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THE FILM OF FACT 195
Some of the psychological films released by the National Film Board of Canada with a view to spreading awareness of mental disorders are bad cinema and good object lessons. It happens, of course, that perfect indoctrination goes together with high cinematic quality; for instance, the pictures which Sir Arthur Elton produced for the Shell Film Unit— think of his Transfer of Power— are both admirable pieces of education and excellent films. Yet in many a case the issue at stake precludes regard for the affinities of the medium. Occupational training films have often to rely predominantly on verbal explanations to deliver their particular message. One may even venture the assumption that cinematic penetrance is apt to divert audience attention from the learning process proper. Formally a subgenre of documentary, the instructional film more or less belongs to the family of audiovisual aids.
THE FILM ON ART
Art films have come into prominence since the last war. Before examining them, I should like to mention a phenomenon which seems to materialize whenever halfway realistic paintings and drawings, or rather, details of them, are being transferred to the screen. Provided it is really the moving camera, not the still camera, which records these landscapes or portraits, their screen reproductions evoke three-dimensional life more vividly than do the originals themselves.
Gain in three-dimensional naturalness
This easily observable effect may be tentatively traced to the following three factors. First, the moviegoer expects to be confronted with images of given reality. And due to this expectation, he will spontaneously be inclined to think of shots detailing a realistic canvas as photographic records of the three-dimensional objects represented on it. He might feel tempted, for instance, to identify the image of a woman's head in a Rubens portrait with a shot of the living model herself. In consequence, the pictures seem to gain in spatial depth.
Second, the practice, customary especially with experimental art film makers, of compartmentalizing a painting without showing the whole of it— a practice which no art critic will readily endorse*— is likely to sustain
* Bolen, "Films and the Visual Arts," in Bolen, ed., Films on Art: Panorama 1953 (French edition: p. 7 n.), mentions that at the Amsterdam Congress of the International Art Film Federation an art critic requested the directors of art films to reproduce, in each film on a work of art, that work in its entirety at the beginning of the film.