Focus: A Film Review (1950-1951)

192 BOOK REVIEW Focus Film Course Primer. Handbook No. 1. By Andrew Buchanan. pp. 36. Catholic Film Institute, is. 6d. The monthly articles comprising the first half of “Focus Film Course” have now been published as a handbook. While primarily an introduction to the present series of lectures at Hove House, it also serves as a blue-print for Film Study Groups, providing a scheme of work in place of possibly shapeless arguments. It is a primer in the art of film appreciation through knowledge, a positive approach. Dr. Buchanan has suggested a syllabus by means of which students can become informed on all aspects of the medium. The film on the screen is the end of the story; he urges them to begin at the beginning. Thus the syllabus for the first eleven meetings covers the film industry as a whole, classification of films, subject matter, films in education, films for children, commercial programmes, the news reel, religious films and film music. The twelfth chapter suggests questions covering the work of the previous meetings, and the student who can answer most of these, says Dr. Buchanan, is ready to go on to the second series of lessons, the Work of the Film Makers, now appearing in Fqcus, and later to be published as Handbook No. 2. The writer wastes no words and the short chapters are essentially readable. There are not too many statistics, a specimen lesson with points for discussion is given, and the comments on different parts of the syllabus are interesting. He goes straight to the cause of the trouble when he says that there is a world of difference between books and plays written for adults and those for children, but, judging by the thousands of children who visit cinemas, there is little if any difference between films for adults and films for children. Why? Because the cinema does not cater for a very high standard of intelligence, says Dr. Buchanan. He would have all children barred from all commercial cinemas, since films made for adults cannot be suitable for children, and he urges the setting up of a 16mm. network for the showing of children’s and religious films. An original turn of phrase lends a lighter touch to the book. I liked his description of the News Reel as merely an animated interval for some people, and the idea of a film going in one eye and out of the other is, if faintly ludicrous, at least novel. In conclusion, Dr. Buchanan states that although the first aim of the course is to increase the critical faculties of the film-goer through the formation of study groups, the ultimate purpose is the making of films “which shall proclaim the Christian Message ceaselessly”. This business-like handbook is provided with a bibliography and several blank pages for notes. It is obtainable, price Is. 6d., from More House, 53 Cromwell Road, London, S.W.7, or from Blue Cottage, Sumner Place Mews, London, S.W.7. M. A. Prayer Book for Artists of Stage, Screen and Radio. (Published by Basil Clancy Ltd., 33 Bachelor’s Walk, Dublin.) The Catholic Stage Guild of Ireland is fortunate in having FT. Cormac O’Daly, O.F.M., to edit a delightful prayer book for actors and players. The charm of this neat book lies in its original presentation of its prayers. Fr. Cormac knows his actors well. They are busy people with many rehearsals. The prayers are therefore kept short, and the player is continuously but tactfully reminded that life itself is a rehearsal for an eternal drama. There is a prayer by Hubert van Zeller in which the actor is bidden to ask God to save him from the artificiality of the footlights and the sniff of the Green Room. All the prayers are built on a lovely conception : that Christ is the Supreme Artist who played to perfection the part allotted to Him by His Heavenly Father.