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166 PROBLEMS OF STYLE IN THE FILM
was 'One who did not take part in the contest' : a blind beggar and his 'seeing eye' dog, watching over his miserable master in the cold of winter. Then 'St Moritz' : Skating rinks and the guests on the terrace of a luxury hotel. 'This, too, is St Moritz': a melancholy procession of ragged, hungry snowshovellers and rink-sweepers. 'Brilliant military parade' followed by 'Disabled ex-servicemen begging in the streets'. There were no other captions. The police were itching to ban these news-reels but could not do so, as they were all respectable UFA news-reels, every one of them approved by the censorship. Only the order of showing had been altered a little.
Single pictures are mere reality. Only the montage turns them into either truths or falsehoods. Herein lies the immense responsibility devolving on the news-reels. Their convincing power is in the fact that the spectator feels that he is an eyewitness. The shot is accepted as a fact, a presentation of conclusive proof, although of course it is not by accident that the camera comes to a halt in front of one particular object and not of another.
EPICS OF LABOUR
If there are films which deserve the appellation of 'cultural' films, they are those film memorials to human effort, proclaiming the glory of human labour, toil which at the cost of skill and sweat is labouring to make this earth a garden. I want to mention first of all one of the finest examples of this kind of documentary: Turin's Turksib. All that this film shows is the building of a railway from Siberia to Turkestan. Many railways have been built before this, longer railways, railways involving more arduous technical tasks. And yet this film was such an outstanding success and exercised such an inspiring, onward-urging influence, that few feature films could be found to rival it. For the great human significance of this piece of Soviet construction was expressed by a Soviet director in a passionate and monumental pictorial epic, the appeal of which was irresistible far beyond the borders of the Soviet Union.
The building of the first railway ever to link Siberia with Turkestan is shown in this film with a dramatic tension and