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October, 1 945
FILM AND RADIO GUIDE
37
SCENES IN THE BRITISH DOCUMENTARY, "BACK TO NORMAL"
Above — A one-armed billiard-player overcomes his handicap. Below — A onearmed Britisher digs in his garden while his son watches.
they may be as individuals or institutions. “Children of the City” is an honest film and a good documentary because it goes deeper than its immediate terms of reference. It argues that children must have good homes to live in and open spaces to play in and that their parents must have economic security. But the argument is not imposed on the film. It is implicit in the story, so that the audience itself will arrive at this conclusion by the logic of what it is seeing.
For fifteen years now, Britiish documentary has been developing these principles. Taking its stand firmly on objective reality, believing that the very essence of drama is to be found in real life and real people, it has refused to be side-tracked into romanticism and illusion. Documentary principles and methods are having a profound influence on British films. British films have moved out of the drawing rooms and boudoirs of the idle rich and into the lives of ordinary people and their surroundings.
Before the war this tendency was clearly discernible. In such films as “T h e Stars Look Down,” a film of great integrity about coal miners, there was recognition that documentary had something to offer to the feature film of entertainment.
During the War the best British films have combined a strong element of documentary realism with the fictional element. Films like “San Demetrio,” “Millions Like Us,” “Waterloo Road,” “In Which We Serve,” and “The Way Ahead” — all great popular successes — have achieved honesty and authenticity through interpretation of real life and real people.
This welding together of the documentary and fictional ele
ments has created a British style of film making which offers great possibilities for the future. Workers in the documentary
field will continue to perfect their techniques and principles in approaching the problems of social reconstruction after the