitally important subject. Alain Gibaud demonstrated in Transports Urbains (1949) the rich vein of parody which documentary film-makers have long left untapped, while William Novik's Images Medievales (1949) developed with striking effect the use of illuminated manuscripts to recapture the spirit of a past age.
Amidst many scores of French films of this kind and that, many highly inventive in their use of the film medium, the one thing lacking is a sense of consistency and purpose. The reason lies partly in the unsatisfactory economic basis of their production. With no substantial source of finance outside the film industry and limited prospects of distribution, the French documentary film-maker is left to make his weary round. Cavalcanti only found real scope for his talents in this field outside France, while others like Painleve have retired into the more private retreat of some speciality. The history of the French cinema over the past ten years — feature as well as documentary — shows the talent and skill which the country still has at its disposal. The parallel story of waste and frustration, particularly once the immediate postwar social and political unity was broken, is equally revealing. It is symptomatic that many of the best films have taken this as their subject and inspiration.
Belgium
As in the case of France, documentary production in Belgium has lacked any formal organisation. It has continued to revolve around a handful of individuals of whom Henri Storck remains the most outstanding. A leading figure in the European avantgarde movement before the war, he has retained his skill and his interest in experiment. In Rubens (1948), his most substantial film since the war and made with Paul Haesaerts, the art critic, Storck showed with considerable brilliance the power of the movie-camera to interpret an artist's work in a way which the
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