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used the compilation method to produce such powerful propaganda documents as Baptism of Fire (1940) and Victory in the West (1941).
The success of these films bears witness to the immense potentialities of the compilation film as a means of dramatising first-hand historical records. In competent and scrupulous hands, the unrehearsed, spontaneously shot material can be dramatised and edited into faithful renderings of past events. But it must be stressed that the authenticity of the original material does not necessarily guarantee that the final impression of the film will be a truthful one. In the process of dramatising the newsreel shots by editing and commentary, the more or less inert shots can be twisted into new meanings ; the method can be used to falsify historical events because it is in the process of selection and editing that the shots acquire most of their significance.
A striking instance of the possibility of abusing the compilation method is afforded by some of the Nazi propaganda films. Victory in the West, for instance, uses a number of shots which were also used in the third of Capra's Why We Fight films, Divide and Conquer (1943). While the commentary gloats over the unfortunate victims, shots of fleeing French refugees are made in the first film to symbolise the total victory of the German army ; the identical shots are used in Divide and Conquer in the course of a compassionate account of the fall of France. If the compilation film is to give an authentic view of its subject, the proviso that the makers approach their subject honestly is a most urgent one.
The scope of films made by compilation is necessarily limited by the material available : it is not, of course, possible to compile fiction films which trace the fates of particular groups of characters. On the other hand, films of the type Baylis calls " broad canvas " documentaries can be made as, among others, the makers of The True Glory and Desert Victory have shown. These films gave a comprehensive picture of highly complex themes and must be compared in intention with scripted documentary films dealing with similar subjects.
To discuss compilation is to discuss the " broad-canvas " documentary as a whole.1 Whether the material is sought after and found, or scripted and shot, is really beside the main point. By sheer accident of method, the compiled film leads to a fundamental editing technique — fundamental ever since the early days of cinema — the art of telling a story with pictures and telling it, not as a story of a tiny group of individuals, but of individuals in a community or as a nation.
1 Notes by Peter Baylis.
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