World Film and Television Progress (1938)

Second in the projected series of U.S. Documentary Films, The River has followed The Plow That Broke The Plains under the backing of the U.S. Farm Security Administration. Infinitely more popular from the beginning than The Plow, The River is creating a stir that is bound to increase the attention given to documentaries in America, and open a field well-prepared by English imports and the few efforts already made in America. But The River, which is being met with inordinate praise, both from audiences and reviewers, has its dangers. They lie in a certain slackening of standard and tightness. The film itself is finished ; the dangers are such that they may be passed on to future films. Looseness of conception, inadequacy of "plotting," lack of climax are all found in a work as ambitious in theme and range as any documentary has been, and with many of the virtues of breadth and common appeal. The River was shot in 1936; just as the original script was finished, the Mississippi burst, and additions, shot in the flood areas, are in the film as it stands now. A patch inserted to make a film topical would show to the damage of most scripts, but it is among the vices and virtues of The River that there are no signs of stitches. The patch becomes one of a series, with very little garment visible. The film is loosely centred around the quality and effect of the Mississippi on its huge valley (which covers two-thirds of the United States), and the history of the valley in terms of its rivers which feed the Mississippi. There are sequences of beautiful shots, resolved without any satisfaction, stacking isolated excellences. For example, the small trickle, which signifies the headwaters, en 'The S2^S' LONDON FILM SCHOOL JULY25thto AUG. 5th, 1938 OFFICIAL OPENING with Address by JOHN GRIERSON, M.A. SUBJECTS: TECHNIQUE AND MANIPULATION PRACTICAL FILM PRODUCTION TEACHING METHODS BY MEANS OF FILM MASS DEMONSTRATIONS LECTURES ON GENERAL FILM MATTERS DEMONSTRATIONS of FILMS VISITS to FILM STUDIOS, etc. Write for FULL PROSPECTUS to Mr. J. W. S. KAY 74 LIMESDALE GDNS., EDGWARE, MIDDX. ®&S»£® Some critics have questioned the enthusiastic praise given Pare Lorentz's Film 'The River', in this country and America. W.F.N, prints this comment by Muriel Rukeyser without in any way endorsing her criticisms of the film. larged into flood during the film, including fine moments of icicles dripping, clear shallow streams over pebbles, and the high motion of flood crest — and all this excellence never resolves into a river flow in one direction across a screen until it reaches its delta. The old river traffic, predicted so superbly by the shots of paddle-boats, never are carried out of Mark Twain's times; the old lumber industry falls away, but the new machine industries are never explained. Its photography is the best thing about The River. Stacy Woodard, Floyd Crosby, and Willard Van Dyke have done some first-rate work ; work so good that a spectator questions the sense of buying stock shots from such Hollywood films as Come and Get It, instead of spending the amount necessary to use dialogue for the few family scenes, instead of using commentary. The narration itself is weak, fake poetic, and often ridiculous. It depends often on names, place-names, battle-names, names of years and trees, Black spruce and Norway pine; Douglas fir and red cedar ; Scarlet oak and shagbark hickory . . . or, in the beginning, and in countless repetitions, . . . Down the Judith, the Grand, the Osage, and the Platte; The Rock, the Salt, the Black and Minnesota; Down the Monongahela, the Allegheny, Kanawha and Muskingum; The Miami, the Wabash, the Licking and the Green ; The White, the Wolf, the Cache and the Black; Down the Kaw and Kaskaskia, the Red and Yazoo Down the Cumberland, Kentucky and the Tennessee . . . names that are in themselves evocative and rich, but which in reiteration become the chanted jargon of a lesson, a childish and geographical glossolalia. The voice of the narrator (Thomas Chalmers) goes on and on in a well-trained baritone, smoothing over the lurches. But the film itself slips, and the slip is apparent from anywhere in the house. The voice is not talking about what is on the screen; climaxes slip; the music (Virgil Thomson) slips, and from variations on 'Hot Time In The Old Town To-night,' it slides to strident, outdated 1,2,1,2,3, blast-furnace music when we should be hearing the machines themselves; and, when the riser as enemy has built to the top of its menace, we hear, ingratiatingly, in a new key, 'Old Man River.' The River's story is that of a wide and magnificent basin wasted through war and boomtime, expansion, greed, and flood. The Mississippi has drawn off the land of the South, as far back as the mountains, through erosion, mismanagement and the great floods, washed the land off into the Gulf of Mexico. The story to be told is the land in terms of its people and industry and common history, and there is a future beyond that of re-planting. But in The River, the story is garbled, the people are all but omitted, and the land is left, with its sole promise in water-power (the shots of power-plants and dams are, again. first-rate) and between the lines an implicit condemnation for the entire farming South. There is real excitement of content and possibility in The River. Its threat to documentaries is in its inherent carelessness, its sloppy technique and development. What it is doing is to lower its own standard through truncated sequences, missed connections, and a narration full of childish parallelisms. Its virtue is in the great stimulus of its material, its honest excitement, and the promise of future documentaries for which it is helping to prepare an audience. 121