Motion Picture Herald (Nov-Dec 1948)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD MARTIN QUIGLEY, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher TERRY RAMSAYE, Editor VOL 173, No. 12 B33Efl December 18, 1948 HEAD in THE TENT THE study of "The Overseas Information Service of the U.S. Government", issued by the Brookings Institution in Washington, contains pressure for a decided order of control and censorship for American motion pictures in the world market. "Closer liaison with Hollywood" is the gentle term which the author of the report, Mr. Charles A. H. Thompson, suggests. He plainly would require "topics which are noteworthy, which present the U. S. in a favourable light, and which do most for strategy." That "closer liaison" does not, however, seem to imply as much latitude for differences of opinion as would seem to be required for the real functioning of an art of communication. So far there is no indication that the Brookings study has ventured an equivalent supervisory "liaison" with the medium of the printed word. That is perhaps for later. The ultimate workability of such a program can be achieved only under the dictatorial conditions of war, or in the lands of the dictators where the customers are told what they may see, what they may not see. When that is decided, there is no democracy. Obviously, trie toe got into the door with the arrangements for control of the export newsreels. Perhaps it will ultimately be discovered also that thereby the camel got his head in the tent. ■ ■■ THE FADING NEWSREEL THE newsreel is suffering pernicious anemia. As indicated in our news article on the subject last week, the news picture, after a career of four decades, has reached the lowest water-mark in its history. Some say it fell, some say it was pushed. Both are correct. Even newsreel theatres are turning to drama. The rising motion picture drama was in its earlier days a form of publication, a program, revolving on the week. It has ever tended away in the direction of the stage pattern of roadshowing. The newsreel has remained a form of publication, but with almost no publication consciousness, conscience or consistency behind it. All there is of that in the newsreels is in their own offices among the men who make them — and they are the most lonely men of the movies. The last debacle of official industry attention came with the Presidential campaign, when executive concept of political expediency resulted in a ukase to the newsreels that they devote an issue to a campaign picture that had been made for propaganda promotion of Governor Dewey. His election was in the bag and it was going to be nice to be able to claim a share in the victory for the picture industry. The newsreel editors, by now used to orders from upstairs, did murmur that it would seem discreet to give President Truman some attention, too, just to avoid journalistic bias. So that was ordered in addition. To fill that requirement it became necessary for the newsreel resources to supply the Truman picture. It just so chanced that, with the skills available and the wealth of library material, it turned out to be the better picture to look at. Anyway, the newsreel, which had already been covering the campaigns, was now required to devote two successive issues to political expediency. THE like, and worse, happened, as we have recorded, during the war with yieldings to Washington pressures from official personages who felt free to kick the films around as they would have liked to have dictated to the press. That, of course, is not the whole answer to what has happened to the newsreels. They have, in fact, been of no interest "upstairs" since the day when they served as experimental plants for sound recording technique. Rising criticism of the newsreels appears in the intelligentsia sectors of the press, where most of the complaint about everything comes from. The comment is that the technique and subject matter have not changed from the days of long ago. The fact is, obviously, that newsreel pictures are of people and events. That will not be changed. What can be done about such subjects in the shrinking screen time of the newsreel is inevitably limited. "The March of Time", a magazinelike screen periodical, broke out of that limitation, with frequently challenging narrations, but without setting the screen afire. Now it would appear that those persons who like facts have been getting increasingly fed by the rise of pictorial journalism, daily and weekly — and quite as fast as the screen on first run, what with the wired and radio photographic service of now. There is the hourly competition of radio and the new, if feeble, conveyance' of television. The newsreels, without large encouragement, are fretting about television and fiddling with colour. Unless they get some strong friends upstairs, they are likely to go the way of the serial — and thence out into history and tradition. Ill ARNALL PLATFORM MR. ELLIS GIBBS ARNALL assuredly comes in with a flourish and fanfare of program. As the newly elected president of the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, he has at a press conference outlined a schedule of attentions to the industry quite as broad as the total of its problems at home and abroad. Mr. Arnall soys he will have in hand education, litigation and legislation against theatre monopoly, foreign market problems of quotas, restrictions and legislation, the interests of his members, benefits for the industry, and dispelling "pessimism in the industry". He is going to be rather busy. Since it is clear enough that the selection of Mr. Arnall for his new post has been made with eyes for political access and some orders of diplomacy, one must view with a lifted eyebrow his quoted answer to inquiry about cooperation with Mr. Eric Johnston: "I don't see how I can unless he changes his attitude toward the industry." That does not appear to take cognizance of the fact that, in view of the breadth of Mr. Arnall's program, he would probably find that he and Mr. Johnston might have some identical causes. —Terry Ramsaye