Documentary News Letter (1942 - 1943)

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NEWS LETTER

( ONTl NTS

PRIOR] I >

NOTES Ol i ill MONTH

GETTING THEM SHOW N

NEW DOCUMIM \l<1 I II MS
FILM OF THE MONTH — ShorS
INDUSTRIAL TRAINING HLMS IN I

snui ISII ( I MKAI I ILM LIBRARY

Mil GIAN1 SHINNIES DOWN I III BEANST/

111! BRAINS TRUST ON PROPAGA
sen mini FILM sim n i |l s
SHORT 1 II M BOOKINGS FOR IAN
FILM SOCIETY NEWS
TECHNICOLOR BY A NEW PRO( I
NATIONAL SAVINGS PUBLICITY

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON Wl

PRIORITY

there can be little doubt that the British Government
is now making a more widespread use of the film than has
ever been attempted 'oy any other public body in the world.
For this condition of things the British documentary movement
can take some part of the credit. After two and a half years of war
and two and a half years of campaigning for the full recognition of
the film as a war-weapon film makers may regard with some satis-
faction the volume of official production now in hand. Films are
being made or sponsored by the Army, the Navy, the R.A.F. The
Ministry of Information is having films made on its own behalf
and on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Home
Security, the Board of Education, the Ministry of Food, the Mines
Department, the Ministry of Labour, the Colonial Office and the
National Fire Service. Films are being made by such semi-official
bodies as the British Council and the National Savings Committee.
In addition a number of other official bodies are making use of the
film for private record purposes.

Thus 1939, 1940 and 1941 have seen waged a successful campaign
to promote the use of the film : 1942 should mark the opening of a
second and a complementary campaign, a campaign for efficient,
intelligent and co-ordinated production. It is not enough for the
Government to produce a lot of films : it is necessary for the Govern-
ment to ensure that the nation's film making power is directed into
the most useful channels and that these channels provide for the
national propaganda and instructional needs in the most efficient
possible way. For the supply of films cannot be unlimited. Already
there is competition amongst official sponsors for the services of the
more efficient units, and it is not always the least valuable subjects
which are abandoned because of lack of available production
facilities.

The crying need is for organisation and co-ordinating control.
Film-workers everywhere are demanding that the Government take
steps to make more efficient use of their industry. The recent public-
ation by the Association of Cine Technicians of a report on how
greater efficiency may be attained represents a step of considerable
significance. The labour interests in the industry are not only anxious
to pull their weight in the war effort : they are determined to do so,
and they see no reason to remain silent in face of inefficiencies caused
by employers or official sponsors. They see no good reason why
units, facilities and materials badly needed for official films should
be employed upon commercial advertising films ; nor do they under-
stand why directors must stand idle for weeks ear-marked for the
production of urgent official films whose Whitehall sponsors cannot
decide upon the propaganda line to be followed.

The Association of Cine-Technicians has listed its complaints and

suggestions and most of these will come as no surprise to readers of
Documentary News Letter. However strongly some sections of
the employers may resent this tactless probing into the war effort,
it is a significant and a necessary development that labour should
play a more active part in the organisation of film propaganda. It
is. moreover, a step in the direction of that socialisation of industry
which must become more and more openly accepted as the war
progresses. Yet labour must do more than demand increased effi-
ciency from employers and sponsors. It must take a greater measure
of responsibility for its own efficiency. In the studios the time has
come for labour to question the national value of much of its work
and to take necessary action to prevent the frittering away of pro-
duction power. In shorts production labour must look more
critically at its own professional contribution to the welter of films
in hand. Many documentary film-makers have become so used to
blaming their sponsors that they are frequently blind to production
opportunities which they themselves waste.

It is the task of the documentary movement continually to force
up its standards of efficiency, speed and quality. It is the task of the
competing host of official sponsors to see that national advantage
is taken of efficiency, speed and quality and to see, moreover, that
documentary's unique experience in propaganda and instructional
method — as distinct from film-making — is fully utilised. The varied
official demands will never be satisfactorily met without some
means of co-ordinating competing needs. Already shortages not
only of staff but of equipment are becoming serious. Already the
Services are beginning to use their powers to commandeer production
equipment and so put it beyond reach of Civil Departments a
course of action which may well be against the national interest.
Production bottle-necks at the labs, and in types of specialised film
— such as the making of animated diagrams -are holding up im-
portant work. Who is to decide whether an instructional film for
the Army or a propaganda film for the Ministrj of Information
shall have priority?

It becomes apparent that what is required is a co-ordinator of all
film work undertaken in the national interest who will have power
at least equal to that of an Under-Sccretan, of State. It would be his
responsibility to review the film production machinery available, to
co-ordinate and appraise the requirements of all official users, to
establish production priorities and. by virtue of his control over
personnel, equipment and raw materials, to ensure that approved
production proceeds smoothly. Such a position can only be filled by
an expert in the field of propaganda ; it is not merely an administra-
tive job, but one which calls for creative ability backed by know-
ledge and authority.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

NOTES
OF THE
MONTH

our new year issue appears in a new
format, due. as you may readily guess, to the
paper shortage. By using a three-column lay-
out throughout the paper (other than the
front page) we have succeeded in keeping
very nearly the same amount of wordage.

Welcome Arrival

we are very glad to announce that Alex-
ander Shaw has joined the Editorial Board.
Shaw lias just returned from a year's work
in India, organising the production of docu-
mentary films for the Government and also
planning and setting-up an all-Indian
organisation to carry out the work. As will be
seen from the list of films published else-
where in this issue, Shaw did not let the grass
grow under his feet. We shall publish in the
next issue Shaw's account of the film situa-
tion in India.

Stupidity

a story is current that several films pro-
duced by the Canadian Government cannot
get a theatrical release here owing to some
obscure clause in the quota regulations. The
films concerned include The Strategy of
Metals and The Battle for Oil, which those
who have seen them claim to be two of the
best propaganda-plus-informational films of
the war. Both were officially produced by
John Grierson and Stuart Legg for the
( anadian Government. It is said that a well-
known American renting firm cannot obtain
renter's quota for them in the United King-
dom, and this presumably means that they
are classed as "alien" films— a pretty compli-
ment to the Commonwealth. We hope that
action will be taken to see that any petti-
fogging restrictions in the way are quickly
removed. This is no time for crass parochial
stupidity to prevent the showing of films
which relate our own individual war efforts
to the world scale of the conflict. The B.O.T.
must snip a few strands of red tape right

Flaherty

wi hopi that Robert Flaherty's film The
Lain/, to which reference is made elsewhere
in this issue, will be sent over here as soon as
possible. All British film people owe
Flaherty a great deal lor his rumbustious
sojourn over here, and few will see without a
sigh of regret his Chelsea Hat, battered
slightly, and exposed at unexpected angles,
perched on the edge of one o\' the I mbank-
ment's largest lumps of devastation. Any
new film by him is an event, and this one,
which deals with one of the U.S.A. 's most
pressing internal problems, is bound to be of
special interest. We hope, bj the way, thai in
wartime America he will continue to wield
his camera in his inimitable way.

It's an III Wind . . .

the propaganda content of the financial
columns of the Press is always worthy of
study. A recent attempt to build up national
morale was made by the City Editor of the
Sunday Express. In reference to Japan's in-
creasing grip on vital war materials he writes
as follows •

"But the outlook for rubber investors is
not wholly gloomy. Before the Japs came in,
it was estimated that the United States
would finish the war with "strategic" re-
serves of 500,000 tons while we might have
accumulated stocks of 250,000 tons. Gradual
liquidation of those stocks would have kept
the price of rubber low for years. Now it
seems that Europe and America may finish
Lip with almost no rubber at all."

"•Target for Tonig'it"

the national Board of Review of Motion
Pictures, which annually selects the outstand-
ing work of the year in every branch of pro-
duction has chosen Target for Tonight as
1941 "s best documentary. The Ministry of
Information announces that by the time this
film finishes its release in the United States.
Canada and South America, it is anticipated
that it will have played in over 12,000 theatres
to approximately 50 million people.

Dirt in the Milky Way

said Mr. R. H. Naylor, noted astrologer,
in a recent issue of The Sunday Express:

"Propaganda— In the middle of this
year Uranus ("The Awakener") enters
Gemini (the Zodiacal sign concerned with
publicity and communications). That spells
the death of propaganda as we have known
it and the birth of a new form of propa-
ganda.

By natural law the present forms of pro-
paganda must finally defeat themselves.
The day will soon come when the leaflet
will fail, the loudspeaker blare in vain, the
propagandists shout unheeded.

When that moment comes — and it will
come while Uranus is in Gemini, i.e.
1942-1949— propaganda may roar, but the
public mind will heed not.

Various consequences will follow:

( 1 ) The whole propaganda machinery
of dictatorship — under whatever name that
dictatorship masquerades — will unac-
countably become non-effectual.

(2) Hence a desperate attempt every-
where to muzzle free speech and construc-
tive criticism; in the hope of giving new
life to old methods of shaping mass
opinion.

(3) Political and business psychologists
will have to invent new and more subtle
forms of propaganda and advertising."
We hope the M.O.I, and the documentary

movement will jointly note this prophecy,
and make arrangements for an appropriate
Witches' Sabbath to be held in Russell
Square. D.N.L., for its part, is prepared to
exert itself no less fully in casting runes than
it does in casting aspersions.

Allied Propaganda Needs

we deal in this issue with the need for
national co-ordination of film propaganda.
This is an issue of vital importance matched
only by a new need arising from the clari-
fication of the international situation caused
by the Japanese aggression. The Allied
Front is now world-wide, and it is clear that
not only must each nation look carefully to
the efficiency of its propaganda machinery
but also that the Allied Powers must imme-
diately co-ordinate their individual prop-
aganda efforts. It is all to the good
to learn that an information depart-
ment has been set up in Chungking, but it is
to be hoped that this department will not
find itself working in a vacuum. It is a case
for joint action by Britain, the Dominions,
the United States, the U.S.S.R., China, and
those governments of allies temporarily
overrun by the Nazis.

GETTING THEM SHOWN

A survey of the huge distribution of propaganda
and instructional films which is now growing up in
Great Britain as part of the national war effort.

io produce good films for purpose
formation and propaganda is only
job. In addition to ensuring the right
matter and efficient and speeds pre
it is vitally important to see that the i
tion machinery is working properlj
gandists should always be able to
the questions: (a) Are your films

ill.- I;

opK

(b)ai

reaching the right groups
The answers to these
always as easy as night b
larly as regards th: circulation o\ films over-
seas. The British ; ouncil Films Committee
never been able to satisfy questioners

s o\' in- distribution. We doubt, for that matter, how
half the far the M O.I. can be absolutely sure of its
subject- overseas coverage, although it must ob-
►duction viously have a number of facts and figures
listribu- at its disposal. The difficulty here, of course,
Propa- is that it is easj enough to send a number of
answer prints, lavenders and negatives to various
■caching parts o\' the world, and it is also compara-
nd? and iivelv simple to get estimates of the numbers
urposes, of shows given. But the numbers and type of

the audiences are much more difficult to
arc not come by. A list of showings in. say, I urkcv
particu- or Egypt, may look imposing, although in

fact the film may only have been shown to

limited audiences at Embassy soirees or

Mich like.

as to the extent and quality o\' its overseas The only solution to this problem is the

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

appointment of officers overseas with some
knowledge and training in the field of films.
This has in some cases been done^notably
in New York— but there still appears to be
too much reliance on "the usual diplomatic-
channels" which provide all too little under-
standing of the problems involved.

Nevertheless everyone will agree that in
this country the M.O.I.'s distribution system
has been sensibly planned and carried out.
The five minute films reach a known audi-
ence of ordinary film goers, even if there are
some doubts as to how many exhibitors are
keeping fully to the letter of the C.E.A.
agreement. And the non-theatrical scheme,
created and run by acknowledged experts
and pioneers in this field of distribution, is
working admirably. The only difficulty here
is, apparently, to achieve a supply of sub-
standard prints sufficiently big to meet the
constantly increasing demand, although the
Treasury appears to have been far from
miserly in its grants for distribution.

The M.O.I., however, is only a part of the
distribution picture. The bulk of the nation's
youth is in uniform, and films are being
increasingly used for training purposes as
well as for general education and for enter-
tainment. This type of distribution is largely
in control of the Services themselves, and,
although it is difficult for civilians to obtain
a full picture of the situation, it is widely
felt that the distribution situation in the
Services is by no means satisfactory.

We are not at the moment concerned with
the question of whether service training films
are good or bad (in general they appear to be
a pretty mixed bunch). We are concerned with
the questions: "Are training films, when made,
used properly? And are they seen by the right
trainees at the right time and at the correct
intervals in the curriculum?"

While it is, as we have found out, difficult
to obtain official answers to these and similar
queries, there does appear to be a good deal
of doubt as to whether they can at present
be satisfactorily answered. It is said (and we
are speaking of the Services in general) that
the conditions of projection are not always
satisfactory. If the screen image is too dark
and the sound is distorted the best training
film in the world is not worth showing. It
would appear, moreover, that many Service
men have never seen any training films.
There are, too, doubts as to whether com-
manding officers fully appreciate that films
must either be properly used or not at all.
It is no use showing a unit a ten-reel film
in one long session when it has been specially
produced to be shown reel by reel at ten
different stages of training.

Have the Services taken the distribution
problem seriously enough? Have they
realised that distribution is a creative as well
as a technical job? Are experts in distribution
being employed, and are they in positions of
sufficient authority? These and similar
questions are being widely asked, and it
would seem that a strict investigation into

distribution methods, projection conditions.
and their whole relationship to training and
educational activities, is now overdue.

Most in the public eye at present is the
Army. The War Office has established a
complete department to deal with the pro-
duction and distribution of training films.
This department (on whose production
activities we have more than once had occa-
sion to comment) is operating on a large scale,
and considerable public monies are involved.

A statement has now been issued by the
War Office to explain the respective func-
tions of the Director of Army Kinemato-
graphy (Paul Kimberley) and the Army Film
Unit, which is controlled by the Director of
Public Relations. This statement makes it
clear that Kimberley is responsible for the
production of Army films for instructional
and training purposes and also for the
supply, distribution and maintenance of all
projectors and film prints (including those
which are for purely recreational purposes)
required by the Army. On the other hand
the Director of Public Relations remains
in charge of the Army Film Unit, whose
job it is to supply "film material about
the Army" (sic) for public cinema distri-
bution. The statement emphasises that the
Army Film Unit "is concerned with propa-
ganda and Army publicity and therefore
very closely related to the Films Division
of the Ministry of Information."

From all this it would appear that Kimber-
ley has been whisking his new broom around
to some purpose, and that in the process he
has much strengthened the hand of his own
department, since, in addition to training
films made by Trade Units, he has now-
formed an Army Kinematograph Service
Film Unit to undertake training work. The
means of staffing this Unit are, we gather,
already causing some heartburns in the
cinema trade.

In a further statement it is announced
that the War Office Kinematograph Depart-
ment will within two months have 150
35-mm. mobile units supplied with generat-
ing sets and two projectors, and also 400
16-mm. mobile vans, half of which are
completely self-contained and can give
shows anywhere and the other half equipped
to plug into main supplies. It is also stated
that 200 static units are installed in training
centres. Between 60 and 70 per cent of this
equipment already exists.

Thus the War Office Cinematograph
Department will shortly have at its disposal
an enormous number of projectors. The
statement continues. "It is intended to use
this apparatus primarily for educational
purposes, but half the time it will be avail-
able for entertainment purposes, and
arrangements are being made for the suppl\
of films."

This evidence of the widespread distri-
bution organisation which is being set up
by the War Office will naturall) be wel-
comed in all quarters. It must be confessed

that we are still somewhat in the dark as
to the actual organisational system b\
which the right training films are to be
supplied to the right units at the right time.
It is to be hoped that the Director of Armv
Kinematography will find himself well
supplied with experts in non-theatrical dis-
tribution, and that he will bear closely in
mind that in addition to the technical
problems there are also creative problems
in any use of films for this type of showing.

To-day, great improvements are being
made in Army Education, and facilities for
spare time study are being greatly extended.
Sub-standard film shows could be of great
value, particularly in relation to discussion
groups and study circles, both of which are
being encouraged by the Army Education
authorities. Films for this purpose must of
course be drawn from the same sources as
those used by civilians, but those Arm}
Education officers who attempt to do this
are apparently finding it difficult to obtain
copies of the films they require owing, no
doubt, to the immense civilian demand for
non-theatrical film prints. There would
appear to be a strong case for th. War
Office to make a separate grant to the
Central Film Library, so that copies of im-
portant films shall be readily available to
Service Units on an exclusive basis.

It is of course doubtful whether some
Education Officers fully realise ihe number
and variety of films which are available from
the three Central Film I ibrary catalogues,
from the Petroleum Films Bureau, and from
the Gas Association — to say nothing o(
films which can be hired from commercial
agencies. In some cases it would appear that
Command Education Officers have a num-
ber of copies of films at their disposal, but
some of these do not always seem to be well
chosen nor the catalogues well laid out.
(Hence the misunderstanding by which a
Russian lecture was illustrated by a film
entitled The Red Army which turned out lo
be concerned with the life and habits of the
domestic bed-bug).

Nothing could be more striking than the
immense expansion of the whole non-
theatrical field during the last two years.
In addition to the army activities ahead}
referred to the Ministry of Information has
100 vans giving non-theatrical shows (to
say nothing of its constant supply of films to
people who already have their own pro-
jectors) and. although figures are apparentlv
not available, both the Navy and the
Royal Air Force must also have a consider-
able number of projectors.

The capital investment represented b>
these activities is pretty large; but it is also
of incalculable value. When the war is over
we shall as a nation have in our possession
one of the most powerful weapons of public
education imaginable. All the more reason
therefore for ensuring that distribution
should be efficiently and also imaginatively
cai ried out here and now.

!)()( I MENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

FILM/ OF GREAT BRITAIN LIMITED

PRODUCED

IN

1941

SIMPLIFIED FIRST AID

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION

EMERGENCY OUTDOOR COOKING

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION / MINISTRY OF FOOD

GOVERNMENT TRAINING COURSES TRAILER

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION / MINISTRY OF LABOUR

SURPRISE BROADCAST

FOR ANDREW BUCHANAN PRODUCTIONS

YOUTH TAKES A HAND

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION BOARD OF EDUCATION

LONDON, AUTUMN, 1941 0* sPani8h' ***w»*& English)

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION

HOT ON THE SPOT

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION MINISTRY OF FOOD

HEATING ECONOMY TRAILER
COOKING ECONOMY TRAILER
HOT WATER ECONOMY TRAILER

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION / MINES DEPARTMENT

GRATE DAYS TO GREATER DAYS

FOR BRITISH FILMS LIMITED

HE WENT TO THE CUPBOARD

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION / MINISTRY OF FOOD

Managing Director
ANDREW BUCHANAN

NEW

DOCUMENTARY

FILMS

W.V.S. Production: Venn Films. Direction:
Louise Birt. Camera: George Plowman. Music:
William Alwyn. 19 minutes.
Subject: Mary Welsh, an American newspaper
writer, is looking for a story about the W.V.S.
She interviews Lady Reading and subsequently
pieces together, at her typewriter, a few of the
seemingly innumerable jobs that the volunteers
in this Service perform.

They organise sorting depots for clothes, mend
oilskins for the Merchant Navy, look after
blitzed families and take care of children in re-
ception nurseries. Every little job of personal ser-
vice, whether it is ambulance driving or arrang-
ing street salvage dumps, billeting evacuated
families or servicing rest centres, making hot tea
for the mobile canteens or helping mothers whose
children are evacuated, is done willingly and
efficiently by this unpaid army of a million
women.

Treatment: This film is an extremel) competent
and straightforward job of reporting. It succeeds
in covering a very wide field, ranging from
streets dumps to nurseries, rest homes and i
Scottish fishing village, with a dozen other places
in between. It has a very nice feeling for personal
detail and for ordinary people doing an ordinary
job of work. Photography is excellent and
Alwyn's music helps a lot. Mar\ Welsh who
commentates all through has a pleasant voice and
speaks a thoughtfully written commentary well.
Pitipuxaiulii value: Very good. Made speciticallx
for American release it does its job. If it secures
exhibition in this country— and it should do —
some commentary changes would be advisable.
At times it is a little too patronising to America
for British consumption. The film is a worthy
record and a worthy tribute to a great body of
people who get little or no publicity but are doing
a job as good as any.

All Those in Favour. Paul Rotha Productions
Direction: Donald Alexander. Camera: Geoffrey
Faithfull. 2-reel Non-T.

Subject: The impact of the war on local govern-
ment in a rural district of Devonshire, and tht
steps taken by a special committee of the loca
council to Solve the various problems arisini
from emergency conditions.
Treatment. The most striking thing abou
Alexander's direction o\ this film is his use o
synchronous dialogue, spoken in open-ai
locations and often while the characters ar
walking along roads or across fields: this dia
logue is used to point the moral rather thai
adorn the tale, and it is often very effectiv
because the conversation is intimately relate;
either to background action or— dramatically-' j
to an entire landscape. The story is shaped fron
a personal investigation made by an America
news correspondent who \isits Devonshire an;
discusses matters with members of the locii
council; but in addition to this, various sectior
of the film are compered by the council peopl
concerned, and here Alexander has ingeniousl
mingled actors with real people. This is especiall
successful in the meeting of the council. Tr l0;

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

{Continued)

only criticism of the film is that despite its
technical skill and ingenuity some of it is
on the dry side — but it must be remembered
that in tackling the subject of Ideal government
this was almost unavoidable; and the wonder is
that so much of the him is free from this defect.
Propaganda value. At a time when democracy,
facing its greatest crisis, is gradually learning
that its future lies in the closest possible fusion
between central (national) planning and active
regionalism, this him will be of immense
propaganda value. All Those in Favour empha-
sises the necessity for local initiative and for the
creative action of individuals within the local
scheme, without which national planning be-
comes either a cipher or a form of dictatorship.
It therefore has a direct appeal to all citizens
who are determined that the post-war period
shall be one not only of reconstruction but of
absolute democratic progress. Thus within the
limits of its treatment this him rates full marks for
propaganda.

War in the East. Production: Shell Film Unit.
M.O.I. 5 minutes.

Subject. The situation in the Far last after
Japan's aggression. Strategic points, sea dis-
tances, and possible moves and counter-moves
by the various forces are described.
Treatment. Practically the entire film is com-
posed of simple maps and diagrams, often with a
lecturer pointing at relevant parts of the map or
illustrating comparative distances with a ruler.
The argument is succinctly and vividly expressed
and remains fully up-to-date despite the fall of
Hongkong. It is especially noteworthy that the
whole film was made in eight days, from treat-
ment to show-copy, and congratulations are due
to the Shell Film Unit for its admirable team-
work, and to the M.O.I. Films Division for its
foresight and speed. After seeing this film one is
inclined once again to raise the plea for more of
this sort — many of which could be made in rough
form by intelligent anticipation and be ready for
use in emergency.

Propaganda value. This is just the type of in"
formational film which the public surely, wants-
Full marks.

Main Street, U.S.A. Production: March of Time
(No. 8, Seventh year.) Distribution: R.K.O.
Radio Pictures.

Subject: Made just prior to America's entry into
the war, an analysis is made of her civil defence
efforts, together with an attempted enactment of
what life would be like for Americans if Hitler
were able to impose his "New Order" there.
Treatment. This is one of the most disappoint-
ing issues of "March of Time" for some while,
utterly lacking in conviction, and to English
audiences at least, likely to provoke considerable
mirth. We are introduced to what is described as
a "typical" American family. They are a pretty
revolting lot and it is significant that in one of
the two sync, dialogue sequences, the father and
his eldest son — a corporal in the Army — can
find no other subject of conversation than to at-
tack trade unionism and denounce sti
if everything else in the American social system
was perfect.

There-enacted sequence of what life would he-
like under Hitler is done rather in the style of an
"Our Gang" comedy. Groups of self-conscious
youths march round the streets trying to look
tough and pretend to beat up harmless citizens.

Their efforts culminate in raiding the head-
quarters of the "Loyal Order of the Moose." The
suppression of this doubtless formidable body
mav e\emplif> fascism in all its bestiality to
an American, but over here it's just a big joke.
The shooting all through is stagey and un-
realistic, particularlv so when dealing with people,
all of whom look extremely nervous and very
conscious of the camera.

Propaganda value. The film does very little to
create a bettei understanding between the peoples
of America and Britain and its "ideology" is very
doubtful. At times one gets the impression— due
to the unfortunate selection of types and what
thev arc made to sav -that while America on no
account wants Hitler's new order, it would not
be averse to a form of American fascism, if onlv
to deal with these damned labour agitators. And
once that idea gets around it's going to start an
awful lot of trouble.

They Met in London. Paul Rotha Productions
and British Paramount News. Producer: Paul
Rotha. Photography: Jack Harding. Non-T.

I I minutes.

Subject. The 1941 meeting of the British Associa-
tion. It is opened by Mr. Maisky, Dr. Wellington
Koo, Dr. Benes, Mr. Winant and Anthony
Eden. Then the association gets down to dis-
cussion of war and reconstruction. Young
scientists say how much more could be done by
pooling knowledge and equipment. Sir John Orr
and H. G. Wells speak and Julian Huxley puts
their difficulties in a nutshell. "It is no good
planning for the post-war period if we don't win
the war. That's obvious. At the same time, what's
the good of winning the war if we don't plan the
post-war period."

Treatment. The film is produced jointly by Paul
Rotha Productions and Paramount News, and
it is pleasant to see some co-operation round the
place, for however much the Newsreel Associa-
tion shout their intentions of being 100 per cent
behind the war effort, some members still won't
co-operate to make films even if they are needed
for the war effort. The film is a good example of
a little goodwill and a little less profit-making.
It is extremely well photographed and recorded.
The sior\ is straight and clean.
Propaganda Value. Very good for overseas.
Celebrity appeal. Maisky, Wells, Sir John Orr.
Huxley. Critical and progressive sentiments.
effective.

How to Thatch. Production: Strand. Direction:
Ralph Bond. Photograph) : Charles Marl-
borough. Commentary: Freddie Grisewood.
Associate Producer: Edgar Anstey- M.O.I, non-
theatrical for the Ministry of Agriculture.

I I minutes.

Subject. How to Thatch is another of the Ministry
of Agriculture's first-class instructional films.
In a pleasant simple fashion it shows how an ex-
pert goes about thatching a rick, round or rect-
angular. We are introduced to the expert, who
looks a fine old boy. his young assistant, and a
number of new phrases and expressions, the
wisesl of which is "> calms" for the sections of
thatching straw stripped out ready for laying.
Treatment. The film is verv well made in a quite
straight instructional vein, with plenty of close
shots, good camerawork, and a decent human
touch in dealing with the thatchcr and his
assistant. Minor ca\ lis arc that the commentary
is too stilted and unhuman in wording, so that it
is a bit out of step with the human quality of the
shooting; that it contains (obviously the M. of

A.'s fault this) a fair amount of facts, figures and
pronouncements that have very little to do with
the film as it has been shot, and merely over-
balance it. and that the commentator's voice is
too obviously smart and townee for a film of
this kind. But these are fairly minor points.
instructional value. It is difficult to say what the
instructional value o\ this anil similar farming
films will prove to be. Obviously they are ex-
tremely pleasant for laymen and near-laymen to
watch, and their general message is good, clear
and useful, and that is justification enough. But
whether this film, for instance, will persuade
farmers to do their thatching better or tell them
something they don't know already, I don't really
know and should hate to guess.

\a\

I ha.

il Operations. Production: Shell Film Unit.
ucer: Edgar Anstey. Direction: Grahame
p. Diagrams: Francis Rodker. M.O.I.

Subject. Naval Operations briefly des
of the different units that make up
battleships, cruisers, dest rovers, and
illustrates the strategy and tactics i
with reference to the sinking o\ tin
and to the Matapan, Graf Spec

ind othei

Treatment. Technically, the him consists for the
most part of animated diagrams illustrated from
time to time with library shots. The diagrams
are very well made, easj to follow and have-
plenty of pleasantly swift tracks and pans to
liven them up. The film, however, attempts to
cover too much ground, with the result that it
presents a somewhat scrappy appearance, with
the function of some areas barely mentioned and
the functions of some craft (submarines for
instance) not mentioned at all. It might have-
been wiser to concentrate simply on one action ;
but within its limits the film is well made. -
Propaganda Value. The film is sure to prove
interesting to the general public, and no doubt
the spreading of information of any kind can be
considered an end in itself. \nvwa> it would be
unfair to criticise a film which sets out to do no
more than touch on certain aspects of naval
tactics, for not dealing with the fascinating sub-
ject of sea-power.

Three in a Shell Hole. Production: Mostilm
News. Direction: Leonid Leonov. English Version
and Dubbing Soviet War News Film Agency.
M.O.I. 5 minutes.

Subject. This is the fust Russian film to be shown
as one of the M.O.I. 5 minuters. It tells of the
work of one of the Soviet Red Cross girls in the
front line. During a Russian counter-attack she is
driven to take refuge in a shell-hole where she
finds a Russian soldier wounded in the knee. She-
patches him up and then, with a German machine-
gun stopping her leaving, discovers a German
doctor buried in the same shell-hole. She Icoks
after him too and fetches water for both of them.
As she prepares to go, the German doctor digs
up his buried revolver and is about to shoot her
when the Russian soldier shoots him instead, and
the two Russians both rejoin the counter attack.
Treatment. The film is nicely made in a plain
realistic style. The production, sound and
photography are all well done, and the girl her-
self is extremely good. She loots serious and
sincere and goes about her business with a very
pleasant and reassuring deftness and intensity.
You feel that the whole thing means a great deal
to her. that the war is really about something.
(Continued on page 6)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

NEW

DOCUMENTARY

FILMS

(CmHwed)

I he Russian voices are clubbed into English ; this
is supposed to be essential for British audiences
(though 1 doubt it), but here at any rate it is so
badly done as to ruin the whole realism of the
film. The voices are affected, the wording pom-
pous and the lip-synching inaccurate. If it is
really believed that audiences will not stand sub-
titles, it would be worth while to try leaving the
original dialogue on the film with an English
\oice giving the gist of it from time to time.
Anyway it is quite certain that this sort of
dubbing on a realistic film is a failure.
Propaganda value. The film is very obviously
addressed to Russian audiences, with its fierce
fighting spirit and insistence on the sub-human
brutality of the Germans. The main message
that home audiences will draw is a very useful
confidence in the seriousness, tenacity and
decency of the Russians, with a small by-
product on the ethics of the medical profession.
But it is for the M.O.I, to try and tie up the vivid
front line danger of the Russian women soldiers
with the activities of the A.T.S. By the way, it
does not seem particularly useful to suggest in
cheerful Charlie fashion, as is done in the open-
ing shots of this film, that the Germans, if left to
themselves, will happily exterminate each other.
However, the more Russian stuff that gets on our
screens, the better for everybody.
Sowing and Planting. Production: Selwyn Films
Limited. Direction: Jack Ellitt. Photography:
.lack Parker. Commentary: Roy Hay. Distribu-
tion: M.O.I, for the Ministry of Agriculture.
10 minutes.

Suhjei /. Sowing mid Planting is the second of the
instructional gardening films for beginners and
new allotment holders, the first being How to
Dig. It covers the preparation of the ground,
plantings shallots, sowing onions and parsnips,
sowing the seed-bed and planting potatoes.
Treatment. As in the first film it is extremely
pleasant to see people at work who obviously
know how to do their job, and the shooting
and cutting emphasise wisely the rhythm
and sureness of their actions. In a film of this
length (10 minutes) it must be a problem to decide
how much to cover, particularly as it is hopeless
to try and squee/e too much information into
a small space, but the film manages to give a
good general idea of how to plant and sow.
However, gardening is a religion where there are
no orthodoxies and hundreds of heresies. As this
series develops I can visualise more and more
controversv arising among the various sects. I
hope for instance that beginners with heavy
clay soil alter seeing the film will not go straight
out on a wet day and start treading their allot-
ments, excellent though treading is for the light
loam shown here. And for the same reason I
don't much care for the business of shuffling in
the newly sown rows with the feet. But a film like
this must remain simple.

Instructional Value. Within its limits, full marks
It is extremely well made, clearly shot, neatly
edited and simply commentated.

No. 2

THE

GOLDEN

GOOSE

THERE was a man who had three sons. The younge-i was called Dummling. and was on all
occasions despised and ill-treated hv the whole lamilv . 1 1 happened that the eldest went one day
into the wood to cut fuel: and his mother gave htm a delicious pa-tv and a hottle ot wine to take
with him. As he went into the wood, a little old man hid him good-day. and said. "Give me a
little piece of meat from your pasty, and a little wine out of your hottle: I'm very hungry and
thirsty." But I his clever young man said. ''(,ive von mv meal and wine! No. I thank you; 1
should not have enough left tor mv self ": and awav he went. He soon began to cut down a tree;
hut he had not worked long before he missed his stroke and cut himself.

\e\l went out the second s,,M to work: and his mother gave him. too. a past} ami a hottle of
wine. And the same little old man met him also, and asked him for something to eat and drink,
thought himself vastly clever, and -aid. AN hatever you get. I shall lose: so go your
roke that he aimed against a tree, hit him on the leg: -o that he too ua-

way!" The si

forced to go home.
Then Dummling
Bui his fal her an

aid. "lather. I should like to no and cut wood, too."

tvered. 'A oil had heller -lav at Ik. me. for vou know nothing of the business."
But Dummling aa- v erv pressing, and at last his lather said. "Go vour wav : vou' 1 1 be u |s,i when
you have suffered for your folly." \ ml his mother gav c him onlv some dry bread and a bottle of
sour beer. But when he went into the wood, he too met the little old man. Dummling -aid. "I'v e
onlv dry bread and sour beer: if that will suit vou. we will sit clou n and eat it together." So they
sat down, and when the lad pulled out his bread it was turned into a tine pasty and his sour beer
was delightful wine. They ale and drank heartily: and when the} had done, the little man said.
" \s you have a kind heart, I will send a blessing upon you. There stands an old tree: cut it down
and you will (ind something at the root."

Dummling set to work, and cut down the tree: and when it fell, he found in the hollow under
the roots a goose with feathers of pun- gold. He took it up. and went on to an inn where he
proposed to sleep for the night, "flic landlord and his three daughters when the} s,,w I lie e ,,,,., .
were very curious to examine what this wonderful bird could be. \l lasi iheclde-t -aid. "I rnu-i
and will have a feather."

So she waited until his back was turned, and then seized the goose b\ the wing: to her great
surprise there she stuck, for neither hand nor linger could she get auav again. Presently in came
the second sister and thought to have a feather too: but the moment she touched her sister, there
she too hung fast. A I last came the third, and wanted a feather: but the other two cried out.
••Keep auav ! for heaven's sake keep awav !" II owe v er. she did not understand what they meant.
"If the} are there." thought she. ''I may a- well be there too." So sh,- went up tothem: but the
moment she touched her sisters she stuck fast. \nd so thev kept companv with the goose all

The next morning Dummling carried oil I he goose under his arm. and look no notice of the
three girl-, but \ nil out with them sticking la-l behind.

I n I he middle of a held I he parson met I hem: and when he s-,v. the I rain, he s.,id. " Vre you not
ashamed of vou.--.clx e- \ on hold girls, to run after the v ouug man in I ha I wax ox er I he held- : I-
thal proper be lax iourV" Then he look the youngest bj the hand to lead her awa}. but the
moment he touched her he- too hung fast, and followed in the train. Presently, Up came the clerk:
and xvlien he sa ,\ hi- master I lie parson running alter the three ::ir|s. he wondered greatly, and
said. '-Hollo! hollo! your reverence! whither so lasi'- I h,re i- a christening today." Then he ran
up, and look him hv the gown, and in a moiii.nl lie w.i- l.i-l In... \- the live were thus trudging
along, one he] I anolher. I hex met two labourers with then mattocks, coming from work: and

the parson cried oui to them to set him free-. Bui -eaieeK had the) touched him, when they too

fell into the rani s. .md so made sex en. all running after Dummling and hi- » v

\l last thev arrived al a eilx. where reijined a kin" who had an onlv daughter I he princess
v, i- ,,| ., r i..ii- a I urn o| mini I I ha I no one could make I hi laiii;h: .im\ I he king had proclaimed to

all the wo i Id. Ih 1 1 whoev . i . on Id ma k. hei I a u - h -In add ha v c her for hi- wile. \s ,,s she sm

the seven ..II h . mini: I. met her. running about I read urn on each other'- heel-, -he could not help
biirsliii" into .. loic .tuti loud I.iul'Ii. linn Dummling claimed her for his wife: and he w a- heir

the km

RE VLIST FILM UNIT

IT OXFORD ST I. i; IT. \\ . I
Telephone: GERR IRD 1958-9

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

FILM OF THE MONTH

Shors. Produced at the Ukrainfilm Studios, Kiev .
Direction: Alexander Dovzhenko. Photography:
Y. Ekelchik. Music: A. Kabalevsky.
Shors is a particularly welcome film at this time.
Not only does it provide a badly needed key to
getting free drinks (wangle your friends into
asking "What's Shors?") but it's just about the
finest sort of film anyone could wish for in war-
time. It's a film about war and fighting, but,
much more than that, a film about what people
fight for. For the richness and fertility of their
native land, for love, for warmth of blood and
warmth of feeling, for the pleasure of living and
the dignity of dying. Dovzhenko is one of the
few men who, like Beethoven, all the time talks
naturally and unaffectedly about everything in
capital letters— Love, Death, Strife, Fertility.

The story of Shors is set in the Ukraine in
1918-19 when the local Bolsheviks had to drive
out first the invading Germans and then Petlura
with his White Guard and armies of inter-
vention, but after the first three shots it's per-
fectly clear that the film is going to be much
more than a slice of re-enacted history. It opens
with a typical Dovzhenko landscape, a sloping
field of sunflowers shimmering in the sun,
with two blooms right in front of the camera.
Suddenly there is a shell burst among the sun-
flowers, then another, and all at once, under your
very eyes, the opposing armies push up through
the sunflowers and get to grips in a hand to
hand struggle among the riches of the earth
they're fighting for, with the Ukrainians using
their bare hands to ram down the throats of
the invaders the same corn and sunflowers they
came to steal. There has never been anything
before quite like these first shots and the whole
opening sequence, with its warmth and violence,
for setting the mood of a film. The nearest to it
was the opening reel of La Bete Humaine.

This is the first film of Dovzhenko's we've
been allowed to see publicly over here since
Earth. There seems to have been a bit of hanky-
panky about him one way and another, as Ivan,
his film of the building of Dnepropetrovsk,
never got beyond the bonded film stores, and
Aerograd, his later anti-Japanese one about
fighting on the Manchurian border, which was
very good according to American reviews, never
got here at all. Anyway, it would be a good idea
for the Soviet War News Film Agency to fetch
it over now and let us have a look at how the
Russians deal with the Japs.

Dovzhenko is certainly an amazing director.
He has the most individual touch of any: if you
put him on to shooting the life of the ant I
guarantee you'd recognise his style after the
first few shots. This individual quality, a lyrical.
poetical feeling of warm blood, fertility, love
for the soil and joy of living, combined with
a great atmosphere of folk-lore in the telling
of the story, is, I'm willing to bet. quite uncon-
scious and unsought for by Dovzhenko himself.
1 should say that realism (which he certainly
gets) is what he goes for in his shooting, and the
rest is just a by-product. It is rather pathetic
and amusing to see poor old Eisenstein, after
months spent on careful historical research and
delving into the records and religious ritual of
the time, so as to get the true folk-tale spirit

into a seven hundred years' old story, come out
with that dreary schoolbook exercise Alexander
Nevsky, whilst Dovzhenko in a couple of minutes
on the screen can turn a realistic tale of modern
battle into true and authentic folk-lore.

He's certainly helped by his cameraman,
Ekelchik; the photography throughout the film
has a marvellous shimmering, luminous quality,
particularly in the exteriors, that it is a bit
difficult to account for. It's something like the
old orthochromatic or modern infra-red effect,
with the foreground bright and glazed in the
sunshine and the background lowering off into
darkness — it must be something to do with the
light in the Ukraine. And, of course, it works
specially well on Dovzhenko's particular favour-
ites, horses. This film, like Earth, is full of horses;
three riderless horses galloping through the
wheat, horses sheering off as the shells burst,
and coming with their flanks gleaming right
across the camera, close-ups of men and horses,
a horse standing appreciatively by as his master
and friend have a drink together, horses in the
charge, with the camera panning with their, not
the riders", heads. And the sound too is fine,
a very good score from Kabalevsky and full
volume on the sound effects, so that you think
you've never really heard a shell burst before.

The story of Shors, inside the story of the
liberation of the Ukraine, tells, somewhat on
Chapayev lines, of the friendship between Shors.
the efficient young party-member and com-
mander, and Bozhenko, a tough rowdy bearded
old lad magnificently played by I. Skuratov.
The film in a pleasant loosely-constructed
continuity alternates between large-scale spec-
tacular action sequences and intimate dialogue
scenes. The action sequences are beautifully
done on a scale of production that makes
Cecil B. de Mille look like a quickie merchant —
the opening sequence with its shot of one horse-
man cutting another down ; the battle of Cher-
nigov, with the thousands of tiny figures advanc-
ing over a snow-covered landscape that reminds
you of Breughel, and the astonishing tracking
shots with the cavalry; the fraternising with the
German troops; the retreat through the corn-
fields with dying Bozhenko carried on the
shoulders of his men and the horizon black with
the smoke of burning villages; the entry of the
Bolsheviks into Kiev and, shot with perfect
economy, what it meant to the inhabitants— the
release of the prisoners from gaol, the pained
reaction of the bourgeois as they look down from
an upper window and complain of the Bol-
sheviks, like W. C. Fields's wife of the burglars,
that they're singing; the reunion of the soldiers
with their families, and the two children rubbing
a place in their cellar window to look up at the
troops riding by whilst their mother lies dying
on a pallet behind. And the intimate dialogue
scenes are. in their way. just as good— the
village wedding feast with the cheerful inter-
ruption of the troops and the handsome young
gunner making a speech about love, bearing off
the bride for himself and giving an old peasant
woman the long awaited opportunity for a quite
irrelevant deunuciation of her old man ;
Bozhenko, particularly old Bozhenko, with his
studied address to the bourgeois citizens ol
Kiev, his quick, flattening dismissal of an officer

prisoner, his corrective healing of his henchman
Savochko and their drinks and reminiscences
together afterwards, his map-reading course
with Savochko, and his broken-hearted grief
when he hears of the killing of his wife. All this
is done with such a broad sweep, with such a
sense of warm blood and warm feelings, with such
a natural peasant touch about it, that the film
leaves you with a firm conviction that lite is
a pleasant thing, the Ukraine a fine country,
and the Russians bloody good lively lads.

There are just two things wrong. The con-
tinuity is loose anyway, though that is quite
pleasant; but on the top of that whole actions
and sequences have obviously been cut out
and the film as it is shown now presents a
horribly mutilated appearance, particularly
towards the end. I don't see why we shouldn't
be allowed to see films as they're meant to
be seen, it looks as though half an hour has
been cut out of Shors. Then there's Shors
himself: I'm afraid he's not a particularly
pleasant character; efficient and forceful enough,
but in his scenes with Bozhenko revealing himself
as a nasty young prig. In fact the "policy"
scenes in general all have a slightly unpleasant
flavour, quite out of character with the generous
human quality of the rest of the film. No doubt
both the savage cuts and mutilations, and the
intrusive sermons on behaviour and policy spring
from the same cause: never mind, Shors is
absolutely first class and nobody should miss it.

INDUSTRIAL
TRAINING FILMS

IN U.S.A.

exclusive distribution rights to the Govern-
ment's biggest civilian training film project, some
sixty films produced by several commercial pro-
ducers for the U.S. Office of Education, have
been awarded to Castle Films (30 Rockefeller
Plaza, N.Y.C.). The films are intended as visual
aids in training machine shop workers and
shipbuilding craftsmen. Ten films on ship-
building are included in the programme. The
distributing company announced that five
pictures on the machine shop would be re-
leased by November (last) and twenty subjects, in
groups of five, by December (last). Prints are not
rented, but sold to interested organisations,
among which are educational and vocational
training centres.

The first two films in another training film pro-
gramme, similar to the Office of Education's.
have been announced by Burton Holmes Films
Sponsor is the South Bend Lathe Company. The
series (16 mm., sound, colour) is based on the
book, "How to Run a Lathe," and the films are
to be used in conjunction with the book. Object
is to speed the training of lathe operators in de-
fence industries. Titles of the completed films
arc The Metal Working l.athe and Plain Turning.
Rental is free, borrowei paying transportation.

A new and unusual series of films on arc weld-
ing is being produced by Raphael G. Wolff, Inc.
These films are in 16 mm., sound, colour: de-
signed for teaching. The arc flame is shown and
explained in a simple manner through live action
photography combined with animation. Direc-
tion is by Paul Satterlield, who directed the Walt
Disney riveting picture.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

NEWS LETTER

MONTHLY SIXPENCE

VOL. 3 NUMBER 1

JANUARY 1942

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands for the use of film as a
medium of propaganda and in-
struction in the interests of the
people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of
common people all over the
world.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

is produced under the auspices
of Film Centre, London, in asso-
ciation with American Film Center,
New York.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey
Alexander Shaw
Donald Taylor
John Taylor
Basil Wright

EDITOR

Ronald Horton

Outside contributions will be
welcomed but no fees will be
paid.

We are prepared to deliver from
3 — 50 copies in bulk to Schools,
Film Societies and other organi-
sations.

Owned and published by
FILM CENTRE LTD.
34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON
W.l GERRARD 4253

ARMY TRAINING FILMS

IN U.S.A.

Reproduced by courtesy of Film Nei

with an absence of publicity and an air of
routine that is typical of the military altitude,
the Army's expanded training film programme
has covered a great deal of ground during
the year now ended. Audiences of more than
a million have seen the basic training sub-
jects; relatively small groups have seen the pic-
tures produced on hundreds of vital technical
matters affecting the welfare of the modern army.
All have received effective instruction in a wide
range of subjects. No estimate has been made of
the distribution in terms of thousands and mil-
lions of men, but there can be no doubt that the
Army has created and manned the largest educa-
tional film programme yet attempted.

The total strength of the Training Film Pro-
duction Laboratory, located at the Signal Corps
post at Fort Monmouth, N.J., has probably
reached its final quota in terms of men, with
almost 200 enlisted soldiers, about 30 officers
and a dozen civilian specialists working on pro-
duction. All these men have had previous ex-
perience in some type of motion picture work,
with the majority recruited from the Hollywood
entertainment factories. The T.F.P.L. occupies
one rather crowded building, with the founda-
tions for a second already laid a short distance
away, and completion promised by January.

More important than the record of completed
subjects and the technical facilities that have been
collected is the fact that a tremendous amount of
inertia, arising in many different phases of the
situation, has been overcome during the past
year. This is probably the most important of the
achievements. Because training film production
is necessarily subordinated to the work of all the
branches and services of the Army, and is subject
to countless controls contained in the channels
of military authority, the expansion of a complex
unit from a strength of seven men to almost 250,
since authorisation of the present programme in
August, 1940, presented in this respect alone, a
formidable problem in setting up effective mili-
tary procedures. On the educational side of the
picture, there is the fact that motion picture
methods used for teaching purposes are still rela-
tively undeveloped, and so the Army, which has
had a rudimentary training film unit since 1932,
has had to find its own methods, more or less
independently of outside authorities and prac-
tices.

But officers and men accustomed to the tech-
nical elaborations of Hollywood studios .it first
felt hampered by the rigidity of Army require-
ments and by the apparent routineness of its
educational methods. Actual experience, often
under conditions o\' high pressure acliu'ty, pro-
duced encouraging results. Many training films
on commonplace subjects have obviously been
of thecut-and-dried variety, but most of the more
recent films show encouraging fluidity in the use
Of the camera and inventiveness in methods ol
condensation and emphasis. Carson Kanin, top
ranking R.K.O. director, a draftee for about four
months until released because over 2S (and now

a SI a year consultant on films for the O.P.M.
Information office in Washington), shot two
films on the general subject of gas defence, and
turned in reels that are interesting enough for
theatrical presentation and at the same time un-
doubtedly successful in carrying a clearly pre-
sented load of specific technical information to a
mass audience. Standards will normally tend to
be raised through the influence of high class
creative work on other similar work being car-
ried on in the same place.

"Men and Machines" might be an appropriate
title for the Army film programme as a whole,
with emphasis, at least for the present, on the
latter item. One of the most pressing of all the
training problems is to develop familiarity with
the operation of the multitude of complex
mechanical instruments and weapons developed
by modern warfare. Consequently for each
branch of the service, films on various types of
machines are in production, having as their sub-
ject-matter the operation of small arms, artillery,
tanks, searchlights, signal devices, construction
tools and vehicles of transportation. Later on.
emphasis will naturally shift towards the topics
related to the behaviour of troops in the field and
the more complex strategical problems.

But even at present the expanding scope of
the Army's work requires a new type of film pro-
duction to be taken up. Men must be given basic
training in electricity in a minimum of time in
order to pass them through the Signal Corps'
courses in radio and wire communication, and
for this purpose a series of films entitled Elements
of Electricity has been approved. The series will
be made at the Carnegie Institute of Technology
Pittsburgh, with the co-operation of the physics
department there. Work is starting immediately
on the first subject, entitled Atomic Structure ami
Ohm's JLaw, and elaborate production devices
will be employed to make the films both graphic
and interesting. Thus, starting with a vitally
serious military objective, the Army finds itself
pioneering in fields closely related to the high
school and university class-room, and it is more
than likely that new techniques and talent
beneficial to the progress of visual education will
be the result.

According to reports from Washington, the
\im> is scheduled to turn out 370 reels oi film
during the year ending July 1. 1942. About 120
ol these had been completed up to last month.
1 rom 50 to 75 35mm. prints and from 200 to
300 16mm. prints, depending upon the subject.
are prepared. The films are not made for the
general public, and so most o\' the titles are
announced. Of the total 370 reels 125 are being
produced commercially on the Coast by Lieut. -
Colonel Darryl I. Zanuck, with Major Stodter
as liaison officer.

All films are distributed by 13 central libraries
in corps areas. Each of these libraries has from
three to five prints of each film, 1 hese prints are
distributed directly and with the help of about
1 25 sub-libraries. They are free to all Army camps
and local R.O.T.C. organisations.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

INDIAN FILMS

The following is a report on the work done by the "Indian Film Unit", the Production

Department of the Film Advisory Board, during the period IXth of January to

28th of October, 1941

1. Films Made by the Unit
(a) India's War Effort
The Handyman. A film of the work done by the
Royal Bombay Sappers and Miners. Kirkee. Its
object was to show that the work of this section
of the Army is important and highly skilled.
"Without the Sappers and Miners no advance is
possible ... no victory can be gained."
Seamen of India. This dim is in Hindustani. A
sailor visits a village and while there tells his
friends about the Royal Indian Navy. "Our job,"
he says, "is to protect the great ports and the
coastline of India, to protect convoys on the
first part of their journeys and to sweep the
enemy from our seas." The film shows an
Indian sailor's life at sea and the sort of jobs he
does.

Convoy from India. This is a shortened, re-made
version of Seamen of India in English. The
sailor once again visits the village, but this time
he tells of the work done by the R.I.N, in
escorting and protecting a large convoy. The
commentary is written as though it were actually
spoken by the sailor and uses village symbols to
explain to his friends, who have never seen the
sea, what ships, convoys and waves are like.
Tools for the Job. This film surveys India's war
production. It concentrates on some of the lesser
known war materials as the heavier industries
are covered by other films in the programme.
It opens with a sequence showing the "obscura-
tion of light" in a big Indian city, goes on to
explain India's strategic position in the war and
then shows war industries such as trucks, tyres,
khaki drill, tents, medical supplies, etc. Arma-
ments, ships, war funds and the fighting forces
are mentioned.

Cavalry of the Clouds. A short recruiting film for
the Indian Air Force, for pilots and mechanics.
Defenders of India. A tribute to the Indian
soldiers who played such a splendid part in the
African victories. It was made from material
supplied from the Middle East. General Sir
Claud Auchinleck speaks the foreword.
Wartime Factory. The story of how a large^'motor
factory in India speeded up its production of
army trucks to meet the demands of war. The
film, while it concentrates on the individual men
working on the assembly line, also relates their
work to the Indian war effort in general. It also
has a brief factory A.R.P. sequence.
Armoured Cars. Made out of Indian steel, built
by Indian workmen, armoured cars are being
produced in India. The film shows the making
of the steel, the marking out and cutting, and the
assembling and building of the cars. It ends with
a sequence showing armoured cars carrying out
mass manoeuvres on service in the war zone.
Railway Workshops. This film has two objects.
One to show that India has great engineering
workshops and skilled technicians working in
them. The other to show that Indian factories
can still keep up their essential services and yet
make room for direct war production. Here we
see the repairing and re-making of railway
engines as well as the production of shell cases,
fuses, gun rings and precision gauges.

(b) Might of the Commonwealth

The films wider litis general title are made out of
newsreel material from Movietone and Cairo Wat
Pictorial News. They are intended for rural
audiences. There is a written cammentai v with
eaeh film in English and Hindustani.
Our Navy. A survey of Britain's sea power. We
show the battle with the Graf Spee the Mediter-
ranean Fleet and the Fleet Air Arm in action
from an aircraft carrier. We see destroyers,
battleships and convoy work in the Atlantic.
Our Air Force. This film shows the training o\'
pilots; a Bomber Command; a lighter Com-
mand; anti-aircraft defences, and ends with an
air battle over Britain.

New Weapons. Here we see mobile Bren gun
units, tanks, big guns and mobile anti-aircraft
guns. The final sequence shows the training of
parachutists and ends with a mass jump.
Comrades-in-Arms. This film shows the people
who are fighting together with Britain against
the enemy. Indians, Australians, Canadians,
South Africans, Poles, Czechs, Norwegians and
Free French. At the end America too is helping
us by supplying us with the weapons of war.
Thrills! This is a film made up of stunt sequences
and is intended for entertainment purposes,
(c) Documentaries on Modern India
Made in India. This is a film showing the indus-
trialisation of India. It takes as its theme the
suggestion that part of the solution of the great
economic difficulties of India lies in rapid indus-
trialisation. But it points out that at the same time
the village industries have an important part to
play in the life of the country. The village indus-
tries shown are spinning, weaving, paper-making
and tanning. The large scale industries in the
film are : Bata Shoe Factory, Titaghur Paper
Mills, Associated Cement and Tata Iron and
Steel. Also shown are aeroplane and ship-
building and the new chemical works in Kathi-
awar. The film is based on chapters of Minoo
Masani's book "Our India."
The Women of India. The Indian woman of
today is no longer a person of veils and shadows.
She is playing her part in the modern world, and
this film shows some of her activities. It starts
with a country wedding, shows women in offices
and shops, women in the professions and women
in the entertainment world. We then see women
organising and a session of the All-India
Women's Conference, and some of the important
work which is being done by the progressive
women among the poorer sections of the com-
munity.

Modern India. This film contrasts the India ol
the country and of the villages with the India of
the cities and of the sciences. We see a typical
Indian village, the village school, the village
doctor and some of the village entertainments
such as the performing bear and a troop of
marionettes. The film moves to modern India
and we see the ballroom of a big hotel in Bom-
bay. The film then surveys progress in India
today in the fields of Agriculture, Medicine.
Scientific Agriculture and new industries. The
film ends in a modern school.

2. Films Produced through llurmah Shell

Calcutta
The Grand Trunk Road. This is a film of transport

in India. It takes as its theme the Stor;
Grand Trunk Road" and shows how this road
serves industry, tourist traffic, places of pilgrim-
age, and the villages.

3. Edited Items supplied to Messrs. 20th

Century Fox for their Newsreel
Italian prisoners being landed at Bombay.
\ll India Cattle Show, New Delhi.

4. films made by the Studios, on which the
"Indian Film Unit" worked at various stages
Here Comes the Letter.

The Awakening.
Towards India's Defence.
Careless Talk.
Nazi Rule.

5. Films in Production
Defence Forces. Material for this film has all
been shot, except for an Indian Air Force
sequence which it is hoped to include.
'V for Victory. This film has been scripted and
scheduled to go into production.
A Day in the Life of a District Officer. This film
is to show the work done by an Indian District
Officer. After consultation with the Chief
Secretary to the Government of Bombay,
shooting will start.

Agriculture. A film on modern scientific agricul-
ture in India. Some of the material has been shot
and research work has been done on the whole
subject. It is to show how agricultural develop-
ments help villages and it is to include a sequence
on the Sukkur Barrage.

SCOTTISH
CENTRAL
FILM LIBRARY

ONE OF the features of the educational film
movement in Scotland during the past three
years has been the tremendous expansion of the
Scottish Central Film Library. The increase of
output is best shown by the following statistics
giving the number of films despatched each
month from the Librarv since it began operations
in March. 1939.

1939 1940 1941

Januarj $56 1,406

Februan 467 1,706

March S7 512 1.931

April 54 489 1,217

Mav 183 706 1,500

June 179 696 1.662

.llllv

195
106

786
727

August

September 74 432 1,181

October 183 1,104 2.533

November 286 1,476 3.302

December 353 1,403 not yet

The Library's growth is the more remarkable
in view o\ the fact that it has operated through-
out under the severe handicaps occasioned by
the war.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

THE GIANT

SHINNIES

DOWN

THE

BEANSTALK

By THEODORE STRAUSS

An interview with Robert Flaherty reprinted
from the New York paper "P.M."

rHi giant was in a jovial mood. Despite the
tact that a commiserating waiter was bringing
distressing minute-by-minute reports on the
backward progress of the Dodgers. Robert
Flaherty continued to scatter his dollars like
chaff — probably to bolster his own failing con-
fidence— in even money on "dem bums." But
when the cataclysmic blow finally fell, Mr.
Flaherty's shaggy while head was only moment-
arily bowed. Raising his flagon with a full-
blooded oath that would have rent the veil in a
tabernacle he was shortly launched on the
reasons why Hollywood morticians are the wiliest
entrepreneurs at large. Faughter shook his
mighty frame like an inner tempest. The Dodgers

had lost? "I am absolulelv heartbroken," he said
sincerely, but already his mirth was erupting.
He had thought of another story.

Listening to Robert Flaherty one listened to a
great romantic and a great romancer. Put him in
a cassock and you might have had Friar Tuck — a
great tumbling man with massive red cheeks,
brilliant blue eyes and the sharp profile of an
eagle. His size was matched only by the exuber-
ance of his wit ; he tossed ideas like an agile bull
lifts the matador. A born raconteur, he talked
fabulously out of a memory shot full of colourful.
bawdy and heroic reminiscence of all the places
he had ever been, from the dangerous straits of
Hudson Bay to the fragrant islands of the Pacific.
from Mysore and the elephant hunts to the Aran
Islands where they shoulder the northern sea.
He talked like a man who had just finished a long
and gruelling job.

In fact he had. It is nearly two years since Mr.
Flaherty was summoned by Pare Forentz and the
then existing United States Film Service to make
The Land; nearly two years since he returned to
his homeland for the first time in a decade of
wandering. It is nearly a year and a half since he
loaded his cameras in a station wagon and set
out to "rediscover" America. "It was really an
exploration," he said.

To be sure, his journeys constantly "on loca-
tion" were but part of the long. e\h, n-nn
struggle that goes into the making of a Flaherty
film. There were endless conferences with Wayne
Darrow, head of information in the Agriculture
Department, who. as Mr. Flaherty gratefully re-
members, told him "Take your time and don't
pull your punches." There were talks with such
interested parties is Milo Perkins, and after

G.-B. INSTRUCTIONAL LTD.

THE STUDIOS • LIME GROVE ■ SHEPHERD'S BUSH • W.I 2

Telephone: Shepherd's Bush 1210

Telegrams: Gebestruct, Chisk, Londo

SEND GREETINGS AND BEST
WISHES FOR 1942 TO ALL
THEIR FRIENDS AND ASSURE
THEM THAT THEY ARE AT
THEIR SERVICE EQUALLY IN
1942 AS IN THE PAST.

travelling 25.000 miles and exposing 100,000 feet
of film began the cutting with Helen Van Dongen
and the writing of the narration with Russel
Lord— a task which Mr. Flahertj said had to be
so accurate "that only an expensive corporation
lawyer could write it."

"Actually," he said, "there wasn't any story.
They gave me a camera and threw me out into
the field to make a film about the land and the
people that live by it. 1 was fresh and had no pre-
conceptions whatever; I was so sensitive you
could hear me change my mind. So I merely
groped my way along, photographing what
seemed to me significant: it was only later that
we began to see the pattern. The film is different
from my others, it isn't a romance. It hasn't any
specific solution for what the camera sees, but it
is often critical. And that perhaps is the most
amazing thing about it, that it could be made at
all. It shows that democracy can face itself in
the mirror without flinching."

For what Mr. Flaherty met and saw and heard
and photographed was often grim. He saw
eroded, desolate lands nearly equal in area to the
size of Germany, France and England combined.
From the rich harvests of the Minnesota river
valleys he turned southward, where the long
dusty roads were often clotted with migrants too
weak to work even if they found it. Elsewhere, in
the midlands, he met farmers who boasted of
having worn out five or six farms in their life-
times—and then he saw farms that had been left
behind, the rat-infested shells of empty houses.
And again the straggling pilgrims on the dusty
roads.

But just as ominous was the terrible face of
the machine. He watched the automatic corn-
husker that robbed the rows with blind efficiency,
the cotton picker, watched by awestruck workers
who hardly surmised its impact on their way of
life, which did in twenty minutes what it took a
man two days to accomplish. In Minnesota he
saw an angle-dozer which cleared an acre of
wooded, boulder-strewn land in an hour. The
farmer who owned it had paid S6.000 for it,
cleared new land for his neighbours at five dollars
an hour and was so proud of his machine that he
wore a yachting cap at work.
"It is incredible," said Mr. Flaherty. "With one
foot in Utopia, where the machine can free us all.
we have yet to dominate it. That is the problem
of our time— to conquer the machine. With i1
new modern countries have been developed in a
matter o\' generations rather than centuries. In
1855 Japan, an almost medieval country, sent its '
first Ambassador to the Court of St. James
attired in a suit of chain mail. Today it is one of
the most highlv industrialised countries in the
world. The progress in this country is something
that neither Washington nor Jefferson could have
dreamed of. Todaj we stand at the threshold o\'
a great calamity or a great new era. The decision
is ours."

Didwesav Mr. I lalicrn w.i- a lomantic? lie is.
His feet still wear seven-league boots and there is
still the aura of legend about his massive
shoulders. He still hopes that a kindly deity will
allow him some da\ to wander to the Mountains
of the Moon, to the Himala>an back-countrv and
China. But beneath his great gusto Mr. I lahcrlv
has changed. His "•lediscovery" has left its im-
press upon him. In facing what is the most
primitive and most modern of our problems he
has not escaped unmoved. Out of the seared
hinterland of America he has emerged with what
he believes to be his deepest and truest film.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

THE BRAINS TRUST ON PROPAGANDA

OR
A LITTLE PRACTICAL HELP FOR THE M.O.I.

Reprinted by the courtesy of the B.B.C.

mccullogh : The next question comes from
Mr. Hudson, who is in Queen Mary Hospital,
Roehampton. He asks: "Why is propaganda so
much more successful when it stirs up hatred
than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling'"

Campbell: Mind you, I think propaganda a
very deadly weapon, and in the ordinary way,
propaganda has an object, and it is much easier
to point to something and get people to hale it.
I think, than to get them to think well of it. If
you've got something there, say either— any
particular thing — a person or a creed, it's quite
easy to use words to make them hate it, or
much easier to make them care for it. So propa-
ganda seems to me to be much easier on the evil
side in fact I think it is one of the most evil
things in the world today. If we could get rid of
propaganda, the world would be a much better
world, I think : and it seems to be always
directed to the evil side of things, because that's
a delinite object as against a sort of nebulous
good object. That's the impression I get of
propaganda.

mccullough: Thank you. Lord De La Warr?

de la warr: I think the question is based
really on a half truth. We all of us as human
beings have our — what we call our friendly side
and our more hostile side. Take it in the case of
(here the remainder of this sentence was inaudible
because of someone coughing) ... in countries
where we develop the friendly side to a very con-
siderable degree, it's to some extent at the
expense of suppressing the more hostile side.
which then can very easily be appealed to at
given moments, by propaganda. But similarly.
1 think if you took a country; take Germany,
where the hate side has been developed very
strongly, one hopes sooner or later certainly,
for the future happiness of this world, at some
time that the moment may come, ruined by
propaganda, when we can haul out the friendly
side that's been suppressed there.

joad: Well, you know there is a very good
definition of propaganda which says that you
can always propagate a propaganda if you
have the "proper geese". Now of all creatures
known to man, the goose is the most indignant
and the most given to hatred. I've often wondered
whether that is what's at the basis of the proverb.
I think that the real answer is this — that propa-
ganda is successful in so far as it appeals — is it to
the highest common factor or the lowest common
multiple — I never can remember which — but
whichever it is. to human feelings. Now I think
the feeling o\' hatred and anger, and the desire to
hurt, tends to the lowest common multiple, or
highest common factor. It's a thing which we
tend all of us, perhaps to have in common.
especially in wartime. Whereas feelings of kind-
ness and compassion, and, perhaps let me add,
of good sense and the desire for truth, are things
in respect of which we differ. Above all, propa-

ganda which appeals to hatred and appeals to
malice tends to appeal to more people than
propaganda which appeals to. what you might
call, the nobler emotions.

[ddendum, December 21s/. 1941.

rOAD: The last thing and most difficult of all—
and I have no time to deal with it— our most
unfortunate answer to that question about
propaganda. We gave the impression. I think,
that propaganda was most successful when it
appealed to man's lowest feelings. It seems to me
that this week presents us with one outstanding
example to the contrary, namely, the message
of peace and goodwill— propaganda wasn't it'.'
It germinated from Bethlehem two thousand
years ago. more honoured you will say in the
breach than in the observance — well, I agree,
in the present situation, much would justify
such a view. You know it is not wholly true,
not wholly true that nobody ever responds to
the noble appeal. Let those who believe that the
Christmas spirit means nothing at all read A
Christmas Carol again and read it every Christ-
mas. It does seem to me nonsense to say that
nobody has ever been moved by an appeal to
what's best or to take the risk of a noble hypoth-
esis being for once true and then to act on that
risk. It is precisely that willingness which at
times has transfigured the whole face of society.
Think, for example, of the propaganda for the
abolition of the slave trade or think of the propa-
ganda which has moved so many of us today —
the propaganda to fight for freedom and for
human dignity.

SCIENTIFIC

FILM

SOCIETIES

The third session of the Aberdeen Scientific
Film Club is now in full swing. Membership has
not yet quite attained las' year's record, but is
regarded as very satisfactory at a time when ever-
increasing demands are being made upon leisure
time. The figure now stands at over two hundred.
A new development not without significance is
the affiliation to the club of the Regional Field
Naturalists' Association.

Programmes so far have included. Turn of the
Furrow, Shipbuilding, Defeat Diphtheria, The
I oi i/nvoini, hist Hint ion. Volcanoes, Ken sal House.
Sex in Life, and The Gieat Tit. Following up the
plan o[' former sessions the audience were asked
to award marks to the various films. Here are
some of the results: Volcanoes, 60",,: Kensal
House, 63%; Distillation. 85",,: Sex in Life.
90%; The Great Til. 77",,. Many of the scientists

present expressed the opinion that Distillation.
considered from the point of view of the pre-
sentation of a subject requiring a considerable
degree of technical understanding, was one of the
most ingenious films that they had seen.

The Workers' Educational Association have
this winter experimented with a film show as
part of their programme. On the IXth of last
month Mrs. Nan Clow, of the Aberdeen S.I .< .,
took a show of scientific films to Fraserburgh.
Silent films only could be used but a varied
programme was shown including The House Fly,
Arabia and Islam, Volcanoes, and The Making ol
Stained Glass. It is expected that further develop-
ments in this direction will take place. For the
last programme of the present year the S.I .('.
intend to show The Development of Railways.
Crystals. Malaria. First Principles of Lubrica-
tion, and The fern.

If these programmes show anything they show
how quickly a film society working over a num-
ber of years consumes the existing first-class
scientific films. Why are there so few films on
technical subjects like Distillation, and endless
pseudo-geographical films which almost invari-
ably get adverse criticisms'.' Some knowledge-
able person might through the good offices of the
D.N.L. inform lis where the Fault lies.

The Ayrshire Scientific Mini Society, alter one
year's successful operation in Ayr, has recently
expanded its activities and now covers six centres
throughout the County. This development has
been occasioned by the almost embarrassing de-
mand from other County towns for information
and guidance on the formation of Societies. So
great was the enthusiasm that Dr. George
Dunlop, Secretary of the Ayr Society, undertook
the heavy job of showing a programme of
scientific films at Troon, Kilmarnock. Ardrossan.
Prestwick and Dalmellington, in addition to the
normal Ayr show, all during one week, to test
the possibilities of the situation. Result— Socie-
ties formed at Ardrossan, Prestwick and Dal-
mellington. The response at Troon did not justify
continuing. At Kilmarnock, the hall was packed.

In addition to the centres mentioned, requests
to be included in the scheme were received from
an army encampment and an R.A.F. station.
This was agreed to. In all. therefore, six centres
with a total membership to date of over 600, are
having fortnightly shows quite a pleasing
situation. The possibilities of further expansion
are good. While each of the centres now formed
will be a distinct Society, it became evident
after the second meeting that some form of co-
ordination was necessary. An ad lux committee,
consisting of two members from each Society
has been appointed to consider (a) formation of a
County federation, (b) immediate co-ordination
of film bookings to prevent overlapping.

So much for the recent history of the Scientific
Film Movement in Ayrshire. What of the prob-
lems now raised'.' Of all the difficulties, choice of
films will now be the greatest. While Ayr was the
only centre, the membership was fairly well
classified under the following sections [a) agri-
culture. (/>) medicine, (c) laymen interested in
any or all aspects of science. This being so. films
were chosen from within fairly narrow limits,
with occasional diversions to nature films. What
now? Membership of the new Societies embraces
all branches of science from chemistry to an-
thropology, from engineering to dietetics, from
paleontology to micro-biology. A single booking
of films passed on each night from Society to
{Continued on page 14)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

SHORT FILM

BOOKINGS

FOR JAN.-FEB.

The following bookings for January and February

are selected from a list covering it.

Members,

supplied by The News and Specialis

■d Theatres

A Letter from Cairo

eommentane

Premier Nmu Theatre, Bournemouth

Jan. 25th

\I;U' In the Deep

The News Theatre, Leeds

The Taller Theatre, Chester

Feb. 2nd

All's Well

The News Theatre, Leeds

Jan 26th

\merican Spoke,, Here

latle. Theatre, Manchester

Feb. 18th

Back Street

I he latter I lieaf e ( heslet

Feb. 2nd

Bundles lor Britain

The Taller 1 heat re, Chester

Feb. 9th

< apital ( it % ot Washington. D.C.

News Iheatre, Bristol

1st

News 1 heatre. Leeds

( anl'liean Sentinel

Tatler Theatre. Manchester

City Bound

News Iheatre, Leeds

Dances ol the U.S.S.R.

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne

Donald'-. 1 ueky Day

Tatler Theatre, Leeds

2nd

Feathers

Premier News Theatre, Bournemouth

Jan. 25th

Feminine Fitness

Tatler Theatre. ( hester

Fishing Fever

The latler Iheatre. ( hester

Feb. 2nd

1 orlinlileii Passage

latler Iheatre Chester

Jan. 26th

Carden Spot nl the North

Tatler Theatre, Birmingham

Feb. 1st

News Theatre, Manchester

His Tale

News Theatre, Nottingham

Isles of Fate

News Theatre, Birmingham

News Theatre, Manchester

8 th

Jungle Arches

News Iheatre, Bristol

Ian 25th

kangaroo Country

News Iheatre. Nottingham

25th

' Premier News Theatre, Bournemouth

1 eb. 8th

Land ol the Maple Leaf

Cosmo Cinema. Glasgow

Jan. 25th

Man and the Fnignia

News Iheatre. Birmingham

25th

Mar, Inne. No. 5

, eb. 1st

4^E{iiFzrne

Mh

Meet the Stars. \i..4

News Iheatre. 1 eeds

Miraeleol Hydro

Premier News Theatre. Bournemouth

PhiMin; iMlh Neptune

News Iheatre, Birmingham

Please Answer

Quiz 15,/

ire, I eeds
•die

STRAND FILMS

MAKERS OF DOCUMENTARY
FILMS SINCE 1934

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR - MANAGING DIRECTOR
ILEX I YDJ R Sfl HI - DIRECTOR OF PRODI < TIOJS

5a UPPER ST. MARTIN'S LANE, W.C.2
MERTON PARK STUDIOS, 269 KINGSTON RD. S.W.19

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

FILM SOCIETY NEWS

Belfast Film Institute reports that two shows
have so far been held, both in the Grosvenor
Hall, Belfast, which for two seasons has been
the only meeting place available to the Society.
Although the accommodation has been spartan,
and sound and vision reproduction below the
standard of the usual cinema, the Society has
been able to carry on, and the last two shows
have been very successful. Renoir's La Marseil-
laise at the first show and Chapavev at the second,
were attractive for their political message at
the time, and both films attracted many people
not before interested in the Society's work.
Supporting films for the second show were the
Polish abstract Three Studies from Chopin.
Northern Outpost and the Point of View film
As Idleness a Viee'.'— well worth showing for its
entertainment value.

For the third show the Society had a tre-
mendous stroke of luck. A cinema had become
available for the Society's use— a new and com-
fortable house of just the right size, within easy
reach of the city centre. This was so welcome
that we are confident the future of the Society
will be much more secure. The programme
for the third show included Vigo's Zero de
Conduite, an example of a serious film in a sur-
realist manner, and an early Marx Brothers
crazy comedy — Monkey Business. The Com-
mittee have great expectations of arousing inter-
est by such violent contrasts of styles and
subjects.

The Aberdeen Film Society has decided to
continue its activities for the present season and
to hold at least six performances. In order to
enable those members who have undertaken
A.R.P., Civil Defence and Home Guard duties.
and also those in the Services, to attend the
exhibitions of the Society, kind permission has
been granted by the magistrates to hold after-
noon and evening performances throughout the
season. The same films will be shown at the
afternoon and evening sessions. The first exhi-
bition was held on 12th October when the films
Ignace, Tommy Atkins. Scene in Bali and
Marshland Birds were shown. The second per-
formance of the Society was given on 16th
November and the films exhibited were Retain
a TAube, Border Weave, Robber Kitten and
It Comes from Coal. The date of the next per-
formance was 14th December and the films
screened were La Grande Illusion and Water
Birds.

The membership for the present season is 352,
which is considered very gratifying in view of
the fact that a large number of old members are
serving in H.M. Forces.

Tyneside Film Society. The first part of the
season, consisting of four film shows held on
Sunday afternoons in the Ha\ market Theatre.
Newcastle-on-Tyne, has been successfully com-
pleted, the membership being about 750. The
programme for December 7th was When the Pie
Was Opened (Lye), And So to Work (Massing-
ham), and Lenin in October; and on December
14th The Plow that Broke the Plains (Lorentz),
Modem Inventions (Disney) and Le Bonheur. It is
hoped to continue the season with four further
exhibitions. These will definitely be held if

sufficient subscriptions are obtained in advance,
the dates planned being February 1st and 15th
and March 1st and 15th. Among the feature
films under consideration are Retonr ,) /' Aube
Chapavev. and Circonstances Attenuantes.

Cambridge University Film Society reports
that a further set of three shows is scheduled for
the Lent Term, in addition to two talks. The Rich
Bride is proposed for the first show as an example
of a light modern Russian film. On Februan I si
Jean Vigo's L'Atalante is to be shown. pro\ ided
that it can be licensed by the local magistrates,
together with The River. Basil Wright, President
of the Society, has promised to speak on "Films
and Propaganda" on February <Sth. and on
February 15th Cavalcanti's new Film and Realii\
is due to be shown, pro\ ided that a copy is readv
in time. On February 22nd The Last Laugh and
excerpts from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are to
be shown in connection wilhh a discussion by
Karl Mayer and Paul Rotha.

The Edinburgh Film Guild, continuing its
interesting policy of "specially built" pro-
grammes, showed on November 30th a series of
Czecho-Slovakian films, including Prague. Games
of Slovak Children, Czechoslovaks March On,
and the Czech feature film Pied Maturitou.
directed by Linneman. On December 14th pari
of the programme was devoted to "Contrasts in
Comedy" with examples from Chaplin, Disnev
and Benchley. The feature was Accord Fine/!.

The Manchester Film Institute Society and the
Manchester and Salford Film Society continue
their policy of joint film shows of a progressive
and ingenious nature. On December 14th
Le Dernier Tournant was the feature. For the
spring season, beginning on January 25th, the
features will include We from Kronstadt, Inno-
cence, La Teudie Fnnemie and Alexander Nevski.
The specialised show on December 6th was de-
voted to "Films of Science" with a very repre-
sentative programme. Future shows include the
B.F.I.'s Film and Reality and New Babylon.

The objects of the Irish Film Society, notes on
which we are glad to include on this page for the
first time, are the development of film apprecia-
tion in Ireland, presentations to its members of
the best artistic and educational films of all
countries, promotion of the study of film-making,
and of a high standard of film production in Ire-
land, and such other activities as are relevant
thereto. During each season it is customary for
the Society to arrange eight presentations of out-
standing films from all countries — films most of
which, for various reasons, never reach the
ordinary commercial cinemas. The programmes
for the first five years have included such pictures
as Westliont I91S. \ibelungen Sana. Kermesse
Heroiaue. Un Camel de Bal, The River. The
Cheat, Quai des Brumes. Peter the Great. Dood
Hater and La Grande Illusion. Representative
shorts have also been shown. Recent shows have
included Episode (with Paula Wessely), the Rus-
sian film White Mghts ol St. Petersburg, Guitry's
Remontons Les Champs Flysees. and Lac aux
Dames. Lectures are also given from time to time
on various social, educational and aesthetic
aspects of the film. For those interested in

amateur film work, courses are held at the studio
headquarters of the Society each year in which
all the processes of film work are dealt with in a
practical fashion. A permanent film unit of the
Society also carries out experimental production
of short films. It is hoped to expand the work ol
the Society during the coming season in the
spheres of educational films, film writing and film
making. The Societj is anxious to km.
members would be interested in the opportunity
of can vine oul practical work of experiment and
record in these directions. Much scone for
teachers lies in the study of the film in relation to
the child, and, apart from the development of the

to those interested in the development ol native
films.

The Secretary of the Dundee and St. Andrews
Film Society writes: "The first half of our Sea-
son concluded on Sunday, 14th December, with
the feature film Noui Les Jeunes, and our activi-
ties recommenced on Sunday, January I lth. Since
1 last reported on our membership there has been
a further substantial increase and the total num-
ber of members enrolled has reached a new high
record total of 936. It is verv gratifving to find
the Council's decision to earn, on during war-
time has been so amplv justified. I iiere have been
many requests for Russian films, but some diffi-
culty has been experienced in booking arrange-
ments and it may not be until late in the season
that Russian films will be available. During this
season it is our aim to present feature films of
different countries presenting as diversified a list
as possible, and during the first five performances
the feature films have been three French, one
Austrian, one Czechoslovak ian and one Ameri-
can. For one performance an experiment was
tried of presenting two feature films instead of
the feature film and a selection of shorts, and this
change proved quite popular: but during the rest
of the season the practice of showing one feature
film will be adhered to."

Scottish Churches Film Guild (Glasgow Branch i

reports that transport difficulties prevented the
monthly review of Religious films taking place
at the usual meeting in December, but the
Secretary was able to obtain substitutes which
proved very interesting. Four short Ministry of
Information films were shown Living with
Strangers, an evacuee picture with ample scope
for social service work ; it was considered a veiv
good film and quite useful. The New Britain,
another social service film, but lacking any indi-
cation of the religious life of the country.
Neighbours under Fire, the best of the films under
review from the religious aspect; all and sundry
find shelter where a Rector is awaiting them and
starts a "sing-song" to while away the waiting
time. Welfare of the Workers, for social service
purposes this film was considered quite insuffi-
cient, and it was overloaded with the subject-
matter shown. The speech at the end was over-
emphasised and had little to do with either the
"Welfare of the Workers" or social service. The
general opinion was that this was more of a
propaganda or "Go to It" film than either wel-
fare or social service.

A pleasing feature of the recent meetings of the
Guild is the good attendance of members, who
are taking a keen interest in the criticism of the
films.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

TECHNICOLOR
BY A NEW PROCESS

Reprinted by courtesy of Kinematograph Weekly

Warner Bros, have a Technicolor subject King
o/ the Turf, which has been made by a
new process, the film having been shot on
Kodachrome, and enlarged to 35 mm. The tech-
nique employed is felt by many people to mean
a revolution in colour work in the studio.

Ever since the introduction of the improved
three-colour Technicolor with its magnificent
results on the screen, the Technicolor Corpora-
tion has been setting its research workers the
task of endeavouring to discover a really efficient
taking process which would avoid the huge
demand upon film stock and the high lighting
costs which the triple film camera requires in
the studio.

It was obvious to most workers that the
integral colour-layer system promised the most
hopeful line of research, but that this type of
film could not be employed upon costly film
studio sets until it had been so far improved as
to make certain of correct colour renderings
on 35-mm. prints.

H>- in in. Kodachrome Negative
Patience and industry have reaped their reward,
and at the present moment 35-mm. release
punts are being made from negatives originally

shot on 16-mm. Kodachrome in a major studio
for general release in moving picture theatres.

Experts declare that the technique employed
in the new Technicolor process means a revolu-
tionary step in the recording of colour, and that
among the results which will follow will be a far
sharper picture upon the screen and enhanced
colour values.

It is generally known that the Kodachrome
process, introduced at first to supply amateur
kinematographers with a colour film which,
upon reversal, would supply a single copy for
screening, is of the integral layer type in which
three differently sensitised layers are processed
with colour formers to produce the resultant
colour image.
Interlocking Patents

The use of Kodachrome in Technicolor was
made easier by the fact that Eastman Kodak
and Technicolor have an interchange patent
agreement which makes it possible for each to
use the other"s patents under licence. The new
step gets rid of the rather clumsy Technicolor
camera with its three negatives, and enables
shooting to be done much as in black and white
once the correct lighting balance has been
secured.

"Living Movement" . . .

CARLYLE defined Progress in just those two words!
In paying due tribute to the aptness of the sage's
definition the Kinematograph Weekly translates the
spirit into action. Current events are reported for our
readers in relation to the general advance, artistic and
technical, l>\ which progress in Kinematography is
achieved.

Keep abreast of progress in your craft
— read the

<>:j low; acre

WEEKLY

.ONDON : : W.C.2

At the moment the subjects shot by this
method have been theatrical shorts, industrial
and documentary films, but there is nothing to
prevent its extension to the feature film, the
enlarged picture having the inherent optical
qualities of the straight 16-mm. picture.

Enlarging the Original

The Kodachrome negative having been shot
the next step is to "blow up" the picture into
three selectively filtered colour-separation nega-
tives from which the matrices are made in the
usual way in order that the three-colour positive
may be printed from it.

The resultant 35-mm. picture is stated to have
a good tonal range as a result of control in the
printing laboratory, blacks and whites being
uncommonly good with a worth-while range of
colour. It is not claimed that the colour is
yet equal to the best 35-mm. Technicolor prints,
the lee-way is small and further research will
probably make great improvements.

Better Depth of Field

In one direction an improvement is claimed,
viz., depth of field. In the "blown-up" Koda-
chrome picture the depth of field was far beyond
any previous 35-mm. Technicolor print, the
result being entirely unexpected. It is stated
that the steadiness of picture was also a surprise
to many Technicians, who had looked upon the
16-mm. camera as not affording the necessary
stability standard for a commercial picture.

Another pleasant surprise was in the definition
of the picture which it was thought might lose in
this respect as the result of the duping and
enlarging which the process involved.

Whereas with black and white 16-mm. copies
blown up to 35-mm. grain difficulties might
arise, with Technicolor this does not exist owing
to the fact that practically no silver grain is
present, the picture being recorded in deposits
of the various dyes.

SCIENTIFIC FILM SOCIETIES

(Continued from page 1 1)

Society, as at present, will probably have to go by
the board. A half-yearlj or yearly viewing week
attended bv representatives from each centre, at
which bookings and plans could be made well
ahead and co-ordinated where possible, mav form
a solution to the difficulty.

A second problem lacing each society is lack
o\' sound projectors. At the moment each de-
pends on the goodwill of private owners, a situa-
tion tolerable to both parties in the initial stages
of formation but likely to create difficulties if
continued indclinitclv . At present, search is being
made for a projector for purchase as the com-
mon propei t\ of the centres, so far with little
result.

The London Scientific Film Society opens its
fourth season at 2.M) p.m. on the 31st January
at the Imperial Institute theatre. South Kensing-
ton. The first show, winch has been organised in
conjunction with the Socialist Medical Associa-
tion, covers "Medicine in War." and further
programmes will be announced in due course.
I nil p.uiiculars of membership mav be obtained
from the Secretary. 30 Bedford Row. W.C.I.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

NATIONAL

SAVINGS
PUBLICITY

By W. BUCHANAN-TAYLOR, Honorary

Publicity Adviser to the National Savings

Movement, who is responsible for the

production and supervision of National

Savings Committee films.
when is a door not a door? In the old days of
show business the answer was "When it is ajar."

The door of Documentary News Letter is
ajar — as it should be and sometimes is not.
Readers may want to know how the National
Savings Committee managed to raise in two
years the sum of £1,115,306,106 from what are
known as the "small savers." Some of those
readers may not be particularly interested,
if by any chance it was not altogether due to
the use of film propaganda. To satisfy this
specialised appetite 1 intend to deal with the
film side first and leave the other manifold
elements for later discussion in the special
phraseology of the "befuddled mind of an
old advertising nark" — to quote that precious
bit from a recent Documentary News Letter
paragraph.

I feel I must somehow justify some of the
"fatuous National Savings spreads" so beloved
of the editorial staff of this Journal. Well, we
started on the track of public money in Sep-
tember, 1939. armed with a permanent staff
sized to peace time needs. When I say we—
I mean the honorary advisory publicity wallahs
— S. C. Leslie and myself. And 1 should add, six
advertising agencies — a spread-over which was
calculated to give us the product of six brains
and at the same time do justice to the advertising
business, then in a position of parlous prospects.
Neither Leslie nor I were concerned with the agen-
cy side of advertising, but with advertising itself.

Professor Keynes and some other economic
pundits figured that the outside edge of small-
saver savings would work out at £400.01)0.000
per year. Many high-ups in the biggest City
financial scheme put it at £150,000,000 per year
and a few slightly higher than that. In the first
year the produce was over £475.000,000 from the
"little man" in restricted Securities— the unit
maximum being £375 for Savings Certificates and
£1,000 for Defence Bonds.

How was it done? I believe it was done chiefly
through publicity— in all its branches. The part
which films played in the record achievement is
difficult to measure, since in the first six or eight
months we had to depend upon the goodwill
and understanding of the newsreel companies.
And here I want to pay tribute to them. True,
they were a concern already in action and their
machinery was going full tilt. The documentary
element was still thinking in terms of 10 minute
and 20 minute shows. They were still going along
in their own sweet way, some of them loftily
insisting that that was the only way. The de-
elasticising of the documentary mind was a slow
process. The newsreel folk jumped in with the
shorter short— and filled the bill. Not only did
the newsreels help us very greatly in then-
weekly issues, but they made shorts for us
which were realistic and. we believe, effective.

Then came the making of the shorter shorts —
a limit of live minutes being fixed as between the

Ministry of Information and the C.E.A. People
in and close-by the film trade will know that not
all the shorts made for Government propaganda
were accepted or shown. In many cases exhibi-
tors, conserving their rights, felt their territory
was being encroached upon. They set themselves
up as judges of what was best for their patrons —
customers who paid to be entertained and
amused and not necessarily to be preached at in
varying terms — week by week. The big circuits
were on the whole kindlier than the independents,
but even they had managers whose attitude
towards propaganda was not whole-hearledlv
approving. Some averred that the material was
in many cases not worthy of being placed along-
side the booked material of entertainmenl
calibre. And in many cases they were right.

It must be remembered that the new and
shorter short demanded condensation of story.
Not unnaturally some of the earlier efforts
were somewhat bald, but condensation in all
the arts is one of the most difficult processes.
How many journals even of the same genre are
comparable with the Readers' Digest? As a
nation we have been devoted to elaboration of
wordage. Gladstone as a public speaker and
many popular authors established a vogue which
is only now beginning to diminish. From a ten
minute to a five minute short required a process
of condensation beyond the immediate grasp of
most producers. Like all experts who had become
set they had to learn and profit by practice.

The National Savings Movement were quick to
realise the need for co-ordinating with the ex-
hibitors, even though distribution of their pro-
ducts was in the hands of the M.O.I. Of the
necessity for informing even the entertainment
seeking publico!' their national duties there could
be no doubt. And the cinema, depending for its
livelihood on the nation's efforts at preservation,
was as much entitled to assist as were the several
thousand newspapers which for the best of all
reasons regularly published free editorials on
Government requirements — recruiting, ration-
ing, saving and the rest. Th. exhibitor is inclined
to the riposte that the newspapers get paid ad-
vertising and therefore are entitled to give a quid
pro quo. That is the old and outworn theory.
Newspapers do not give paragraphs to adver-
tisers; in fact the average editorial controller re-
sents the suggestion. Of course there are certain
mean journals which indulge in the practice, but
they are so few that they don't matter.

from the start we tried to make those re-
sponsible for distribution appreciate the value of
a title not a continuous label which proclaimed
the propaganda character of the film. We sought
to get our publicity by more or less indirect
methods — presenting our shorts, as feature items
are presented and placing the credit titles-
National Savings, and M.O.I, as distributors — at
the end. To go into a cinema lobby to find on
the time-table the simple and unconvincing an-
nouncement "M.O.I." meant literally nothing.
Even now, I believe, the title of a Government
film is rarely announced in bill matter or on the
time-sheet.

Since November 22nd, 1939, we have pro-
duced fourteen shorts and trailers in connection
with War Savings. We have two in technicolor
— one The Savings Song in which Jack Hvlton
and his Band appeared with the Aspidistras and
George Baker, and The Volunteer Worker, with
Donald Duck, presented to* us by Walt Disney.
We weie first in the field of Government propa-
ganda with technicolor. The current National
Savings films are Give Us More Ships (Gilbert

Frankau, Leslie Banks. George Posford and
Geraldo's Concert Orchestra contributing, and
produced by Harold Purcell, Merton Park
Studios); Sam Pepys Joins the Navy (Gaumont-
British); The Owner Goes Aloft (Ivan Scott.
Spectator); The I olunteer H brker (Walt Disnej :
Donald Duck); Seaman I rank (I rank Laskici
returning to sea; Derrick de Marney, Concanen
Recordings, Ltd., with commentary bj I
de Marney and Laskier himself). IK I
short goes out immediately on its news value and
because the C.E.A. executive aftei seeing it asked
for quick release.

All the material we have produced has been
adapted for the 15 mobile cinemas, which are in
charge of my colleague. Sir Alberl Clavering. \
punctilious calculation and check shows that
since April, 1940, over eight million people have
seen the film displays on these vans.

The press advertising, posters leaflets and
exhibitions (of which there are several) have
played a highly important part in the building up
of War Savings propaganda. They have all been
produced by expert advertising men. It will be a
miraculous moment when all people agree upon
the mould, quality and ellicacv of any one
particular advertisement or poster design. Those
in the advertising business are always painfullv
aware of what's wrong with everybody else's pro-
ducts. But the amateur, non-advertising pundit.
who is usually an indifferent performer in his own
line, transcends all others in his critical certitude.
That may be why the documentary news letter
being in the Documentary line is so abundanth
qualified to criticise the work of advertising ex-
perts for National Savings. There's magic in a
thousand million pounds — unless it was merelv an
automatic contribution. May it not be that in our
midst are several "old Documentary narks'".'

SIGHT

and

SOUND

Film Appreciation
Number

CONTRIBUTORS :
P. L. MAN NOCK

CHARLES OAKLEY
Dr. RACHEL REID
H. A. V. BULLEID

Published by: The British Film Institute.
4 Great Russell Street, London. W .C.I.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1942

FILM LIBRARIES

Borrowers of films are asked to apply as much in advance as possible, to give alternative

booking dates, and to return the films immediately after use. H. A hire charge is made.

F. Free distribution. Sd. Sound. St. Silent.

Association of Scientific Workers, 30 Bedford
Row, W.C.I. Scientific Film Committee. Graded
List of Films. A list of scientific films from many
sources, classified and graded for various types of
audience. On request. Committee will give ad-
vice on programme make-up and choice of films.
Austin Film Library. 24 films of motoring in-
terest, industrial, technical and travel. Available
only from the Educational Films Bureau, Tring,
Herts. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.
Australian Trade Publicity Film Library. 18 films
of Australian life and scenery. Available from
the Empire Film Library. 35 mm. & 16 mm.
Sd. & St. F. 3. sound films on 9.5 mm. available
from Pathescope.

British Commercial Gas Association, Gas Indus-
try House, 1 Grosvenor Place, S.W.I. Films on
social subjects, domestic science, manufacture of
gas. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & a few St. F.
British Council Film Department, 25 Savile
Row, W.l. Films of Britain, 1940. Catalogue for
overseas use only but provides useful synopses of
100 sound and silent documentary films.
British Film Institute, 4 Great Russell Street,
London, W.C.I, (a) National Film Library Loan
Section to stimulate film appreciation by making
available copies of film classics. 35 mm., 16mm.
Sd. & St. H. (b) Collection of Educational
Films. The Institute has a small collection of
educational films not available from other
sources. 35 mm., 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.
British Instructional Films, 1 1 1 Wardour Street,
W.l. Feature films; Pathe Gazettes and Pathe-
tones; a good collection of nature films. A new
catalogue is in preparation. 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.
Canadian Pacific film Library. 15 films ol Cana-
dian life and scenery. Available from the Empire
Film Library. 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.
Canadian Government Exhibitions and Publicity.
A wide variety of films. Available from the
Empire Film Library.

Central Council for Health Education. Catalogue
ot sonic 250 films, mostly of a specialist health
nature, dealing with Diphtheria, Housing,
Maternity, Child Welfare, Personal Hygiene,
Prevention of Diseases. Physical I itness, etc.
Most films produced by societies affiliated to
the Council, or on loan from other 16 mm.
distributors (e.g. B.O.G.A.). Six films produced
direct for the Council also available, including
Fear and Peter Brown, (any on Children, and
Breath of Danger.

35 mm. and 16 mm. Sd. and St. II. and I .

Central Film Library, Imperial Institute, S.W.7.
Has absorbed the Empire Film Library and the
G.P.O. Film Library. Also contains all new
M.O.I. non-theatrical films. No general catalogue
yet issued. A hand list of M.O.I, films is available.
35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Coal Utilisation Joint Council, General Buildings,
Aldwych, London. W.C.2. Films on production
of British coal and miners" welfare. 35 mm. &
16 mm. Sd. F.

Crookes' Laboratories, Gorst Road. Park
Royal. N.W 10 ( kloids in Medicine. 35 mm. &
16 mm. Sd.F.

Dartington Hall Film Unit, Totnes, South
Devon. Classroom films on regional and eco-
nomic geography. !6 mm. St. H.

Dominion of New Zealand Film Library. 415
Strand, W.C.2. 22 films of industry, scenery and
sport. Includes several films about the Maoris.
16 mm. St. F.

Educational Films Bureau. Tring, Herts. A selec-
tion of all types of film. 35 mm. & 16 mm.
Sd. & St. F.

Educational Genera! Services, 37 Golden Square,
W.l. A wide selee ion of films, particularly of
overseas interest. Some prints for sale. 16 mm. &
St. H.

Electrical Developn.nt Association, 2 Savoy Hill,
Strand, W.C .2. Four films of electrical interest.
Further films of direct advertising appeal are

available to members of the Association only.
16 mm. Sd. & Si

Empire Film Library. Films primarily of Empire
interest, with a useful subject index. Now merged
with the Central Fi'\i Library. 16 mm. and a few
35 mm. Sd. & St. f

Film Centre, 34 Soho Square, W.l. Mouvements
Vibratoires. A film on simple harmonic motion.
French captions. 35 mm. & 16 mm. St. H.

Ford Film Library, Dagenham, Essex. Some
50 films of travel/ engineering, scientific and
comedy interest. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.
Gaumont-British Equipments, Film House, War-
dour Street, W.L Many films on scientific sub-
jects, geography, hygiene, history, language,
natural history, sport. Also feature films. 35 mm.
& 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

G.P.O. Film Libr.v*;,. Over 100 films, mostly
centred round communications. Now merged
with the Central Film Library. 35 mm., 16mm.
Sd. & St. F.

Kodak, Ltd., Kingsway, W.C. 2. (a) Kodascope
Library. Instructional, documentary, feature,
western, comedy. Strong on early American
comedies. 16 mm. a 8 mm. St. H. (A separate
List of Educational Films, extracted from the
above, is also published. A number of films have
teaching notes.) (/>' Medical Film Library. Circu-
lation restricted to .aembers of medical profes-
sion. Some colour fi'ms. Some prints for outright
sale. 16mm. St. II

March of Time, Dean House, 4 Dean Street
W.l. Selected March of Time items, including
Inside Nazi Germany, Battle Fleets of Britain,
Canada at War. 16 mm. Sd. H.

Mathematical Films. Available from B. G. D.
Salt, 5 Carlingford Road, Hampstead, N.W.3.
Five mathematical films suitable for senior
classes. 16 mm. & 9.5 mm. St. H.

Merropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co., Ltd., Traf-
ford Park, Manchester 17. Planned Electrifica-
tion, a film on the electrification of the winding
and surface gear in a coal mine. Available for
showing to technical and educational groups.
16 mm. Sd. F.

Pathescope, North Circular Road, Cricklewood,
N.W.2. Wide selection of silent films, including
cartoons, comedies, drama, documentary, travel,
sport. Also good selection of early American
and German films. 9.5 mm. Sd. & St. H.
Petroleum Films Bureau, 15 Hay Hill, Berkeley
Square, W. 1 . Some 25 technical and documentary
films. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Religious Film Library, Church Walk, Duns-
table, Beds. Films of religious and temperance
appeal. Also list of supporting films from other
sources. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Scottish Central Film Library, 2 Newton Place,
Charing Cross, Glasgow, C.3. A wide selection
of teaching films from many sources. Contains
some silent Scots films not listed elsewhere.
Library available to groups in Scotland only.
16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Sound-Film Services, 27 Charles Street, Cardiff.
Library of selected films including Massingham's
And So to Work. Rome and Sahara have French
commentaries. 16 mm. Sd. H.

South African Railways Publicity and Travel
Bureau, South Africa House, Trafalgar Square,
W.C. 2. 10 films of travel and general interest.
35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & 4 St. versions. F.

Southern Railway, General Manager's Office,
Waterloo Station, S.E.I. Seven films (one in
colour) including Building an Electric Coach,
South African Fruit (Southampton Docks to
Covent Garden), and films on seaside towns.
16 mm. St. F.

WaUace Heaton, Ltd., 127 New Bond Street
W.l. Three catalogues. Sound 16 mm., silent
16 mm., silent 9.5 mm. Sound catalogue contains
number of American feature films, including
Thunder Over Mexico, and some shorts. Silent 16
mm. catalogue contains first-class list of early
American, German and Russian features and
shorts, 9.5 catalogue has number of early Ger-
man films and wide selection of early American
and English slapstick comedies. 16 mm. & 9.5
mm. Sd. & St. H.

Workers' Film Association, Ltd. Transport
House, Smith Square, London. S.W.I. Films
of democratic and co-operative interest. Notes
and suggestions for complete programmes.
Some prints tor sale. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. &
St. H.

Owned and published by Film Centre Ltd., 34 Soho Square, London, W.\ , and printed by Simson Shand Ltd., The Shenval Press, London and Hertfon,

CONTL NTS

NEWS LETTER

. PI I V

NOTES OF THE MONTH
UNITED PROPAGANDA
DOCUMENTARY IN CANADA /> I

war by Donald Slesinger

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

NOTES ON VAAGSO hy Harry II all— by a Commando 23

LETTER TO INDIA

LIST OF 5-MINUTE FILMS FOR DEC. JAN. AND FEB.

the land by Richard Griffith

■J THE WEST

SHORT FILM BOOKINGS FOR FEB. MARCH 28

FILM OF ihe month — How Green was My Valley 29

CORRESPONDENCE 29

1 I A( IORIFS

VOL 3 NO 2

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQL ARE LONDON Wl

ACTION PLEASE

it is necessary that the gravity of the present military position of
the Allies should be widely appreciated in Britain. Such realisation
may be a direct incentive to corrective action. But corrective action
will be the result only if morale is high, that is to say, if there is
a clear understanding of the course which must be followed if
victory is to be won. At the time of writing there are indications that
the morale of the British people is low. Everywhere people are question-
ing our prospects and finding no answers to their questions. The
war crisis in the Far East and the Mediterranean is, however, too
remote to impel people to an immediate sense of urgency such as
arose in this country after Dunkirk when we were faced with an
enemy in control of France and the channel ports. Today, faced
with serious reverses in far off theatres of war and political dissatis-
faction at home, people are showing signs of falling into a dangerous
apathy. This is of course basically a problem of leadership and the
final solution must either be evolved by the Government or imposed
upon it. Nevertheless propagandists in all branches must take a
measure of the blame for the drop in morale. Even granted the
initial disadvantage of the propagandists due to the lack of lead
given by the War Cabinet there remain within the present limitations
a number of signs both of commission and omission.

Our propaganda lacks objective, therefore inevitably it lacks
planning and direction. We have seen propaganda and information
services swing into action on small and limited fronts and without
sufficient forethought. Witness, for instance, the ill-considered
approach to the second Libyan campaign. The impression was
certainly given to the British people that we were going to smash

: Axis forces in Libya, and the continual issue of confident
statements was bound to lead to disappointment and depression
when the fortunes of war and the unexpectedness of enemy strategy
reversed the situation. This disappointment was due to the fact
that neither the promised victory nor the actual reverse had been
put in perspective v. ith the whole strategy of the war. The trouble
is that we have failed to develop an efficient technique by which the
truth may be told, by which its many and various aspects may be
integrated into a whole and then given direction. The result of this
lack is that the public's mind is pulled now this way and now that.
On the same day we can read in our papers on the one hand that
General Rommel is a thug, a natural fascist, a killer of socialists.

betrayer of his own chiefs and probably the murderer of
General von Fritsch ; and on the other, in the words of the Prime
Minister, that Rommel is '"a very daring and skilful opponent and
may I say across the havoc of war — a great general."' There is no
actual reason to doubt the truth of either of these statements, but
it is not particular!) helpful to ordinary people to be presented with

such diverse attitudes in regard to one of our most dangerous
enemies. Similarly the public is made cynical by reading on one
day that the B.B.C., broadcasting in German to Europe, has stated
that the R.A.F. is going to strike at Germany in the Spring with
a terrible force of huge bombers, while on the next day the Air
Ministry brusquely announce "This must not be regarded as an
official announcement. It is pure propaganda" — (which is danger-
ously near to an official denial of any connection between truth and
propaganda).

These things are indeed pinpricks; but they are uneasy examples
of the failure of the propaganda services. As the war progresses it
becomes more and more clear that in propaganda the words, "informa-
tion" and "morale" are inextricably interwoven. You cannot raise
morale unless you give the public information and explanation; and
our great failing, which is now being thrown into sharp relief,
-ies in the fact that most of the information given the public has
no forward-looking quality and that consequently our propaganda
is a matter of a short-term policy without regard to any long term
plan.

What is needed is intelligent anticipation leading to much more
advanced planning. Propagandists must not start campaigns in a
vacuum. They must take thought for the morrow. Otherwise an
unexpected turn of events may throw even the most successful
short term campaign into ridicule and make the acceptance of fur-
ther campaigns far more difficult.

As regards film propaganda there have recently been signs that
the need for a forward looking information service is being realised.
The film War in the East, which was rushed out after Japan's
aggression, gave a very clear picture of the situation, and remained
undated during its period of circulation. But here again an even
wider picture of the Far Eastern situation and of the Axis plans
would have been of value. If at that stage, both in film and other
media, the people had been given the chance to look beyond
Singapore and to make up their minds even to the remoter possi-
bilities, unlikely as they may have appeared at that time (e.g. a
Japanese interruption of Allied supply lines to the Middle Last and
Russia) there is some likelihood that many apathetic people would
have received something of a stimulus to action.

The long term plan which is at the moment badly needed could
be easily based on a very simple thesis (with compliments to Monsieur
I itvinov) "World War II is indivisible".

The background to all calls to action must essentially be (and v\ ill
so remain for some time to come) a propaganda drive which will get
clearly into everyone's heads the scope and implications of the war
as a whole.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

NOTES OF THE MONTH

The Fourth Arm

reference is made elsewhere in this issue to the extraordinary
situation which recently arose between the Air Ministry and the
B.B.C. A broadcast to Germany by the B.B.CYs overseas service
threatened that in the Spring the R.A.F. would launch a bombing
offensive of unprecedented violence. This broadcast was reported
in the British press and the Air Ministry was approached by one
paper for further details. They were apparently told in reply that
there was no connection between the broadcast statement and
R.A.F. plans and that it was, in fact, "simply propaganda". This
gay abandon with which a Service Department can dismiss an
official propaganda statement as having no relation to the facts,
perhaps reveals nothing more serious than the traditional Service
contempt for propaganda. If, on the other hand, it means that our
broadcasts to enemy and enemy occupied countries are composed
without reference to military policy, then this can only mean that
we have abandoned the propaganda principle with which we began
the war — namely that all our statements were to be true. It has
always been agreed that Nazi propaganda methods have a great
many things to teach us, but it has never been suggested that we
should learn from them the art of lying. It is doubly unfortunate
that the confusion should have arisen in relation to our most
conspicuous military failure of the winter, the failure of our bombing
offensive against Germany. Unless the R.A.F. can be absolutely
sure that a new and successful policy can be put into operation in
the spring, it is a bad mistake to threaten the Germans with heavy
raids. It is likely that any tendency to threaten greater aggressions
than we can perform will immediately be interpreted on the Conti-
nent as a first sign of waning Allied hopes of victory; particularly
since our own principal answer to Nazi propaganda has been to
draw attention to the difference between promise and achievement.
Let us hope that this present issue between B.B.C. and R.A.F. is
not symptomatic of any widespread evil, but merely a more than
usually irritating example of bureaucratic muddle.

Fitness for Purpose

it is interesting to find the propaganda film being used officially
as a channel for statements of policy requiring visual exposition.
The recent five-minute film War in the East provided what was in
fact an official statement of the Government's early hopes and fears
in relation to the situation in the Far East. More recently a change
in policy in relation to the use of the stirrup pump in fighting
incendiary bombs has been embodied in the Ministry's film Fire
Guard. 1 he first announcement of an important change of procedure
had to be made, and since the nature of this change and the reason
for it could only be made absolutely clear by visual demonstration,
it was wise to use the most appropriate medium — the film. It is
clear that in making such use of the film medium, consideration
must be given to the distribution available so that questions of
national coverage and time-lag can be taken into account. It is
equally clear, however, that, just as certain messages can best make
their lirst appearance in the press, over the air or in leaflets, there
are some instructions which can best be conveyed by film.

Medieval Mediocrity

in a recent issue of the Daily Express William Hickey wrote
from New York as follows : —

"I think I'll start burning thatched cottages down when I get home.
I xcept in Target for To-night and a few other short films, Britain
has been mainly presented to Americans — both by Britons and by
American tourists as a quaintly medieval enclave, where there are
plenty of cathedrals and no bathrooms.

"Americans adore mechanical efficiency. It would be nice if they
coulu be shown Britain as the great industrial country it is; and if
l nglishmen weren't always portrayed to them in a mood of slightly
pathetic whimsy.

"The newest theatrical importation from London is Lesley Storm's
Heart of a City. I winced my way through its Broadway previews
Possibly those consciously stiff upper lips, those embarrassing
heroics, were typical of the theatricals of whom the play is about :
I never struck them among ordinary Londoners in air raids.

"The current juke-box best-selling tune is in the same false and.
at the moment, doubly unfortunate vein: "The White Cliffs of
Dover." It starts "There'll be blue birds over the white cliffs of
Dover." (To me, no ornithologist, this seems an improbable
phenomenon : seagulls perhaps, but blue birds?)

"Then I went to the opening of the latest big film, Captains of
the Clouds, a vigorous and splendidly coloured document of the
Royal Canadian Air Force, with a Cagney thriller rather uneasily
superimposed. There is one Englishman among these braw Canadian
pilots who talks the same old stuff: he wants to be back in England
because it is all narrow lanes and high hedges and thatched cottages.

"It is irritating to keep coming on this minor misrepresentation
when all our lives are being enacted against a gigantic backcloth of
disaster: Singapore — the Normandie — the German Fleet — these
are blows which might be called crushing, if Britons and Americans
were the sort of people who could be crushed."

Achievement

documentary workers will always have a special affection for the
Imperial Institute, because it was the original source from which
grew the great non-theatrical distribution field now represented b>
such a large yearly audience coverage among all classes of the
community. Sir Harry Lindsay has now issued, in the Annual Report
of the Institute, a number of facts and figures regarding the increased
distribution services which have arisen now that the Ministry of
Information has channelled all its non-theatrical services through
the Institute. The Central Film Library, it is claimed, is probably
the largest library of documentary and educational films in the
world. In December, 1941, there were in the Library 9,250 copies
of 645 films. There were 2,200 copies of 430 films about the Empire
and the United Kingdom, 550 copies of 60 films made by the G.P.O.
and 6,500 copies of 155 films produced for, or acquired by the
Ministry of Information. Of the 5,800 copies of films added to the
Library during the year, 5,000 were added by the Ministry of
Information, while 670 copies of Empire films were presented to
the Library; the balance consisted of copies of G.P.O. films. The
Imperial Relations Trust has made another grant of £500, this time
for the purchase of films about the Dominions; and a number of
Governments and organisations have once again presented copies
of films to the library. But the most striking figures in the report
relate to the circulation of films : —

"In all, 61,000 copies of films were sent out by the Library.
Of this total 29,000 were Empire films, 6,000 were G.P.O. films
and 26,000 were Ministry of Information films. Nor do these
figures fully represent the distribution achieved by the Library.
Films have been lent to about 5.000 organisations. A large number
of these organisations show the films to several audiences before
returning them. Because of the time thus saved in transit the
Library is encouraging this development. Many films and pro-
grammes of films are shown to as many as a dozen different audi-
ences before being returned, and it can be fairly estimated that on
the average every film despatched represents three showings, each
to an audience of between 100 and 150 people.

All this is most encouraging news. It seems likely that the figures
will continue to mount, and that when peace comes we shall have in
this country the best service of films for civic education in the world.

Special Version of W.V.S. Film

is mi review of the film W.V.S. in our Januarj issue it was sug-
gested that this film, which was made for American circulation.
would also be valuable in this country if commentary changes were
made. The Films Division of the M.O.I, have now announced that
a special version of W.V.S., with a new commentary, has been
prepared, and will be circulated here.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

UNITED PROPAGANDA

the setting up of Pacific Councils, the
exchanges of information between leaders,
the laying down of charters, demonstrates
the unity of purpose and interest among the
United Nations. It demonstrates a desire to
march forward together on common ground.
But all these committees and charters are
hardly likely to function without a better
understanding between the nations con-
cerned.

Our relations with America will not be
cemented because of a personal understanding
between Roosevelt and Churchill. Russia and
Britain will not march forward successfully
together because of an understanding be-
tween (ripps and Stalin. There must be an
understanding between the peoples. We in
this country must know, for instance, more
of the Chinese way of life; the Americans
must have a better understanding of ours.
The war is a matter of individual concern to
every man in every country fighting Fascism.
If we are to fight and work together for a
common good, it is essential for the peoples
of every land to know and appreciate one
another's way of life.

In this country the prejudicial teaching of
most of our educational system, the lack of
any special responsibility in the newspapers,
and the symbols of the caricaturists, leave an
extraordinary picture in the average Briton*s
mind of the peoples who are fighting with
us. How can we appreciate the effort China
is making for our common good if we
conceive the Chinese as men with pigtails,
smoking opium and talking pidgin English
— a very popular conception? Can the British
really obtain an accurate understanding of
the American way of life from their fiction
films which flood our cinemas?

The thinking of the average citizen is
coloured by the nationalist policies of his
ruling class. He is encouraged to believe
that, say, one Englishman is worth four
Frenchmen. This was one of the earliest
forms of encouraging local patriotism. It is
right to have pride in one's own country, its
associations, its sceneries and its achieve-
ments; but it is wrong to encourage these
natural emotions to a point at which they
become jingoist.

All men know in their hearts that symbols
and shibboleths cannot represent the people
of foreign lands; but because they lack
information about the people of foreign
lands they have accepted symbols instead of
truths. Incidentally, it is worth noting that
many of these symbols imply criticism of the
foreigner's way of life.

It is noteworthy that where great ideals
have sprung from a nation or are the moti-
vating forces of that nation, common people
all the world over have felt the effect
of that idealism and perhaps subscribed to it.
Witness the overwhelming body of sympathy
for Russia in this country at the moment.

when for so long we have been encouraged
as a nation to believe that Russia was an
evil place because Communism was an evil
thing. There is, too, the example of the
early working class movement in this country
which looked to the Americans, in their
early days of the shaping of America, for
inspiration in the British fight against class
oppression.

We have constantly campaigned for
greater dissemination of information within
our own country about the conduct of the
war, but there is to-day an even greater
need for exchange of information among the
peoples comprising the United Nations.
The Russians are still suspicious of our
objectives, while most of us here have little
understanding of the ideas coming from
Chungking. Yet all the United Nations, in
their different ways, are trying to beat Fas-
cism and shape the way to the good life.
But in no two countries are the methods
the same.

Since the widening of the war, there have
been many instances of lack of understanding;
this, for example, appears in the out-spoken
criticism by Australia of our conduct of the
war in the Pacific. There has been China's
dissatisfaction at its exclusion from General
Wavell's Pacific command. There has been
the Dutch dissatisfaction at our tactics in
the Far East. There has been the Russian
dissatisfaction with the war effort in our
factories. There has been our own dissatis-
faction with rate of production in the United
States. Obviously, quick dissemination of
information among the United Nations would
go a long way towards removing distrust and
suspicion.

The cause of internationalism was largely
lost through mutual suspicion and distrust
among the peoples represented at the League
of Nations. Had there been a better under-
standing of one another's problems, a greater
knowledge of one another's countries, many
of the difficulties that wrecked many an
international conference need never have
arisen. (It is interesting to note here that
only since America has become a fully-
fledged ally, has any teaching of American
history been introduced into our schools.)

There have been signs in this country that
our Government is aware of this need.
Churchill has spoken of the necessity for
setting up little Whitehall in each of the
Allied countries. There have been questions
in the House about the possibility of setting
up a British film unit in Moscow.

In this country we have observed the
efforts made by the Russians to make us
understand their country and the part they
are playing. For example, the Soviet Em-
bassy publishes at regular intervals a news-
paper giving great detail about Russia and
the war it is fighting on the Eastern Front.
The Russians have set up a film agency

which turns Russian films into English and
distributes them. They have made arrange-
ments with commercial concerns to dis-
tribute their feature films in the ordinal")
cinemas. They have sent us delegations to
meet our workers and investigate our war
factory conditions. In a multitude of ways
they are opening up the eyes of this country
to the Russian way of life and the Russian
war effort.

But this must not be a one-way traffic.
We must do the same in Russia itself.
We must do the same in America; we musf
do the same in China, in the Dutch East
Indies, and in all the Dominions. But the
conception of setting up little Whitehalls will
probably only lead to trouble. We have our
own experience of Whitehall and its thinking.

What is needed is a complete British
information agency in each of the various
capitals. It is not sufficient that we send
publications, radio talks and films to the
Allied countries, we must have organisa-
tions on the spot to direct their use. Organ-
isations in Moscow, Washington, Chung-
king, Sourabaya and each of the Dominion
capitals, in touch with affairs on the spot,
and able to adapt and edit material and with
sufficient experience of the situation on the
spot to see that this material is properly
used. It is not sufficient that press attaches at
the Embassies should undertake this work.
They are the preachers of diplomacy and ill-
adapted to the dissemination of informa-
tion. Their previous history has not been
conspicuously successful. No, there must be
complete units, each designed to present in-
formation about its country in films,
periodicals and radio.

But this again must not be a one way
traffic. Our Allies must arrange that they
themselves have similar organisations set
up in each of their Allies' capitals. The result
should be a complete net-work of informa-
tional services which work from one capital
to another. The obvious co-ordinating com-
mittee in each country would consist of the
chiefs of the United Nations information
agencies under the chairmanship of the
Information Minister in that particular
country.

This organisation will lake no time at all
to set up. It means the appointment in each
foreign capital of a representative to see that
proper information is disseminated about
his own country. If these information
agencies were set up there would be a more
harmonious working between the Allied
countries.

From this would come a common under-
standing between the peoples of a great part
of the world and, in the end, not only a
greater efficiency in concluding this war, but
also a true basis for any international
federation that may arise afterwards.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

DOCUMENTARY IN CANADA

By ROGER BARLOW

Mr. Barlow is a member of the Association of Documentary Film Producers (U.S. A),
and recently worked under John Grierson for the National Film Board. In the following
article he is not speaking for the Fi m Board, but has set down opinions and observations
gathered from his work on Fi'm Board productions. The article is reprinted (slightly
abridged) by courtesy of Documentary Film News (New York).

documentary films are being made in Canada
— and in a far more organised manner than we
have ever seen in the United States. One of the
false ideas about Mr. Grierson's organisation
is that it now is, and was originally set up as
a propaganda unit for the Empire War Effort.
Actually there has existed for the past twenty
years a production unit under one of the Govern-
ment departments — the Canadian Government
Motion Picture Bureau. The word "bureau" is
properly descriptive because while it did
occasionally turn out a picture, its unimaginative
leadership was incapable of producing anything
that was a credit to the nation as an example of
its art. The mushroom growth of the English
documentary movement had no effect upon this
unit.

Just how Mr. Grierson happened to come to
Canada 1 am not quite sure, but I am sure that
he was deeply interested in both the United
States and Canada, having previously spent
some time in the United States and knowing
the filmic potentialities of the North American
continent. In any case, through Grierson's
prestige and by his efforts the Canadian Govern-
ment created the National Film Board with Mr.
Grierson as Film Commissioner, some short
time before the outbreak of World War II. His
task was to organise and supervise all production.

Stuart Legg, who had long been associated
with Grierson in England, came to Canada
as the first new director. At the old Bureau he
produced The Case of Charlie Gordon, a film
about the problems of unemployment facing
the youth of Canada. Then after the outbreak
of war Legg produced the first of what was to
he the most popular and most successful of all
( 'anadian productions — the Canada Carries On
series, a monthly release presenting in each issue
some phase of the Canadian war effort. At
present this release is reaching virtually all
theatres in Canada through distribution by
Columbia Pictures.

To meet this schedule of monthly releases,
plus trailers and a growing programme of non-
theatrical production, it was necessary to get
additional personnel and to utilise all available
existing commercial production facilities Stan-
ley Hawes, J. Davidson and Raymond Spottis-
vvoodc came from the English documentary
field. Irving Jacob} came up from New York to
produce a film, and I came up to work on half
a dozen other ones. Some films were let out to
the commercial producers in Montreal and
Toronto, but under the close supervision o\' the
film Board.

In the meantime, soung Canadians with an
itch to work m films were taken on at the old
Motion Picture Bureau as apprentices and
groomed for active production duties, one of
the primarj aims of the film Board being to
make, insofar as practical, production truly
Canadian. About a year ago something of
a crisis arose out of the friction between the
enterprising, ambitious new film people and

the members of the original Motion Picture
Bureau who wanted to retain the status quo, and
who resented the new ways of getting films
produced.

Eventually, after threatening to resign, Grier-
son was given authority to go ahead with the
film programme that had been in development.
The National Film Board was transferred to
another department, the Motion Picture Bureau
dissolved and its physical properties and staff
became the production department of the
National Film Board and directly under its
control. The producing staff was greatly in-
creased, and by this time some of the first
apprentices were ready to go out into the field
in production capacities. Of these, Don Fraser
is now cameraman for one unit and Jim Bever-
idge is a director and cutter on non-theatrical
productions.

Non-theatrical production has grown tre-
mendously and must now total nearly fifty
films a year — mostly Kodachrome and of course
16 mm. — doing a first rate job of showing
Canada to the Canadians, and to the rest of the
world as well — films about Ukrainian, Icelandic
and French minorities, the far-removed districts
such as the Peace River farming country.
Canadian artists. Canadian crafts, agricultural
problems, Indian tribes and cultures, trans-
portation, and many more are either completed
or in production. One young amateur. Budge
Crawley, and his wife, have now become pro-
fessional 16 mm. producers and colour specialists
having produced some of the best Kodachrome
work I have seen. They have complete 16 mm.
recording facilities.

Present theatrical production is limited to the
Canada Carries On release of one two-reeler a
month, and an occasional war loan or fire
prevention trailer. Stuart Legg is producer and
supervising editor of the Canada Carries On
films, while shooting may be in the hands of
three or more units in the field. This scries has
been quite similar to The March of Time in
editorial treatment and narration, bearing no
similarity whatever to the current British war
films that have made such an impression here in
the United Slates. Personally, I should like to
see warmth and a greater feeling about people
in this theatrical release, hut there is no denying
that it has been effective in its present form.

Currently two abstract musical shorts in
colour are in production in Ottawa. One is ,i
"mail-early" trailer, the othei a war loan trailer
with Boogie- Woogie music. Willard Van Dyke
and I saw the fust of these the other day, and
1 must Say that I was quite impressed hv the
work of the young Scotsman. Norman McLaren,
who made them single-handed. He does the
animation directly on the film- not I en I ye
style, but actual figures ami designs lie also
draws sound tracks that are amazing, but too
difficult to do for a long film.

\part from actual production in Canada, Mr.
(iiicrson has devoted much effort to peisuading

Hollywood to make use of Canadian locales or
subject matter, and has succeeded, as will be
noted from a check-up of next year's releases.
This extensive programme has come about in
two years in a nation less than one-tenth the
size of the United States, with no background of
film production and with little money to spend
unless full value is received. Films in Canada are
produced economically and about as efficiently
as films can ever be made. It is possible that by
its efficient, workmanlike productions the
National Film Board will be in a position to go
on with its peace-time programme when the war
is over. It is to be hoped that the public will
realise that the Board can continue to benefit
its country.

WAR

First reactions of U.S.A. Documentary to the
entrance of the United States into the War.
By Donald Slesinger.
Reprinted from Film News
roM hviki) of the British Film Centre sat with
me in a garden restaurant in the spring of 1939,
and we speculated on how the film could be
used to raise the human standards, and to make
the peoples of the earth understand each other.
A few months later, when there was no more
peace and Tom was at his post in London,
John Grierson stopped off in Santa Monica on
his way to Australia. We made the rounds of
the Hollywood studios and Grierson begged
producer after producer to use his control of
the most persuasive of all means of communica-
tion to inform, to warn the American public; to
tell the world that the democratic way of life
was in danger.

By the time the full fur) of war burst over
London the motion picture in England, in
Canada and in Australia was doing its bit. The
peoples of the British Empire began to under-
stand each other. And under the roar of anti-
aircraft fire something was being done about
human standards. The life of the Empire had
a richer goal— to beat Hitler in order to be able
to promote the public welfare-
War has now come to our country and for
a moment we respond with the unity due to
danger. But if we are to win the war and later
the peace, the present emotional unitv must
become one of understanding. All the regions,
all the peoples of America must get to know one
another. Common ideals grow out of friendship.
The motion picture, in aiding friendship and
understanding, has its greatest opportunity. It
has long amused and diverted us all. It now has
a clear responsibility— to use its technical and
dramatic skill to help keep alive a love of free-
doms of mankind, that will make every farmer,
worker, manager, soldier, sailor, a defender to
the death o\ our ideals.

To do that requires a new attitude on the part
of an entire industry. There must be no produc-
tion or distribution bottlenecks. The theatres
must be open to essential films, no matter who
makes them. There must be a comprehensive
and continuous flow of motion pictures to the
theatrical and non-theatrical audiences o\'
America. As loin Band remarked, human
standards must be raised. As John Grierson
said, we' musl inform, and warn the public.
I lie American 61m makers join the British,
Canadian and Australian film groups in
dedicating themselves to that task.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER PEBRl ARY 1942

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Fireguard. Production: Shell Film Unit. Pro-
er: Edgar Anstcy. Direction: Geoffrey Bell.
Photography: Sydney Beadle. M.O.I. Non-T.
25 mins.

Subject. Fireguard tells how the ordinary man
in the street can organise his own fire parties,
and how to deal with the actual incendiary'
bombs. The film shows first of all how fire-guard
parties can best be worked street by street on
a rota system. Next, the equipment they need,
how it should be used and what to expect of
incendiaries; and finally there is a reconstruction
of a fire blitz showing how the fire guards go
about their job.

titment. The main part of the film is purely
instructional, with a fair amount of diagram
and simple commentary by way of explanation.
The end, that is, the reconstructed raid, is nicely
covered by sync, post-synch, natural sound and
speech. The instructional section is purely and
simply shot and constructed, and anybody seeing
it should know all about how to deal with incen-
diaries. It is interesting to see that alter all these
rs we have got right hack to the plain jet of
water for dealing with firebombs. The film even
tackles the subject of explosive incendiaries. The
reconstructed raid, in comparison, is a bit on the
artificial side though this defect is partly counter-
balanced by the fact that the people look ordinary
decent folk, and get on happily with the job off
their own bat. It is nice that they put their fires
without calling on the Fire Brigade or
official assistance, beyond the provision of tin
hats and stirrup pumps.

Propaganda and Institutional' value. From the
instructional point of view this is a very good
film particularly in that it makes the job of deal-
ing with incendiaries seem perfectly simple.
It is a scandal that it has taken over 2\ years of
war before it was made. Sensible instruction of
this sort at the proper time might well have
saved the centres of dozens of our cities, as it did
Moscow. However, it is no doubt in time to be
of use to America and should be very helpful,
incidentally, in showing them how we go about
running our lives.

Seaman Frank Goes Back to Sea. Production:
Concanen Films for the National Savings
Committee. Producer: Derrick de Marney.
Direction and Photography: Eugene Cekalski.
Commentary: Terence de Marney and Frank
Laskier. 7 minutes.

Subject. Frank Laskier, the most effective broad-
caster of World War II, is depicted returning to
work in the Merchant Service and makes a
personal appeal to all of us to give all we can to
National Savings.

Treatment. Laskier's broadcasts (which can now
be had in a booklet called ""Seaman Frank"
which everyone interested in great prose and
"Simple emotions must read) have touched a
depth of sincerity which only a film of epic
quality like The Grapes of Wrath could ever
hope to re-create. This particular film is a Five
Minuter, shot silent, with one dubbed sequence,
a commentary by de Marney, and a final spoken
message from Laskier himself. Its pictorial
ij material consists of dock and ships scenes shot
I apparently in haste but in any case with a sense
of dramatic angles. But it adds up to nothing
striking as a film. Its sound track, however,
carries two important things. Firstly, the com-

mentator's introduction of laskier, signing on
again for another voyage although the U-boats
have already taken one of his legs. Secondly.
Laskier's own remarks, which, although in
some ways they lack the pure spontaneity of his
broadcasts, do strike to the heart. On the whole,
it is not a wonderful piece of film-making, but
its message somehow manages to register
thanks largely to its chief character.
Propaganda value. The Savings Committee ha\e
hit on a real down-to-earth as a basis for appeal,
and the film ought to be by far the most suc-
cessful money-getter they have yet put out.
They should pursue the same policy on future
films, To such future efforts they might well allo-
cate more time and money, since the direct appeal
of human effort here hinted at is probably a key
approach to even the less-well-fumished pockets.

Land Girl. Production: Rotha Films. Produce)
Donald Alexander. Director: John Page. Camera:
Graham Thompson. M.O.I. 5 minutes.
Subject. A land girl goes to a farm in Scotland.
The increased responsibilities now devolving
upon the farmer have made her a necessity;
in the instance of this particular farmer — a
definitely unwelcome necessity. The farmer and
his men doubt her capacity for work. They fear
that her towny habits, about which they are
already prejudiced by hearsay, will disrupt the
even tenor of the farmhouse. But she proves to
be strong, sensible, industrious and respect-
worthy.

Treatment. Characteristic people and real
sentiments have been sought and successfully
found. The girl herself is a real person and
a delightful one. The conflict of personalities
is valid and is validly resolved.

Mention should be made of the ploughing
sequence. In this the plough attains an extra-
ordinary vitality. One's hands feel an urgency to
take it and join in the job. The parts of this little
film are so well proportioned that it appears to
run for longer than its five minutes. Besides
recognition of the obvious merit of the direction,
credit is due to the cameraman for some
splendid work.

Propaganda value. It will obviously contribute
towards better feeling on the agricultural front
Also it is likely to be of considerable general
appeal because of its human values.

A Drop of Milk. Production: Lenfilm Studio.
Leningrad. English version: M. Dennington.
English voices: Harry Ross, Gerhard Hinze,
Fredda Brilliant. 7 minutes.
Subject. This is a short Soviet propaganda film
designed to emphasise the sufferings of the nativ e
populations of occupied countries and their in-
domitable will to resist. The story is melo-
dramatic and shows sequences of a father's
attempt to obtain milk for his sick child after
its mother has been executed by a Nazi firing
squad. In contrast with the miseries of the
peasants in the film we see brutal Nazi officers
enjoying good food and accommodation which
they have commandeered.
Treatment: Technically the film takes a conven-
tional form not dissimilar from early studio-
made M.O.I, five-minuters. Direction, photo-
graphy, editing and acting all are excellent. The
film embodies a much simpler propaganda con-
tent than is usual in M.O.L work. It attempts

to make only one single propaganda point a
contrast between the bestiality of the Nazis ami
the humanity and fortitude Of their enemies.
Propaganda value. This film is probably of much
greater propaganda value in Russia than in this
country. In Russia, with the war on native soil.
the issues arc comparatively simple. It is neces-
sary to eject the enemy and in order to eject
him it is necessary to hate him. In this country
where we can still afford to be perhaps danger
ously — objective, the propaganda approach is
reminiscent of the '"hate the nun" films of the
last war.

More Eggs from Your Hens. M.O.I, for the

Ministiy of Agriculture. Production: Merlon
Park Studios. Direction: Terence Bishop
Camera: Jimmy Roger*. Editing: Cath Miller.
Non-T.

Subject. This is a simple instructional film
in the Ministry of Agriculture's programme
on Backyard Poultry. It shows you how to
house your half a dozen hens, how to feed
them, and what points to look for in a good
laying hen.

Treatment. The film is made quite straightfor-
wardly with a few superimposed skeletons to
liven it up. The commentary is too hurried and
overladen for the picture, but to outweigh this
it is a pleasure to hear a real human voice which
is not afraid of making a joke and a good joke
at that. The main fault of the film is that n
leaves untouched many things that the audience
is bound to want to hear about, while, at the
same time, going into some detail about more
complicated and less important things which it
does not properly explain. For instance, the
film gives no help on the choice of a breed of
hen for laying, although there is a long sequence,
not particularly clearly done, about the bone
structure, etc., necessary in a good layer.
Propaganda value. The film should prove very
interesting to people who keep hens or intend
doing so, and also reasonably instructive.

Song of the Clyde. Production: Merton Park
Studios for the British Council. Direction and
Camera: Jimmy Rogers.
Subject. The Clyde from source to sea
Treatment. There is no treatment, no approach.
The film is merely a cameraman's holiday and
Jimmy Rogers has taken full advantage of it.
The shooting is impeccable, but the film com-
pletely meaningless a scries o\ excellently shot
scenes put together with no purpose. The result
is a travelogue with almost no voice— which is
a novelty— but it is also a waste of time. The
film sees everything and tells absolutely nothing.
either by speech or editing, except that the Clyde
is ,i nver. which presumably everybody knew.
Propaganda value. It is impossible to imagine
that this film could have been intended as
propaganda of any kind.

Border Weave. Production G. I I inner Pro-
ductions for the British Council. Director: John
Lewis Curthoys. Cameraman: Jack Cardiff.
Subject. The making of tweed cloth.
Treatment. This is the story of how tweed is
made. The treatment is simple and there is
fortunately no effort to impose a grandiose
message on to the subject. From sheep's back lo
the back of a young woman in Princes Street is
a long journey, and we are shown the more
interesting stages of it. The subtle blend of colour
( Continued on page 3 1 )

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

FILM SOCIETY NEWS

l he Devon and Exeter Film Society began its
new season in January with a programme which
will include shows of Guitry's Les Neuf Celiba-
taires, The Rich Bride, Dood Water, and Edge of
the World. The first programme, on January
25th, had as feature a revival of Camet de Bal.
Members of the Society have also asked for
sub-standard showings of film classics and
arrangements are in hand for this. It is reported
that the most successful film of the autumn
season was Flaherty's Nanook of the North ; to
this show incidentally, the Society invited some
60 children from the Deaf Schoolman enterprise
which other Film Society secretaries might take
note of and copy, particularly when silent films
are being projected.

The Edinburgh Film Guild continues its policy of
progressive and carefully planned shows. The
Guild believes that a Film Society does not
justify its existence merely by providing enter-
tainments on Saturday or Sunday afternoons,
and therefore its Committee is anxious to con-
tinue such programmes as that given on Decem-
ber 19th, which was entitled "Planning", At this
showing six documentaries were shown — all of
them analysing various social problems and
pleading for a planned approach to their
solution. The films included Children at School.
Housing Problems, Roads Across Britain and the
U.S.A. film The City, and the show, it is reported,
was attended by a large number of Government

officials representing departments which will be,
administratively at least, responsible for post-
war planning in Scotland. On January 11th the
programme included Five Faces (Shaw's film on
Malaya), the March of Time on The Philippines
and Pabst's Drame de Shanghai.

Manchester and Salford and the Manchester
Film Institute Societies, still acting together,
announce a series of shows which will include
a number of Soviet films, both short and feature.
Amongst these will be We from Kmnstmli.
Daghestan. Incident in a Telegraph Office, and
a revival of The New Babylon.

On January 11th Dundee and St. Andrews

presented Renoir's La Marseillaise, together
with three shorts.

The London Co-operative Film Society has now

published its programme for January, February
and March. This includes Pudovkin's Deserter,
Shaw's Future in the Air, two Technicolor
shorts ( The Green Girdle and Queen Cotton) and
a number of other documentary and entertain-
ment films.

After a very successful opening the Belfast Film
Institute Society began its four shows of the
second part of its season on January 17th. The
programme was chosen in tribute to Czecho-
slovakia, which was represented by Janosik, and,
in the supporting programme, two Czech shorts.

Prague and Children Dancing. The Pal Birth of
a Robot and Rotha's admirable Cover to Cover
were also shown. Cover to Cover has been shown
in Belfast before but a revival of it was con-
sidered overdue. The February show is to be
mainly French, and Le Roi S' Amuse has been
booked. Two further shows are being actively
planned to complete the season of seven shows
originally promised. But it is possible that
additional shows may be arranged if circum-
stances permit.

Two religious films were shown at the January
meeting of the Glasgow Branch of the Scottish
Churches Film Guild. Lift up Your Hearts was
a short one reel picture with beautiful country
scenery. The commentary was good and the
picture was thought to be very useful. Kindled
Flame — a three-reeler — is a splendid picture, suit-
able for any kind of audience and it will be found
an asset in religious teaching. The story deals
with the persecution of Christians in the third
century and their martyrdom to uphold their
Faith. The acting is good and the photography
even better.

It is with regret that the committee of the
Tyneside Film Society has had to abandon plans
for a second session of the 1 941-42 season, owing
to insufficient support. During the first half of the
season Ernte. Le Roi S'Amuse and Lenin in
October were shown. The choice of shorts was
more difficult, and a policy of revivals was
adopted, among the films chosen being The
River. And So To Work and The Plow that
Broke the Plains: the last, so satisfying in its
entiren. unfortunately proved to be a "cut"
copy.

ECONOMY

A large number of films are ruined by
scratches caused by dirt — or sprocket
teeth. To-day a greatly increased national
use of films makes the avoidance of waste
more important than ever.

Please help by:

• Keeping the gate free from dirt and accumulations
of emulsion, and cleaning it before projecting each
reel.

• Keeping clean all pulleys over which the film passes.

• Keeping unspooled film off the floor.

• Keeping the film correctly seated on the sprocket
wheels of the projector.

PETROLEUM FILMS BUREAU, 15, Hay Hill, Berkeley Square, W.l

SCIENTIFIC

FILM

SOCIETIES

The London Scientific Film Society is holding
its second show of the season at 2.30 p.m.. on
March 7th, at the Imperial Institute Theatre.
South Kensington. The theme of the programme
is — Oil ! and included in it are Grierson's
S //(/?<'<,m of Oil. the Anglo-Iranian oil film, and
a German newsreel. Full details of reduced
membership for the rest of the season may be
obtained from the Secretary. Hanover House.
73 High Holborn. W.C.I.

Glasgow Scientific Film Society reports: —
"The season so far has been most successful.
and although there has been a considerable
number of resignations due to members joining
one or other of H.M. forces, or taking up v>ork
of national importance outside this area, this
loss has been almost offset h> the number of
new members enrolled. At the present time there
are a feu vacancies, and members will be
enrolled for the remainder of the season at a
reduced subscription.

"During the first season of the Society one
non-scientific documentary film was included
m each programme I his proved so acceptable
that during this season this policy has been
continued and augmented, as it is felt that in a
programme consisting of from 7 to 10 films.
up to three non-scientific documentary films can
( Continued on page 26)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

NOTES ON VAAGSO

By HARRY WATT

(Director of Target for Tonight)

there were six of us in the "Propaganda"
party in the Vaagso raid. Harry Rignold and
Roy Boulting from the Army Film Unit, Ralph
Walling from Reuters, Lt. Mallindine for
official stills, Jack Ramsden from Movietone
and myself. My title was guest director and
I went along as an observer, and to do any
filming I wanted with the Army Film Unit.
Despite the preponderance of film and stills
people we were obstinately referred to as "the
Press" and at first treated a little suspiciously.
No one expected us to behave quite as ordinary
human beings. We came from those twin homes
of vulgarity, Fleet Street and Wardour Street,
and everyone seemed to be waiting for us to
show it. Perhaps because of this "the Press"
was housed in the decontamination centre.
Perhaps it was just because the ship was over-
crowded. We beefed a lot at first but in the end
it was quite successful as we had a bunch of
junior officers and Norwegians shoved in with
us and we used to lie around and argue politics
and things far into the night.

By the time we were getting ready to sail on
the actual job we were quite accepted. Walling,
the Reuter's man, did us all a good turn by
doing a real "wet landing" on a rehearsal and
carrying on in his soaking uniform. We further
improved our position by insisting on going
ashore with the first landing parties at Vaagso.
There had been some vague idea that we would
stay on board the transports and shoot it all
with long-focus lenses. We were posted to the
Headquarters boat. During boat drill we dis-
covered somewhat uneasily that this carried
several hundred pounds of high explosive. We
were greatly relieved therefore when we were
shifted to another landing boat. This turned
out to be chock-a-block with fully primed hand
grenades, so we stayed uneasy.

Going across we shot some reconstructed
interiors with two small banks of lights rigged
up for lis by the ship's electrician. Harry Rignold
did wonders with them. All the time Harry was
the hero of the trip. He was constantly sea-sick
yet never complained and turned out consistently
steady, good quality stuff. We used two 100 ft.
Eyemos. Jack Ramsden had a Sinclair. Both
worked well though Ramsden complained that
his outfit was too heavy for a one-man job.
Rignold swears by Eyemos. I would say two
with a Sinclair is the best, but the second man
must be able to reload in a changing bag. The
quick daylight loading of the Eyemos is terribly
useful on a job like this.

It was really too dark to shoot when we
began to go ashore in Norway, but we got the
German warning Verey lights and the shells
exploding on Malloy island. I and the Army Film
Unit went to Vaagso town while Ramsden
and Mallindine went to Malloy. Our party had
agreed not to make a wet landing, to save the
cameras. But the smoke screen was so thick
that we couldn't see how near we were to the
shore. When I got to the bows of my boat I

asked the Navy man in charge if it was deep
as I didn't want to spoil my camera. "To hell
with you and your camera" was all he said and
gave me a push. I leapt wildly and landed up
to my knees. Rignold was more unlucky and
got wet to the waist.

The first scenes ashore were quite eerie and
fantastic. Here and there the bombs burned
fiercely in the snow and poured out clouds of
choking yellow smoke. Through this odd figures
dodged. Rignold as usual kept his head and we
got some marvellous set-ups against the flames.
By the time the smoke had cleared, head-
quarters had been set up and we started towards
the town. We had shot quite a bit around head-
quarters; so while Rignold reloaded, Boulting
and I did some camera work. Both of us were
rather inexpert. We kept forgetting to change
the focus. But Boulting did show marvellous
presence of mind in turning the camera two
seconds after the ammunition dump had blown
up and getting a shot of the debris falling on to
us. It wasn't heavy debris, thank goodness.

Up in the town, while the fighting was going
on, we dodged about the back of houses and
shot what we could. We couldn't give any
impression of the opposition as they were all
sniping from the houses and I never saw a live
German except as a prisoner. But you had to
move around quickly as odd bullets were
constantly pinging about. There was so much to
do and you were so keyed up that there was no
real sensation of being frightened. But your
reaction afterwards made you realise how much
nervous energy had been used up. Actually,
to a film man, the whole action became like
the big day in a super production. Although ihe
dead and wounded were real, you were so pent-up
they didn't worry you. There were the same
unexplainable delays, while you waited with
camera poised for a house to blow up and every-
body shouted "Any minute now". You had an
odd feeling in the back of your mind that some-
body would suddenly blow a whistle and yell
"O.K. lunch, one hour" and the grips would start
handing out box-lunches. But, of course, film
people are always cynical of spectacular things.
Our motto should be "It's done with tiny
mirrors".

Some reflections on the results: Cameras on
the warships and aircraft involved would have
made an amazing difference to the coverage.
There was a completely unnecessary delay in get-
ting the film to London. (We were over 30 hours
in the train.) The newsreels, who got all the 4,000
ft. shot on the raid, made very good use of it, on
the whole. One or two didn't bother to check
their facts or die chronological order of shots.
But in every newsreel dramatic moments, speci-
ally shot for, were thrown away. We tried to
make a film. But the newsreels just strung shots
together. Of course material shot quickly and
haphazardly like this is difficult for the cutter to
understand and assemble. The solution might be
closer liaison between the service units and the

newsreels after shooting. In any case "dope
sheets" must be as detailed as possible. Directors,
even if for nine-tenths of the time they are merelj
camera helps, are of great assistance on such
a job. There's far too much for one man to do
alone.

And lastly, it's the kind of thing that should
have been done from the start of the war.
Whatever its deficiencies, the public loved it,
therefore it has helped morale everywhere.
The authorities said "the Press" behaved well
and were even a help. So let's hope we'll get
some more chances like Vaagso.

NOTES ON THE FILM

By a Commando who took part in
the raid.

there is always a danger in seeing a film, or
reading a book, about something or somebody,
one knows well — a danger of being too critical,
of selecting petty faults and overlooking the
real issues. This danger does not exist where
the newsreel of the Vaagso raid is concerned.

However critically one views this brief crystal-
lisation in a matter of minutes of an operation
which lasted several hours, one cannot escape
the authentic note. Here is an exciting operation
vividly and accurately presented without touch-
ing up and with no feeling of over-dramatisation.
Here, to those of us who were privileged to be
present, is the real thing. The impression of
careful planning, the rising tide of preparation,
the silent wait for zero hour, the scramble
ashore through the smoke, the bitterness of
that brief, tense action ashore, the determined
resistance in the spell of street-fighting, and the
pall of destruction which finally hung over that
once quiet fiord — these things move swiftly and
surely in this film. Even those who lived through
those swift excitement-packed hours cannot
see this film without thrilling again to the sight
of the destroyers moving up the fiord or the
sound of the bagpipes coming suddenly and
unexpectedly over the water. What we do not
see — and for obvious reasons — is the cameramen
at work. The astonishment of heavily armed
commando men who watched the "film men"
going about their work, often completely unpro-
tected except for the inevitable tin-hat, was
amusing to see. When one is seeking cover from
bullets by crouching behind a wall, it is rather
disturbing to see a gallant spirit, disembodied
from his fellows, moving about restlessly in the
open and calmly running his camera despite the
battle around him. Disturbing, but verj
heartening.

Perhaps the more-keen-thinkmg o( the public
who view this film will pay tribute to those who
filmed— though one suspects that the innate
scepticism of the public will cause them to dis-
miss the whole thing as trick photography or
"all done with telescopic lens". But however it is
explained away, whatever kind of devilment or
scientific witchery is brought to blame, they
cannot dismiss the fact that this film lives.

The value of accurate documentation in war
cannot be over-estimated and the combination
of accuracy and a lively sense of theatre is so
rare as to be more than noteworthy

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

NEWS LITTER

MONTHLY SIXPENCE

VOL. 3 NUMBER 2

FEBRUARY 1942

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands for the use of film as a
medium of propaganda and in-
struction in the interests of the
people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of
common people all over the
world.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER
is produced under the auspices
of Film Centre, London, in asso-
ciation with American Film Center,
New York.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey
Alexander Shaw
Donald Taylor
John Taylor
Basil Wright

EDITOR

Ronald Horton

Outside contributions will be
welcomed but no fees will be
paid.

We are prepared to deliver from
3—50 copies in bulk to Schools,
Film Societies and other organi-
sations.

Owned and published by
FILM CENTRE LTD.
34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON

W.l GERRARD 4253

LETTER TO INDIA

Alexander Shaw, in an open letter to a friend in India,
discusses his experiences in Indian film production

To Pwshottam Tricaindas. Esq.,

cjo The High Cowl,

Bombay.

MY DEAR PURSHOTTAM,

To write an article about films in India is to
write an article about politics. India is now
probably the great representative political
question, on the correct solution of which much
of the future hangs. Enough is being written
about India and politics now — here is a letter
to you about India and documentary films.

It was you who really wrecked the whole
show. After six weeks in India it seemed quite
obvious that everybody in your country is slightly
mad. Some, but not very many, are pleasant l>
mad; the others are dangerously crazy. The
Europeans are mad because, although they most
of them realise the real dangers of the situation,
they find it more comfortable to imagine that
Victoria, Empress of India, is still on the throne.

Your countrymen are mad because they cannot
get what they want — freedom. A word for which
we are all fighting across the world, but which has
never been allowed in connection with the word
India.

The Mutiny, as we call it, is just over every-
body's shoulder and the shadow of General
Dyer lies darkly across the last twenty years.
Neither side ever forgets these two terrible
pieces of history; to the stranger they are some-
thing out of a book — to everybody living in
India they are to-day's headlines. That's how it
seemed at first anyway and that, for the moment,
is enough about politics.

It was all very difficult for the stranger. Then
you came along and, later, were good enough to
bring your friends and you showed us what
India is really like.

Seen from the ship,
exotic skyline of Bomba
clear. To form a film u

icross the reasonably
, the problem seemed
t of Indians, to train
f documentary films,
would show them the
eep clear of politics.
but not perhaps nn-

them in the technique
to make some films whk
way and. above all. to
Hard work for a year
possible.

Within six weeks of landing the problem
appeared completely insoluble. The making of
these films, the composition of the unit and
even the mere presence of an English film maker
in India, had become questions over which film
trade magnates and politicians fought with a
bitterness worthy of many better causes. The
attacks of the Press, the questions in the
Assembly, the cunning thrusts of the American
film trade could in the end be ignored or parried.
And, of course, there was alwa\s the ivor> tower
of Government to retire to. But films can't be
made in a vacuum, they can't be made by people
cut off from everything except officialdom. The
honest film makers must go down into the market
place, must be inquisitive, must sense the feel
Ol the people and the lie of the land. I he\ must
ask the whj and the wherefore and they must
co-ordinate and turn into celluloid the results of
their contacts and questions.

Perhaps it might have been better if we had
tried to make our films in a vacuum. There
would, at least, have been fewer miseries for
everybody, but I think now. as I thought then,
that the whole thing would have folded up in
a few months, and any films produced would
not have been worth looking at. But it would
have been much more peaceful.

That's why I said that you wrecked the show .
You held the key and you lent it and thus
destroyed the peace. I hope that it did not bring
too much trouble upon your head, although, of
course, you are used to trouble.

The war effort films were comparatively easy
We went to the factories and shot the films and
tried to forget what India's war effort could have
been if you had come into the war with us instead
of being brought into it by us. We filmed the
great Tata Iron and Steel Works in Bengal,
pouring out thousands of tons of every sort of
steel. We filmed the first armoured car to be
produced in India, made out of Indian steel
and built by Indian hands, the forerunner of
a ceaseless stream of the weapons of mechanised
warfare. We filmed the army trucks being assem-
bled on their ever-moving lines, the production
figures rising daily as the cameras turned.
There's plenty of war production in your
country, as you know — bullets and shells and
guns, tents and khaki drill and medical supplies.
Aeroplanes assembled in India soar above the
fertile land of Mysore on their test flights,
ships built in India slide down the slips to join
their sisters in the Royal Indian Navy. Yes.
there's plenty of production in India and the
armies of the Middle East have felt its weight
behind them. We made six films about it and
could have made many more.

Then there were the Services. The} were easj
too. The Royal Indian Navy, for many years
a token fleet, has become a reality. Many of the
Indians who join it have never seen the sea.
but they take to it as though they had always
lived in ships just as their brothers on the coast.
Indian and English Naval Officers guard the
coast of India together and they have played
their important part in the war in Africa. The
Indian Army needed no film boosting; then
exploits in Eritrea alone have earned the
applause of the world. The cinema goers were
clamouring for films news of them. G.H.Q. did
not take kindly to the idea of cameramen
attached to the Eorces. and English newsreel
cameramen naturally tended to film their own
countrymen at war. Australia and South Africa
had their own film units in the field and they, too.
concentrated on their own battalions. Eor a time
the situation was difficult. The Press was full of
the great deeds of the Indian soldier, but the
newsreel could onlj show the other conquerors.
Hut now India has her own film units to see that
full justice is done lo their part in the war. B\
now you should be seeing them on the screens
in the air-conditioned cinemas of Bombay.

There were Indian pilots to take up practice
dive-bombing and Indian ground staff to show

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

that there is an India in dungarees as well as in
dhotis.

So all that part of the programme was I'airlx
easy as far as subjects and facilities were con-
cerned (1 will speak of the people who made the
films in a moment or two), but the really difficult
part of the programme was to come. We had
decided in Delhi in December, 1940, to make
six films on "Modern India".

These films were to have no political slant.
They were not to say that everything in the garden
was lovely, neither were they to echo 'Mother
India*. They were intended to show the world
that India was not only a land of temples and
stiff shirts, of pukka sahibs and wandering saddhus,
but that it was also a land of great modern
industries, of science and of some progressive
social movements.

These films were intended as a counterblast
to the colourful travelogues with their ever-
dancing snakes and the equally highly coloured
travel books with their tales of princely intrigue
and stories of tropical, passionate, nights in
Bombay.

We thought that it was important that at a
time like this, with the problem of India increas-
ingly in the news, the people who do not
follow politics, the people, to whom Amery and
Nehru are names in some political tangle and
Gandhi a funny old fellow dressed in a sheet,
should be shown that India is a great and im-
portant country. One day, perhaps sooner than
most people expect, they will be called upon to
consider your strange vast country, and it is right
that they should know something else about it
than the twopence - coloured picture usually
presented to them.

But now the opposition became difficult and
serious. Difficult because our opponents pre-
sented a point of view with which we could
agree; serious because without its co-operation
the films would have been impossible to make.
We wanted the help of University students, of
progressive teachers, of scientists and writers
and artists. Their attitude was that the films were
being made for the Government of India, that
Congress was opposed to the Government and
that, therefore, they could not help in the making
of the films in any way. This refusal, of course,
was not put as bluntly as I have put it, but that
is the gist of it. Their attitude was understand-
able, but was obviously not going to get any
rummy played. One or two people were helpful
(and they were not necessarily among the sup-
porters of the British Raj), because they agreed
that the value of spreading knowledge about
India outweighed the political objections. But
it was you who really put us in touch with
India — you who helped with all the films, and
Premila Rama Ran and Minoo Masani. I hope
people haven't put very black marks against
you all for helping "the enemy".

Your names used judiciously and with your
consent opened nearly all doors. To have a
drink with you was one of our few pleasures,
to be seen having a drink with you was a pass-
port which led to many places. It was a talisman,
not only in Bombay but all over your country,
which in spite of its size is in many ways a very
small land.

So, with the help of you and a few others, we
were finally able to make films about India
to-day. We already had material enough to pay
tribute to Sir Jamsitjee Tata, one of the world's
greatest industrial pioneers. We filmed the
great Salt City which is growing up on the shores
of the Arabian Sea: we filmed the cotton mills

of Bombay and the paper mills of Calcutta.
We went to the engineering workshops and into
the civil aviation sheds. The mass production
methods of the West provided material at
Batanagher, and on the Western Ghats the
striding pylons suggested a revolution in power.
Using Minoo's brilliant script, we made a film
of your great industries.

There were other subjects. The life of the vill-
ages going on unchanged through the centuries
and the life of the cities where science and
industry are building a new India. The perform-
ing bear and the marionettes, the ballroom at
the Taj Hotel and the crowded cinemas, the
Institute of Industrial Science at Bangalore, the
Haffkine Institute where Colonel Sokhy fights
the diseases and epidemics of the East, the
Agricultural Station at Poona where new crops
are being experimented with, all provided us
with subjects.

There were so many things to film that several
years' work on a carefully prepared programme
would only begin to cover them. Perhaps these
things are as yet only a small part of the life of
India compared with the size of your vast country,
but the work they do is growing and will benefit
all its peoples.

In spite of the many Indian women who
have travelled abroad, the West still tends to
think of Indian women as veiled creatures
moving softly through the shadows, so we made
a film of modern Indian women taking their
place in the important work of their country.
Politicians, social workers, film stars and archi-
tects helped us with this film, which shows the
women of India in a new light. The women
argued the political point stubbornly but
helped us in the end. Always excepting she-who-
gives-no-cup-of-tea ; I have not forgotten her
early morning attack, the faint breeze off the
placid sea and the group of bitter, contemptuous
faces.

In Calcutta a unit working under Burmah
Shell, made a film of the Grand Trunk Road for
us — that fantastic road which runs from the
Khyber Pass across a continent to Calcutta,
cutting through history, linking the port and the
factory, the pilgrim and the shrine.

These are only some of the films we made.
You were away from Bombay at the end and
we did not see them togethc, but when you did
see them I hope that you did not feel that you
had wasted your help.

Finally, there were the people who made the
films. The directors and cameramen and cutters
and assistants who made up the Indian Film
Unit, as well as the people from outside who
wrote the scripts and spoke the commentaries.
They joined us in ones and twos — suspiciously.
They nagged and criticised and felt rather
ashamed at first at being attached to this
notorious body. The studios, quite unable to
make short films themselves and with various
evil reasons of their own as well, were non-co-
operative; and at first it did nobody's reputation
any good to be associated with the Indian Film
Unit. But gradually they came along.

They came from all over the place. You will
remember some of them. Gian Singh, the Sikh
from Delhi. He was the strong and silent man of
the Unit, marvellous in a crisis, unmoved by the
sudden squalls which occasionally swept across
us. Then there was Pratap Parmar ; he came from
the studio cutting rooms and worked like a fury,
determined that the films should be finished.
He became the mainstay of the Unit. Ezra Mir.
an old hand at the film game, with tales of might)

deeds in Hollywood in the earl> days of talkies
There was Mittra from Calcutta via Hitchcock
and Carol Reed, the Hamlet of the Unit, and
Bodhye from Kholapur who always said that
the light was too bad, but who always brought
back superb rushes.

In a way they mirrored India. They had their
civil wars, they quarrelled, Hindu with Hindu,
or Hindu with Mohammedan. But if the Unit
was attacked from outside they presenteu a
united front. There was never any communal
question in the Unit. And if it wasn't for one or
two unscrupulous, power-seeking, politicians
there wouldn't be any communal question in
India. At least that's how it seemed to me.

To the Unit, as to the Indian filmgoer, a short
film was something running about ten reels. Even
the trailers ran a quarter of an hour. The Indian
film producers had never thought of the film as
being used to interpret real life or that ordinarv
people and their jobs could be a subject for the

They had, it is true, started to make one or two
films on the social problems of to-day, but
always from a studio point of view, with actors
playing on sets which looked as like the real
India as English studio country scenes look like
rural England. If they went on location thev
imitated the processions of the Rajahs and took
the entire studio with them, and when they came
back, excessive make-up and their own idea of
how Indian peasants dress plus poor exterior
photography made a sorry show. Your film
industry is going through a transition stage-
perhaps. The men of money have got to make
way for the men of ideas. But it is going to be
a tough fight.

Documentary brought something new to India.
It brought not only a new sort of film, but a new
way of making films. Everybody in the Unit
found these two things difficult at first. If I asked
a director to do a sequence of Indian village
women at work, he would try and slide off to
a studio, hire a few extras, and proudly present
me with hundreds of feet of leering, posturing
pretty-pretties. Often, when sent away on his
own to shoot, he would panic at being cut off
from the constant, nagging supervision to which
he was used. But it worked.

It worked— with false starts and alarums
and excursions but with the wheels eventuallv
turning. Everybody came new to their different
jobs. Nobody had written or spoken com-
mentaries before, or worked on a proper script,
or mixed three tracks with split-second cues or
used other than the most tentative of filters. \s
you know, not any of the film people had even
looked at India before, except through conven-
tional spectacles. Perhaps we started something
that will last even after the necessities of war.

And now to finish this long letter, in which
there is much that you alreadv know but which
may serve as a postscript to an absorbing year.
I hope that one day soon we shall meet again,
and that when that happens I shall be a real
guest in your country and not come as Un-
representative of an unwelcome rule. Although
I don't think that your hospitality could be an)
the more delightful. My best wishes to you and
Mrs. Purshottam and all our friends. We have
not forgotten the Mahableshwar trip or the
cool evenings at the Bar Club. I hope we shall
repeat them together one day.

Yours sincerely,

ALEX SHAW

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

SCIENTIFIC

FILM

SOCIETIES

{Con

ml from p. 22)

be included without upsetting the scientific
nature of the programme as a whole. Under
present conditions, this policy will help to
conserve the number of purely scientific films
available and the Society can look forward to
future seasons more hopefully. In this connec-
tion, a series of films on Industrial Scotland will
be included in future programmes. The sixth
meeting will be held on March 18th, in the
Royal Technical College at 7.30 p.m.: the
meeting in March being the last ordinary
meeting of the Society for the present season.

"Our activities will not cease then, as we have
not yet held any of our extra meetings, of which
we intend holding three. The first of these
will be held at an early date, depending on
the completion of the Society's film Life
Saving Bank. This film, dealing with the blood
transfusion service, was scheduled for completion
last November, but due to pressure of other
film work, our producer, Mr. Frank Marshall,
has been unable to devote the time necessary
to complete the film. The film work on which
he was engaged and which naturally took
precedence over our own film, was a film on
Women in Industry, which he has now com-

Presrwick Scientific Film Society has now

reached the second half of its first season.
Certain war-time difficulties have still to be over-
come but it is hoped to commence the second
season in the autumn. With most of the local
halls being used for military purposes the Society
are indebted to the Bowling Club for the use of
their Clubhouse which, if the heating arrange-
ments are not always ideal, is at least central,
acoustically satisfactory and well adapted for
projection purposes. A more suitable hall may
be obtained on the cessation of hostilities. The
membership, at present 50, is increasing at each
meeting. The Society has affiliated to the
Federation of Ayrshire Scientific Film Societies.

From the subsequent discussions and the
appraisal forms the most popular films have
been found to be the Great Green Turtle, Cathode
Ray Oscillograph, Development of the Trout,
Manufacture of Gas, Hydraulics, Fasciola,
Einstein's Theory and Air Screw. The last film is
being shown for a second time at the Second
Extra Meeting arranged in conjunction with the
Ayr Society and the Services. The "feature'* of
this show is Skyways over Africa, a 7-reeler in
colour presented by Commander Pigg, one of
our members. The wild life scenes are particu-
larly good.

It is perhaps fortunate that three of the mem-
bers have their own sound projectors and that
use of these can be made at the meetings. The
national instinct of independence is, howbver,
strong and the Secretary has been instructed to
obtain a machine as the property of the Society
before the commencement of the second season.

SIGHT

and

SOUND

Spring Number
Just Out

CONTRIBUTORS :

JYMPSON HARMAN
HERMAN WEINBERG
G. H. ELVIN

Published by: The British Film Institute,
4 Great Russell Street, London, W.C.I.

5 -MINUTE FILMS FOR DEC. '41, JAN. & FEB. '42.

Production Unit

THREE IN A SHELL HOLE

SAM PEPYS JOINS THE N \\ Y

ROYAL OBSERVER CORPS

NAVAL OPER VI IONS

WAR IN THE EAST

SEAMAN LA
TO SEA

RUSH HOI R

NEWSPAPER TRAIN

THE \k\l\ LAYS THE RAILS

KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN
VRMS FROM SCRAP
THE HAI I 01 \ NATION

LAND GIRL

finance and the Navy
Watching the skies
Naval strategy
The Eastern war zone
The Merchant Navy

: F. Searle
(i. Cuinn
G. Tharpe

D. dc Ma my

Newspaper distribution in the blitz L. Lye
The work of the R.E.S

The St. John Ambulance Brigade Ja> lewis
I he story of scrap metal
Women in Russia

The Women's Land Aim>

.1. Pag

Soviet War News Film Agency

G.B. S. S.

Spectator
Shell Film Unit
Shell Film Unit
Concanen

20th Centurj Fox

Realist

Army Film Unit

Strand

Movietonews

Sen id War News I ilm Agency

Paul Rotha Productions

.. 15

„ ::

.. 29

Jan. 5

.. 12

Notes: * Reeul and dubbed imo Fnglish. f Produced by the National Savings Committee. J Newsreel and library compilation.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

THE LAND

By RICHARD GRIFFITH

D. N. L. is glad to publish this review of
Robert Flaherty's film The Land. Repro-
duced by courtesy of the National Board of
Review Magazine of U.S.A.

The Land: Production: The Agricultural Ad-
ministration of the U.S. Department of Agricul-
ture. Direction and Narration: Robert J. Flaherty.
Commentary: Written by Russell Lord. Music:
Richard Arnell.

pare lorentz called Robert J. Flaherty "a
wandering poet", and it is a simpler and more
beautiful description than any of the encomiums
the critics have thought up. There is the grace of
poetry on everything he has done from Nanook
to Elephant Boy, and of all the screen's master-
pieces these films are freshest and most alive
when seen today. He has been a wanderer in time
as well as in space, for the societies and customs
he has filmed were one and all left over from the
world's primeval past. But now the fascinating
arc of his camera's voyage of discovery has swung
full circle and Flaherty brings us a film of his own
country— the United States.

More specifically it is about the land on which
that country is built, and which has seemed in the
past decade to be falling away beneath us. For
The Land is that new kind of documentary which
other men have built on the Flaherty form, which
does not merely lyrically celebrate a way of life
marshals facts about it, raises issues, drama-
tises arguments pro and con. Like The River, the
new picture is a sort of government report on the
state of the union — but how much more drama-
tic, how much closer to us. than any written
report can ever be!

It is beginning to seem, in fact, that docu-
mentary is the new democratic art of our time, a
propagandist art, perhaps, but backing up its
persuasion by argument and statistics and the
consciences of its enthusiastic makers.

It will seem a pity to some that Flaherty, in
dropping his old form and adopting the i.ew,
should have to begin on material which previous
films have made familiar. Lorentz's pioneering
Plow that Broke the Plains, and his masterpiece.
The River, have told us before what wind and
un and wasteful greed have done to the soil of
our country. The Grapes of Wrath has drama-
tised with heartbreaking power the tragic fate of
the thousands of farmers dispossessed by erosion
and forced into the serfdom of day labour on the
great fruit and vegetable farms of California. A
hundred films (it seems) have shown man sacri-
ficed to the juggernaut of the machine. So the
movies have made words like erosion, share-
cropping, and technological unemployment come
to life for us before. Now Flaherty does the same
job over again, and he has to treat all three sub-
jects at once, so that the film falls abruptly into
three parts, with a brief, unemphatic coda which
tries, not ver> successfully , to show what the
government is doing to check erosion, stabilise
farm prices, and put the farmer himself back on
the land he owns.

In short, the picture lacks that wholeness and
gradual building toward a climax which have
hitherto contributed to the pleasure of seeing a
Flaherty film. This is a fractured film, its skeleton

is awry, the bones stick out through the skin. But
I think Flaherty meant it that way. Edith Sitwell
in her poems, Stravinsky in his music, deliber-
ately adopted a jagged, staccato form to express
the confusion and distress of their vision of the
modern world. And Flaherty, travelling through
his own country for the first time in many years,
forsakes the graceful smoothness of his "primi-
tive" films for a form which suggests the horror
of his broken journey. "Here we saw this," he
says, and passes on, but not indifferently. If ever
there was a personal film, this is it. It is a cry, a
groan ; it has for me the terrible simplicity of the
Book of Common Prayer, or of the Book of Job,
which Flaherty quotes in the commentary. "If
my land cry against me. or that the furrows like-
wise thereof complain ; I et thistles grow instead
of wheat, and cockle instead of barley." The
images are equally as beautiful and near and part
of common experience. Flaherty's relentless
camera. Helen Van Dongen's editing (her part in
the film is a great and important one) make a
machine cutting corn into The Machine, cutting
lives. And we see those lives, cast off, broken

down by the roadside, in the eyes which one
starving woman turns into the camera. There is a
dulled animal curiosity in those eves, and some
pain because she is squinting agamst the sun, but
hardly anything human any more.

A man who brings his camera to such sights
emerges not the same. It is hardly strange that the
film is little more than a cry of pain, that Flaherty
cannot tell us what to do to help, can only shout
at us at the end of the film to do something. To
many people the tragic beauty of The Land will
not be sufficient to compensate for the fact that it
provides no blueprint. But I have been thinking
for a long time that films should pose the
problem and leave it in the lap of the audience,
for it is we who must answer for our lives, not
our teachers, not our artists. And I say now that
this film is important and perhaps great because
it means that Flaherty in the fullness of his years
has come back into the modern world, to work
alongside the rest of us. All his films and his film-
making have been a timeless escape from the
terrible vision he thrusts at us here. But for him
who is joined to all the living, there is hope.

VICTORY IN THE WEST

An article abstracted by a correspondent in the New World from
a German brochure on the Nazi film Victory in the West.

01 k ton respondent writes: "The astonishing point is that the German thinking contains so much
of the old European preoccupation with aesthetics. That is to say, that in spite of their overt
emphasis on activism, the manner of thought underlying the article is still non-activist. For example.
note how the writer thinks in terms of counterpoint (an old non-activist conception surely) and
the nature of such images as 'Landscape of Sombre Beauty', "Landscape . . . Ravaged by Guns',
'Darkness, Light . . .', and 'This is Goya". The images are not functional in progress towards a
result but mark time in the atmospheric light of the old order. I confess I am a trifle surprised.
For my part I would say — if this article is to be generalised from -that the Nazi mind is not as
tough as it pretends to be and there is still room for better barbarians than they. In other words.
there is still hope for the more savage English."

"Art? — who cares, we want reality in our war
films, hard, naked reality!" That is what the
German soldier says. First of all, let us define
that vague term, "art". Some of us seem to
believe that art is a sort of little white lie, a kind
of attractive bluff. And indeed they might well
be right about it when they measure art by the
mendacious insincerities which use the label.
But a true poet is no soft-mouth, a true artist
is no rosy-glass painter. He is a realist — more
concentrated, less accidental than reality itself.
And so is the film man who wants to show a
living picture of this war, a picture which shows
the true spirit of our age.

"You get no documentary by joining together
documentary stills. You get no history by joining
together historical events. It is order, the showing
up of relations which turns chronology into
history. And thus it is the will, the idea behind
the film, which turns dead celluloid into a living
documentary. To do this the film director must
be a poet.

"There is still another point where the war
documentary touches upon the basic elements of
artistic creativity. Art requires the utmost
unreserved devotion — the sort of devotion which
was required of the men who made this film —
the devotion of the soldier who stakes his life
to get things done. Thus life and art become one
in the narrow borderland of death. A pictorial
chronology of the war was not enough. A docu-
mental} must look at the bitter face of reality,
without flinching, but only the artistic concen-
tration of the material, the montage of the
many hundred thousand metres of exposed film.

could give that supreme reality that was de-
manded. And he who has seen this finished
film will never make the silly statement that art
is a lesser truth than reality.

"A poetical report of the war holds more truth
than a war diary; a poetically edited film raises
its truth from the level of conglomerated
accidents to that of an essential truth. It is in
this sense that the army documentary has grown
into a work of art. It contains as big a slice of
reality as a newsreel, and it is bigger than any
newsreel because it includes the enemy's point
of view so as to give a total view of the whole
situation.

" thus the army documentary combines hard
realism with creative editing and sweeping music.
There is the infantry theme 'marching, marching'
accompanied by close-ups of marching feet, advan-
cing, advancing, crusted with dust, hut advancing.
And then counterpoint breaks in with another
theme, and we dissolve into other feet, marching
too, but tired, in torn boots — prisoners' boots.
And thus the other themes are built — weariness,
dust, battle, landscapes of a sombre beauty,
landscapes mown down and ravaged bv guns:
panzer attacks at night, the darkness lit by burning
enemy tanks, this is Goya the war seen through
an artist's eyes the noble cathedral of Rouen,
standing upright over the burning town; or the
Maginot line with its criss-cross pattern, orna-
ments of light and shade, all of it stressed by
Windt's score which frees film music from its
rdle of subservience. Picture and sound are
equal partners, a comradeship of war on the

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

SHORT FILM BOOKINGS
FOR FEBRUARY— MARCH

(,' bookings for I chimin and March arc selected from a list covering
supplied In the \c\\ \ and Specialised Theatres A

\rtie Shaw and Orel
The News Theatre

Tatler News Reel Tin
Canine Sketches

Tatler Theal

News Theatre. Newcastle-on-Tyne
t avalcadc i.l San Francisco

Tatler Theatre. Birmingham

News Theatre. Newcastle-on- r.vne
City Bound

New I hi atre, Manchester
Classic S.ums anil Dances (Russian)
*., Leeds

News I hen

Cock nl the Walk

Tatler News Reel Theatre. 1
( iiuuriiin Heritage

News I heatre. Aberdeen
Cuban Rhythm

" 'S Theatre, Birmingham

Doing a Dickens' Walk

Mar. 2nd

News Theatre, Aberdeen

Drawing the Line

News Theatre, Aberdeen

Duntiil hut Dumb

Tatler Theatre, Chester

lather ul the 1 :i mils ISeerets ..1 1

■eb. 22nd

News Theatre. Nottingham

22nd

1 ei.hiia.nl the Bull

22nd

Taller Theatre, Leeds

(.liirnnis Vamp (Musical Svinphoi

Mar 1st

News Theatre. Aberdeen

Golden Eggs

Feb. J 9th

latler I heatre, Chester

22nd

Goofv and Wilbur

22nd

Tatler Theatre, Leeds

22nd

Going Places No. 84

News Theatre. Nottingham

(ioing Places No. 90

News Theatre. Aberdeen

Happy Faces

2nd

Taller 1 heatre, Birmingham

Isles of Fate

News Theatre. Bristol

Islands of the West Indies

News Theatre. Noiiingham

Journey in Tunisia

Tatler Newsreel Theatre. New,. is

News Theatre. Manchester

8th

Junior I.O. Parade

News Theatre, Manchester

15th

King Salmon

News Theatre. Aberdeen

eb 22nd

Land ol Inventions

News Theatre. Aberdeen

Mar. 8th

Land ot Seniles

News 1 heatre, Newcastle-on- 1 > i

Lasso Wizards

8th
15th

News 1 heal re. Leeds

Tatler Theatre. Manchester

News Theatre, Bristol

eh. 22nd

Lions on the Loose

Mar. 1st

Waterloo Station News 1 "heatre.

8th

Man Who (hanged the World

News Theatre. Birmingham

"Living Movement" . . .

C\ l> Ci LK deli ned I'l'iip'rss in jus I those two words!
In paying due tribute to the aptness of the sage's
definition the Kinematograph Weekly translates the
spirit into action. Current events are reported for our
readers in relation to the general advance, artistic and
technical, by which progress in Kinematography is
achieved.

Keep abreast of progress in your craft
— read the

93 long a cm:

WEEKLY

iONDON : : W.C.2

March of Time No. 7- 7th \ ear. "Sailoi

News Theatre, Aberdeen

News Theatre, Nottingham
March of Time No. 8— 7th Year

Tatler Theatre, Manchester

News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
March of Time No. 9— 7th Year

Waterloo Station News Theatre, ST .1

Victoria Station News Theatre, S.W.I

Eros Theatre, W.l
Meet the Stars No. 5

News Theatre, Leeds
Merseyside

News Theatre, Aberdeen

Tatler Theatre, Chester
Mickey's Trailer

Waterloo Station News Theatre. S.E.I
Moby Dicks Home Town

Tatler News Reel I heatre. Newcasile-o
Moth and the Flame

Eros. Piccadilly, W.I,
More Trifles ol Importance

News Theatre, Leeds
Mountain Summer

Tatler News Reel I heatre. Newcastle-.'
M> Ladies' Dress

News Theatre, Aberdeen
Old Blue (Secrets of Life)

News Theatre, Nottingham
Old New Mexico

News Theatre, Birmingham
Olive's Birthday Present

News Theatre, Leeds

Tatler Theatre, Manchester
Olive's Sweepstake Ticket

Tatler Theatre. Chester
On Ice

Tatler News Reel Theatre. Newcastle-o
Opening Day

Victoria Station News Theatre. S.W.I
Peg of Old Drurv

Embassy , Nottmg Hill Gate
Playing with Neptune

Tatler Theatre. Manchester.
Plav the Game

Tatler News Reel Theatre. Newcastle-

Theatre, Manchester
News Theatre, Leeds
Pot Pourrie

News Theatre. Aberdeen
Queen Cotton

Victoria Station News Theatre. S.N

News Theatre, Manchester
Respect the Law

News Theatre, Birmingham

Tatler Theatre, Chester
Russian Salad

Tatler Theatre. Liverpool

News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne

Feb. 22nd
Mar. 8th

Feb. 26th

l-Tyne Mar. 15th

26th

Mar. 15th

n-Tyne Mar. 8fh

Feb. 22nd

23rd

Mar. IStfa

News 1 heme. Aberdeen

s.tka

,1 Junea

_._ Theatre. Newcastle-on

News I heatre, Leeds

Tatler Theatre. Manchester

News Theatre, Bristol
Spanish Journey

News I heatre. Aberdeen
Spotlight on Indo-China

News Theatre, Birmingham
Steel (,.ies to Sea

News Theatre, Newcastle-on-
Stranger than Fiction No. 76

ction No. 87
ction^No" 911

News i heatre, I eeds

Tatler Theatre. Manchester
lake It or I eave It No. 4

Tatler Theatre. Chester
I he Bookworm Turns

Tatler Theatre. Chester
The Brave Little Tailor

Filler 1 heatre. I eeds
The (.real Meddler

News I heatre. Noiiingham
I he Green Girdle

\ icloria Station News T heatre. VW

This is Braver]

News Ihe.iue. Newcastle-on-Tyne

I .itlei I heme. Manchester

Feb. 23rd

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER l-'EBRl ARY 1942

29

FILM OF THE MONTH

Production: Darryl
>rd.

How Green Was My Valley is an awkward film
to review. Most of the film is so good that it is
difficult to understand why the rest should be so
bad. The bad patches are the two main stories
of the film. First — the valley was green, now it is
dirty. The grass and trees are dirty, and the peo-
ple are dirty. The second, the preacher who,
although he loves the miner's daughter, won't
have anything to do with her because he doesn't
want her to live a life of poverty.

Both these themes are so different to the main
film that in the long run it is best to ignore them
and take the majority of the film for what it is,
a human and simple story of how a mining family
and community lived fifty years ago.

The first reel or so of the film's 10,600 ft. is
straight commentary description of the valley.
Then the people who have been silent come alive
and start to unfold. At first they are very slow
and it is with a lot of creaking and groaning that
e of them manage to become real. When you
are beginning to think that this is just another
film of Hollywood Britain, you suddenly find
yourself in the middle of one of the richest
human films that you have ever seen.

The family consists of father and four grown-
up sons — all miners who work in the same pit —
mother, a daughter who has got an eye on the
preacher, the youngest son aged about 10,
and a daughter-in-law.

How Green Was My Valley is certainly out of
the ordinary as far as films are concerned — all
the most extraordinary things that happen to
people have been made by films into the most
ordinary things — and to see ordinary things about
ordinary people in an expensive Hollywood pro-
duction is most extraordinary.

Of course, the most surprising thing about
the film is that it was made by an American in
America. I should think it is about the most
difficult job a director can do, to* make a film
about another country and another people. It is
obviously easy to make the old pot-boilers about
Henry VIII or stories like that. But to make a
film about a mining village in another country is
obviously a pretty tough job. Say a film director
is about forty and he is making reasonably good
films about life in his own country — think of the
amount of background that he has instinctively
at his finger tips — in fact forty years of living
with the people he is making films about. In
England we have seen foreign directors come in
by the dozen — some of them who had made
class stuff in their own countries — but not
one of them has made a film about Britain of the
British which means anything at all.

There is no particular continuity through the
film. It is just incident after incident in a family
and a village.

How Green Was \h Valley is, 1 should think,
the first real film about ordinary people that has
come from Hollywood. Thai is a film of ordin-
ary people living their ordinary lives. There is no
epic trek across a continent — no battle against
Fascist cops as in The Grapes of Wrath. No ro-
mantic boozing in the tropics— no fights over

luscious dames or against bombers as in The
Long Voyage Home. Nothing that happens in
How Green Was My Valley is out of the ordinary
— and most of the film is of nothing very dramatic.
or anyway not dramatic in the accepted film
sense. A typical sequence is the one where the
four big brothers have their younger brother on
the table and are massaging his temporarily
paralysed legs. It is Sunday morning and all of
them are cheerful — they work away good and
hard and the boy lying on the table grunts as
they work his legs backwards and forwards.
Then his grown-up sister walks through the
kitchen and says something to him — he resents
being treated as a child in front of his brothers,
and says, "You mustn't come in here when I
haven't got my clothes on." His sister is on her
way out, but quickly turns back as she sees a
chance for some fun and says, "Oh! I mustn't,
mustn't 1?" The brothers stand grinning and she
suddenly whips the towel off him and gives him
a terrific smack on the bottom. There is nothing
much to that, but it is very pleasant when you
see it.

The wedding is very good, with the miners
holding hands in two long chains and swinging
their legs alternately in time to the song they are
singing. The wedding party with beer flowing
and Donald Crisp doing a most amazing trick
in a drunken game. The boy starting school, his
fights and beatings, and best of all, Dai Bando,
the half blind boxer, giving the schoolmaster a
lesson in boxing.

There is a lot of rough stuff in the film. The
long shots of the much publicised mining village
set are atrocious. The mining cottage interiors
are about the size of a football pitch. A lot of
the acting is not of the best, but it always seems
to be difficult for actors to play ordinary people,
and there are always the two fake stories in the
background. But the good stuff bears down all
the faults and you remember with a great deal of
pleasure How Green Was My Valley as a rich
and human film of ordinary people.

CORRESPONDENCE

dear sir: A word about your review of one of
our films Three in a Shell-hole. Wouldn't bother
you except that it exemplifies a particular sort of
drivelling thinking from which Dm i
News Letter should be free.

The film is dubbed. Your reviewer writes:
""The voices are affected, the wording pompous
and the lip-synching inaccurate." That of course
may be true. Or it may not. Different people
may hold different opinions. Your reviewer is
entitled to hold and write, and you to print, his
own. But: "Anyway it is certain that this sort of
dubbing on a realistic film is a failure."

"Anyway", "Quite certain". "A failure".
What on earth does this mean? I have made
inquiries and I cannot find an instance of a single
cinema showing of this film that did not grip its
audience and evoke applause. The film was in
fact astonishingly successful. More than one
candid friend has told me how bad, not merely

the dubbing but the idea of dubbing such a film
was, of how its merit and essential character was
thereby ruined, etc., and, on being asked how the
film went over when they saw it, replied off-
handedly, as though it were of trivial importance,
"the audience seemed to like it."

Yes. the audience liked it. The audience was
moved by it. But the audience was wrong
"Anyway, it is quite certain that it was a failure."
Your reviewer may not like that "sort of dubbing'.
Nor do I. But what has that got to do with it?
His drivelling remark is an example of the
dangerous tendency of bright young film-people
to elevate (heir own standards into absolutes and
ignore the crucial test for all art-communication,
the art-object audience relation, the final cri-
terion which exposes whether our own standards
are as impeccable as we may think, or may not
after all need re-examination.

Yours faithfully.
Knowle, Bucks Hill, ivor MONTAGUE

near Kings Langley, Herts.

sir : I am sorry you felt that the first letter I sent
to you was too long for you to print sorry
because it is difficult to compress into one quarter
of the length all of the things about Documentary
News Letter which I think need to be said.
However, here's an attempt to do so :

D.N.L. won my respect — and that of many
others — because it campaigned for the recogni-
tion of the function of the film in total war;
because it insisted that the place of the skilled
film technician was behind a camera, not a
machine gun ; because it spoke out for the good
of the film industry without fear or favour. But
D.N.L. loses my respect when it begins to dis-
criminate unfairly between those who are within
a small self-appointed coterie of "leaders of
documentary" and those who are not. This
discrimination is, I contend, obvious in D.N.L.'s
treatment of the three principal sponsors of
short films in the British Council, the Directorate
of Army Kinematography, and the Ministry of
Information Films Division.

D.N.L. has condemned the British Council
root and branch. Article after article (unsigned)
has insisted that the British Council must go.
that it is already on the departure platform.
Your reasons? Its policy is out of date and re-
mote from the realities of total war. Yel in your
issue of March, 1941 (after 19 months of total
war), a Shell Cinemagazine consisting of three
items— the ancient craft of glass-blowing, old
and new harvesting methods and the work of a
village blacksmith -received from D.N.L. a
warm review, ending with these words: 'The
whole reel has a remoteness from the war-
strained atmosphere of life to-day and should
find favour with any type of audience."

Would the British Council have received
equally warm praise for films dealing with those
three subjects.' And if it is right for Shell to make
films with a welcome remoteness from war-
strained atmosphere, why is it wrong for the
British Council to do so? I think you will agree
that a film like Realist's Out oj the Night, was
well worth making. The British Council com-
missioned it. Then wh> not devote your energies
to persuading them to commission more such
worthwhile subjects?

Then the D.A.K. D.N.L. makes no secret of

its dislike for the Army outtit and hints darkl)

that there ought to be an investigation. What

(Continued on p. 30)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

CORRESPONDENCE

{Continued)

would such an investigation reveal'.' That the
D.A.K. has commissioned 100 training films,
varying in length from one to six reels. That these
films have been made to satisfy the immediate
training needs of a number of different Army
departments — probably rather more than the
number of Ministries the M.O.I, finds it difficult
to please. That the training given by these pic-
tures is sufficiently valuable that- several of our
Allies are glad to beg or borrow copies. That the
quality is generally as high as — if not higher than
— that of similar films made for other sponsors.
That in the case of urgent pictures, involving
exterior shooting, the D.A.K. is prepared in the
event of bad weather — to my mind, quite rightly
prepared — to sacrifice photographic quality to
the urgency of war. Of course, the D.A.K. isn't
perfect. The money available for producers is
skimpy, with the result that in many cases the
films lack "finish ".

Now for M.O.I. D.N.L. beat them up at the
outset — and they certainly deserved it. To-day
you handle M.O.I, with kid gloves and rush to
the rescue when journals with a.wider circulation
take up the attack. Do M.O.I, deserve this change
of heart? Has D.N.L. conducted an investigation
of this department yet? If so, there's one point
on which I should like information. Units have
spent weeks or months working on films for
M.O.I, only to find when they were completed
that nobody had any clear idea why they were
commissioned in the first place.

Can D.N.L. tell us how many M.O.I, films
have been stillborn? How much they cost? And
who stood in the dock at the inquest? If any
films were canned because they fell below the
technical standard acceptable to M.O.I. — and
presumably the minimum standard would be the
worst of the films so far issued — then they
heartily deserve their fate. But if the'y went on the
shell because somebody forgot to find out in the
beginning why they were being made and
whether they would be wanted when they were
finished, then the assumption is that the M.O.I.
has not yet completely formulated its own policy.
In which case it is surely a little early for D.N.L.
to be suggesting that the M.O.I, should take over
the activities of any other sponsor.
Yours, etc.,

JAMES CARR

EDITORIAL note: James Can is in charge of
production al I entv Films, a unit which is largely
engaged on film work for the Department oj
Armv Kinematographv. the British Council, and
the Films Division oj the M.O.I. We ourselves
have little comment to make on \li. Cart's
contentions, although we are interested to note
that this is the first time that a defence has been
made in writing against the hapten! ciilicisms we
have made of ihe British Council and the D.A.K.
Amongst othei things Mr. (air implies that he
objects lo our editorial articles being unsigned.
II c < an assure him that, in common with the rest
Oj the press, our Board takes full responsibility for

opinions expressed m <>it> Editorials ami Notes oj

the Month. Ihe names ol the Editorial Boaid aie
clearly printed in each issue, lie led that Mr.
Carr's revelation ol D.XI.s tenderness and
solicitude towards the Films Division id the
M.O.I, will come as something of a surprise both
to our readers and also to the Films Division itself.

STRAND FILMS

MAKERS OF DOCUMENTARY
FILMS SINCE 1934

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR - MANAGING DIRECTOR
ALEXANDER SHAW - DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT 1<>\

5a UPPER ST. MARTINS LANE, W.C.2

MERTON PARK STUDIOS, 269 KINGSTON RD, S.W.19

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

FILM SHOWS IN FACTORIES

Many films are being shown in factories up and down the country. They form an increasingly important
contribution influencing the productive effort. This film activity has its special problems, and these
are referred to in the following notes which we publish by courtesy of the Ministry of Information

factory audiences offer an opportunity to
provide films for a selected industrial audience.
It is true that in spite of long hours and some-
times long travelling, factory workers, particu-
larly girls, still manage to visit the public cinema ;
this, however, is their relaxation and recreation,
and a visit to the public cinema does not neces-
sarily do anything to stimulate their belief in the
importance of their work.

There is little evidence that people in factories
expect entertainment from Ministry of Informa-
tion films : factory music, radio, and the fact that
they can still go to the pictures and music halls
probably means that in many districts their
entertainment is fairly well looked after. Indus-
trial workers look to the Ministry of Information
films for information regarding the progress and
the scope of the war, and knowledge about how
the war is being conducted. This they do not
always get from the entertainments available to
them. Workers expect a reporting quality in
films— information and news. They do not expect
comedy, entertainment or academics.

Factory audiences are interested in any film
which increases their knowledge and under-
standing of the way the war is going: they are
particularly impressed with films which show the
Services in action, which show how things are
done, or which show how the factory product is
employed by the Services. This breaks down into
two main interests; firstly, factory workers are
interested in how other people are going about
their jobs in the war. They like to be convinced
that other people are working as hard as they do,
and they like to see the efficiency of other in-
dustries and of the Services; secondly, they share
with other people the natural curiosity to know
how things work.

While straight commentary is the most satis-
factory type of sound track for use in a factory,
attention is often increased when dialogue
appears in a film. This, however, should not be
over-estimated, for while dramatic films and
dialogue films are undoubtedly necessary to
break up a non-theatrical programme which
lasts for an hour and a quarter, there is not the
same necessity to have variety of treatment when
only 20 or 25 minutes of film are shown. It is
still true to say, however, that to an audience of
habitual cinema-goers — and most factory work-
ire — the dramatic treatment has a very im-
portant appeal, and a film such as Four Corners,
which is very solid doctrine, goes over very well
in a factory.

Factory shows differ from the ordinary run
of shows in several ways :

(a) The audience is almost invariably larger
than is secured in the ordinary way. Works
canteens holding a thousand people are rela-
tively common. This means that both sound
and picture must have wide coverage.

(b) Canteens are almost invariably large
and acoustically imperfect; this means that
the picture must be technically perfect, and
the sound track very clear.

(c) As many shows are given in canteens
during meal times, there is always a certain
amount of clatter and conversation ; there is
sometimes extraneous factory noise: during

the early stages of the show there is often con-
siderable movement among the audience.
The maintaining of a sufficiently high tech-
nical standard under the sometimes trying condi-
tions found in factories can be guaranteed by
taking precautions along three lines: (a) at the
production stage ; (b) at the programme selection
stage, and (c) during projection.

(a) Production. — It. is not suggested that all
films should be made within the limits of factory
needs. This would rule out much fine and
experimental work.

There are, however, some things that can be
done for many non-theatrical films at the pro-
duction stage which would enable them to be
satisfactorily shown to factory audiences. The
sound track should be kept simple : it should not
be complicated by dialect, overlapping music or
elaborate sound effects which tend to obscure
the commentary or dialogue. It is more impor-
tant to achieve clarity than atmosphere.

Where the argument is complicated, recourse
to sub-titles should be adopted. "Chapter
headings" and short sub-titles summarising a
sequence in advance are very helpful. Where a
complicated process is depicted, trick titles super-
imposed on the picture can be helpful.

The voice of the commentator is, of course,
very important. The recognition of B.B.C.
voices helps audiences quickly to adjust them-
selves to listening and their attention is height-
ened. The B.B.C. voice, has become an accepted
standard and is intelligible and welcome in all
parts of the country.

Dialect, is a serious trouble, even under ideal
conditions. Vernacular is not only difficult but
often quite unintelligible. Even if the romantic
appeal of rusticity has to be sacrificed, it is more
desirable to have clarity and intelligibility than
atmosphere.

During the period of the "blitz" there was
a spate of night pictures — this is understandable
but these films are difficult to show except under
ideal conditions.

Intricate diagrammatic work and fine letter-
ing does not stand reduction to 16 mm.; bold
diagrammatic work is all right. Fine diagram-
matic work and fine lettering should be avoided
in all non-theatrical films.

(b) Selection of Programmes.— The lunch-
hour break in factory canteens seldom exceeds
40 minutes. The usual practice is to allow the
audience 10 minutes to get to their seats and get
started on their meal. The actual film showing
usually runs from 20 to 30 minutes. This means
that three 1-reelers can be shown or one 1-reeler
and a 2-reeler. Often when only 20 minutes are
available, it is found best to run two 1-reelers.

The first selection must be made to rule
out all films not technically suitable for show-
ing under factory conditions. The 5-minute
films which do not have first-class factory appeal
should be left out, as these may already have
been seen by the audience. The next type of film
to avoid in factory shows is the academic dis-
cussion. These films, while essential for many
kinds of non-theatrical audiences, do not have
the urgency and reporting quality which is the
key to successful factory shows. This then leaves

the action and dramatic films, the special news-
reel issues, the Empire films (for example the
Canadian shorts), and the special descriptive
non-theatrical films as well as some acquisitions
such as The March of Time.

Film Officers have found it quite possible to
build suitable programmes from this material,
but there is a shortage of suitable factory material
especially in view of the necessity to visit the same
factories regularly. Every effort must be made to
achieve a sufficient and growing supply of suitable
films.

(<•) Projection.— Operators will find that tech-
nical quality in factory shows can in a measure
be safeguarded if they observe the following
points: —
i. The loudspeaker should not be placed on a
level with the base of the screen. With a large
audience, this practice leads to a marked
absorption of high frequencies which impairs
the sound reproduction. The loudspeaker
unit should be raised to a point at least hall-
way up the screen. This almost invariably
secures a better sound coverage and combats
the absorption,
ii. Projectionists in many cases tend to set the
tone control at "cut treble" which, of course,
aggravates the above conditions. Unless a
hall has extremely bad acoustics, the tone
control should be set at "top".

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

(Continued from p. 21)
with colour, the dyeing — a sodden black mass
being lifted from the. vat which when dry glows
with the soft colour of violets — and the weaving
itself. The climax of the tweed being actually
worn is extremely well done. The Pipe Band of a
Scots regiment swinging along Princes Street
during one of its busy hours, the colour of the
tartan kilts and then the swift swing of the camera
on to a passer-by wearing the tweed whose life
history we have followed. Without comment, she
is lost in the crowd and the film goes into its
final sequence. The Technicolor is excellent, and
full use has been made of the rural background
of wool as well as of the colours used in the
making of a piece of tweed.
Propaganda value. As a salesman tor British-
made tweed, at a time when vital, currency
valuable, exports must be maintained and in-
creased, this film is excellent. (If indeed that is
still our policv.) By skilt'ulK mixing images ol
tweed, its makers, pastoral scenes of clouds and
running water, it should make everybody who
sees it feel that if they buy British tweed. the\
are buying much more than a piece of cloth
Any reader of the fashion magazines will appre-
ciate how important this is, when a scent is sold
because it recalls the smile of the DuBarry. a
bracelet is connected by subtle inference with
the treasures of the Incas, and the line of a gown
recalls the Second Empire and its glories. After
this film, border weave should fill the shops of
South America and the other luxury markets
with the heather-laden breezes of Scotland and
the faint echo of the pipes.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1942

FILM LIBRARIES

Borrowers of Kims are asked to apply as much in advance as possible, to give alternative

booking dates, and to return the films immediately after use. H. A hire charge is made.

F. Free distribution. Sd. Sound. St. Silent.

Association of Scientific Workers, 30 Bedford
Row, W.C.I. Scientific Film Committee. Graded
List of Films. A list of scientific films from many
sources, classified and graded for various types of
audience. On request, Committee will give ad-
vice on programme make-up and choice of films.
Austin Film Library. 24 films of motoring in-
terest, industrial, technical and travel. Available
only from the Educational Films Bureau, Tring,
Herts. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.
Australian Trade Publicity Film Library. 18 films
of Australian life and scenery. Available from
the Empire Film Library. 35 mm. & 16 mm.
Sd. & St. F. 3, sound films on 9.5 mm. available
from Pathescope.

British Commercial Gas Association, Gas Indus-
try House, 1 Grosvenor Place, S.W.I. Films on
social subjects, domestic science, manufacture of
gas. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & a few St. F.
British Council Film Department, 25 Savile
Row, W.l. Films of Britain, 1940. Catalogue for
overseas use only but provides useful synopses of
100 sound and silent documentary films.
British Film Institute, 4 Great Russell Street.
London, W.C.I, (a) National Film Library Loan
Section to stimulate film appreciation by making
available copies of film classics. 35 mm., 16mm.
Sd. & St. H. (b) Collection of Educational
Films. The Institute has a small collection of
educational films not available from other
sources. 35 mm., 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.
British Instructional Films, 1 1 1 Wardour Street,
W.l. Feature films; Pathe Gazettes and Pathe-
tones; a good collection of nature films. A new
catalogue is in preparation. 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.
Canadian Pacific Film Library. 15 films of Cana-
dian life and scenery. Available from the Empire
I - i I in Library. 16 mm. Sd. & St. I
Canadian Government Exhibitions and Publicity.
A wide variety of films. Available from the
Empire Film Library.

Central Council for Health Education, c atalogue
of some 250 films, mostly of a specialist health
nature, dealing with Diphtheria, Housing.
Maternity, Child Welfare, Personal Hygiene,
Prevention of Diseases, Physical Fitness, etc.
Most films produced by societies affiliated to
the Council, or on loan from other 16 mm.
distributors (e.g. B.C.G.A.). Six films produced
direct for the Council also available, including
Fear and Peter Brown. Carry on Children, and
Breath of Danger.

35 mm. and 16 mm. Sd. and St. II

i enttral Film Library, Imperial Institute, S.W.7.
Has absorbed the Empire Film Library and the
(J. P.O. Film Library. Also contains all new
M.O.I, non-theatrical films. No general catalogue
yet issued. A hand list of M.O.I, films is available.
35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Coal Utilisation Joint Council, General Buildings.
Aldwych, London, W.C.2. Films on production
of British coal and miners" welfare. 35 mm. &
16 mm. Sd. F.

Crookcs' Laboratories, Gorst Road. Park
Royal, N.W.I0. Colloids in Medicine. 35 mm. &
16 mm. Sd.F.

Dartington Hall Film Unit, Totnes, South
Devon. Classroom films on regional and eco-
nomic geography. 16 mm. St. H.

Dominion of New Zealand Film Library. 415
Strand, W.C.2. 22 films of industry, scenery and
sport. Includes several films about the Maoris.
16 mm. St. F.

Educational Films Bureau, Tring. Herts. A selec-
tion of all types of film. 35 mm. & 16 mm.
Sd. & St. F.

Educational General Services, 37 Golden Square.
W.l. A wide selection of films, particularly of
overseas interest. Some prints for sale. 16 mm. &
St. H.

Electrical Development Association, 2 Savoy Hill,
Strand, W.C.2. Four films of electrical interest.
Further films of direct advertising appeal are

available to members of' the Association only,.
16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Empire Film Library. Films primarily of Empire
interest, with a useful subject index. Now merged
with the Central Film Library. 16 mm. and a few
35 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Film Centre, 34 Soho Square, W.l. Mouvements
Vibratoires. A film on simple harmonic motion.
French captions. 35 mm. & 16 mm. St. H.

Ford Film Library, Dagenham, Essex. Some
50 films of travel, engineering, scientific and
comedy interest. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.
Gaumont-British Equipments, Film House, War-
dour Street, W.l. Many films on scientific sub-
jects, geography, hygiene, history, language,
natural history, sport. Also feature films. 35 mm.
&16mm. Sd. & St. H.

G.P.O. Film Library. Over 100 films, mostly
centred round communications. Now merged
with the Central Film Library. 35 mm., 16mm.
Sd. & St. F.

Kodak, Ltd., Kingsway, W.C.2. (a) Kodascope
Library. Instructional, documentary, feature,
western, comedy. Strong on early American
comedies. 16 mm. & 8 mm. St. H. (A separate
List of Educational Films, extracted from the
above, is also published. A number of films have
teaching notes.) (/>) Medical Film Library. Circu-
lation restricted to members of medical profes-
sion. Some colour films. Some prints for outright
sale. 16 mm. St. H.

March of Time, Dean House, 4 Dean Street.
W.l. Selected March of Time items, including
Inside Nazi Germany, Battle Fleets of Britain,
Canada at War. 16 mm. Sd. H.

Mathematical Films. Available from B. G. D.
Salt, 5 Carlingford Road, Hampstead, N.W.3.
Five mathematical films suitable for senior
classes. 16 mm. & 9.5 mm. St. H.

Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co., Ltd., Traf-
ford Park, Manchester 17. Planned Electrifica-
tion, a film on the electrification of the winding
and surface gear in a coal mine. Available for
showing to technical and educational groups.
16 mm. Sd. F.

Pathescope, North Circular Road, Cricklewood,
N.W.2. Wide selection of silent films, including
cartoons, comedies, drama, documentary, travel,
sport. Also good selection of early American
and German films. 9.5 mm. Sd. & St. H.
Petroleum Films Bureau, 15 Hay Hill, Berkeley
Square, W. 1 . Some 25 technical and documentary
films. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Religious Film Library, Church Walk, Duns-
table, Beds. Films of religious and temperance
appeal. Also list of supporting films from other
sources. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Scottish Central Film Library, 2 Newton Place,
Charing Cross, Glasgow, C.3. A wide selection
of teaching films from many sources. Contains
some silent Scots films not listed elsewhere.
Library available to groups in Scotland only.
16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Sound-Film Services, 27 Charles Street, Cardiff.
Library of selected films including Massingham's
And So to Work. Rome and Sahara have French
commentaries. 16 mm. Sd. H.

South African Railways Publicity and Travel
Bureau, South Africa House, Trafalgar Square,
W.C.2. 10 films of travel and general interest.
35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & 4 St. versions. F.

Southern Railway, General Manager's Office,
Waterloo Station, S.E.I. Seven films (one in
colour) including Building an Electric Coach,
South African Fruit (Southampton Docks to
Covent Garden), and films on seaside towns.
1 6 mm. St. F.

Wallace Heaton, Ltd., 127 New Bond Street
W 1. Three catalogues. Sound 16 mm., silent
16 mm., silent 9.5 mm. Sound catalogue contains
number of American feature films, including
Thunder Over Mexico, and some shorts. Silent 16
mm. catalogue contains first-class list of early
American, German and Russian features and
shorts, 9.5 catalogue has number of early Ger-
man films and wide selection of early American
and English slapstick comedies. 16 mm. & 9.5
mm. Sd. & St. H.

Workers" film \ssociation. ltd. Transport
House, Smith Square. London. S.W.I. Films
of democratic and co-operative interest Notes
and suggestions lor complete programmes.
Some prints foi sale. ;s mm & 16 mm. Sd. &.
St. H.

Owned and published by Film Centre Ltd., 34 Soho Square, London, W.l, and /"■■• ' /.. rite Shenval /Vest, London and Hertford

CONTENTS

FACTS TO BE FACED

NOTES OF HIE MONTH

VALE ATQUE AVE

FILMS AND ARMY EDUCATION

NEW DOCUMENTARY Ml MS

I III \

NEWS LETTER

A JOB in m done by Bosley Crowther
FILM AND reality by Basil Wright

SHORI I II M BOOKINGS I OR MARCH/APRIL

VOL 3 NO 3

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDO&. Wl

FACTS TO BE FACED

F morale in Britain is low this is due, not to defeatism, but to
frustration. Libya, Malaya, Singapore, Burma, Java, the Scharnhost
episode, have all presented the British people with a vision of them-
selves in relation to the rest of the world which they have never seen
before. "Lesser breeds without the law", and all sorts of "peculiar
foreigners" are either inflicting ignominious defeats on us or are,
for the present at least, our main defence against defeat. These and
similar realisations are still in the process of sinking into our con-
sciousness, and our sense of frustration is due not merely to them
but also, and in greatest sense, to a feeling of hopeless inadequacy
at home. The critics of the Government may well be wrong, but until
something is done to prove them wrong, or until an active and
convincing policy is outlined by the War Cabinet, the dangerous
state of morale that at present exists will remain.

Maybe we shall achieve this summer a great victory. Victories are
naturally good for morale. But victories cannot be won without
morale. And the danger of the present situation is that our propa-
ganda system is a failure. Years of neglect are bringing their harvest,
and unless our propaganda switches to an active policy at home as
well as abroad it is in danger of becoming a contributory factor to
an unnecessary prolongation of the war.

Our propaganda has not failed merely for mechanical reasons. It has
failed because it is bankrupt of ideas and bankrupt of policy.

It will continue to fail just as long as our propagandists continue to
shut their eyes to the fact that we are living in the middle of a world
revolution, and that therefore revolutionary tactics are not merely
expedient but also absolutely vital.

The Press is the only propagandist medium not controlled by
Government sources, and it can achieve much (more indeed than
it is doing) by forming an independent focus of active criticism.

But media like radio and film — particularly as direct propaganda
weapons — suffer from the disability of being, by and large, the
nouthpiece of Government. A radical change in the Government's
policy towards these two powerful media and what they say is an
absolute necessity.

It is too late for authority to plead, cajole, or reassure. There
nust be no more radio-features or propaganda films whose main
nessage (however interesting or box-office) is likely in any way to
ead to a feeling of complacency. There is absolutely nothing to be
complacent about.

Nor is it any use producing "calls to action" without their being
Dacked by hard thinking — and how many official propagandists have
ione any hard thinking so far? If people aren't working hard enough

in the war effort there can, in the long run, he only one reason — that
they have no basic incentive to an all-out effort. That basic incentive
can be supplied either ad\entitionsly and from without (e.g. an
invasion of this country or an allied victory) or from within by a
gigantic propaganda effort which will frankly admit that this is a
revolutionary period, which will step down from the pedestal of
present authority whenever necessary, which will formulate and
implement the real ideas for which people as a whole are fighting
(nobody in Britain has bothered to do this yet), and which will use
all and every revolutionary tactic to gain its ends.

If propaganda is to play — as it must — a vital part in the winning of
this war, our propagandists must adhere closely to the following
principles: —

1. Consciousness that they are the vanguard of policy, and that
therefore they must not merely keep in touch with, but, whenever
necessary, merge themselves with the broad masses of the people.

2. They must be hard thinkers. Their leadership in strategy and
tactics must be correct and far seeing, for they cannot be successful
unless the mass of the people can, as time goes on, be convinced by
experience that what the propagandists say is correct.

Only on such principles as these can we help to build up the iron
discipline which is now so badly needed and which is the absolute
necessity if we are to win.

Any survey of the present situation as regards propaganda makes
it clear that these pre-requisites have been and are continuing to be
neglected. How far this state of affairs can be remedied without
drastic changes in a wider political field is a matter of some con-
jecture. But in any case it is the duty of all true propagandists in
films or in radio to devote their own eneig.es and thought to the
purposes outlined, to campaign vigorously against ideas and sub-
jects which do not fit into the scheme, and to play their part in con-
verting inadequate official ideas into something approaching the
active attitude which is needed.

It is not a question of stimulating a comatose people. It is a
question of providing a means by which they can feel, in a practical
sense, that there is an ultimate purpose, leading forward to a better
state of affairs and not back to the status quo, in the present holo-
caust. Only if they are quite certain that they are lighting for a
positive result (a new world) rather than a negative result ("beat the
Axis and make the world safe for pre-1939 democracy"), can people
freely give themselves to "the unprecedented torment and sacrifice,
unprecedented revolutionary heroism, incredible energy, devoted

34

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

searching, study, testing in practice, disappointments, suffering,
diligence and thoroughness", which is now so dramatic a charac-
teristic of the people of the Soviet Union.

As long as morale at home, and a vital picture (based on fact) of
ourselves overseas, are of fundamental importance to the winning of
this war, it is necessary to reiterate the need for a fundamental
revolution in our propaganda methods. Weakness in propaganda
may only be one aspect of a general ill, but it is significant not
merely as a barometer but also as a symptom.

As we have already said, the propaganda services are a weapon in
the hands of the Government. We appeal to Winston Churchill and to
Stafford Cripps to initiate at once a complete and drastic purge of
personnel, an overhaul of the machinery, and, above all, a practical
policy, however revolutionary it may appear, on which active and
aggressive propaganda may be based. As individuals they have the
confidence of the country ; that confidence will increase if they will only
give the propagandists the tools to finish the job. "The attempt", said
Lenin, "to brush aside, to fence oneself off from one of the 'un-
pleasant' problems or difficulties in one sphere of activity is a profound
mistake, and one which later will have to be paid for dearly." We are
paying now for our neglect of many things, and one of them is propa-
ganda. But it is in no way too late to clear ourselves of the debt, if
only we take action right away.

NOTES OF THE MONTH

Waste

films whose sole purpose is to advertise branded goods are still
being made. Studio space, cameras and film stock arc being wasted
on short films devoted entirely to the job of selling sweets or
tobacco; believe it or not, sweets and tobacco were the subject
of two recent advertising films. It is a scandal that man-power,
apparatus, and screen time should be wasted on this sort of useless
nonsense. It is even said that the production of a Government film
was recently held up for a week because studio floor space was
occupied by a unit making an advertising film. In any case this is
not time to waste film stock, or to increase, however temporarily,
the jam-up in the laboratory bottlenecks. Films advertising branded
goods can be of no possible service to the community. To get them
shown the sponsors have to pay the cinemas, and there is a danger
that a manager being paid to show an advertising film might well be
tempted to give it priority over the weekly Five-Minuter if his pro-
gramme time was tight. In our opinion an absolute ban on the mak-
ing of direct advertising films is long overdue. The authorities must
clamp down on this type of sponsor right away. The production of
advertising films is a direct interference with the national film
effort. It would be a pity, however, if the action of a few unpatriotic
concerns were to bring the more enlightened sponsors into disrepute.
A large number of commercial organisations, both big and small,
are contributing propaganda and informational films to the national
effort. While it would be idiotic to attribute purely idealistic motives
to these sponsors (their action is, at the least, "good public rela-
tions") the fact remains that they are making films which are adding
to the official propaganda drive, few of them, as far as we can
ascertain, engage on production without previously getting an O.K.
from the films Division of the Ministry of Information. The basic
distinction is in any case easy to make, and there should be no
difficulty in setting up a system by which no commercial sponsor is
allowed to engage on production which is not in the national
interest. To take an example : a film showing how to economise in
the use of a commodity in short supply is naturally in (he national
interest; but a film devoted to trying lo sell a particular brand o\~
that commodity is directly against the national interest, and per-
mission for its production must on no account be granted. The
really enlightened sponsors are of course those who have no visible
axe to gimd at all; and who base their production plans on a survej
of national propaganda needs geared to the M.O.I.'s own pro-
gramme. Hut the direct selling film must go. In peace-time U was ,i

constant nuisance both to those who made it and those who had to
sit through it. With any luck it will not survive the war.

Merit Rewarded

it is excellent news that of the Academy awards made annually in
Hollywood the "Oscar" for the longer documentary class has been
presented to Target for Tonight (a further award in this class went,
appropriately, to Kukan, a reportage of the Chinese way). People
over here will be especially gratified to learn that John Grierson
himself presented the awards. In the short documentary class the
award went to Churchill's Island, produced in Canada by Stuart
Legg and incidentally one of the films debarred from renter's quota
by the Board of Trade. These two examples once more prove the
success and influence of the British documentary movement, and
must be a special source of gratification to Grierson himself as the
founder, inspirer and still the chief exponent of the documentary
school of film making.

Departure

n is with sincere regret that we say goodbye to Ronald Horton,
who leaves D.N.L.'s editorial chair this month in order to take up
an important post in propaganda film production. Horton has
edited D.N.L. almost since its first inception, and has carried out
this difficult and nearly always delicate job with a courage and far-
sightedness which has been of incalculable value to the Editorial
Board. We wish him luck in his new post, and are glad to learn that
his advice and opinions are still from time to time to be available
to us.

Arrival

j. p. r. golightly, one of documentary 's most noted figures, has
been seconded from the Army to an important job as personal
representative in London of Canada's National Film Commis-
sioner. Many have felt sorry that Golightly's knowledge and abilities
as regards the film business should have been buried in the Army,
valuable though the work he was doing there may have been. In
his new job he will of course be working in close collaboration with
Canada House, and will, we hope, have many opportunities to work
also in collaboration with his many friends and colleagues in docu-
mentary.

Time to Wake Up

the Board of Trade still fails to move with the times. As a result the
Quota Act is interfering with film propaganda. The latest example
of this is Wavell's 30,000, an excellent compilation of newsreel and
other reportage material shot in Libya. This film may be regarded
in the same class as other M.O.I, "specials" such as Merchant
Seaman, Target for Tonight and Terry Pilot. In other words it has
big box-office value and is usable as a second feature. But because
of the material from which it is edited it is debarred from rating as
exhibitor's quota— a fact which many exhibitors, anxious to run the
film as a piece of real !> good entertainment propaganda, only real-
ized after booking it. As some at least of them must have been count-
ing on it as part of their annua 1 quota, the resulting situation is not
merely annoying but also ridiculous. As we write, the M.O.I, are
making representations to the B.O.T., we hope with some violence.
But the B.O.T.*s reputation in such matters is not good at the
moment, since the case of the Canadian films (see D.N.I . for
January) is still apparently undecided. That items of the Canada
Carries On series, winch are official Canadian propaganda and are
being distributed bj an important American renting organization,
should be debarred from renter's quota in this country on the
grounds that they are "alien" is more than ridiculous, it is an insult
to one ol our most important allies. It is most improbable that any
influential section of the British 1 ilm Lrade would object to a
revision of the Quota provisions which won I J remove these irritating
anomalies which impede part of the war effort. The Board of Trade
mi, si he soundl) kicked in the pants until it sees sense.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

VALE ATQUE AVE

the British Empire, as originally conceived, is
breaking up before our eyes. This is not simply
because Japan has captured Malaya and the
strategic bases of Hong Kong, Singapore and
Rangoon, but because, throughout the
Colonial Empire and the Dominions, the old
bonds are weakening and snapping. When
Canada looks for an ally close in spirit and
ultimate ambition, she looks not across the
Atlantic, but to the United States. In her
moment of panic at the rapidity of the
Japanese advance, Australia appeals, not to
Britain, but to the United States and to Rus-
sia. These are signs of a situation to be
faced.

What was the British Empire? Surely for all
practical purposes it was nothing more and
nothing less than a variety of conceptions
built up in the minds of the peoples of the
world by a variety of propagandists. Some of
these propaganda conceptions had been cre-
ated to preserve the Empire, others were de-
signed to destroy it. The images of the Empire
which existed in peoples' minds ranged at the
one extreme from that of the Empire Day
organiser leading British school children in a
ritual of map worship, to the Nazi propa-
gandists' opposing picture of a vast slave-
labour camp. Both of these pictures are false
and out-of-date. In recent years more mod-
ern and more enlightened interpretations of
the functions of the Empire have grown up.
During its unfortunately abbreviated life the
Empire Marketing Board did what it could to
spread the conception of the Empire as a
group of peoples bound together, not by
force and exploitation, but by the need to
move to a common goal of social and scien-
tific advancement. The Dominions have been
coming more and more clearly to see them-
selves as free creative agents within a forward-
looking commonwealth of nations. Yet black
spots of repression and exploitation remained.
Imperial policy in the West Indies and in India
gave the lie to many an idealistic conception
and added fuel to the fire of anti-Imperialist
hatred.

The Empire has meant many things to many
men, each one seeing it in the light of his own
ideals and purposes. But the conceptions of
Imperialism which move people to action in
the present time of testing are the ones that
matter. How do the peoples of the Empire
see themselves and the Commonwealth to
which they belong when the Axis military
machine is at the gates? In Malaya the breed
of Empire-builders — a special creation of
British Imperialism — was suddenly revealed
to the Malays and to many other watching
races as being not only incompetent in mili-
tary and civil administration but completely
unequal to its responsibilities. This is how
the Empire looked in Malaya when the test
came. How will it look in India? Is it for

images such as this that we dare ask the free
peoples of the world to fight and die?

It is crystal-clear that whatever the outcome
of the war may be the original conception of
the Empire is finished. This does not mean
that the Japanese are likely to be left in con-
trol of their new conquests. The contrary is
certain. The Japanese conception of Im-
perialism is less enlightened even than that
of our most apoplectic die-hards. The
Japanese will be thrown out and it is possible
that the British will go back to some of the
territories from which they have been so
ignominiously ejected. Yet it is certain that
the peoples whose countries have been rav-
aged by two rival imperialisms are by now
too disillusioned to have us back on the old
terms.

If all that is good in an enlightened inter-
pretation of the responsibilities of empire is to
survive, then the successors of the propa-
gandists who designed the old imperial images
must create new ones which will serve present
and post-war human needs. We must worry
less about the white man's burden and more
about the white man. The events of recent
months have demonstrated that in many
territories the white man was capable of
carrying no burden whatsoever. Let propa-
gandists have nothing more to do with such
anachronisms.

The present situation demands that we re-
gard the Empire as a form of organisation
which stands in the line of development from
nationalism to internationalism. The Em-
pire must be a loose federation of free
peoples looking always for new associations
outside. It must be prepared to attach itself
to any other existing group of peoples on a
basis of pure equality. Once fascism is de-
stroyed the world will have no further use for
the theory of a dominant race. In any future
conception of empire there can be no question
of any included people — white or coloured —
dominating the rest, economically or mili-
tarily. The opportunity already exists for the
propagandist to begin building the new
federation of nations which must supersede
our out-of-date imperialisms. The peoples of
the Empire must be encouraged to make
direct contact with the great freedom-loving
powers outside. Canada must exchange in-
formation and ideals with Russia and China;
India must make itself known to America
and our exiled European allies, and, in re-
turn, must communicate to its own people a
knowledge of the nature and purposes of
these other countries. A recent leader in The
Times makes clear the first steps to be
taken :

"The establishment of full political accord
between Britain and Russia will help to make
the alliance effective in another sphere im-

portant for the prosecution of the war. The
hopes of a co-ordinated programme for politi-
cal warfare raised by Sir Walter Monckton's
visit to Kuibyshev last autumn have not been
realised. Little evidence can be seen of co-
operation between British and Russian propa-
ganda services, even in so elementary a matter
as broadcasting to enemy countries. 'I he ex-
ploitation in broadcasting to Germany so
dramatic and fruitful a theme as M. Stalin's
Order of the Day was clearly a matter of as
much concern to British as to Russian propa-
ganda. So far as can be judged, even the
machinery of co-operation scarcely exists at
present. The forthcoming appointment of a
Press attache to the British Embassy in
Russia should provide an opportunity for
remedying this defect. But the first condition
is undoubtedly a wider political agreement.
The lesson that policy is a necessary founda-
tion of effective propaganda is one which this
country has been lamentably slow to learn."

Such a propaganda-exchange would be for
the immediate purpose of winning the war.
But the self-protective instinct which is throw-
ing the free peoples together in defence against
Fascist aggression is a healthy and a necessary
instinct in peace as well as in war. The ag-
gression of the Fascist powers has achieved
amongst their enemies a sense of common
interest and purpose which would have been
unthinkable three years ago. It is the duty of
the propagandist to see that this will to com-
mon action is forged into a weapon which not
only will win the war but which can build the
peace. The first necessity is to establish chan-
nels for the exchange of information, not so
much between Governments as between the
peoples they claim to represent. Here is the
first task of the propagandist. Until it has
been carried out ha\e we any hope of victory?
In a time of desperate crisis Australia will-
ingly entrusts her defence to a United States
general. The Governments of Australia and
the United States set up machinery to oper-
are a common military policy. These are
vitally important measures but they sym-
bolise a link of less revolutionary significance
than do the thousands of American soldiers,
airmen and technicians who throng the
streets of Australian cities, rubbing shoul-
ders with citizens of the Empire whose task
they have come to share. The war has already
seen British airmen lighting in Russia.
American airmen in China, Chinese troops
defending Burma. It is the job of the propa-
gandists of the United Nations to sec that
these emissaries come to mean more to the
peoples of the world than the expeditionary
forces of previous wars. By a propaganda-
exchange amongst the warring nations, the
pooling of military responsibilities must be
maele to symbolise the united aim and the
united power of all freedom-loving peoples
to build a new order of society vigorous
enough to demolish the old national and
imperial boundaries.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

FILMS

IN ARMY

EDUCATION

A Report on a Year's Experiment in the

Manchester Area. By JOHN MADDISON,

Hon. Secretary of the Manchester Film

Institute Society

rHERE is considerable interest in the part films
might play in Army education, and some
months ago documentary news letter pub-
lished an account of the work being done volun-
tarily for the troops in Scotland by a group
of enthusiasts, using non-theatrical films. In
Manchester the Film Institute Society has com-
pleted a year's experiment along slightly dif-
ferent lines for the local Regional Committee
for Adult Education in H.M. Forces. Here, in
the somewhat formal terms of a short report
prepared for our own official records, are those
details of the scheme which may be of interest
to other workers in the same field.

How the Scheme began and has Developed

The experiment began in a small informal way
in February, 1941, when the Secretary was in-
vited to give a series of illustrated lectures on
film appreciation to a rather isolated searchlight
unit in Cheshire. Conditions were primitive;
silent films were projected on a Bell-Howell
Filmo machine and the only electrical supply
available was from the batteries of a service
waggon. Perseverance was rewarded by the
evident pleasure of the men when the first
pictures flickered across the length of their
Nissen hut. The course lasted some weeks,
covered much of early film history, and con-
cluded with a light-hearted session on the work
of Chaplin.

Silent films only limited the value of the
experiment, and we were fortunate in securing
early the use of two sound projectors and the co-
operation of two cineastes, a business-man and
a schoolmaster, as lecturers and projectionists.
These two and the Secretary have earned on
the work ever since, and throughout the year, up
to six units, searchlight and anti-aircraft, have
been visited each week. At one or two of the
sites, continuity has been maintained for
periods of over six months.

The vagaries of film supply have to some extent
dictated the composition of the displays; the
question of film copies (one remembers this as a
crippling deterrent to the wide use of film in con-
nection with school broadcasts) was bound to
operate here. Programmes have, however, been
organised along two main lines: (I) Film history
and appreciation, (2) Home and World affairs
and general knowledge. The proceedings at
each site last about ninety minutes. The films
are introduced by a short talk on subject matter

or technique lasting from live to thni; mtes,

and then time is opportunity for discussion and
questions. Once the serious part is concluded,
the occasion is rounded off with a few minutes
of comedy or music. The talks are made popular
and non-technical and wherever possible linked
with the men's own experience. One or two
examples may be quoted. A discussion of trick
iph\ coincided fortunately with the
'■. neral release of Thiej oj Baghdad; Marry

Watt's Target for Tonight offered comparisons
with his earlier effort North Sea, then showing at
many cinemas; Tawny Owl introduced as a
lighter element, served for a discussion both of
nature films and of the use of commentary;
British and Soviet methods of film propaganda
as seen in the films of the M.O.I, and Soviet
War News Film Agency have been compared
with lively consequences; Alexander Shaw's
fine documentary Five Faces of Malaya was
shown with dire appropriateness during the first
week of December.

Occasionally a special speaker has been
present ; General de Gaulle's civil representative
in the region answered questions arising from
Paramount's Free France and a member of the
University's Spanish Department talked about
his own country when S/>ani\li I 'arth was shown.
(How stern and moving this film remains! It
makes most of the propaganda efforts of this
war appear adolescent. Its uncompromising
tragedy seems better somehow for that intangible
spiritual quality we called morale.)

The Reactions of Officers and Men

Attendance at the displays is, one gathers,
entirely voluntary, and many informal sidelights
reveal that the men appreciate and enjoy this new
kind of leisure education. The best testimony
to this is their continued presence; N. A. A. F.I.
and Nissen huts are always crowded for these
visits. Discussion is often lively, but questions
asked sometimes underline the general public's
ignorance of the serious aspects of cinema
and of film appreciation which neither school
nor radio is doing much to correct. There is
evidence that the men approach the films we

mercial cinemas. Many of them have expressed
a distinct preference for the information over the
fiction film. Generally speaking, commissioned
officers have been very helpful, and have taken
an active interest in the displays; the discussions
often have a democratic flavour, which is the
best guarantee of good relations between the
ranks.

Between 1 50 and 200 films have been shown
during the year, but the following select list of
about thirty is typical:

Film history and "Classics" : Early Actualities,
Early Trick Films, Great Train Robbery, Voyage
ieross Impossible, Chaplin's First Films, Shoulder
Arms, Dr. Caligari, Covered IVagon, General
Line, Potemkin, Drawings that Hulk and Talk.

Famous documentaries: Drifters, Song of
Ceylon, Night Mail, The River, The City, Spanish
Earth, Merchant Seamen, The Londoners.

Actuality, Interest and Information films:
London Can Take It, Men of Africa, Peoples of
Canada, Lion of Judah, White Eagle, March of
Time v various items). Day at Soviet Front,
Soviet Harvest, Stalin's Speech, Beaverbrook's
Speech, King Penguins, Transfer of Power.

Main sources of supply have been the Central
Film Library, the National Film Library and the
G.B.I. Library.

The whole scheme has been very successful, and
we should like to see it extended, but both
machines and voluntary personnel are hard to
come by. The "lecturer-compere" for this kind
of show must be pretty adaptable and have a !
genuine interest in cinema. It is. however, a type
of service which should appeal to the more
active in the Film Society Movement ; it carries
a good deal of pleasure and stimulation for the

SEVEN-LEAGUE

an independent documentary unit
has just completed

"THE COUNTRYWOMEN"

Directed by: John I

Associate Producer: Paul Rotha

H. M. Nieter (late of World Window)
has finished directing

"BLOOD TRANSFUSION"

A four reel film for scientific audiences,
produced by Paul Rotha Productions

In Production: A film on School Meals
SEVEN-LEAGUE PRODUCTIONS LTD.

37, REGENT STREET, W.I

'Phone: Reg. 3737

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Wood for War. Production: Canadian Army
Film Unit. Direction: J. E. R. McDougall.
Camera: George Noble. 10 minutes.
Subject: One part of the work done by volunteer
Canadians in the war effort. Lumberjacks, using
their great experience and skill, are felling timber
in Britain for vital use in the war.
Treatment: By careful avoidance of overselling
the subject the film has achieved an excellent
balance. We are shown Canadian troops arriving
in Britain and we see a special section of them
being drafted to Scotland for timber work.
Swiftly and efficiently the work is shown, mak-
ing the quiet hillsides of Scotland look like a roar-
ing lumber camp in an American toughie. Except
that they, unfortunately, don't seem to do the
leaps from log to log in the rapids any longer. It
is always pleasant to see a good job superbly
well done on the screen and we certainly see it
here. It is a pity, though, that the men on the job
are not brought to life a little more— they look
interesting characters and the film might have
shown something of them as human beings as
well as tough technicians. There is a pub
sequence, very nicely handled, at the end, but
this does not quite satisfy the need for a more
lively knowledge of these men who have come
across an ocean to give us wood for war. Perhaps
freer use of sound would have helped. But it's a
nice job and we welcome this first film from the
Canadian Army Film Unit.
Propaganda: Excellent. People from overseas,
working in this country, in close contact with its
people and working in a common cause, is one
of the best possible propaganda lines.

Western Isles. Production: Merton Park Studios
for the British Council. Direction: Terence
, Bishop. Camera: Jack Cardiff. Sound: C. Tasto.
; Editor: C. Beaumont. Music: William Alwyn.
Commentary: Joseph MacLeod. 14 minutes.
Subject: This is a film of the making of Harris
[ tweed which attempts also to depict the sterling
qualities of the Hebrideansin the industry and to
; remind us of their contribution to the war effort.
Since the importance of the manufacture of
Harris tweed in a total war economy is not clear,
[ the islanders' war effort is symbolised by the
j heroic return to his Hebridean home of a young
i merchant seaman whose ship has been tor-
1 pedoed in the Atlantic.
Treatment. The film is in excellent Technicolor
and shows in some detail the processes of tweed
I making from the gathering of the wool to the
washing of the finished material. The film centres
round the work of a single family to which the
returning seaman belongs. Scenes of the family
making its tweed are cross-cut with shots of the
| young sailor's journey home in an open boat.
He is eventually thrown up, more dead than alive,
on the coast near his parents' croft, having con-
trived— apparently by instinct— to steer himself
« and his companions to the waters he knows best.
This part of the story is less convincing than the
| shots of the special skills and local rituals associ-
:,ated with the making of tweed. There are good
traditional songs, well sung, and the acting of the
principal characters is adequate on a somewhat

I naive and wooden level, which does, however,
manage to convey something of the dourness and
stoicism of the Hebridean.
Propaganda Value. Little propaganda good can

surely come from suggesting to film audiences
overseas that the tweed industry is one of our
principal national concerns of the moment.
Terence Bishop has, however, succeeded in
counteracting in some measure the usual mis-
takes of British Council propaganda by intro-
ducing the shipwreck theme which at any rate
admits the existence of a state of war.

Wavell's 30,000. Production: Ian Dalrymple.
Direction: John Monck. Camera: A.F.U. Com-
mentary: Colin Wills. Music: John Greenwood.
50 minutes.

Subject. This film tells the story of Wavell's
advance into Libya.

Treatment. The visuals consist for the most part
of newsreel material and Army Film Unit
footage with which we are already familiar.
The film is given continuity and shape by the use
of maps and the introduction of participants in
the battle who describe the strategics in terms of
their own roles. The resultant picture of the
battle is not over clear and we are left with the
impression of a number of separate engagements
which do not integrate into any single tactical
conception. This serious criticism would have
been met by an overriding policy statement bv
Wavell himself or some other qualified spokes-

Propagauda Value. Wavell's 30,000 does succeed
in bringing the battle alive in terms of personal
experience. It will help give the civilian a clearer
conception of what actually is meant by mechan-
sed warfare and it provides an excellent example
of the extent to which newsreel material gains in
significance if it is edited instead of just being
joined together.

Newspaper Train. Production: Realist Film Unit.
Direction: Len Lye. Camera: A. E. Jeakins. Com-
mentary: Merril Mueller. Recording: Ernst
Meyer. M.O.I. 5 minutes.

Subject. Newspaper Train shows how, during the
period of the blitz, newspapers were regularly
delivered to every part of the country.
Treatment. The story is told by an American
newspaper man and shows how, in spite of a
series of bombs which one night cut off one
London terminus after another, the Ramsgate
newspaper train did eventually get away on its
journey. The film is full of technical ingenuity.
The raid itself is represented by explosions and
severed lines on a railway map, accompanied by
raid noises, and telephoned instructions diverting
newspaper vans and loaders from one station to
another as line after line is cut. In spite of the
absence of actual raid scenes the effect is amaz-
ingly realistic. The exhaustion of the trainguards
after they eventually leave London is neatly con-
veyed and their reaction to machine-gun attack
by a German fighter is the real thing. Here, again,
we do not see the raiding plane, but only its
ominous shadow paralleling the track and then
moving across the train as its machine-guns
sound. The pay-off to the story takes place in
the office of the editor of the Daily Express. A
Ramsgate newsagent has sent in bullets found
embedded in his batch of copies. Unfortunately,
Mr. Christiansen and Mr. Mueller, the reporter-
narrator, appear to have been too much influ-
enced by Hollywood newspaper films to give a
convincing performance.

Propaganda Value. There appears to have been
no good reason for making this film at the
present time. Even though, by an oversight, due
credit was not given during the blitz to the
heroisms which lay behind regular newspaper
deliveries it is surely too late to do much about it
now. It is high time that blitz-based propaganda
were forgotten, and surely the M.O.I, has more
immediately urgent uses to which to put its
weekly five minutes?

Keeping Rabbits for Extra Meat. M.O.I, for the

Ministry of Agriculture. Production: Strand
Film Co. Associate Producer: Edgar Anstey.
Direction: Ralph Bond. Camera: Charles Marl-
borough. Commentary: Wilfred Pickles. Non-T.
10 minutes.

Subject. This film is intended to persuade people
that it is worth while keeping tame rabbits in
order to increase the meat ration. It stresses the
importance of choosing a healthy doe and gives
concise information on breeding, the care of the
young, types of hutches and how to make them,
and the feeding of rabbits on kitchen waste and
the official bran ration. The film comes to an
abrupt end as a housewife brings a rabbit slew
to the dinner table.

Treatment. As an information film for the begin-
ner in rabbit-keeping, it is practical and direct.
Camera work and commentary are clear and un-
hurried. A little more information about feeding,
and advice on how to deal with the disconcerting
ailments which afflict rabbits and discourage the
amateur would be welcome. The way to kill a
rabbit is left out altogether — a serious omission.
It is, however, better to give a little essential
information efficiently than to overload a film of
this kind with too many details, since its main
purpose is to persuade people that to keep rabbits
is quite a simple business.

Propaganda value. The value of this film is one
of direct instruction rather than to make people
conscious that there is a real urgency in increas-
ing our food production. It answers most of the
queries which those who intend to take up rabbit-
keeping might ask. The importance of Rabbit
Clubs might have been stressed as they would
follow up in greater detail the information which
this film provides.

Ferry Pilot. Production: Ian Dalrymple. Direc-
tion: Pat Jackson. Camera: H. F. Fowle. Editor:
R. Q. McNaughton. Music: Brian Easdale.
35 minutes.

Subject. The story of the work of the A.T.A.
which provides personnel to fly newly completed
aircraft from factory to Service airfield and in
general moves aircraft across the country (or
across the Atlantic) at such times as they are not
in the hands of R.A.F. pilots.
Treatment. The film first shows how ferry pilots'
work is organised and establishes in dialogue
sequences the variety and importance of their
job. Then we see planes being ferried by men and
women pilots and we are given some idea of the
special problems which arise from the need to
have pilots available in the right place at the
right time— often at remote airfields at short
notice. The film finishes with an unarmed bomber
unwittingly escaping enemy attack by the skin of
its teeth and this sequence, plus an earlier aero-
(Continued on page 46)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

CANADA'S CAMERA ON THE WAR CLOUDS

By THEODORE STRAUSS

Reprinted by courtesy of the New York Times

at a time when the United States is massively
assembling its energies for total war, and all the
parts of that mountainous effort must of neces-
sity be closely interrelated, it might be well to
look northward briefly to Canada, where one
weapon, as yet still wavering in the hands of
nearly a dozen agencies in Washington, has been
brought into full use on the home front. That
weapon is the film. With the exception of Russia
and Germany no nation has been so sensitive to
the incalculable importance of films in readying
the public first for the crucial demands of all-out
war and secondly for the changed world of the
peace to come.

Perhaps much of the feeble confusion which
now marks our use of fact fiim in creating an
intensified public awareness to the issues in this
conflict and in showing the average citizen what
its successful prosecution will require of him is
related to a lack of centralised authority in other
quarters. But the fact is that the exploitation of
films in Washington is still characterised by the
overlapping efforts of numerous agencies with at
best an only sporadically intelligible policy. We
have many random efforts, scattered results;
many agencies, faulty co-operation, many piece-
meal plans, no policy.

How Canada Does It

Meanwhile, the framework for government-
sponsored films in Canada stands in direct con-
tradiction to the footloose agencies in Washing-
ton. The Canadian film effort has reached its
present momentum because of three salient facts.
First, it has centralised all government film in-
terests and production under a single board and
placed the execution of the government's pro-
gramme under the direct supervision of profes-
sional film-makers instead of departmental ama-
teurs. Second, it has made integrated use of the
existent facilities of private film industry and in
those films intended for theatrical distribution it
has successfully met professional standards of
entertainment and dramatic interest. Third, it has
a flexible but clearly articulated government
policy which relates the work of all units and de-
partments in a cohesive programme. Admittedly.
Canada's film problems differ from our own and
are considerably less complex, but the important
thing is that they have been brought into a single
pattern.

This year the National Film Board of Canada
will produce and release an approximate total of
150,000 feet of film in 150 items, of which forty or
fifty will be of two reels or more. The cost will
run at Si, 000 to an occasional $7,000 per reel.
This output is not a vague blueprint ; it is based
upon present production rates. It is divided be-
tween theatrical and non-theatrical films. Of
these the former category includes the "Canada
Carries On" series, films roughly comparable to
the March of Time in technique, which alternate
between those short subjects, internationally dis-
tributed, descrifing Canada's relation to the
world war, and those for national distribution
which describe Canada's war effort in more
purely national terms. The theatrical releases also
include weekly news clips and novelty trailers on
government campaigns; one-reel musicals incor-
porating patriotic choruses, and a nc.vs review in
French.

Non-theatrical Audience

The non-theatrical films are devised to bring
specific information and exhortation to specific-
audiences such as the Air Raid Precautions or
the Women's Auxiliaries; audiences which are
being intensively organised. This category com-
prises departmental films reporting on specific
aspects of the war effort, films promoting tourism
in Canada, films for the armed services, films pre-
pared from overseas material showing what other
countries are doing on matters of interest to
Canada, and purely instructional films.

All this production is under the direct control
of the National Film Board, which was estab-
lished several years ago according to a bill drawn
up by John Grierson, the dynamic little Scot who
is now its executive officer. Under his plan all the
government departments are required by statute
to bring statements of their film needs to the
board, which guarantees against duplication of
effort and fits the departmental films into an over-
all scheme of production. Furthermore, all gov-
ernment relations with the film industry are
channelised through the board, which is ac-
quainted with the industry's point of view.

Men at the Helm

The film board as now constituted includes two
government Ministers, three senior civil servants
and three members of the public selected for their
interest in and knowledge of the film as an instru-
ment of public policy. Mr. Grierson, the film

commissioner, in whose hands the day-to-day
initiative remains, makes a monthly accounting
to the board of work in progress. Inasmuch as
most of the films are paid for out of the budgets
of departments requesting them, the budget of
Mr. Grierson's department is hardly more than is
necessary to maintain an office staff and a mini-
mal number of technicians and laboratory
workers. Whenever the spate of production ex-
ceeds the capacities of his own department, the
film commissioner farms out the tasks to private
producers under the direction of one of his own
supervisors, or makes use of private laboratory
facilities.

The production staff— producers, directors
and cameramen — now operating in seven units
is maintained on a strictly temporary basis simply
to act as a prod on personal initiative in the
quarter where it counts most. As Mr. Grierson
explains: "I have a staff of conscience-stricken
men". He places a premium on young men.
Several, such as Stuart Legg, who is now bril-
liantly editing the "Canada Carries On" series,
are comparatively experienced men who have
worked with Mr. Grierson during his years as a
documentary producer for the British Govern-
ment. The others are bright young men with "a
head of steam" who are rapidly trained.

No Handicaps Asked

Up to the present this staff has done better than
(Continued on page 39)

"Living Movement" . . .

CARLYLE defined Progress in just those two words!
In paying due tribute to the aptness of the sage's
definition the Kinematograph Weekly translates the
spirit into action. Current events are reported for our
readers in relation to the general advance, artistic and
technical, by which progress in Kinematography is
achieved.

Keep abreast of progress in your craft
— read the

Wng

WEEKLY

93 LONG ACRE

LONDON

W.C.2

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

well in competing with other commercial short
subjects for theatrical distribution. From the
very beginning Mr. Grierson made it plain that
those films intended for theatrical showings
would be sold and not given away to lie unused
on a projection room floor. It was his intention to
sell the films on their own merits and to use the
commercial success of the films as a yardstick
to measure their popularity and impact upon the
public. Judged by those standards, the National
Film Board is doing the job it set out to do. Of
the 1,000-odd theatres in Canada approximately
900 exhibitors to-day are showing the "'(. anada
Carries On" series and paying better prices for
them than for any other short subjects.

As its ultimate goals, the Canadian film effort
is trying to crystallise an awakening sense of a

nified national identity in a young country
which has still only partly assimilated its

lumerous racial streams. More immediate!), the
film board (and here Mr. Grierson quotes Waller
Lippmann's phrase) is interested in giving the
public "a pattern of thought and feeling regard-
ing the war"'. It is concerned with stating in
simple, dramatic terms such essential themes as
the relation of Canada's mineral resources to the
strategy of the war as a whole. It is trying to ex-
plain graphically the strategy of food and oil,

the remote origins of pressures that raise the cost
of bread or gasoline for the man in the street, the
reasons why his country's frontier may well lie in
Libya or Norway and why his sons and brothers
are fighting on extra-territorial battlefields. In
such films as Atlantic Patrol or Letter Irani
Aide is ha i. it is trying to bridge the gap between
the public and the front line.

Destinations

Mr. Legg once quoted Ludcndorff as saying that
propaganda is the pace-maker of policy. But if,
in a very deep sense, the films of the Canadian
National Film Board are propaganda, they are
much different from the negative and sensational
broadsides of the last war. These films are an at-
tempt to give the people a great hope and a great
faith in themselves and in a brave new world.
Instead of using the films to outsmart the public,
to rush it unthinking into situations it does not
foresee, the film board is dramatising, simplifying
and bringing into perspective the enormous and
complex issues of this war. It is making the people
full partners in the grim but hopeful odyssey of
this generation. And it is achieving this end only
because its purposes are clearly conceived and
their execution systematic.

A JOB TO BE DONE

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Bosley Crowther, in a recent article in the New York Times writes: "Confusion

and lack of policy mark the outset of our wartime film programme." Reprinted

by courtesy cf the New York Times. Slightly abridged.

back in those halcyon peace-times, when war
was but a dimly looming cloud, much specula-
tion was devoted by people of a social turn of
mind to the speed with which our mass com-
municators— namely, the films and radio — would
be geared to psychological expedients when the
fated M-day arrived. No one seemed to doubt
for a moment that, the second the lid blev off,
the air would be charged with inspiration and the
screen would bulge with pat intelligence. One of
the many surprises of the past disturbing six
weeks has been the notable absence of an\ such
evolutions. And, in so far as the medium of the
en is broadly concerned this deeply interested
corner must express some disappointment too.

Let us all be thankful that fools have not
rushed blindly in and dashed off hysterical pic-
tures which wise men have apparently eschewed.
Also let us be thankful that the screen has not
been swamped with rank preachments. But don't
let's be too confident that something of the sort
might not occur without a most intelligent, co-
ordinated plan to cover films. And let us remark
etfully— but not impatiently yet— that no
such plan, officially drawn tip, has been apparent
at the time this goes to press.

The problem of putting motion pictures to

j most effective use in a nation at war as ours is
and with the commercial organisation we have

! here requires a masterful solution comprehend-
ing many elements. First, of course, it is neces-
sary to have a general idea of the over-all accom-
plishment desired or expected from films — how
much the medium should continue simply to en-

tertain ; how much, and in what particular man-
ner, it should be used for the building of morale,
and how far it should be permitted to reveal to
the public spot news. Second, it is essential to
know who or what particular groups are best
qualified to turn out the films which are so de-
sired. And third — but not least important — there
is the problem of distribution, the delicate task of
funneling so much film out to the public.

At present, Lowell Mellett, head of the Office
of Government Reports, is the man whose job
(among others) it is to give the films an ordered
plan, to co-ordinate the activities of several
government film-producing agencies with the
complicated structure of the commercial industry
and to shape, apparently, a policy which would
govern our war-time screen. Needless to say. Mr.
Mellett, who has had no previous experience with
films, is compelled to rely very largely upon the
advice and services of others, plus the co-opera-
tion, generously bestowed, of the industry's own
War Activities Committee.

Confusing the Issue

Although it is patently unfair to expect a perfect
programme to be placed in operation within such
a brief space of time, it is also natural to deplore
the confusion which now quite obviously exists.
Nor does the present set-up make matters less
difficult. There has, as yet, been no move made to
regulate Hollywood, and President Roosevelt, in
his letter appointing Mr. Mellett as co-ordinator
of films, said that "the motion picture must re-

main free in so far as national security will per-
mit". Therefore, there is no immediate task of
guiding entertainment films. But the vital func-
tion of producing so-called morale films the
shorts and manifold brielies intended to inform
the public on war activities is divided among
several agencies, each with its own job to do.
And the consequence is that a haphazard flow of
films may very soon clog the works. In addition
to making their own intramural training films,
the Army and the Navy are ready to pass
films along to the public. The Treasury Depart-
ment has been feeding defence-bond brielies for
some time. The Agriculture Department may
ha>e its films to release. And. of course, the Office
of Imergencv Management has been most active
in turning out shorts giving a factual survey of
several defence subjects.

The time has come for a quick, and efficient
adjustment of this set-up. And from every com-
monsense angle it would seem that Mr. Mellett
would be wise to acquire for himself one or more
advisers with vast experience in the picture field
and a superior capacity to vision the job which
must be done with films right now. Then it would
seem most intelligent to gauge the public's prob-
able response to films with a war-effort content;
films designed to build up the morale, and set a
definite schedule by which these films should be
fed to exhibitors. This schedule, of course, should
be co-ordinated with the run of commercial films
so that a proper proportion of one to the other
might exist at all times.

And, finally, it would seem most advisable to
take advantage as much as possible of the estab-
lished, experienced industry which exists for pro-
ducing films in this country. No finer or more
capable movie-makers can be found any place in
the world than the ones we have right here. No
more efficient producing organisations could be
built than those we have functioning. The March
of Time, for instance, has been making for years
the sort of films which are quite effective in con-
veying information and inspiration to the public.
Numerous Al shorts producers are available in
Hollywood to turn out morale pictures along
whatever lines laid down. Let Mr. Mellett tell
them what he wants; they'll turn it in.

Eyes and Ears

And, by the same token, it would seem logical
to make extensive use of the present newsreel
organisations for the distribution of news. Obvi-
ously, the various armed services will maintain
strict supervision of their fields, and their own
augmented film units — especially the Navy's cx-
cellent group, trained by John Ford (now Com-
mander) and in the March of Time's new service
training school —may be counted upon to cover
combat actions in far-flung areas. But the news-
reels are old, experienced organs; they know
what it's all about. As much opportunity for
initiative and co-operative enterprise as is prac-
tical should be given them.

There is no ready-made formula to cover this
complex problem of enlisting the screen in the
war. The experience of the English film-makers is
not entirely applicable, nor is the smoothly work-
ing set-up of the Canadian Ministry o( Informa-
tion's film unit, explained on this page last week,
a blueprint to be followed literally. But our prob-
lem can be solved, and solved handsomely, if a
good deal of common sense is applied and too
many selfish rivalries are not permitted to in-
trude. This is no time for professional fencing.
We need good films.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

NEWS LITTER

MONTHLY SIXPENCE

VOL. 3 NUMBER 3

MARCH 1942

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands for the use of film as a
medium of propaganda and in-
struction in the interests of the
people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of
common people all over the
world.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

is produced under the auspices
of Film Centre, London, in asso-
ciation with American Film Center,
New York.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey
Alexander Shaw
Donald Taylor
John Taylor
Basil Wright

EDITOR

Ronald Horton

Outside contributions will be
welcomed but no fees will be
paid.

We are prepared to deliver from
3—50 copies in bulk to Schools,
Film Societies and other organi-
sations.

Owned and published by
FILM CENTRE LTD.
34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON

W.l GERRARD 4253

FILM AND REALITY

By BASIL WRIGHT

with A boldness only equalled by that of Dr.
Johnson when he set out to compile his English
Dictionary, Cavalcanti has, in Film and Reality,
attempted, all on his own, to describe the devel-
opment of the realist film over the past fifty
years in an opus which runs for an hour and
three quarters and contains extracts from fifty-
eight different films.

The result is a remarkable document, impres-
sive for the wealth of its contents and (to myself
at least) in many places controversial as regards
its choice of material, and its attitude towards
the social, as opposed to the academic or aesthe-
tic development of the realist film. But what-
ever else it may be, it is certainly stimulating;
after seeing it most people will find themselves
considering the wider perspectives and the
future possibilities which arise from this particu-
lar branch of film making.

Film and Reality, being as it were the only
visual reference-work dealing with a special type
of cinematic endeavour, deserves close and de-
tailed attention from the critical standpoint. And
if my own criticism should appear too personal,
no doubt others, including I hope Cavalcanti,
will hasten to correct, refute, or amplify.

I. THE SCOPE OF THE FILM

As might be expected, Film and Reality is at its
safest when it deals with history, or with chapters
in realist development which can be regarded as
more or less complete.

The First Section (which is preceded by a pro-
logue detailing Dr. Marey's early experiments
and the first film made by the Lumieres), ex-
plains how a new form of dramatic entertain-
ment quickly arose from the new invention.
Extracts from The Life of Charles Peace, The
Great Train Robbery, and The Assassination of
the Duke of Guise, reveal how the essentials of
the movie medium were quickly lost as pro-
ducers turned more and more to the straight
photography of theatrical mime. Incidentally
D. W. Griffiths was probably the man who did
most to rescue cinema from this blind alley, and
this section might well have ended with a brief
extract from Birth of a Nation.

The Second Section shows how newsreels and
interest films have always formed a continuous
thread of contact with reality, whatever devia-
tions the rest of the cinematic world might be
indulging in. Here Cavalcanti very properly
points out that both the newsreel and the interest
film, being forms of visual record and little else,
are unlikely to vary much in attitude and con-
tent, being affected only by improvements in
photographic apparatus and similar mechanical
developments. There is certainly little difference
between the rioting suffragettes of 1906 and the
panicky crowds milling around the killer of King
Alexander in 1934.

Two excerpts in this section have a special
visual impact. The first is a short sequence of
Chinese families burying their dead after the
execution of revolutionaries in 1909; this might
have been made yesterday. The second is an
extract from Ponting's famous film of Scott's
list expedition; which is, with Nanook, a re-
markable reminder of the superb photographic
quality which was obtainable with the old
orthochromatic film. Incidentally, the camera

which Ponting used on this expedition has been
in possession of the British documentary move-
ment since 1932 and as far as I know is still in

The Third Section is perhaps the most com-
plete and most memorable of the whole opus.
But I wonder if Cavalcanti is right in describing
Documentaries of Far-Off Lands by the epithet
"romantic"? It hardly fits Poirier's Eve Africaine.
and Allegret and Gide's Voyage au Congo, both
of which confirmed for me once again my feeling
that the French directors who took their cameras
overseas were often more voyeurs than voyageurs.
Nor, certainly, is the word "romantic" applicable
to Wavrin*s Pays du Scalp. This, like Bunuel's
Land without Bread (not represented in the film)
is a straight ethnological study ; and the sight of
natives eating live slugs, however well filmed
and however interesting, is hardly romantic.

Flaherty of course, is the big man of this
section, which is indeed completely over-
shadowed by the wonderful tattooing sequence
from Moana; but here again I would even prefer
to use the adjective "exotic" in its original
dictionary sense, to "romantic".

The terrific realism of the crossing of the river
in Grass is the other dominating factor in this
section. Grass, without doubt, is one of the great
realist classics, and worthy of constant revival
along with Nanook and Moana. And, talking of
early American films of fact what has become
of Chang, with its terrific picture of man's
eternal struggle with the jungle?

But it is Section Four, dealing as it does with
the sociological development of the film of fact
which has obviously given Cavalcanti the most
trouble and which is bound to be the most
controversial. For this is the point where the
historical merges with the contemporaneous, and
where, incidentally, Cavalcanti's pre-occupation
with aesthetics is at its most dangerous. Person-
ally I do not believe that any one man is in a
position to select extracts from the huge bulk of
production during the past ten sears. With
practically all the producers and directors of the
films still at work, a personal selection is bound
to be too arbitrary. Far better to have a selection
committee, however heated the discussions
which might result.

As it is, I think that Cavalcanti has missed
two things — firstly the real meaning of the
sociological approach which was preceded and
signalled by his own Rien Que les Hemes and
by Ruttman's Berlin and which under Grier-
son's inspiration and leadership has formed the
permanent basis of all documentary production
in this country for the past iweh e years. Secondly
—and this is very surprising from Cavalcanti —
he has, in dealing with the Grierson documentary,
almost ignored the dynamic use of sound a factor
to which he himself has made such a great con-
tribution. The various earlv experiments in sound
were important not merely from the aesthetic
point of view but because the> were designed to
strengthen and clarify the sociological angle.
Yet, barring an extract from Housing Problems
and another from Nig/it Mail, the uninitiated
might well get the impression that the realist
film had hardly left the stage of musical accom-
paniment.

One of the most important developments in

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

documentary has been the introduction of dial-
ogue sequences, using sometimes raw material,
sometimes actors, sometimes a mixture of both.
Yet, in the extract from North Sea, Cavalcanti
gives us a sequence which might just as easily
have been shot in the Drifters period as in 1938,
whereas the great wealth of dialogue material
in the film (e.g. the conference in the cabin)
obviously had an absolute claim for representa-
tion.

Similarly the historical importance of Rotha's
Contact is hardly great enough to justify its
inclusion if it is to mean the omission of the
same director's Shipyard, in which the sociolo-
gical approach and also the use of sound is far
more representative of both the aims and the
development of the realist movement in Britain.

Other selections in this sequence are more a
matter of personal choice. I myself think that
Cavalcanti has done less than justice to Rien Que
les Hemes, Turk-Sib, Drifters and The Spanish
Earth. But others may think otherwise.

There is one other omission, and that is the
analytic film dealing with mechanical or scienti-
fic processes or with their theory and practice— a
genre in which Britain has, in its documentary
movement, done pioneer work. No reference
at all is made to such films as Aero-Engine,
Transfer of Power or Airscrew.

As regards the Final Section, which is entitled
"Realism in the Story Film", 1 confess myself
entirely baffled. I agree in some respects with
Cavalcanti's contention that: "To-day the
theatrical film still holds a prominent place in the
cinema, but has undergone no fundamental
change since the days of The Assassination of the
Duke of Guise and The Lady of t/ie Cornelius.
Film technique has been developed mainly by
seeking to represent reality. Because the film-
maker's material is not make-up and scenery,
but photography and sound-recording, the best
work in the cinema has been done by those who
have remembered what the first inventors never
doubted, that the essence of cinematography lies
in its power to represent reality."

But I find it difficult to reconcile the structure
and choice of his last section with his thesis.

It begins beautifully with a magnificent se-
quence from Stiller's The Old Manor. Then
comes the river crossing from The Covered
Wagon (speaking personally once again, I would
have chosen, from the point of view of realism,
the Indian attack on the encampment — do you
remember the horse going over the cliff?) Then
— after a perfunctory morsel of Mix— we are
treated to three comparisons. The first is between
Eisenstein's mutiny sequence from Potemkin
and a stagey version of the same thing made in
France by Ferdinand Zecca in 1907. The second
depicts the clearing of the court room during the
Dreyfus investigation, as done by Dieterle in
Emile Zola (1937) and by George Melies
(c. 1900). The third contrasts a scene from Love
from a Stranger (Britain 1937) with Sarah
Bernhardt in The La.lv of the Cornelias (France
1912).

I am no doubt very dull in the head, but I do
not see how these contrasts add to the argu-
ment. Zecca's Potemkin is as wildly funny as you
might expect; Eisenstein's mutiny scenes are
still dramatic, dynamic, and the whole sequence
is still an absolute classic of cutting. But if,
as I take it the contrast needed is between
theatricalism and realism in the story film,
the argument surely can only be effective if two
nearly contemporary works are chosen. A big

sequence from a de Mille super would have been
a reasonable contrast.

The scene from Emile Zola is apparently
chosen not for its essential interest, but because
it matches the scene from the Melies' film. Zola
was a magnificent film, but this sequence, torn
from its context, means very little in terms of
realism or anything else.

Finally we have Love from a Stranger — a
sequence put in to show that films are still
sometimes no more than photographed stage
plays. Could we not have taken this for granted?
The sequence is merely boring and forms no
sort of contrast to the historically interesting
excerpt from the Bernhardt film, which might
well have been included in the first section.

The film is not yet over. To conclude it we are
given three extracts from story films, presum-
ably because they are notable for their realism.
Of the first two of these— Kameradschaft and
Le Grande Illusion — I do not think anyone could
complain. But why the troopship sequence from
Farewell Again? For myself at least it formed a
depressing, lamentable, and very bewildering
ending to 9,500 feet of impressive or stimulating
material of all sorts.

Film and Reality is too important a work to be
glibly dismissed with faint or frantic praise. And
whatever I may have said about it I am certain
that it does, despite the faults I have stated, form
a remarkable document which will be of great use
to students and to all others interested in the real-
istic approach to cinema. It would be interesting
to make a parallel job called Film and Reality
No. II, which would be devoted, not to aesthetic
considerations, but to a study of the sociological
approach combined with the new developments
in technique which arose from the desire of
realist film-makers (especially in Britain, due to
Grierson's genius) to find more vivid means of
expression. Himself a pioneer in this field, I am
certain that Cavalcanti would agree, and would,
this time, consult his contemporaries more freely
on the selection of the relevant material.

II. TODAY AND TOMORROW

Not the least valuable aspect of Film and Reality
lies in the fact that it is bound to stimulate many
of us to consider the present state of affairs in
the development of the realist film, and to look a
little way into the future.

Cavalcanti's survey very properly stops short
before September, 1939 . . . Since then we have
had two and a half years of war in which needs
as well as conditions of film-making have
changed very considerably. All available per-
sonnel has been pressed into the urgent needs of
wartime propaganda and wartime information.
Output has increased enormously.

When the war began documentary was no
longer in its experimental stage. Realist traditions
had by then been firmly established, and the
results of the experiments of the previous ten
years had been crystallised into several different
styles. Nevertheless that static stage, which in
any movement is the prelude to complete ne-
crosis, had in no sense been reached. On the
contrary, in the years immediately preceding
World War II the realist movement was begin-
ning to concern itself firstly with larger and
broader treatments of subject matter, and
secondly with an increased use of dramatic
incident and dialogue (cf. The Londoners and
North Sea, to give but two examples).

In some senses the gulf between the docu-
mentary and the realistic film story was narrow-
ing. Not only had the British realist movement

begun to influence film-makers in other coun-
tries (most notably the U.S.A., where a vigorous
documentary movement was by now established)
but also there was, in the studio world, a re-
crudescence of that realistic approach which had
flared up all over the world in the mid-twenties
but which had been thoroughly smothered by
the coming of sound.

The realist workers in those days were in-
creasingly occupied with internationalism. It
wasn't mere chance which found Cavalcanti
in Switzerland shooting the material for We
Live in Two Worlds, or which found Grierson
and myself, in the same country, discussing with
the International Labour Office plans for world
production, distribution, and international ex-
change of all films of sociological content.

By 1939 the realist movement was all set for a
series of major developments.

Where do we stand now?

I am not one of those who believe that war
essentially stifles all creative impulse, although
I am certain that it limits it. To this it is, I think,
correct to add the rider that discipline is good
for the creative worker, provided the discipline
comes from the right quarters and with the right
motives. The motive for making wartime docu-
mentaries will be regarded by no one as other
than sensible. Indeed, the most striking thing
about the last two years of realist film making
has been that— if only for lack of any official
lead — the documentary workers have evolved
their own discipline and done all they can to
impose it on themselves. There has, in other
words, been no diminution of the basic docu-
mentary thesis: "We are propagandists first and
film makers second."

Literally hundreds of films have been made
during the past two years, and it is perhaps only
too easy to forget that their widespread distribu-
tion, both in the cinemas and non-theat;icall>.
has given the documentary film an audience
coverage infinitely larger than anything it had
attained in peacetime.

The urgencies of the moment make for sim-
plicity of construction and treatment. Only in a
few major efforts (e.g. Target for Tonight) is it
possible to elaborate the script and involve
oneself in the complications of a large number of
interrelated incidents.

1 would sum up the existing situation first by
claiming that documentary has no cause to be
ashamed of its wartime record. Its workers.
often under extraordinarily difficult circum-
stances, have fully carried out the jobs that
needed doing. But secondly, I feel that this is no
time for complacency. I think all of us feel that
much of our production is not up to that level of
achievement which we have always set ourselves.

Is it enough to satisfy the demands of official
sponsors, however well we do it? It is surely our
job, as pioneers (and such we have always been) to
be a step ahead of the rest.

Now, and for the remainder of the war, the
keyword is "Urgency". Today the realist film
needs to achieve greater punch. It must be active.
It must without fail and without pause devote
itself to the urgencies of the moment with the
same dynamic emphasis which marked the revo-
lutionary period of the Soviet film. The social
experience of documentary is ideally suited to this
propaganda task, which is, firstly to impel
immediate and all-out action in the direct crisis
of war, and secondly, to pave the way for the
post-war drive : both these aims being completely
interwoven.

(Continued next page)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

(Continued from page 41)

I believe absolutely that the revolutionary
technique is now the only technique. Whether
you like it or not, we are undergoing a world social
revolution here and now, and it is a revolution
which must continue after the war, and continue
with increasing strength. Eor that is the only
thing the people of Britain are fighting for.

It is today the job of documentary to inte-
grate the immediate war-effort with the facts
and implications o\ radical social and economic
changes which are part and parcel of it.

Only from this standpoint can we get into our
films the dynamic impulse which will strengthen
their propaganda v alue to this nation and its allies.

The realist tradition is rich in the abilities
for the job. The whole trend of the 'thirties was
towards this dynamic concept (wc said we were
trying to make Peace as exciting as War), and
the films which were made tended more and more
to sacrifice purely aesthetic considerations to the
need for pungent comment and the imaginative
presentation of facts and problems.

Today the intensification of effort which is so
urgently needed depends on an equal intensi-
fication of morale-propaganda; and if we don't
pull our punches any longer wc have a vital
contribution to make.

I believe that the future of the realist film (if
one can spare a moment to look ahead in such
parochial terms) lies in the attitude and action
which 1 have outlined. Our films must be the
shock troops of propaganda. It is no longer policy
to compromise with timidity — either among our-
selves or in others. The documentary movement is
part of a continuous process and a continuous pro-
gress towards a new deal in life for the peoples of
the world. And the only slogan worth having today
is "Speed it up!"

SIGHT

and

SOUND

SPRING NUMBER

COM KHUTORS:

JYMPSON HARMAN

(Evening Sews)

GEORGE H. ELVfN

( t.C.T.)
F. L. THOMAS

(20th Century)

HECTOR McCULLIE

(Exhibitor)

Price oil.

Published l»v:i lie iJritish I'ilm Institute.
4 Great Russell Street, London, W.C.I.

SHORT FILM BOOKINGS
FOR MARCH— APRIL

The following bookings for March and April are selected from a list co\eriwi
supplied by the Sews and Specialised Theatres Association

ie News Theatre,

Bristol

Day at the Soviet Front

The News Theatre. Nottingham

lheatr

e, Newcastle-or

Goon Tin

the New
I he latk
Ihe New
the talk
The latk

e For a

1 heall

1 heal

ll„. M

Iheat
r I heal

Dime

■. Birmingham
e, Uirmingh in
e, Leeds
e, Leeds
e. Manchester

A Gentleman's Gentleman
The Tatler Theatre. Chester

At the Stroke of Twelve

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
The News Theatre. Leeds

Baggage Buster

The Tatler theatre, Manchester

Barging Along

The News Theatre, Leeds

Beautiful Outlaw

The News Theatre. Bristol

C'omedv Kid

The News Theatre, Birmingham

Canine Caddv

The Tatler Theatre, Leeds
The News Theatre. Leeds
World's News theatre, W.2

Canine Sketches

rhe

s I Ilea

;, Newcastle-

( apital ( n-. Washing. ..

The News Theatre. Manchester
< ai ihhe.in Sentinel

The News Theatre, Leeds
Cavalcade ol San Francisco

The News Theatre, Bristol
I he I alio I healre. Maikhestci

The News Theatre, Leeds
( .in,,,, ,:i Heritage

The Tatler News Theatre, I iverpool

Ihe News theatre. Newcatsle-on-Tyn<

Delhi

n-Tyne

s Theatre, Newcastle-i
;r Theatre. Chester

April 12th

March 29th

April 5th

April 5th
March 22nd

March 22nd
April 12th

' " I he

ler Theatre. Chester
News Keel I healre

rhe Tatler 1 i

I emtigrad Gatcwav I" Soviet Kns

The Taller I healre. Chester
Man the Knigma

I !,, i ,,;.■■ II. , . ( hester
March of Time— Battlefields of the Pacific

The World's News Theatre, W.2
March of Time— Main Street U.S.A.

The News Theatre. Nottingham
March of Time 7th Year, No. 9

Victoria Station News Theatre. S.W.I

The News Theatre. Newcastle-on-Tyne
March of Time 7th Year. No. 10

Waterloo Station News Theatre, S.E.
March of Time 7th Year. No. 9

March 22nd
April 5th

\pnl 12th
March 22nd

March 26th
22nd

22nd
22nd
22nd

April 5th
March 22nd

The Tatler Theatre. Manchester

April 5th

Meet the Mars. No. 5

The News Theatre. Leeds

March 22nd

The Tatler News Keel 1 healre. Newcastle-

April 5th

Meet the Stars. No. 6

The News Theatre, Leeds

12th

The Tatler News Reel Theatre, Newcastle-

5th

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester

March 22nd

Waterloo Station News Theatre, S.E.

26th

Northern Neighbours

The Tatler Theatre, Birmingham

Old Natchez of Mississippi

The News Theatre. Nottingham

29th

Old New Mexico

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne

22nd

The News Theatre. Bristol

April 12th

The News Theatre. Leeds

Old New Orleans

The Tatler Theatre. Birmingham
The Tatler News Theatre, Liverpool
The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne

Plane Sailing

i 29th
30th

The N

Plea

s Thea

The News Theatre, Leeds
Queen Cotton

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
Raising Sailors

The News Theatre, Nottingham
Russian Salad

The Tatler Theatre. Manchester
S,, Von think \"M Know V our Musi

The News Theatre, Leeds
Stage Fright

The Tatler Theatre

The Tatler News Reel Theatre

Stranger t

n I ictioi

The News Theatre. Nottinghai

Tee Up

The News Theatre
I he < arpenters

s Theatre, S.W.I

The Gun

s Thea

e, Liverpool

ie Tatler Theatre. Chester
Ihe Happiest Man on I arlh

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
The Hockcv Champ

The Tatler New. Thcaio
Training Police Horses

I he. tire. Manchester
The News I healre. Nottingham
Two Little Orphans

I he News | heatre, Nottingham
Tj neside

V Ktoiia Si m. mi News I healre. S VV I
. ,o. mi News I heatre, S I 1
Ihe News I heatre. New visile-. Ml- I v lie
Willie ami the Mouse

the News Theatre. I eeds
I he la'.ler I he. me. Manchester
Waier Babies

The News Theatre. Nottingham

Mar

April 5th
March 29th

March 22nd
29th

March 26th
22nd

April 12th
March 29th

April 12th
12th

March 22nd

April 5th

March 22nd

n Isles

The News Theatre. Bin

me. Nottinghan
World Garden

Ihe News 1 healre, Birminghar

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

FILM SOCIETY NEWS

NINTH SCOTTISH
AMATEUR FILM FESTIVAL

The Scottish Amateur Film Festival has been
held annually since 1934. This year the Scottish
Film Council is holding a competition to decide
the best amateur films produced in Britain dur-
ing the past eight years.

The outstanding prizewinning films entered in
the Festival from 1934-1941 were screened at a
public showing in the Cosmo Cinema, Glasgow,
on Sunday, March 8th. There were two sessions,
one at 3 p.m. for non-fiction films and one at
7 p.m. for fiction films.

The adjudication at previous festivals has been
done by well-known film directors like Victor
Saville. Anthony Asquith, John Grierson, Caval-
canti and Alfred Hitchcock. On this occasion,
however, the public adjudicated. Ballot slips were
issued to the audience and the results were an-
nounced at the conclusion of each session. The
Festival was run this year in aid of the Navy
League War Comforts Fund.

The Cambridge University Film Society reports :
'"The Society's present season came to an end
with the discussion between Paul Rotha and
Karl Meyer held on February 22nd, in connec-
tion with a showing of The Last Laugh, excerpts
from Caligari and two recent M.O.I, document-
aries— Our School and The Baltic of the Books.
At earlier shows during the Lent term were
shown The Rich Bride, together with Den Hang.
the six-year-old Dutch avant-garde film, and a
couple of British abstracts in colour — Len Lye's
Colour Box and Norman McLaren's Love on the
Wing. On February 1st the Society presented
Jean Vigo's second feature-length film L' Andante
(Zero de Conduite was shown last year) and The
River. Basil Wright gave a stimulating talk on
"Films and Propaganda" on February 8th.
During the season programme notes have been
contributed by, among others. Basil Wright,
Paul Rotha, Richard Massingham, Michael
Powell and Forsyth Hardy, and the Society has
been privileged to entertain several of those
whose films have been shown. It is not proposed
to run formal shows during the summer months,
but it is hoped to open a fresh season next
autumn.

Unfortunately Cavalcanti's Tilm and Reality,
booked for the last show ing of the season, did not
arrive. The Regional Officer of the Ministry of
Information stepped into the breach, however,
and supplied a representative programme of
shorts lasting for two hours. This included Men
of the Lightship, living with Strangers, Incident in
Moscow Telegraph Office, and Grierson's Battle
for Oil.

Manchester and District Film Institute Society
and Manchester and Salford Film Society reports :
"In the final session of their first joint hmmhi
1941^42. the Societies have already presented two
standard and two substandard shows. The Janu-
ary show at the Rivoli Cinema had almost en-
tirely a Soviet programme: lie front Kronsit.dt
proved an admirable revival in these times, and
the shorts included Dagestan. Incident in a Mos-
cow Telegraph Office and Russian Scenes and
Songs. Trauberg and Kozintev's New Babylon
and the American Willard Van Dyck's Valley

Town were the main items in a substandard show
at the Y.M.C.A. on January 17th. For February
the standard films have included Soviet frontiers
on the Danube and Joueurs D' Tehees, while o.i
substandard we have presented China Tights for
Freedom and Protazanov's Moscow Art Theatre
satire. Marionettes. We hope to make the March
standard show something of an occasion with a
premiere of Cavalcanti's new survev vf realism.
Tilm and Reality, and a v isit from the Curator of
the National Film Library."

The Tyneside Film Society:

The Chairman hopes to revive the activities of
the Society next autumn. There is reason to think
that the drop in the number of subscriptions this
spring was due more to the public not realising
the absolute necessity of their guaranteeing sup-
port in advance, rather than to lack of interest in
the Society.

The Secretary of the Edinburgh Film Guild

reports :

"Our recent American programme was voted a
great success. The M.G.M. films, The Old South
and Forgotten Victory, are first-rate document-
aries—both by the same director, Fred Zinne-
mann — and can confidently be recommended to
Film Societies. The Pacific showing was a prem-
iere,— it has, as you may know, just been com-
pleted for the British Council. A Man to Remem-
ber had not been shown widely in Edinburgh
when first released, and was new to most people.
It was very well received. Harry Watt, who was
present, spoke during the interval and paid a
tribute to the support Film Societies were giving
to the documentary movement. For the next two
performances we are showing Claudine, with
Rotha's All Those in Favour; and Shots. We are
also arranging a special performance of prize-
winning amateur films."

The Manchester and Salford Film Society reports
that Film and Reality (35 mm.) was shown at the
Rivoli on Sunday, March 22nd, in place of
Rois dit Sport; the shorts included Guests of
Honour, and Line to the Tschicrva Hut (all
Cavalcanti films). A questionnaire is to be issued
to members of both societies, for indications of
their opinion regarding films shown during the
season, preferences of features for next season,
and general comments and suggestions, for the
guidance of the committee. In spite of many
difficulties, a very successful season of nine
35 mm. and eight 16 mm. film displays have been
held jointly with the Manchester Film Institute
Society.

During March the Devon and Exeter Film
Society presented two programmes. In the first
the feature was Michael Powell's Edge of the
World; in the second Guitry's Us Etaienl Neuf
Celibataires was shown. Documentary films are
shown in all programmes of this Society, in
addition to examples of early comedies.

The Sixth Repertory Show of the Belfast Film
Institute Society took place on March 21st. The
main film was Pagnol's La lemmedu Boulanger.

Dundee and St. Andrews is still busy beating
its own and everybody else's records for member-
ship. It now numbers 950 and the cinema is filled
to the brim for all shows. Recent programmes

included Malaria (Shell Film Unit). Naples au
liaiser tlu Feu. and a revival of Disney's Ferdinand
the Bull.

The Belfast Film Institute Society reports : " Three
shows have been held so far this year in addition
to the three given in the autumn. At the end of
I ebruary the sixth show of the season had Gens
da I ovage as main film with Children's Story and
Sing a Song of Sixpence. The seventh show had
as its feature La Fenune tlu Boulanger. a very
popular attraction. Although our normal seasons
in peace-time were of six shows only there is a
possibility that two or three extra shows may be
put on as a late-spring season. Publication of our
Monthly Review will probably continue until
June. We hope by that dale to begin planning a
season for next winter "

CORRESPONDENCE

sir: As the reviewer of Three in a Shell-Hole, a
word about Ivor Montagu's word about the re-
view. The function of a reviewer iscertainly not to
act as a Gallup-pol! on audience reaction (a
typical plea so often put forward by interested
executives in the film trade); otherwise Ivor
Montagu would find us writing enthusiastic
praise of such anti-Soviet stinkers as Ninoichka
or Comrade X. Anyone who regularly attends
popular cinemas knows all about art-object
audience relation without the necessity of in-
quiries from friends; and anybody could have
told Ivor Montagu that Three in a Shell-Hole
would go down like hot cakes with the audience,
not because it was good, but because it was Rus-
sian. What I object to is the attempt to use the
strong bond of friendship between the British and
Russian peoples as an argument when discussing
a film and its technique. There are too many
people about ready to cash in on this cast-iron
popularity of Russia and it is difficult for lis to
be happy about a film that is popular in spite of
lousy technique. We have already had the dis-
turbing spectacle of Lord Kemsley trying to sell
Our Russian Allies and Lord Beaverbrook trying
to sell Stalin to the British people. The intellec-
tuals may still need a bit of sales talk ; but there
is no necessity to sell the U.S.S.R. to the people
that stopped the "Jolly George" from sailing.

That much said, it is still important that Rus-
sian films shown over here should be well made
and have a good line, though I admit even bad
ones are better than none at all. The point at
issue is, was the dubbing successful, not was t he-
film popular? Three in a Shell-hole was bound to
be successful, however bad; with true socialist-
realism in technique both in idea and production
and in its treatment over here it would have been
ten times more so. I know it is said that foreign
films must have dubbing of some sort for large-
scale distribution here. 1 still maintain that the
dubbing on Three in a Shell-Hole was stilted and
middle-class; and I invite Ivor Montagu to make
a trial, in future, of sub-titles or sotto voce English
interjections if that is the best he can do with lip-
synching. Ivor Montagu and I both want as
many good Russian films as possible shown over
here: if any film is not particularly calculated to
help and is also lousy technically. I shall cer-
tainly, in a small-circulation film paper, continue

Yours, etc..

I R VNK SAINSBI KY

( lunch Street,
Shoreham. Kent.

[continued on page 44 1

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

No. 3

THE DOG
AND THE
SPARROW

ho look no care of him. 1ml often lei him suffer the greatest
longer: so lie look In his heels. On the mail he met a sparrow*
sad, m> friend?" "Because." saiil the dog. "I am very, very

A Shepherd's dog had a mi

hunger. At last lie could beal

that said to him, "W by are

hungry, and have nothing to eat." So on they went together into Ihe town: and as this pa— ed
by a butcher's shop, the sparrow perched upon the shelf, and pecked and scratched at a steak
that lay upon the edge of the shell, till at last down it fell. Then the dog snapped it up and
scrambled a\va\ with it into a comer, where he soon ate it all up. So then they both went out upon
the high road, but as the weather was warm, they had not gone far before the dog said. "I am
scry much tired. 1 should like In take a nap." ""Very well." answered Ihe sparrow, ""do so. and in
the meantime I will perch upon that bush." So the dog stretched himself out on I he road and
fell fast asleep.

Whilst he si, -pi there came by a carter with a carl drawn h\ three horses, and loaded with
two casks of wine. The sparrow seeing that the carter did not turn out of the way, mi as to
drive o\cr the dog. called out. "Slop! slop! Mr. Carter, or it shall be the worse for you." But the
carter cracked his whip, and drove his cart over the poor dog. so that the wheels crushed him
to death. "There." cried the sparrow, "thou cruel villain, thou hasl killed my friend the dog.
This deed of thine shall cost thee all thou art worth." "Do your worst and welcome." said the
brute: ""what harm can you do me?"' and passed on. But the sparrow crept under the till of the
carl and pecked at the bungs of the casks till she loosened them, and then all the wine ran out.
At last Ihe carter looked round and s;,u that the cart was dripping and the casks quite empty.
"What an unlucky wretch I am! ' cried he. "JNot wretch enough yet!" said the sparrow, as she
alighted upon the head of one of the horses, and pecked at him (ill he reared up and kicked-
When the carter saw this, he drew out his hatchet and aimed a blow at the sparrow; but she
Hew away, and ihe blow fell upon the poor horse's head with such force that he fell down dead.

"I nlucky wretch that I am!" cried he. ""Not wretch enough yet!" said the sparrow, and she
had soon perched on the second and third horses, so that in his fury he had killed them too.

"Mas! miserable wretch thai I am!" cried he. "'Not wretch enough yet!" answered the sparrow
as she flew away: "".Now I will plague and punish thee at thy own house."

The carter was forced at last to lca\ e his earl behind him. and to go home o\ crllow ing with
rage and vexation. "Mas! husband." cried bis wife. "\ wicked bird has conic into the house
and brought with her all the birds in the world, I am sure, and they have fallen upon our ccrn
in the loft, and arc eating it up at such a rate!" "Unlucky wretch that I am!" cried the earti r.
for he saw thai the corn was almost all gone. "Not wretch enough \ el!" said I he sparrow |..i . [ie,l
on the window-scat: "lliy i\erti shall cost thee thy life yet!" Then he became mad and blind
with rage and si ruck the window -scat with such force that be cleft it in two and as I he sparrow
Hew from place In place, Ihe caller and his wife were so furious, thai they broke all their
furniture, glasses, chairs, benches, the table and at last Ihe walls, without lunching ihe bird at
all. In Ihe end. however, they caught her; but the sparrow began In flutter about and cried.
"Carter! it shall cost thee th\ hie vel! Willi that be could wait no longer: so be gave his wife
the hatchet, and cried. "Wile, strike at ihe bird and kill her in mv hand." Then the wile struck:
but as women will, she missed her aim. and hit her husband on the head so that he fell down
dead, and the sparrow Hew ipiiellv home In her ne-t.

REALIST FILM UNIT

17 OXFORD ST R I. ET, W. 1
Telephone: GERRARD l').r,8-9

CORRESPONDENCE

(continued from page 43)
sir: Is this a private argument? Or can anyone
join in? If the latter then I should like to give Mr.
Montague a note of the reaction of a cinema
audience of slightly over 700 to Three in a Shell
Hole.

(a) There was a general titter immediately the
"dubbed" nurse spoke. Some members even
laughed outright;

(/>) The film gripped;

(c) There was applause when the film ended.

That reaction seems to agree both with the
Documentary News Letter reviewer and with
Mr. Montague. But does it? I believe that this
film gripped its audiences for two reasons — the
concentration of its pictorial setting and the
intensity of its dramatic content. Three in a
Shell-Hole succeeded despite the dubbing. As for
the applause when the film ended, I think this
was a tribute to the cameraman coupled with a
sense of relief that justice is not always wrapped
up in kid.

For a short film like Three in a Shell-Hole the
producers should have followed Mr. Doan's
advice and let the picture tell the story. If,
however, it was felt that lip-movement must be
reproduced, surely it should have followed that
this would be in the language of the people
concerned. When the audience tittered it showed
its disapproval of the producers' conception of
the "eckcint" which would be used by Russian
women in the heat of battle.

Yours faithfully,

ARTHUR J. NELSON

6 Hilary Crescent,

dear sir, — As an engineer and shop steward. 1
was particularly interested in the M.O.I, article
in the February issue of D.N.L. on "Film Shows
in Factories"; all the more so because at the
large factory where I am employed, we recently
had our first M.O.I, film display. At the per-
formance in question, the films presented were
Paramount News Review, which was very well re-
ceived, and From the Four Corners, which re-
ceived general adverse criticism, and was with-
drawn from subsequent shows to other groups of
employees, being replaced with Sinews of War,
which deals with armament manufacture.

One realises the limited suitable material avail-
able for shows o\' this kind during ifs pioneering
stages the successful development of which will
he in some sense retarded, if insufficient consider-
ation of factory psychology is undertaken.

Archaic propaganda of ihe "Old School Tie"
brand cuts no ice in the workshop, and it is a
waste of tunc and material to try and put it over.
Films of engineering processes arc a valuable
contribution in their proper lime and place, but
are not ideal dinner-time subjects to the o\er-
worked engineer, whose morale requires encour-
agement and enthusiasm in other directions. It
would he more in keeping with the workers point
of view lo couple a British "action documentary"
with one of the many new Soviet shorts which
arc now available, but so difficult to have an
opportunity to see.

Perhaps the recent Government changes will
hear fruit in a revised policy at the M.O.I, and
give our outstanding documentary technicians a
broader and more progressive choice in the
subject matter.

Yours, etc.,
Manchester 19. R. CORDWELL.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION FILMS

By VICTOR SELIGMAN

Hereunder we publish an interesting and controversial point of view from the exhibitor's side

AS A renter of documentary shorts, for some
considerable time prior to the outbreak of the

r, I have been in a position to study the
exhibitor's reaction to this type of short film and
although I now handle features as well as shorts,
I have never lost the interest I first felt for what is
undoubtedly the most progressive branch of the
film industry. My present territory is almost en-
tirely devoted to single-feature programmes,
which lend themselves admirably to the exploita-
tion and exhibition of M.O.I, shorts, but owing
to the initial bad handling of these subjects, the
public has very little opportunity of judging them
on their own merits.

Before the M.O.I, took over the distribution of
documentaries, the few that were available were
frequently handicapped by shortage of funds, and
the strong sales resistance of the average ex-
hibitor who was unable to appreciate the
entertainment value of these pioneer produc-
tions. Nevertheless some admirable pictures
were turned out by a band of enthusiasts
and eventually a market was created for them by
interesting enterprising exhibitors in the new art
of the documentary, who were gratified to find
that the audience responded fa\ numbly when this
type of short was included in the programme,
even going so far as to congratulate the manage-
ment on the change from the average commercial
American short. In addition to documentaries in-
dependently produced there were the sponsored
shorts, which with strong financial backing could
be more lavishly produced, and were, as a rule,
useful subjects for any programme.

When the war started and the M.O.I, embodied
film distribution in their programme, I, for one,
felt the golden opportunity had at last arrived for
documentary technicians and directors, and these
films handled and sold with the M.O.I, backing,
would be given the utmost Ministerial support,
be widely shown, and eventually sought for and
welcomed by the average film-goer, whose taste
requires educating to appreciate what is actually
the finer side of the film industry. It seems in-
credible that the Ministry could have so mis-
handled the whole question of documentaries,
but from the time they were taken under the wing
of the M.O.I, these pictures have fallen steadily
into disrepute. First of all, the small company of
the original makers of these films, who can be re-
lied upon to turn out a worth-while subject, have
been joined by many more technicians and direc-
tors, some of them quite incapable of making
even an average picture. The exhibitor is re-
quested, as a favour, to include one of the shorts
in his programme, and frequently they are shown
at any time when they will least interfere with the
programme proper. The M.O.I. not only allow
British quota on these films but supply them free
of charge. Surely this very prosperous industry
should not be allowed to show a 5-minute film
which ranks as British quota, as their only con-
tribution to the war effort.

The quota value of M.O.I, films enables the
Exhibitor to book a number of American shorts
to make up his programme, and sometimes the
length of these shorts leaves very little room for
even a 5-minute M.O.I, film, with the result in
some cinemas, where I have attended the per-

formance, the Ministry film is shown in the in-
terval between houses whilst the audience is com-
ing in for the performance, before the show be-
gins, and whilst the lights are up.

As a result of the cheaply and badly made
M.O.I, films, even in those cinemas where the
presentation is properly done, that section of the
public who occupy the cheaper seats give vent to
an audible groan when M.O.I, appears on the
credit titles.

No criticism as set out above should be en-
tirely destructive, and I, therefore, make the fol-
lowing suggestions —

1 . The Exhibitor should pay a reasonable price
to the Ministry for his M.O.I, films. This would
ensure a proper place in the programme, as un-
fortunately nothing given free of charge is really
appreciated.

2. A well-known North Country exhibitor speak-
ing to me recently about the reaction of the public
to a M.O.I, film, suggested that the best method
of getting over the disrepute into which M.O.I,
films had fallen, would be to show credit titles,
giving names of director, cameramen, etc., with-
out mention of the M.O.I, which could be re-
served for the closing title. This is elementary
psychology.

3. The films supplied should not count as quota

war).

4. films should be issued once a fortnight in-
stead of once a week, as in towns where the change
of programme is invariably twice-weekly, and
where every cinema in the town is showing the
same M.O.I, short, the exhibitor keeps the film
on his shelf for the latter half of the week.

5. In order to show appreciation to the exhibitor
screening and paying for M.O.I, films, a plaque
should be issued to him, something on the lines of
the one supplied by Western Electric, and could
read something like this, "This Cinema is render-
ing National Service by showing M.O.I, short
films."

6. Only directors who are capable of turning out
a satisfactory film should be allowed to handle
M.O.I, productions.

1 feel sure that if these suggestions were given
consideration and where possible, acted upon,
the whole outlook towards M.O.I, films would be
considerably altered, and the revenue accruing
to the Ministry would help to put their films
on a paying basis, and furthermore any message
which the M.O.I, wish to get over to the public
would stand more chance of impressing the
audience seeing the film.

SUMMONS TO ARTISTS

Reprinted by permission of "Soviet War Neivs Weekly"

"pravda" writes: —

"It is not only factories, workshops and col-
lective farms that are to-day helping the Red
Army to smash the enemy. We know what a
tremendous part is also played in our defence
by the political education of the masses. Day by
day our press, our literature, songs, music,
theatres, paintings, posters and films are helping
our people to organise their forces for the war.
That is why we are justified in making high
demands of all forms of Soviet art.

"Co-ordinated action by all arms was of
decisive significance in the battles for Moscow,
Leningrad, Sevastopol, Rostov and hundreds of
other towns and villages. Our strength resides
in this co-ordinated activity by all sections of the
Red Army. But art, too, is a weapon which must
to-day be applied completely to the service of
the Red Army.

"Twenty-four years of Soviet power have
shown the part played by artists in the most
difficult periods of the life of our people. Not
long ago the entire country followed with great
emotion the filmed speech made by Stalin at the
meeting of the Moscow Soviet on November 6th.
and his speech at the Red Army parade on
November 7th. Millions of people lived through
an unforgettable experience. The impression
left by the film was tremendous. Another docu-
mentary film is now coming to the screen —
The Defeat of the German /'roups he/ore Moscow.

This film shows with exceptional force the men
and commanders of the Red Army and their
unshakable confidence in the victory of our
cause.

"Let our playwrights, too, use all their genius
so that our actors from the theatre stage may
inspire the people with burning patriotic images,
with sharp satire against the enemy, with songs
and music. Our playwrights are indebted to the
people. They have not done sufficient to enable
our theatre, which possesses such glorious tra-
ditions, to march in step with the Red Army.

"Many but far from all our poets have found
words to present the image of these grim days
to our people. Let them write as Mayakovsky
dreamed, making the pen the bayonet's equal,
so that their words may lire men's hearts as
did the poems of Pushkin and Lermontov.

"Let playwrights and composers, poets,
writers and painters praise the heroic deeds of
the Red Army and the entire Soviet people.
Their creations in these days of war. in the
service of the Red Army, will hasten v ictory over
the enemy. Let them inspire the entire people
and our Red Army to further relentless struggle,
so that our warriors march to battle with songs
of joy, courage and terror to the enemy. Every
picture painted by the artist, every scene shot
in a film, every newspaper column written by
a novelist or poet must be a well-placed shot
against the enemy."

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

SCIENTIFIC

FILM

SOCIETIES

the formation of a branch of the Federation of
Ayrshire Scientific Film Societies in the north of
the county has succeeded in a solid if un-
spectacular manner. The Ardrossan Society is
organised and managed hy the Association of
Scientific Workers in conjunction with the
Council ol the Federation. Difficulties havearisen
in starting off the Society, although with five suc-
cessful shows to date the local committee feel
that the worst of the teething troubles are over.
There are 100 members of whom (despite travel-
ling inconveniences) 70-K0 have attended each
meeting. Their enthusiasm is encouraging so that
the outlook for next season is promising; and a
substantial membership increase may be antici-
pated. Members have shown commendable in-
terest in the films shown. The results of the ap-
praisals to date are a valuable indication of the
most popular type of film and a useful guide to
the building of future programmes. Mr. Stewart
Paterson is president and Mr. W. T. Cunningham
secretary of the Society.

The desirability of forming a Scientific Film
Society in Dalmellington (Ayrshire) was discussed
last October by senior officials of the local mining
company, the head masters and science staffs of
the schools, and representatives of the local
clergy and medical profession. From the outset
it was obvious that the success of the venture
would depend on the good-will of the popular
landlord of a local hostelry. Indeed the Society
would have been still-born but for the sound
projector, comfortable lounge and refreshments
placed at its disposal by Mr. Joe McCardle, of
the Eglinton Hotel, who also undertakes the
duties of projectionist. Since mid-November the
Society has held six meetings. Thirty-seven mem-
bers joined within the first fortnight of its
formation. As the accommodation in the hotel
lounge is limited the membership list had to be
closed. The Society is affiliated to the federation
of Ayrshire Scientific Film Societies, the Council
of which books most of the programmes as well
as undertaking some of the secretarial work. The
piccnt feeling is that, rather than expand, the
Society should continue, for the 1942-43 season at
least, in us present form with a restricted mem-
bership and comfortable meeting place. The
secretary is Dr. E. S. Lee.

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

(continued from page 37)
batics episode, provide modest excitement in a
film which is more remarkable lor observation
than for drama. Ferry Pilot is beautifully made
and remarkable for Pat Jackson's handling of a
small group of pilots around whom the action
rcvc.K i sand who are skilfully sketched in as very
human and pleasant people.
Propaganda Value. The film reminds us of the
complexity of jobs which make up the machinery
of modern warfare, li suggests also that friendly
people, with a sense ol humour and a deep love
of their craft, ni.iv be no less efficient than the
grim automata beloved of Nazi ideologists, a
reminder that, if he is given his head, the British
craftsman, whether he be an engineer or an air
pilot, is a good enough man to win the war.

STRAND FILMS

MAKERS OF DOCUMENTARY
FILMS SINCE 1934

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR - MANAGING DIRECTOR
ALEXANDER SHAW - DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION

5a UPPER ST. MARTIN'S LANE, W.C.2

MERTON PARK STUDIOS, 269 KINGSTON RD, S.W.19

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

DOCUMENTARY AND EDUCATION

there is no greater indictment of our genera!
educational system than that at this time when
initiative, competence and co-operation in every
branch of our national war effort is needed, there
is so much muddle, indecision, and failure to cope
with emergencies. The result of this lack of co-
ordination and of the desire to pass on the
responsibility for action to someone else means
that the most urgent things do not get done.
Whilst we delay and hesitate and ignore the les-
sons of our disasters, our national prestige de-
clines.

As long as the school curriculum continues to
make little provision for making people aware of
the obligations of citizenship, other methods
must be used to arouse this consciousness in the
general public. The press, the film and the radio

e the principal channels for conveying informa-
tion. They can influence public op nion and
rouse the interest of the greatest number of people
simultaneously. The responsibility of giving the
right sort of information rest in the hands of those
who control these three services. The greatest
moral integrity on the part of those who wield
such power is therefore essential.

The film is the only one of these services which
can make its appeal to a large gathering of people
who have come together individually and form a
temporary community whose reactions can be
observed. People go to the cinema to be enter-
tained and not for instruction; but if a docu-

ntary film presents a theme which is related
to a human experience with which they are in
sympathy or which they share, then the audience
appreciates it and it will have a direct influence
on their attitude of mind towards the problem
which has been presented.

In these days of upheaval, when homes are
broken up. and families separated, when a feeling
of uncertainty and frustration and boredom
makes decent people doubt their old ideals and
distorts their sense of values, a film like They Also
Serve restores the sanity of human kindliness and
neighbourly common sense. There is nothing
spectacular, nothing consciously heroic about
this story' of a woman who serves the needs of her
family, who rubs her husband's rheumatic back
when he comes home from work, who helps her
young neighbours, and who by her patience and
friendly example makes her rather selfish daugh-
ter feel quietly ashamed of herself. This film is
essentially human and free from the taint of senti-
mentality or a patronising attitude. It is for the
homes of such people, for the most fundamental
of human relationships, that we are fighting. All
the qualities which the mother in They Also Serve
shows are needed in the efficient running of this
war for the people.

It is possible through films of this nature to do
something which neither lecturing or preaching
can do. For instance if more films on evacua-
tion could have been treated in this way and
widely shown in reception areas and in those
towns from which women and children were
evacuated, the insurmountable psychological
problems might have been humanly solved
instead of being officially ignored. Living
with Strangers does, indeed, go some way to-
wards presenting the problem properly. There is
a need for these •"social" films which frankly pre-
sent themes which deal with those probf
which harass so many people; problems which
assume gigantic proportions until a sympathetic

(By EDITH MANVELL)

and understanding person restores a sense of
balance and wisely guides a worried community
to find its own solution to them.

In a society which regarded education as a
social service instead of as a means of instilling
a lot of miscellaneous facts and arbitrary rules of
conduct into the minds of more or less unwilling
victims, many of the difficulties which beset
adult life would never arise. But as it is. few
people have been encouraged to combine com-
petence with human understanding when taking
the initiative or making decisions. Only the anti-
social and selfish people seem capable of being
efficient : the rest of the community just drifts
along, waiting to be told what to do, making mis-
takes, and correcting them by bitter experience.
The right kind of education would avoid much
of this, or at least it could set things going along
the right lines.

Films can show us how sensible and com-
petent people get on with the most ordinary jobs
whether they are directly concerned with the war
effort or with the welfare of people who have
other responsibilities. How, for instance, does the
housewife combine home duties with work in a
factory? Some women can do it, others get in an
awful muddle and the home and the work suffer
in consequence.

I should like to see a film on infant welfare, not
as an instructional film made in an institution
run by a highly trained staff, but in the home of a
woman like the mother in They Also Serve — a
working class home such as many women have
to live in. Where conditions are bad, the criticism
implied might rouse the social consciousness of
those who see the film and make those who them-
selves live in such conditions aware that they have
a right to something better after this war is over.
Another film could treat the theme of the nursery
school from a new angle: that is, in its influence
on the home life of the child who attends such a
school. Do the children who go to these schools
live in two worlds? Are their minds confused by
having to change over twice a day from one
environment to another? Are they bewildered by
having to make a rapid mental readjustment
when they get home, where they may get a "box
on the ears" for doing something which at school
they are encouraged to do? Are the parents being
educated as well as the children, or do they send

them to school because they do not want the
trouble and responsibility of looking after them?
Though many institutions offer better conditions
than many homes, they can never supplant the
home, nor should they. It is for the people that
the fight goes on and against such things as bad
housing — bad cooking and housekeeping—
ignorance and low standards o\ living
against similar inefficiency and lack of responsi-
bility in national affairs that we are struggling.

Many films, simple, short and direct would be
better than a few long films which arc too com-
prehensive. Not only should they appear in
cinemas just once, but they should be available
for clubs, welfare centres and other institutions,
through the local library projection service as the
need arises.

Post-war reconstruction will not be just a
matter of rebuilding our devastated cities, nor
should it be left entirely to governing bodies to
carry out. Reconstruction will mean very little
if the greatest problems of modern civilisation —
the spiritual or psychological aspect of recon-
struction—is neglected.

This is one subject which is going to cause a
lot of trouble in the future, but whether it will
ever come in the province of documentary films
depends on its social application. That is, the
religious and moral education which is going to
be inflicted on people, especially school children,
in the future. Is it going to be left in the hands of
professional theologians to dictate on these mat-
ters, or are people going to ask that moral up-
bringing in the future must be based on the
development of a sense of social and individual
responsibility to the community, and the positive
idea of service as something which is worthwhile
because it contributes to the happiness of others?
What will meet with official approval in this mat-
ter may leave the public indifferent. The mass of
people will not be impressed by religious re-
vivals; they will continue to drift on in a rather
purposeless manner, gradually losing their sense
of values, unless some moral objective replaces
the unprogressive ideas of controversial theology
or the sentimentality of many of its disciples.
People to-day want to feel that there is a real pur-
pose in being alive, not just as individuals but as
the founders of a new kind of community where
vital issues are not entirely based on physical
needs. Can this unformed, this rather vague urge
to a new ideal be expressed through the medium
of film?

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942

FILM LIBRARIES

Borrowers of films are asked to apply as much in advance as possible, to give alternative

booking dates, and to return the films immediately after use. H. A hire charge is made.

F. Free distribution. Sd. Sound. St. Silent.

Association of Scientific Workers, 30 Bedford
Row, W.C.I. Scientific Film Committee. Graded
List of Films. A list of scientific films from many
sources, classified and graded for various types of
audience. On request, Committee will give ad-
vice on programme make-up and choice of films.
Austin Film Library. 24 films of motoring in-
terest, industrial, technical and travel. Available
only from the Educational Films Bureau, Tring,
Herts. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.
Australian Trade Publicity Film Library. 1 8 films
of Australian life and scenery. Available from
the Empire Film Library. 35 mm. & 16 mm.
Sd. & St. F. 3, sound films on 9.5 mm. available
from Pathescope.

British Commercial Gas Association, Gas Indus-
try House, 1 Grosvenor Place, S.W.I. Films on
social subjects, domestic science, manufacture of
gas. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & a few St. F.
British Council Film Department, 3 Hanover
Street, W.l Films of Britain, 1941. Catalogue
for overseas use only but provides useful synopses
for 100 sound and silent documentary films.
British Film Institute, 4 Great Russell Street,
London, W.C.I, (a) National Film Library Loan
Section to stimulate film appreciation by making
available copies of film classics. 35 mm., 16mm.
Sd. & St. H. (b) Collection of Educational
Films. TJie Institute has a small collection of
educational films not available from other
sources. 35 mm., 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.
British Instructional Films, 1 1 1 Wardour Street,
W.l. Feature films; Pathe Gazettes and Pathe-
tones; a good collection of nature films. A new
catalogue is in preparation. 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.
Canadian Pacific Film Library. 15 films of Cana-
dian life and scenery. Available from the Empire
Film Library. 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.
Canadian Government Exhibitions and Publicity.
A wide variety of films. Available from the
Empire Film Library.

Central Council for Health Education. Catalogue
of some 250 films, mostly of a specialist health
nature, dealing with Diphtheria, I lousing,
Maternity, Child Welfare, Personal Hygiene,
Prevention of Diseases, Physical Fitness, etc.
Most films produced by societies affiliated to
the Council, or on loan from other 16 mm.
distributors (e.g. B.C.G.A.). Six films produced
direct for the Council also available, including
Fear mid Peter Brown, Curry on Children, and
Breath of Danger.

35 nun. and 16 mm. Sd. and St. II. and F.
Central Film Library, Imperial Institute, S.W.7.
Has absorbed the Empire Film Library and the
G.P.O. Film Library. Also contains all new
M.O.I, non-theatrical films. No general catalogue
yet issued. A hand list of M.O.I, films is available.
35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Coal Utilisation Joint Council, General Buildings.
Aldwych, London, W.C.2. Films on production
of British coal and miners' welfare. 35 mm. &
16 mm. Sd. F.

Crookes' Laboratories, Gorst Road, Park
Royal, N.W.10. Colloids in Medicine. 35 mm. &
16 mm. Sd.F.

Dartington Hall Film Unit, Totnes, South
Devon. Classroom films on regional and eco-
nomic geography. 16 mm. St. H.
Dominion of New Zealand Film Library. 415
Strand, W.C.2. 22 films of industry, scenery and
sport. Includes several films about the Maoris.
16 mm. St. F.

Educational Films Bureau, Tring, Herts. A selec-
tion of all types of film. 35 mm. & 16 mm.
Sd. & St. F.

Educational General Services, 37 Golden Square,
W.l. A wide selection of films, particularly of
overseas interest. Some prints for sale. 16 mm. &
St. H.

Electrical Development Association, 2 Savoy Hill,
Strand, W.C.2. Four films of electrical interest.
Further films of direct advertising appeal are
available to members of the Association only.
16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Empire Film Library. Films primarily of Empire
interest, with a useful subject index. Now merged
with the Central Film Library. 16 mm. and a few
35 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Film Centre, 34 Soho Square, W.l. Mouvements
Vibratoires. A film on simple harmonic motion.
French captions. 35 mm. & 16 mm. St. H.

Ford Film Library, Dagenham, Essex. Some
50 films of travel, engineering, scientific and
comedy interest. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.
Gaumont-British Equipments, Film House, War-
dour Street, W.l. Many films on scientific sub-
jects, geography, hygiene, history, language,
natural history, sport. Also feature films. 35 mm.
& 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

G.P.O. Film Library. Over 100 films, mostly
centred round communications. Now merged
with the Central Film Library. 35 mm., 16mm.
Sd. & Si. I .

Kodak, Ltd., Kingsway, W.C.2. (a) Kodascope
Library. Instructional, documentary, feature,
western, comedy. Strong on early American
comedies. 16 mm. & 8 mm. St. H. (A separate
List of Educational Films, extracted from the
above, is also published. A number of films have
teaching notes.) (b) Medical Film Library. Circu-
lation restricted to members of medical profes-
sion. Some colour films. Some prints for outright
sale. 16 mm. St. H.

March of Time, Dean House, 4 Dean Street,
W.l. Selected March of Time items, including
Soldier-, with WinSs, Britain' s R.A.F., Dutch East
Indies. 16 mm. Sd. H.

Mathematical Films. Available from B. G. D.
Salt, 5 Carlingford Road, Hampstead, N.W.3.
Five mathematical films suitable for senior
classes. 16 mm. & 9.5 mm. St. H.

Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co., Ltd., Traf-
ford Park, Manchester 17. Planned Electrifica-
tion, a film on the electrification of the winding
and surface gear in a coal mine. Available for
showing to technical and educational groups.
16 mm. Sd. F.

Pathescope, North Circular Road, Cricklewood,
N.W.2. Wide selection of silent films, including
cartoons, comedies, drama, documentary, travel,
sport. Also good selection of early American
and German films. 9.5 mm. Sd. & St. H.
Petroleum Films Bureau, 15 Hay Hill, Berkeley
Square, W. 1 . Some 25 technical and documentary
films. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Religious Film Library, Church Walk, Duns-
table, Beds. Films of religious and temperance
appeal. Also list of supporting films from other
sources. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Scottish Central Film Library, 2 Newton Place,
Charing Cross, Glasgow, C.3. A wide selection
of teaching films from many sources. Contains
some silent Scots films not listed elsewhere.
Library available to groups in Scotland only.
16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Sound-Film Services, 27 Charles Street, Cardiff.
Library of selected films including Massingham's
And So to Work. Rome and Sahara have French
commentaries. 16 mm. Sd. H.

South African Railways Publicity and Travel
Bureau, South Africa House, Trafalgar Square,
W.C.2. 10 films of travel and general interest.
35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & 4 St. versions. F.

Southern Railway, General Manager's Office,
Waterloo Station, S.E.I. Seven films (one in
colour) including Building an Electric Coach,
South African Fruit (Southampton Docks to
Covent Garden), and films on seaside towns.
16 mm. St. F.

Wallace Heaton, Ltd., 127 New Bond Street
W.l. Three catalogues. Sound 16 mm., silent
16 mm., silent 9.5 mm. Sound catalogue contains
number of American feature films, including
Thunder Over Mexico, and some shorts. Silent 16
mm. catalogue contains first-class list of early
American, German and Russian features and
shorts, 9.5 catalogue has number of early Ger-
man films and wide selection of early American
and English slapstick comedies. 16 mm. & 9.5
mm. Sd. & St. H.

Workers' film Association, Ltd. Transport
House, Smith Square, London, S.W.I, films
ol democratic and co-operative interest. Notes
and suggestions for complete programmes.
Some prints for vile. 55 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & 1^
St. H.

Owned and published by Film Centre Ltd., 34 Soho Squar,

n Shand Ltd., The Shenval Press, London and Hertford

DOCUMENTARY
NEWSLETTER!

CON II NTS

\I STERI1 V?
NO! ES Ol I HI MON I H
INDI \ \ si COND CHAN< I
MORI SI Hi (Ol Ml MS

by Oliver Bell

i.s.x. FILM NEI DS

NEVi DOCl MENTARY 1 II Ms

W I II \\ 1 OUR I ROUBLES Too!

by Mary Loser
FILM SOCIETY NEWS

-by R. S. Miles

VOL 3 NO 4

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQL ARE LONDON Wl

AUSTERITY ?

dn the 21st March, the 931st day of the war, in a West End food
;hop, two women stopped at the vegetable counter and asked the
jrice of the French beans. The man said, "Seven and six a pound,
vladam." One woman turned to the other and said, "It's incredible."
The shopman said, "Yes it is, isn't it. Last week they were twenty-
lye shillings a pound."

And so with the new French beans and the spring of the third
/ear of the war, a great call goes out from our various leaders,
">ig and small, for a greater war effort. Austerity — urgency and all
hings nasty.

(Johnson put away the brandy — tell the girl in the spare room to
;et out— and lay out my hair shirt.)

The one thing that seems to have missed them is that it is difficult
o be urgent unless you have some pretty solid idea to be urgent
ibout. If you are urgent just for the sake of being urgent, it's like
i broody hen sitting on a nest with china eggs in it. What's the good
)f being austere unless you have to. All this business of scourging
nd hair shirts, deliberately not eating, sleeping in a stone cell
.eems to be very teutonic. At least it is the kind of thing that the
Herman leaders recommend for the German people.

There is quite certainly a lack of urgency in this country, but it
omes from a people who have been mobilised for over two and

half years, and even now do not feel that they are really involved
n the war.

The people of Britain are most likely the most grown-up people
n the world. Everything that has happened to a people has happened
o them and they know by experience what is right and what is
vrong.

Everywhere people are talking. A soldier says, "The guns are
>ut too close together and so when we are firing on a traverse, the
rew of B gun have to leave their gun while A gun fires— they'd
>e blown off if they didn't." A woman in an aircraft factory says,
The owners of the factory take 1\ per cent on all wages earned,
"here are twenty thousand people in the factory. Say the average
rage is five pounds a week, that means the employers rake in
7.500 a week profit on their employees."

Everywhere people are complaining about the way the war is
un. This most likely happens in any country at war — because war

anyway so appallingly inefficient— but if you have a people who
now and believe in what they are fighting for, they will get over
he difficulties.

Continually since the war started the country has been fed with

series of slogans of one kind or another which are supposed to

interest the people in the war— to give them inspiration to fight and
endure. Does anyone think that these mature English people are
going to give everything (including their lives) for politicians' catch
phrases? The answer is obviously— No. The British people can and
have won more difficult battles than this one— and they are still
the only people the Germans are afraid of. But the old ideas they
fought for are worn out. Telling people to be austere and urgent,
giving them slogans, is not going to make them fight. If they have
something to fight for they will soon become urgent and make
their own slogans — as the people of Russia have done. Obviously
high-powered propaganda coming from every source of informa-
tion is going to cover up the truth to a certain extent, but surely this
is not the kind of thing we are working for.

It's not what we are supposed to be fighting for anyway. The
greatest job of propaganda would be to put our own country in
order. Conscript every man and woman in the country. Conscript
all land, all raw materials. Conscript all means of production.
Two weeks ago in Sheffield outside a smart hotel were 73 cars.
Inside there was a very good dinner for lO.v. del. Outside again
were streams of factory workers, on the way home, carrying news-
papers with a speech on austerity. Can anyone in their right minds
think that when those factory workers go on the job in the morning
— these people who have been doing an eleven-hour, six-day week
for two years or more — can anyone believe that they will start
their machines more determinedly next morning.

The amazing thing is that the people who have done so much
with so little encouragement still stick at it. They dig up a million
allotments when asked to, and they still see people around them
who have all the food of all the kinds they want. They willingly
wait patiently in queues — Service people stand willingly for a twelve-
hour train journey — they accept the loss of husbands and brothers
at sea, and they still see a mass of private cars around them. They
see a thousand breaches of decency, a thousand costly mistakes,
and still they keep on.

The apparent strategy of the war over the last year, as fai as
Britain itself is concerned, seems to be not unlike that of the first
year of the war. The Germans evidently believe that a democracy
will not move unless it has to. That if a country is held in a state
of emergency for too long, it will fall to pieces internally. They
were right about France, but they have been wrong about Britain.
First the people were more mature and more stable than the French,
and secondly Russia's fight gave them inspiration at the most
dangerous moment. But even so, if the Germans apply the ■"lease

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

and let go stale" policy, we have obviously not got to sit and just
live on our hump. A year's breather at home should be a time to
recuperate and, once that is done, to take up an aggressive policy
for everyone in the country. And an aggressive policy cannot be
raised on worn-out words. The Germans know that the war depends
on the people of the country as a whole. Especially on the ordinary
people who do most of the foot slogging. The one thing the Germans
have worked on in Britain, as far as the ordinary people are con-
cerned, is that Britain is not seriously in the war. They have told
America the same thing about us and with a certain amount of
success up until December 7th. They told it to Australia, India,
Burma, Russia, South America, South Africa, also with a certain
amount of success.

The year's pause should have been used to build up internal
unity with every means possible. We should have built up a feeling
that everyone in the country is equally in the war; that everyone is
sharing equally; that unearnt privileges have been abolished; that
no one is making a profit out of the country's troubles. This is
obviously what the people want. This is the kind of feeling that will
increase production, that will win battles. This is what will gain
the confidence of our allies and the neutrals.

A certain amount has been done towards levelling up the country
during the past year. One little thing like abolishing the basic petrol
ration will gain more enthusiasm and greater support for the war
than twenty speeches, no matter how sincere they are. At the
moment if Britain started to put her house in order on a deliberate
plan and with a good propaganda campaign for home and abroad,
it might cut the length of the war by half. It would certainly give
everyone confidence and something solid, something easily under-
stood, to fight for.

NOTES OF THE MONTH

The End of an Argument

it is with some regret that we find it necessary to devote a great
deal of valuable space in this issue to questions arising from the
British Film Institute's production Film and Reality — a film which
was reviewed at considerable length by Basil Wright in last month's
issue. The major part of the documentary movement was from the
beginning opposed to the production of this film, particularly those
sequences dealing with the British movement, firstly, because the
time seemed scarcely to be ripe, and secondly because such an
attempt at contemporary historical record was felt to be a task
better suited to a production committee than to an individual.
Attempts were made by the Association of Realist Film Producers,
the documentary movement's representative organisation, to in-
fluence the production, but without success. The sponsors of the
film were not prepared to consult the documentary movement as a
whole in this matter. Once the film had been completed, however,
the Editorial Board of D.N.L. felt that this production must not be
allowed to become the cause of internal quarrels between document-
ary personnel at a time when documentary energies are directed to
more important objectives. We were aware that the danger existed
that the film might be widely accepted as accurately representative
of the work of the documentary movement. We were also aware that
the release of the film, which incidental!} contains significant
omissions and inaccuracies, was being made the occasion o\' un-
fortunate personal recriminations. We nevertheless hoped that these
parochial excitements would in time die down and that Film and
Reality would one day be substituted by a record which would be
more accurate and less subject to prejudice. Unfortunately, it has
proved impossible for us to let the matter rest. We publish a letter
from Mr. Lindgren of the British Film Institute which brings the
issues to a point where the> can no longer be ignored. It becomes
clear that the controversy has taken a turn which fundamentally
affects the purpose of documentary and the contribution which it
can make to the war effort. The disagreement is no longer between
personalities but between those who see the documentary movement
primarih as a means of propaganda :ind those who would regard

it narrowly as an aesthetic form divorced from any specific purpose.
At this time the documentary film makers cannot afford to play into
the hands of those who would relegate them to the role of the
"carriers-out" of propaganda ideas provided for them from outside
the movement. The documentary film movement as it was created
and developed under John Grierson was and still is directed to one
purpose and to one purpose only — the formation of a body of skilled
propagandists trained to express their propaganda ideas by means of
film. We cannot allow to pass in silence any statement which sug-
gests that documentary is nothing more than a tool lying ready to
the hand of our amateur propagandists. It is as professional propa-
gandists then, as well as film-makers, that we endorse BasilWright's
reply to Mr. Lindgren's letter. It represents our final word on Film
and Reality. We do not propose to devote further space to the con-
sideration of a film which has achieved so much unpleasantness.

Goodbye, Cassandra

a correspondent writes: "One of the curious things about the
debate in Parliament and the Press on the Daily Mirror was the fact
that nearly everybody who discussed the paper so knowingly and
patronisingly was obviously very seldom in the habit of reading it at
all. They talked in terms of sensationalism and salaciousness, of S
lurid stories of rape and pictures of pretty nudes, which may have
been true five years ago, but of which today Jane in her perpetual
deshabille is the sole pale survivor. The fact is that over the past
few years, and particularly since the beginning of the War. the
Daily Mirror has changed out of recognition. It has adopted a
plain, honest, straightforward policy and forceful critical line, and
this has made it in a very special sense (which the wiseacre critics
obviously do not appreciate) the Forces' paper. The Forces see
printed in it the things they are saying themselves, and that they
want to see said and the whole paper has become very much a part -i
of their lives— Popeye and Capt. Reilly-Ffoull, I Assure You. and
Live Letterbox, W.M. and, most of all, Cassandra. For seven years
William Connor has been writing Cassandra in that simple straight
Anglo-Saxon language of his. A touch of Beachcomber, a touch ofl
Swift, the plain style of Defoe and through it all the sincerity of his
Socialist faith and his honest anger at any humbugs, stupidity,
cruelty or crookery. Isolationists, appeasers, Quislings. American
exhibitionists, cheapsters, dividenders, the Free English, profiteers,
bureaucrats and Fascists, in every country from Hitler dow
in fact all enemies of the common man, have all been named and
held up to public obloquy in his column. Cassandra was one of the
few pieces of journalism which named and attacked evil personalities
as freely and fearlessly as the working man in the pub. And now
Cassandra has to go. A fighter to the last, he has refused to com-
promise with the mealy-mouthed back-scratchers and place-
seekers. His last article was a fine statement of what he stands for.
what he has always fought for and still fights for. Here are his last
words: "Mr. Morrison can have my pen— but not my conscience.
Mr. Morrison can have my silence — but not m> self-respect."
Cassandra has gone, but we have by no means heard the last of I
William Connor.
Propaganda Policy

we are indebted to the TatJei for the following war-winning
sentiments: "The programme at the Regal also contained an.
some ways, excellent short M.O.I, film entitled Builders. This showed
the enormous amount of work being done in the building lineinparts
of the country not habitually visited by the general public. The film
strikes a note of commiseration for the men engaged in this wof
and I am not quite sure about this. Bricklaying cannot be much fi
at the best of times, and it doesn't seem to me to matter in wli
part of the country one does it. The lack of home comforts.' Hut the
are hundreds o\' thousands of men lacking home comforts at the !
moment, and the point is not a good one to make. This film also *■
suggests that if aftei the war we continue pouring out monev now
devoted to the war upon improving the woikcis' conditions, this
country will find itself in Paradise. It won't: it will find itself in
bankruptcy. No. 1 take it that the business of the M.O.I, film
(a) not to argue, and (b) not to argue unsoundly."

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

INDIA -A SECOND CHANCE

in April, 1942, the efforts of the Government
of this country and the Congress Party of
India to reach agreement on a series of pro-
posals put forward by the Cabinet, broke
down completely. India had held the head-
lines during the .days which led up this
strange and disheartening event. The names
Nehru, Jinnah and Azad were heard in
buses and pubs. The people of this country
for once took an interest in the vast sub-
continent of Hindustan. They knew that Sir
Stafford Cripps had become a modern
Hercules, although sometimes when they
really thought about it, they were not quite
certain why he had become so famous, so
much a symbol of hope. They knew too, that
Nehru had been at Harrow and that it was
very hot in Delhi. They were perhaps a little
surprised that the only two famous figures
whom they really connected with India
should not be holding the centre of the stage
■that the Viceroy and the Mahatma were
both playing minor parts. But it was all
going to be all right. Hercules was there.
The excitement was kept up. Hopes ran
,i high. India was going to work with us, to fight
with us and to win with us. Even the Japanese
ieemed to be helping by bombing Trincomalee
and Cocanada almost at the height of the
negotiations. There was going to be a new
brotherhood, new words of friendship on a
:lean slate and equal partnership in a new
constitution.
Then suddenly everything changed. Within
ow [wo days there was a complete collapse. Sir
inj Stafford took his much delayed aerial de-
ici 3arture and Nehru talked in a garden.
Hercules had failed and, crying "No re-
la| criminations," was on his way home.

It is not the purpose of this article to en-
quire into the reasons for the failure of yet
mother mission, although such an enquiry
vould be interesting even if it was also dis-
leartening. One might argue that statesmen
J ire elected and paid to do a job for which
/ears of training and experience have fitted
hem, and that if they continually fail to do
heir jobs, they are no more to be condoned
|| vith than a plumber who connects the water
^ )ipes to the gas jets. In fact, judging by the
treams of cold water which are continually
3 )eing poured upon the British people, from
, rt ources which should have produced warm-
li ng flames, it would be a good thing to con-
ider occasionally exactly what sort of
1 (lumbers we have got.

But it is more to our purpose at the moment
o enquire into and consider the truly appalling
roblem confronting our propaganda services
i so far as India is concerned.

Germany and Japan have not stopped but
have redoubled their propaganda efforts,
Sometimes India is promised equal partner-
ship, and sometimes she is offered her share
of a new Asiatic order. She is also frequently
offered the sun, moon and the stars, together
with easy recipes for obtaining these alluring
objects. These offers do not fall upon deaf
ears. The people who listen to them no dcubt
do so all the more eagerly because of their re-
cent intense disappointment. They do not
necessarily believe them but they would like
to believe them and this alone will prepare
the ground. It is no good us sitting back and
saying that it is India's own fault and it
would not be any good doing that whether it
were true or not.

Like it or not, we must be certain of one
thing in the coming weeks, and that is that at
least India will not hinder our efforts to fight
the Japanese. There must be no repetition of
Burma where thousands of Burmess fought
against us, preferring Japanese to British
domination.

And how are to ensure that this shall not
happen? What message have we got to give/
to India? Ever since the war started the
efforts of many people have been directed to
persuading India that she should come into
the war. Their efforts have been in vain.

War propaganda committees set up in
India, the press, the radio, poster and film
have done their damndest and failed: India
remained unmoved. Propaganda breaks
down as it will always break down if it has
nothing of the heart to offer.

If the problem confronting propaganda
was difficult then, consider what it is now.
There was always the faint hope in the
Indian mind that one day Britain would
recognise India's right to independence :
ignoring the war was one way of con-
stantly reminding us of that hope, and this
did form some sort of a bridge across which
a few of our propaganda messages could
travel. Now even that link has gone.

We were told during the negotiations in
Delhi that the eyes of Egypt were on India, and
this was doubtless true of Ceylon, the African
Colonies and the West Indies. To the whole
world it looked like a test case, a test of our
good intentions, of our success or failure in
giving self-government to the peoples under
our flag. To the peoples of our colonies it must
have looked like the beginning of a new era.

The reaction everywhere must have been
profound. We had failed ; and whichever side
was to blame it did not make any difference.
There would be plenty of voices ready to say

that we had never meant to succeed and
plenty of people ready to listen. And perhaps
it is better so. Who would not rather be
thought wicked than stupid?

This is a depressing picture. It establishes
a fact that cannot be repeated too often and
that is that long term propaganda must alw ays
have something to say, must carry a message
of hope, of promises that can be fulfilled, but
it also suggests that we cannot now carry out
any effectual propaganda in India and even
perhaps in many other places.

But surely we have something to say. Our
cupboard cannot be quite as bare of hope as
one would imagine from the way in which we
keep the door so discreetly shut. This is not
only a war of defence, of defending ourselves
and our possessions and our many, dustv
prejudices. Surely it is a war of attack, of a
military and a mental assault. Now is the time
when the mind must move forward as well as
the sword.

Already there are signs that perhaps all is
not lost. In the news reports, in people's
minds, is hope that something may yet be
done. After the first shock of disappoint-
ment, people have rallied. We have slated
that our offer still stands. Indian politicians
are said to be having further discussions
among themselves. Perhaps something will
be agreed upon yet.

Now is the time for propaganda to get to work .
Ever since the negotiations started it has at last
had something to say and, now that they are
over, its job is not finished. It can build on the
goodwill left behind. Britain has shown a will-
ingness to move forward and even if the step
was faltering at least we hope the goodwill was
there. Let the propaganda services make the
most of their opportunity now, for they can be
certain that their opponents are making the
most of theirs. By newspaper, radio and lilm
India must be constantly assured that the offer
still stands and that we are prepared to re-
discuss that offer with them.

There is no need to wait for something
new to be said, there is enough material
ready, waiting to be used. And it is good
material because, although there is not much
of it, it is at least honest. Against the
airy castles being built for India by Rome.
Berlin and Tokio we can speak in a loud
voice to tell India that at least we are looking
forward and that we will go on looking for-
ward. Our voice could be stronger than the
voices of our enemies because we could
offer India and the colonies something
better than our enemies can. We could offer
them a change of heart.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

MORE SCHOOL FILMS

OLIVER BELL, Director of the British Film Institute, discusses the future of
our visual education sources.

politii u \\ the Board of Education has
been the Cinderella of Government Depart-
ments. The Presidency, which should rank
as a post of the highest honour and dis-
tinction, has been regarded all too often only
as a stepping-stone to further advancement.
The result has been a continual change of
direction at the top. a discontinuous policy
and an unwillingness to devote time and
money to research. Add to this the fact that
most members of Finance Committees of
Local Government bodies retard expendi-
ture on education as wanton extravagance
and the resulting picture is not something
of which to boast.

The present war has released us from
many inhibitions, as the continual talk of
reconstruction and post-war planning bear
witness. In the world of education too. the
keen people are considering this sorry
scheme of things and talking of how they
would remould it nearer to their hearts'
desire. Consideration is being given not only
to the fundamentals of education and its
ultimate purpose but also to the new teaching
methods which people would like to see
introduced.

In discussing these new methods great
emphasis has been placed on visual educa-
tion. Ever since the Greek philosophers drew
their geometrical diagrams in the sand, visual
education has had a place in the teaching
system but until recently it never got farther
than the blackboard or in extreme cases the
magic lantern. The invention of the com-
paratively cool, high-light-output electric
lamp has widened the range of this form of
teachers' aid enormously. It has made prac-
ticable the episcope which depends on re-
flected light and enables pictures, drawings
or printed matter to be thrown on the screen.
It has also rendered possible the full develop-
ment of the sub-standard cine-projector,
both sound and silent.

The teaching film has only come into its
own, in fact, during the last decade and it is
still less since, with the foundation of the
British Film Institute, it was possible to
focus opinion on to the principles which
underlie instruction by film and suggcsi ways
and means of overcoming the difficulties
that emerged with the development of this
new form o\' education. How useful an
instrument the film had become even before
the autumn of 1939 can be gauged by the
fact that relatively less gioand has been lost
in this educational field than in any other.
That is not to say, however, that all is for
the best in the best of all possible worlds.

The amount of apparatus in the schools
of the United Kingdom (excluding Northern
Ireland where there is none) is trilling com-

pared with the U.S.A. or the Axis countries.
There are fewer than 3.000 16-mm. pro-
jectors in operation, and in the schools of
England only about 2,000, of which 1,350
are silent, and 450 sound machines. This is
not a great number considering that there
are over 30,000 schools. This paucity is one
of the difficult factors in the situation. With
such a limited market it is not really a com-
mercial proposition to make special teaching
films. The supply to the schools has there-
fore in large degree been derived from
advertising or semi-advertising sources.
Where the films were specially designed for
schools, notably in the now defunct Kodak
Library or the G.B. and E.G.S. libraries,
they were mainly an adjunct to the sale of
equipment against the profits from which
their renting losses were offset. This situa-
tion reacted unfavourably on the teaching
world who could not see why they should
spend precious money when the supply was
so small.

The breaking of this vicious circle lies at
the root of all post-war plans. Its solution is
simply a matter of capital. Can the Local
Education Authorities and the Board of
Education, that is to say, the ratepayers and
the taxpayers, both of whom contribute to
local education, in the midst of all their
other problems of rebuilding schools, recon-
ditioning schools, installing electricity,
proper sanitation and the rest, be persuaded
to find say £1,500.000, spread over ten years,
lor this purpose? All of us who are interested
in films whether we be administrators, film
makers, or teachers hope that the answer
will be Yes! It is not a great deal to ask if
you believe, as we believe, that whatever
other economies in national expenditure are
effected after the war, that on education
with all it implies as a long term national
policy shall be maintained and expanded.
Cruel though it may sound I would even
be prepared to economise on old-age and
other pensions in order to give the people of
the future a better chance.

Supposing we carry the day for education,
in terms of the visual aspect of the subject,
what then? As I see it we must be prepared
for a little more centralisation. The present
system of complete decentralisation has
much to commend 't in that it gives the
greatest scope to individual initiative. But
it also has the disadvantages o( small scale
operations, the inertia of getting a large
number of autonomous bodies on the move,
in overlapping and waste of effort. Nowhere
is the need foi centralisation more evident
than in dealing with relatively expensive
apparatus like film projectors and relatively
expensive supplies like teaching films, the

capital cost of which is high. I see, therefore
a system developing based on regional
organisation much as the M.O.I, and other
Government Departments are working to-
day. I advocate the establishment of regional
film libraries and film groups whose work
would be co-ordinated by a central institute
and library.

The experience of the Scottish Regional
Film Library which was set up three years
ago, thanks to a £5,000 grant from the Car-
negie Trustees, and is now sending out 4,000
reels a month on a basis of hire, leads one
to believe that the scheme is feasible. The
creation of such regional libraries does not
preclude the existence of local film libraries
such as exist in several of the richer areas
in Scotland to-day. But it is only the richer
areas which can maintain their own libraries,
and so the regional affair would supplement
their requirements and provide a full service
to those Authorities which had no library of
their own. Similarly the central library
would supplement the needs of the regional
libraries in the same way as. for books, the
National Central Library supplements the
activities of local or county libraries.

These regional organisations would also
provide an opportunity for pooled buying
of apparatus, for a common maintenance
service and so forth.

So far this is simply an administrative
solution of a general problem. What is far
more important to my mind is the Teachers'
Film Group. Past experience in this country
and in Scotland, where the Scottish Educa-
tional Film Association is a most flourishing
concern, shows their value in maintaining in-
terest in the subject ; for exchanging ideas, pre-
viewing films, organising refresher courses
on manipulation and teaching method, and.
last but by no means least, for research and
making known teachers' wants. This form
of organisation should be encouraged and
developed. And I conceive it to be a function
of the British Film Institute, as an unofficial
body in a central position, to undertake this
development by enlarging and strengthening
its educational side so as to make it a
separate department of its work.

Thus I suggest the work and functions ol
a central institute might be:

(a) To be a clearing house for the dat;
obtained by the local bodies regardini
technical and pedagogic problems.

(b) To carry out research regarding sue!
problems.

(c) To act as an information bureau on al
relevant matters.

(d) To publish a consolidated catalogu
evaluating all existing films and othe
projection material.

(c) To act as an advisory body regarding th
production of new films, etc.

(/) To organise exhibitions, conference:
and so forth and to assist local bodies i
carrying out similar activities.
it is through the activities of existing fill

groups focused in this manner that we ha\

already worked out the broad aspects

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

teaching technique with various types of
apparatus and are beginning to appreciate
the relative values of the sound and the
silent film for different age-groups and for
different types of instruction, always bearing
nind that the film does not supersede
the teacher. It provides him with a convenient
instrument for increasing his own powers of
instruction and exposition.

Recently the Scottish Educational Film
Association published a report at Is. on the
General Principles governing the Production
of Educational Films. 1 commend it to the
notice of all film-makers interested in the
development of the film for teaching pur-
poses. It is obviously not the last word on
the subject but it serves to show where the
mind of the teaching world is moving. It is
interesting to note the number of subjects
in which film can play a part. The Report
enumerates English, History, Civics, Geo-
graphy, Languages, Science, Biology, Botany
Physical Education and Hygiene. It does not
state the relative importance of each of these
subjects in the curriculum. It seems safe to
assume, however (just as the Documentary
movement has assumed since its inception).

that the teaching of Civics will play an ever
more important part in the general objects
of education. It is the subject which has
perhaps been most lacking from our curricu-
lum in the past. Its need is shown by the
demand for lectures in the Forces on current
political problems; by the establishment of
an Army Bureau of Current Affairs with
regular lectures in training time; by the
reception which has been accorded by ordin-
ary adults to the pre-war and more recent
M.O.L films of a "documentary" character.
The teachers then have already made some
of their wants known but in the days after
the war there must be a more organised
system whereby the teacher, the film maker
and the general public are brought into con-
tact to learn each other's point of view and
to provide a stimulus to new developments.
In the central institution which I advocate,
I see the solution. It is here that the makers of
documentary films can keep in touch with
the currents of opinion in the teaching world.
It is here that the teaching world can be
advised of the opinions of those with a more
general outlook and it is here that a con-
tinuing production policy can be evolved.

U.S.A. FILM NEEDS

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Reprinted by courtesy of the AW York Times

two months ago this column gave voice to some Yet it is vaguely possible that our Government
hopeful remarks about the mobilisation of has been reluctant to initiate a carefully pal-

movies as a factor toward creating war morale.
One month ago we yammered that no apparent
progress had been made. And now, for a third
time, we are asking — with a rumble of impa-
tience creeping in — why our great motion picture
industry has not been more rapidly enrolled to

help get a

terned programme of motion pictures designed
to coalesce morale -because it might fear that
such a programme would smack of a totalitarian
wile. At least that is a generous explanation for
the failure of Lowell Mellett. the Government's
present film co-ordinator, to authorise any more

s to the public the facts and deep than a few Government agency films and cer-

significance of this wai

Granted that motion pictures are not the only
medium of communication not yet geared.
Granted, as Edward L. Bernays, theeminent pub-
licist, observed in a recent Saturday Review, that
we still "are not using the modern weapons of
total psychological warfare to fight a modern
total war". And granted, as Mr. Bernays further
put it. that "a variety of propaganda agencies is
at work, only loosely tied together, each calling start the
vague signals to the other — when there should
be the grand strategy and the grand approach".
There still is no moral reason which historians
will later respect why a medium as vast and
potential as motion pictures should not have
been coupled by now to a programme of
national persuasion in this time of our country's
al direst need.

When we speak of persuasion we do not re-
call motely suggest that films should be used as a
vie bludgeon to beat dogroas into the people's heads.
We mean that they should be fashioned accord-
ing to a thoughtful and orderly plan to convey to
the public information of both a general and
specific nature— information which would

ainly nothing that resembles a comprehensive
programme. (The fact that the British Ministry
of Information has been using films intensively
for two years is an incidental rebuttal.) And so it
seems distressingly obvious, with more than
three months gone by, that if this country is to
have a steady, intelligent flow of morale films,
then it is up to the established industry to get
together and turn them out. Anyhow, it should
rolling against the time when the
Government might decide to supervise.

To the manifest credit of the producers, it
must be said that they are ready to do their share.
The War Activities Committee of the "Hays
office," with Francis Harmon at its head, has
been giving Mr. Mellett and the Government an
abundance of invaluable aid not only in releasing
such pictures as the Government agencies (and
the industry itself) have already turned out, but
in making theatres and artists available for bond
sales, book collections and such. And Mr.
Harmon and his aides have been exploring, with
caution and due regard for trade quagmires, the
chances for a practical programme of morale
films, with the industry doing the job.

But thcclocksare inexorably ticking, the leaves

only help the people to prepare and adapt them-
ei" selves to wartime circumstances, but would give

them a vital awareness of the scope of this grave are falling from the calendar one by one. and the

Mining we are up against. Such clear and sober Nazis and the Japs are not waiting for the in-

J comprehension is essential to psychological dustry — or any one — to form a plan. If the mil-

0 stability in a democracy. lions of movie-goers in this country and that

means the bulk of our population are to have
the incalculable benefit of consistent war indoc-
trination from the screen, then the giant resources
available to provide it had better be utilised
quickly. Now is no time for committees to be
complacently pondering whether morale films
are to be distributed free or on a rental basis,
whether the Government is to pay tor prints
or the industry is to assume that cost. Now is no
time for illusions about "Business as usual"
in this line. Either the motion picture industry-
meaning theatre operators quite as well as pro-
ducers—must acknowledge and assume a
national service at some probable financial sacri-
fice or it must stand in the futile position of
letting "I dare not" wait upon "1 will". A clam-
ouring public, we might add. could have a lot to
do with calling the tune.

Of course, when we speak of morale films we
have particular reference to "shorts" — one and
two reel documentaries, information and in-
spirational films — which experience has proved
are most effective in stimulating a thoughtful re-
sponse. We do not mean fiction features, which
are, in general, another breed of cat, but which
do have, of course, considerable influence on the
public's emotional whims.

And it just so happens that the industry has
already turned out on its own account — and re-
leased through its own competitive channels for
the usual considerations — a number of com-
mendable "short subjects" which might serve as
worthy specimens of morale films. There are the
two initial releases in United Artists" World-in-
Action Series— the films called Churchill's
Island and Battle for Oil, made by Stuart Legg
for the National Film Board of Canada — and as
fine examples of intelligent persuasion and
dramatic punch as you will see. There was that
very good Metro two-reeler. Main Street on the
March, which won an Academy "Oscar", and
another pat one, Don't Talk, not vet released,
which graphically illustrates the danger of letting
vital information slip. There have been several
highly pertinent topics explored by the March of
Time within the past year, among which particu-
lar attention, for purposes of reference, should
be called to When Air Raids Strike. And Twen-
tieth Century-Fox and the Warners, in a purely
inspirational vein, have made some interesting
pictures of our various armed servi;es in action.

Unquestionably, our motion picture industry
is thoroughly competent to produce and dis-
tribute morale films of variety and excellence.
But it must have a co-operative organisation and
supervision as to policy before it can undertake' a
programme of, say. fifty-two films a year. And,
regarding that matter of policy, it is obvious that
the time has now come when the public stands in
need of some enlightenment along broad, strate-
gic lines. More than a simple illustration of an
assembly line for bombers or tanks, our fact
films must next show the people the ways in
which these instruments are used, the compli-
cated problems of transporting them to the fronts
where they are in demand, the vital necessity for
getting them there in the shortest possible time.
The man in the street is beginning to see this war
on a geo-political map. That is a fact which film
producers should not henceforth overlook.

And so, in the hope and confidence which we
have steadfastly held all along, this column is
restivelj waiting for a programme to be laid out.
Maybe a jolt is needed to throw the machinery
into gear. Bui sooner or later it will happen.
We'd hate to think otherwise.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Teeth of Steel. Technique Films for British
Council. Director: Ronald H. Riley. Producer:
James Carr. Cameraman: Geoffrey Urisworth.
Script: Max Munden. 10 minutes.
Subject: There is no story as such, the film con-
sisting of a series of shots showing modern
excavators at work. Giant power-driven shovels
are seen cutting canals, draining swamps, carving
out railroads, extracting ore from the earth.
i 'rent man: Not for long have we seen a film so
infatuated with the worship of the machine for
itself. The director was apparently so overcome
with the monstrous size and power of his
excavators that he concluded they worked them-
selves without any human agency.

Apart from a symbolic opening close-up of
a labourer, there are no people in the film at all.
This, though hard to believe, is literally true.
There is only a monotonous repetition of dif-
ferent types of machines in long-shot, mid-shot
and close-up. The skill of the men who operate
these giants finds no place whatever.

The film is shot throughout in Technicolor.
Some of the colour is pleasant, particularly a
sequence in an iron foundry (even this is shot
without a human being in sight). There is also
a weighty musical score that attempts valianrly
to infuse some excitement into the footage.

It is difficult to understand how a subject that
obviously possesses a fine dramatic quality
could have been approached in such a dull and
inhuman manner.

Propaganda: It is hardly likely that in this day
and age there is much propaganda value in
showing a succession of big machines, even in
glorious Technicolor. Teeth of Steel is such a
throw-back to the predocumentary era that one-
feels slightly mystified as to why it was made at
all. It is rather like an elegant and more costly
item from a very old issue of the Ideal Cine-
Magazine, decked out with all modern access-
ories.

If the last ten years has not taught us that the
machine means little without the people who
make it and the people who work it, with all the
skill, craftsmanship and work tradition that goes
into both, then we seem to have been wasting
our lime.

\ Way to Plough. Verity Films. Production: James
Carr and Sidney Box. Direction and Camera:
Clifford Hornby. Technical Adviser: S. J.
Wright. Editing: John Durst. Commentation:
lied Grisewood. I? minutes.
Subject: A group of Land Girls are taught the
correct method of ploughing a field. It is a
scientific job and, for the beginner, full of pitfalls.
The girls are taught by one o\~ their colk.mucs.
already proficient, and the right and wrong ways
ol setting about it are clearly shown.
Treatment: As in all the Ministry of Agriculture
films, the treatment is extremely simple and lucid.
I lere. the actual shots of the tractor as it ploughs
the field are supplemented by diagrams which
demonstrate very effectively the course lo he
pursued. Photography and commentary are well
up to standard, and the girls, both the green-
horns and the expert, are pleasant people who
really look as if they are trying to learn the job.
Instructional Value: As an aid to training, excel-
lent. On subjects such as this a film is worth far
more than its weight in text-books.

March of Time No. 10. Seventh Year. The Argen-
tine Question. 20 minutes.
Subject: The film endeavours to survey the
economic resources, social structure and politi-
cal course of the important South American
Republic. Economically she is not self-support-
ing, lacking coal, iron and other vital minerals.
Because of this she is dependent on the U.S.A.
for armaments. The country has always lived
on her exports, particularly beef and grain, and
although the war has cut off most of this trade,
Argentina feels more bound to Europe than the
U.S.A.

Popular feeling is overwhelmingly anti-Nazi.
Large scale Fifth Column Axis-inspired activity
has been discovered, but the Government
in a desperate desire to remain neutral refuses to
break relations with the Axis Powers.
Treatment: There is a complete lack of unity
between the visuals and the commentary. It
looks as if a cameraman was given a roving
commission to shoot everything he could find
without working to any plan or prepared script.
The commentary goes on and on, and half the
time the visuals bear no conceivable relation to
what is being said. Neither is there any attempt
at a deep social analysis of the country. For
instance, there is a naive remark to the effect
that Argentina is one of the few South American
nations that has a large middle-class public —
"the kind of men and women . . . who in every
country are the backbone of democracy."
Propaganda Value: Despite its faults, the film
will have a certain informative interest for
audiences unfamiliar with Argentina as anything
but a country vaguely situated somewhere in
South America. The sequences of her modern
cities, her factories, wharves and docks build
up a strong impression of a busy, modern indus-
trialised country and it is easy to understand
the importance of Argentina as a potential
jumping-off ground for an Axis offensive
designed firstly to gain complete control of the
South American continent, and secondly, as
a basis for intimidation of the U.S.A.

Diary of a Polish Airman. Production: Concanen
Films in collaboration with the Polish Ministry
of Information and the Polish Air Force.
M.O.I. 5 minutes.

Subject: The adventures of a Polish airman, who
escaped from Poland and fought in France, came
to Britain and was finally killed in an air battle.
Treatment: The story of the film is told by the
dead airman's diary as his brother officers turn
ovei its pages. This is an effective way of doing
it and the film itself is quite well and simply
made and makes quite an impression of sin-
cerity. It contains a good deal of library ma-
un .il. including some so far unpublished shots
of Warsaw, and most of the rest is nicely shot in
sympathetic close-up.

Propaganda Value: I he film should help by-
giving a sympathetic presentation of the Polish
Government's wai efforl and it succeeds in
making their hate of Hitler very real. What is,
however, not quite so happy is the picture which
many will find a little difficult to appreciate o\'
a type of person who carries on a vendetta SOI I of
light from one country to another. The fight of
Poland itself is another and more thrilling story,
but we can hardly expect a film about that just
yet.

Builders. Production: Crown Film Unit. Direc-
tion: Pat Jackson. Camera: Pennington-Richards.
Editor: Francis Cockburn. Commentary: John
Hilton. M.O.I. 5 minutes.

Subject: The place of builders in the war effort.
Treatment: The camera and commentator go
down to a war factory in process of erection and
interview three typical workers there: a brick-
layer, a navvy and a crane-driver. They are
extremely lively lads, especially Charlie, the
bricklayer, though George, the navvy, with his
perpetual moan runs him pretty close. They feel
that laying bricks and so on puts them a bit out-
side the war effort, but the commentator proves
to them that their job is very important. They
finish by a bit of optimistically vague discussion
on the possible future of England after the war,
but the quality of the film stands or falls by the
personality of Charlie and he is extremely good.
It is a real treat to hear a sound-track of
working-men talking with a feeling of inde-
pendence.

Propaganda Value: The film should be of great
help as a pat on the back and bit of general
encouragement to anybody doing any sort of
building job and the general public will get a
kick out of the vitality of the whole concern.
There is just one thing wrong ; the men in ques-
tion, though very lively, do give the impression of
being "tame" in the same sense that conservative
party candidates used to exhibit "tame" work-
ing-men on their platforms. Hard as it tries, the
film does give the impression that anything the
future holds for these men and their mates

CAVALCANTI'S

FILM and
REALITY

(Length 9,400 ft.)

(Cert. U)

a critical and historical
survey of realist films of
all countries from 1896 to
1939, produced for the
National Film Library, is
now available for hire to
film societies and for
educational use.

Commentated by Emmett

For terms apply to:

National Film Library, British Film

Institute. 4 Groat Russell Street,

London. VS .CM.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

lg to be provided for them from above,
their place and function is to be lively, do their
job and support their leaders. This is certainly
: possible future for this country, but it is by
10 means a pleasant one and certainly not one
ve are fighting Hitler for. The film about the
future of the country should tell us not what the
working-man would like to have given him, but
what he feels he wants badly enough to go and
get for himself.

The Countrywomen. Production: Seven League
Productions. Direction: John Page. Associate
Producer: Paul Rotha. M.O.I. 15 minutes.
Subject: This film is a fireside chat about country
life and the activities of the Women's Institute,
past and present, for the benefit of a woman
evacuated from the town. The discourse is
illustrated by appropriate visual accompaniment.
The evacuee is invited to a W.I. meeting at which
matters of local and national importance are
discussed.

itment: In spite of an attempt to give a
natural and informal setting to this film, the
approach to the subject is quite impersonal.
The evacuee seems to have very little connection
ith the film ; she is merely the audience listening
\ the countrywoman's talk on the work of the
Institute, and occasionally she asks questions.
The \ lsual aspect of the film, often very beauti-
fully photographed, illustrates the commen-
tary, but in itself is rather meaningless and dis-
jointed. We are told there is a communal allot-

it in the \illage; all we see are several dif-
ferent types of women apparently doing some
gardening. Miscellaneous shots of a village shop,
a bus. a telephone box, evacuee children having
tea and so on, are held together by the slender
threads of the conversation between the two
women. We see no more of the life of the women
in the village than would be observed by a
casual visitor: it is not only rather superficial
but is inclined to be patronising, and disappoint-
ing to one who has known and lived among
country people.

Propaganda value: As an instructional film on
the activities of Women's Institutes it is reason-
ably adequate; but if it had given the town-
dweller a real understanding of country people,
their difficulties and the social importance of

r community life, it would have contributed
to that finer type of propaganda which presents
the democratic institutions of this country from
the point, ol' view of human values.

For Children Only. M.O.I, for Ministry of

Food. Production: Strand Film Co. Producer:
Alexander Shaw. Direction: John Eldridge.
Camera: Charles Marlborough. Non-theatrical.
9 minutes.

Subject: This film introduces mothers to a scheme
for providing children with fruit juices and cod-
r oil and shows them how these things can
be obtained.

Treatment: It points out that in wartime when
the usual foodstuffs are restricted children must
be given something to make up for the deficiency.
It is for this reason that the Government has
allowed valuable shipping space to be taken up
in bringing cod-liver oil from Iceland and fruit
juices from America. Mothers are told that their
children must have one or other of these con-
centrated foods to get the right amount of vita-

mins. The film goes on to say that it is a mother's
duty to take advantage of this new scheme not
only because of the trouble that has been taken
to make it possible but to assure the good health
of her children. Films made for the sole purpose
of giving information such as this are always in
danger of becoming boring. But For Children
Only somehow manages to avoid this by intro-
ducing a central character — a mother, who
makes use of the Government's offer, and thus
gives the film a slight personal interest.

Propaganda value: This film is a good example
of how films could be used for making important
announcements. It gives the facts in a clear and
interesting form and would make an excellent
starting off point for a lecture or discussion on
the subject. Should not such a film as this be
available also for theatrical distribution?

Filling the Gap. Production: Realist Film Unit.
Cartoon: Halas-Batchelor. Music: Ernst Meyer.
5 minutes.

Subject. An appeal for us all to grow our own
vegetables, in order to leave farming land free
for crops.

Treatment. Animated diagram and cartoon meet
in this film on common ground. The result is
pleasing, for the treatment is simple and imagina-
tive. By adopting the cartoon's flexibility and
some hint of its inconsequent gaiety in their dia-
gram sequences, and by retaining something of
the diagram's essential simplicity in their pure
cartoon sequences, the makers have achieved a
lively and entertaining film. In details, however,
it falls below the high standard it sets itself. One
of the early sequences lacks clarity : the play with
the three categories of food leaves the audience
in doubt. And there is an unpleasant change of
style at the end in the drawing of a gathering of
vegetables: it smacks of advertisements for
Heinz 57 varieties. One discounts the roughness
of the purely mechanical work — the excessive
outline wobble, the evidence of celluloid buckle,
the unsteady camerawork — as being due to the
limitations of time and cost.

It is, perhaps, inevitable to compare any car-
toon form with Disney's work, which is neither
fair to Disney nor to the cartoonist; for time
and cost play a decisive part in the execution of
cartoon ideas. But there is one factor common to
the making of all cartoons, and that is the film
sense behind the execution. This, and not neces-
sarily his million pound equipment and his
hundreds of personnel, gives Disney his place in
cartoon. His films, in the main, are gems of
imaginative construction. It is just this film
sense which Filling the Gap lacks to some extent.
There arc awkward transitions and odd uses of
screen space. However, altogether it is an
enterprising film, to which Ernst Meyer's ab-
stract music contributes an adequate, if unin-
spired sound track in company with the easy,
straightforward commentary.

Propaganda value. A film such as this will prob-
ably command more attention in the cinema than
most. Its simple message, therefore, stands a
good chance of going home. It is unfortunate
that the sponsors have seen fit to end the film
with an ugly title describing the urgency of the
problem (surely a tacit admission that they don't
believe in the propaganda value of the film). Its
only effect is to make what one has just seen
appear quite trivial.

Via Imperial. Production: Strand Films. Direc-
tion: Desmond Dickenson.
Story: The growth of cables and wireless. The
British Empire's need for rapid communication.
Coming up to date with war communications,
official and personal.

Treatment: Starting off with the development of
communications, via Imperial works up through
reconstructed sequences — such as the first mur-
derer to be arrested by a telegraph message beat-
ing the train he was on. The difficulties of laying
and maintaining the first Atlantic cable. Queen
Victoria exchanging telegrams with President of
the United States. Marconi and the first wireless
signal across the Atlantic. Modern cables, wire-
less telegraphy and news picture transmission.
There is the whole sequence from the G.B. news-
reel of Scott and Black's arrival in Australia.
Each frame of film was enlarged and telegraphed
to England and the film was in the cinemas the
next day.

Propaganda: Good straight-forward film. Very
good for schools.

PLUS CA CHANGE

D.N.L. readers may be interested in the following
extracts from a periodical of the last war (title
unknown), pages of which members of the Editorial
Board recently found wrapped round three
pennyworth of peanuts.

A Rapid Conversion

It would be difficult to find a more striking
instance of the power of personality and prac-
tical work than in the case of the Minister of
Information. When Lord Beaverbrook was ap-
pointed there was quite an outcry in the Press
and the critics in the House of Commons were
loud voiced. To-day, on all sides there is nothing
but praise for the excellent results of his efforts.
Even the enemy has been moved to admiration.

Keen Interest

Movies are attended by some risks at Jerusalem.
where they have been instituted since our
occupation of the Holy City. It seems that the
natives are quite unable to comprehend that the
characters are not present in the flesh. Not only
do they cheer the hero and heroine, and groan
and growl at the villain, but they even pelt him
with stones, sticks and offal, damaging the screen
and not infrequently injuring the stage hands.

The New Taxi Manners

A friend of mine living in Roehampton could
not get a taxi to bring her to the Ritz to lunch the
other day. In despair she made a sign to a luckj
woman who was driving past in one and begged
for a lift, and she proved a friend in need, and
soon they took up another wayfarer. 1 am told
that it is becoming quite the commonest occurr-
ence for perfect strangers to share taxis nowa-
days.

(Questions in Parliament

Talking of boxing one cannot help wondering
what Lord Lonsdale thinks of the precio
v. Conn match, which has taken a soldier and an
artificial limb-maker away from their work to
share an enormous purse. Most sportsmen seem
to think the whole thing was ill-advised, and
there are rumours that questions on the affair
will be raised when Parliament next meets.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

MS LETTER

MONTHLY SIXPENCE

VOL. 3 NUMBER 4

APRIL 1942

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands] for the use of film as a
medium of propaganda and in-
struction in the interests of the
people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of
common people all over the
world.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

is produced under the auspices
of Film Centre, London, in asso-
ciation with American Film Center,
New York.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey
Alexander Shaw
Donald Taylor
John Taylor
Basil Wright

Outside contributions will be
welcomed but no fees will be
paid.

We are prepared to deliver from
3—50 copies in bulk to Schools,
Film Societies and other organi-
sations.

Owned and published by

FILM CENTRE LTD.
34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON

W.l GERRARD 4253

PROPAGANDA OR AESTHETICS?

We publish below a letter from ERNEST LINDGREN, curator of the National Film
Library (British Film Institute), on the subject of Basil Wright's review of Film and
Reality which appeared in D.N.C. for March. Lindgren's letter is followed by a
reply from Wright, and the matter is also referred to in "Notes of the Month."

THE EDITOR,

Documentary News Letter.
34 Soho Square, W.l.

SIR.

In the generous review which you gave to Film
and Reality, Basil Wright makes a number of
criticisms to which 1 have no intention of reply-
ing in detail. Cavalcanti is fully capable of de-
fending his own work, if he feels any defence is
necessary. If, as Wright concedes, the film is
stimulating, then from our point of view it is a
success. If opinion differs as to its composition
and conclusions, this is simply because we are
dealing with a very live subject and not with
some academic corpse.

I may perhaps be permitted to comment on
two points of fact. Firstly, Wright complains that
in dealing with British documentary Cavalcanti
has "almost ignored the dynamic use of sound" ;
in fact, out of a total of six extracts from British
documentaries, three are selected to illustrate
exactly this, as the commentary in each case
makes clear. Secondly, we are told : "there is one
other omission, and that is the analytic film deal-
ing with mechanical or scientific processes"; in
fact, this genre is represented by examples from
the work of Charles Urban, Bruce-Woolfe, Mary
Field and Percy Smith, Dr. R. G. Canti, Dr.
Russell Reynolds and Jean Painleve — six ex-
amples in all. Extracts from Aero-Engine, Trans-
fer of Power, and the like were omitted because
their success depends largely on a clever use of
animated diagrams, and we did not regard
diagrams as falling within our already vast
province.

Really, however, what 1 wish to comment on
are the larger issues raised in Wright's article,
and especially those which go deep down into the
future of the documentary movement. It is plain
that Wrighfs main quarrel with Cavalcanti
arises from the latter's alleged underestimation
of the sociological importance of modern (especi-
ally British) documentary, and overestimation of
film technique, which is belittlingly called "mere
aesthetics". Again and again in his review Wright
reveals this contempt for technique which, under
Grierson's influence, has permeated all the
critical writing of the British school in recent
years.

To me it seems that this view is thoroughly
pernicious and rests on an entirely false distinc-
tion. It is a widespread heresy, not confined to
the film world, that what one says and how one
says it, are two different things. Professor Joad in
a recent Brains' Trust session argued that
Shakespeare's line, "Come away, come away,
death." etc.. contained exactly the same thought
as Ah girl has jilted me and I want to die".
although the second was commonplace and the
first so lovely that it sent shivers down his spine.
To me this is nonsense. Art is the communica-
tion of experience. These two quotations give
expression to entirely different levels of experi-
ence, and so sa> entirely different things. When
.load equates them, he merely reduces them both
to the lowest common denominator. But once
you do that to Shakespeare's lines, you ha\e

destroyed, not merely their form, but their con-
tent. In any work of art. the content lies in the
form. This appears to me the most elementary
axiom of art criticism.

It is the failure to appreciate this axiom which
leads Wright to make such confused and e\
self-contradictory statements as ( 1 ) "The various
early experiments in sound were important not
merely from the aesthetic point of view, but
because they were designed to strengthen and
classify the social angle." (2) British documentary
films tended to "sacrifice purely aesthetic con-
siderations to the need for pungent comment and
the imaginative presentation of facts and
problems".

The realist film, says Wright in his programme
for the future, must "devote itself to the urgencies
of the moment with the same dynamic emphasis
which marked the revolutionary period of the
Soviet film." But were the highest achievements
of the Soviet cinema attained by labelling tech-
nique as "mere aesthetics" and despising it? On
the contrary, as we all know, they devoted the
greatest attention to purely technical experi-
ments and the working out of a sound critical
theory, laying the foundations for all subsequent
film criticism. Eisenstein's preoccupation with
"mere aesthetics" is far greater than Cavalcanii's
has ever been. Pudovkin similarly.

There is a theory that technique can be left to
look after itself if only one is sincere and has
something really vital to say. I cannot believe
that such a fine craftsman as Wright is not aware
how nonsensical this is. In the National Film
Library Loan Section we have two films, both
made in Germany at the same time on the same
theme: Kameradsehaft and War is Hell. Was
Pabst really sincere? Recent rumour tends to
deny it. But to-day Kameicidu In/ft is still as vital
an utterance as ever, while War is Hell has
already become a museum curiosity. To-day it is
still a real joy to watch Night Mail, with its
superb cutting and imaginative uses of sound,
while many other documentaries it would be un-
kind to name, with messages no less sincere or
important, are mercifully consigned to limbo.

I hope by the way that no one will construe me
to be championing mere technical virtuosity,
which simply represents the opposite extreme of
this same heresy that one can in practice separate
thought and expression, form and content.

1 have the greatest sympathy with the socio-
logical aims of the British documentary move-
ment. When Wright says, "I believe absolutely
that the revolutionary technique is the only
technique," he sounds a resounding bugle call for
the future. I devoutly hope that British docu-
mentary may keep its ideals untarnished, for it is
one weapon we possess against the lowering
threat of coming disillusion. But if that weapon
is not to fail in our hand, those on whose work
it depends must get rid of these silly notions that
technique doesn't matter and can be dismissed
as "mere aesthetics".

I believe that Uarrv Watt, in his recent letter to
the New Statesman, has given the fairest com-
ment on the whole business. "It was Grierson's

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

drive and initiati\e that obtained the formal ion
of the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit . . .
it was the introduction of Cavalcanti's profes-
sional skill and incredible film sense that raised
the standard and reputation of British docu-
mentary.*'

1 sympathise with the ideals of British docu-
mentary, and there are occasions when the duty
of a friend is to speak bluntly. One of its worst
enemies is its own narrow parochialism which
occasionally borders on intolerance. It is all too
easy for the fervent propagandist to see little
good in other causes and no fault in his own.
(Hence, perhaps, the curious blindness which
leads Wright to describe our omission of Aero-
Engine or Transfer of Power as an omission of the
analytic film in general.)

It is perhaps because of this (or perhaps it is
merely an accident) that in a six-column review
of Film and Reality no mention is made of the
British Film Institute or the National Film
Library which produced the film and whose
pioneer work in collecting and preserving early
films made its production possible. I mention
this, not from personal disappointment, but be-
cause it hinges on to this matter of technique.
Film and Reality was made for the National Film
Library's Loan Section whose object is to en-
courage film appreciation, and provide material
for its study. I happen to believe in the future
and the value of film appreciation as enthusiastic-
ally as Basil Wright believes in documentary.

Those of us in the film world who are idealists
look on British documentary as a pretty big
thing because it promises so much to our hopes.
But when we get away from the charmed air of
Soho Square and talk to ordinary film-goers in
suburbs and provinces, and see the programmes
they see, we are reminded that documentaries are
still a mere droplet in the ocean of film produc-
tion which floods the screens of the world. How
is documentary to carry its message in the face of
such rivalry?

Surely the only solution lies in an enlightened
public opinion. The cinema is the greatest popu-
lar art of our time. In the cinema he who does
not satisfy millions will quickly be forced to use
his talents elsewhere. This throws a heavy burden
of responsibility for its future development on
the cinema audience itself. If the possibilities of
the cinema are to be realised and used to the
greatest social good, audiences must become far
more knowledgeable and critical. As Hitchcock
said somewhere, the director can only go as far
as his audience will let him.

Fortunately the task is not a difficult one.
People, especially soung people, are astonish nm I \
eager to learn. The film industry itself, with its
curious notion that knowledge will destroy the
cinema's illusion, and with its ersatz diet of fairy
tales for film fans, is much to blame for the fact

I that they have not already learnt far more.
We believe that in tackling the problem of film
appreciation we are tackling one of the major
problems of our time, namely the relation of
•■cinema to society. An audience critically alive
: s Iwill no longer be at the mercy of every smart
";|Alick who can turn out a nicely-lit picture and a
well-recorded track. And in particular, (although
our concern, of course, is with the whole of the
inema, and not merely with one part of it), such
an audience will readily respond to the best the
documentary movement can give it; and by that
an technically the best. The result will not
only be a demand for good documentaries, but
also their showing will achieve, as it already does

for the intelligent film-goer, an importance out of
all relation to their footage.

I believe, in short, that the roads pursued by
British documentary and by the National Film
Library in its film appreciation work (and. one
might add. by the A.C.T. which has become a
most valuable forum where technicians them-
selves can exchange ideas and experience) can
and should lie in the same direction. Discriminat-
ing audiences will demand good films; good films
will help to train discriminating audiences. It is
in this faith that we made Film and Reality. It is
in this faith that I earnestly hope that British
documentary, before it is too late, will reverse its
basic thesis to: "We are film-makers first and
propagandists second." Otherwise I can see little
hope for the success of their propaganda.
Yours faithfully,

ERNEST H. LINDGREN.

Curator, National Film Library,

British Film Institute.

WRIGHTS REPLY

There are one or two points in Lindgren's
letter which call for a reply.

Firstly, there is the alleged "contempt for
technique" which Lindgren claims has per-
meatedallthecritical writingofthe British school
in recent years. How Lindgren arrived at this con-
clusion is a mystery to me, though it may partly
be due to the confusion between "technique" and
"aesthetics" which is such a marked feature of
his letter.

I repeat unrepentantiy the phrase "mere
aesthetics". Nothing, to my mind, could be
worse than an approach to any art form which is
self-consciously concerned merely with aesthetic
considerations. Such an approach is not the job
of the critic; still less so is it the job of the docu-
mentary film maker.

The following points are not personal opinion,
but fact :—

1. "We are propagandists first and film makers
second" has been the basis of the documentary
movement since its inception in 1929. Curiously
enough this phrase does not mean that we are
uninterested in film making.

2. Documentary, under the direct leadership of
John Grierson, has, despite this "deleterious"
motto, done more experiment with the film form
than any other group in this country.

3. These experiments arose from a desire to use
the film as a sociological medium, and the
aesthetics of documentan arose from such a de-
sire. Technically we needed to explore and exploit
all the possibilities of the film. Creati\el\ we
needed to put our message across as a living
entity to our audiences. Hence another "unfor-
tunate" slogan— "The creative interpretation of
reality".

These points I should have thought Lindgren,
with his very wide and acute knowledge of the
whole world of film, would have been the first to
understand. But instead he tries to find contra-
dictions in two statements in my article.

The first, which incidentally he misquotes, is as
follows: "The various earl\ experiments in sound
were important not merely from the aesthetic
point of view, but because they were designed to
strengthen and clarify (not "classify" as Lindgren
quotes me) the social angle." In other words we

weren't trying merely to make beautiful noises.
we were trying to say something important.

The second statement, which is alleged to con-
tradict the first, is that documentary tended "to
sacrifice purely aesthetic considerations to the
need for pungent comment and the imaginative
presentation of facts and problems". This has
been true of a number of very important docu-
mentaries. It is true of Housing Problems, The
Nutrition Film and Children at School, for in-
stance. Yet curiously enough. Housing Problems
especially in its final sequence, has to me at least
had a considerable "aesthetic" impact on all of
the many occasions on which I have seen it. And
what about that super-example of the unaesthetic
subject, Target for Tonight?

I think Lindgren has muddled his argument by
identifying "technique" with "aesthetics". The
words are not interchangeable.

That Lindgren agrees on the point that to-day
"The revolutionary technique is the only tech-
nique" naturally delights me, but when in the
same breath he accuses us of "silly notions that
technique doesn't matter" I am completely be-
wildered. No one in documentary has ever to my
knowledge said or written anything of the sort.
Such an idea is certainly not to be found in my
article. As I have already pointed out, constant
experiments in technique have always been, and
will continue to be, one of the most marked
features of documentary film making.

Now we come to the second major point to
which a reply is necessary. I was indeed aston-
ished to find that Lindgren was in agreement with
an extraordinary letter which appeared recently
in the New Statesman.

Grierson, like all great men, is well able to
ignore attacks made on him from whatever

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DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

[continued fro

s page)

motives. But in the interests of accuracy, and also
because I am sure that 1 am expressing the feel-
ings of documentary workers as a whole, I must
point out that Grierson has always been and still
is a remarkable technician, a magnificent teacher,
and, in short, a great producer. To suggest that
his 'drive and initiative . . . obtained the forma-
tion of the E.M.B. Flm Unit", but that his in-
fluence was then superseded by that of Caval-
canti (who joined us in 1934, five years after the
E.M.B. Unit had been formed), is a statement
which must have astonished Cavalcanti as much
as it astonishes anyone who knows anything of
the British documentary movement.

I owe far too much to Cavalcanti to give the
impression that I wish to belittle in any way the
enormous contribution he made to documentary
during the period in which he was working with
us Indeed, that Grierson invited him to join us is
an excellent example of Grierson's deep under-
standing of the needs of documentary as regards
the development of treatment and technique un-
der an experienced and exceptionally talented
teacher.

Grierson is not merely the founder of the
documentary movement. Since its inception it
has been hisown understanding of film technique,
his encouragement of experimentation and (to
meet Lindgren on his own ground) his uncanny
grasp and knowledge of aesthetics as regards art
in general and film art in particular, which have
been the driving force and inspiration of the
progress of documentary.

These qualities, out of deference to Lindgren. I
have put first, but 1 must now add Grierson's
political grasp and foresight, his incredible energy
and organisational drive, and, above all, his un-
swerving loyalty not merely to the idea of docu-
mentary but also to all those working with
him.

I am sorry to have to recite this factual ABC.
which will be so familiar to all unbiased readers
ot D.N.L. who know anything about the Docu-
mentary Movement, but when a man of Lind-
gren's standing closes his eyes to simple facts, it
is necessary to try and open them again. I am
doubly sorry for the attack on Grierson since it is
unfair to Cavalcanti, who worked so well and so
fruitfully with us all under Grierson's leadership,
and whose latest film, The Foreman Went to
trance, is so distinguished by its realist technique,
its excellent propaganda message, and its
cinematic integrity.

I am in entire agreement with Lindgren's feel-
ings as regards film appreciation, and, in com-
mon I am sure with all documentary workers,
will welcome all and any efforts by him and his
colleagues at the Film Institute to tackle "the
relation of cinema to society".

1 am sure, however, he will forgive us if we
don't take his advice about aesthetics.

We are to-day all of us engaged in the urgen-
cies of war. Much of our work must perforce be
devoted to short-term messages; but the various
productions by documentary people in all sorts of
units are sufficient evidence that documentary's
basic purposes still hold good and hold firm.

1 am not interested in parochial squabbles am
more than Grierson is; nor do I think any good
purpose can be served by discussing this matter
further, now that the facts of the case have been
restated..

Yours, etc.,

FILM OF THE MONTH

THE FOREMAN WENT TO FRANCE

ii vv vs a very hot Sunday afternoon and you
would have thought that after the long winter
people would have wanted to get out in the sun
and warm air and see the Spring. As we walked
up Piccadilly and the Circus came in sight, we
could see the queue. "Damn all these people
going into stuffy cinemas when they should
be out in the healthy fresh air".

Inside it was nearly full and warming up.
Half-past three, twenty to four, and the stalls
started clapping. Looking round you see old
Anstey sitting in the row behind — he seems to be
nodding off. He suddenly looks up and sees you.
I suppose all the boys are here waiting to see
what Cavalcanti's film's going to be like. More
clapping, and on comes the five minuter. The
Owner Goes Aloft. Not one of the best, but every-
one is pleased to see something, and it goes down
well. Then Hayfoot, which also goes down verv
well. James Gleason is good and old Joe Sawyer
(who was in the Informer) is good too. Then the
newsreel — Universal and Mr. Jefferys who I
don't like. Then the lights come up.

The curtains open and blue and red lights are
thrown on the screen and they run the Rat
trailer which is very good, but you can't really
see it for the coloured lights. Its really hot and
stuffy by now. All the air conditioning schemes
seem to have gone wrong since the war started.
Maybe it was the bombs. And they are standing
down the side gangways. Then on comes The
Foreman Went to France. Plain black and white
titles. Its a wonder the English don't have trade
marks like the Americans. Direction Charles
Frend — Associate Producer Cavalcanti — just
straight Cavalcanti — Script Angus Macphail
and Leslie Arliss — couldn't get the third name.
Sound, Len Page— he recorded Housing Problems.
Photography, Wilkie Cooper, and we're off.
That's old Bill Blewitt as one of the fire watchers.

After a reminiscing first sequence, we are back
into 1940 and the film itself. All the opening
sequences of Clifford Evans trying to break
down the stupidity of the factory management
and civil service red tape go down very well.
The audience seem to know that story by heart.
I don't like Clifford Evans very much, he's too
sincerely sincere. All the French people are
extremely well cast though. I don't like Robert
Morley very much either— he's loo clever— but
lie is well directed and toned down. He is the
villain so you can dislike him anvvvav. The first

glimpse of Tommy Trinder and Gordon Jackson
is very pleasant. It's nice to see someone being
honest.

The film really comes alive. (The attitude
towards looting is typical of the whole film.)
It is all very honest and very true— and the film is
extremely good as propaganda, instruction, and
especially morale. No points are laboured,
nothing is distorted to make a propaganda point
— which is such a common failing with both
shorts and features. There is an example at the
end of the film when they are trying to persuade
a French fishing captain to take the machinery
on his already overcrowded boat. The skipper
says he doesn't know whether he can manage the
machinery. The foreman, having heard that the
French are fond of money, pulls out all his
money, gives it to the skipper and says. "There'll
be more when we get to England" — and the
Frenchman just looks at him and says, "I don't
want your money". A sequence like this clears
anti-French feeling, and, more importantly, it
does it honestly. It doesn't just say that there is
nothing wrong with the French. It admits that
maybe the French are fond of a little money, but
it says at the same time that there are plenty of
things the French are more interested in than
money. It is rather an obscure point, but it is
very important one. In so many films, and often
because of the official attitude, everything is
either pure white or pure black ; and it becomes
just silly as far as convincing anyone is concerned.

Once the film has started, it just gets better and
better. The various fifth columnists, the beautiful
sequences of French children — the audienc
just lapping it up. This is the kind of stuff that
English audiences have been waiting for for
main a year. Tommj Trinder's and Gordon
Jackson's dialogue is terrific. Someone using
real English dialogue well. I bet it wasn't written
by a studio writer— maybe that's unfair, but we
have never heard anything as good before. Of
course, a lot of credit' is due to the directing
and acting that puts the lines over — but you've
got to have something to work from.

What more is there to be said? The film is all
good from the beginning to the end — it deals
honestly and respectfully with people — it puts
the dirty dogs m their places. All you can do ij
to congratulate Cavalcanti. the actors and tin
technicians, and Michael Balcon, and hope thai
they will make more films as good as this one.

To DOCUMENTARY PRODUCERS

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have periodically FOR HIRE a surplus of extremel)
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Also CUTTING FACILITIES at 90 WARDOl K ST.

Enquiries to 19 Lexham Mews, W.8. Wes. 4969.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

WOMEN AND PROPAGANDA

By EDITH MANVELL

when war was declared women expected to be
called up within a few weeks to take an active
part in the war effort. While they were waiting
for the machinery of organising the conscription

" woman power to be set in motion, many
women who felt they could spare several hours
a week from their home duties, did voluntary
work, but they regarded this as only a tem-
ry measure. Time passed, the war seemed at
a standstill, and the first desire to serve the
country for the defence of our homes relapsed
into passivity.

Eventually the call came — a million volunteers
were needed. At last the moment had come for
action. It was not quite what was expected,
women were not conscripted, they were merely
asked to volunteer. No one quite knew what to
do. They waited for orders. Nothing seemed to
happen, they just had to go on waiting. What
irritated people was that after being asked by the
Government to volunteer for war work, they
were so often told there was nothing they could
do. A woman who offered to do part-time work
was told, when she arrived at the factory, that
there wasn't a job for her, but if she liked she
could sweep the place up a bit. Is it a wonder
that they feel humiliated and exclaim angrily,
"If thej want me, they must come and fetch me
next time." Apathy breeds apathy and so the
second great opportunity of gaining the willing
co-operation of women was lost.

Once more the Government had put the cart
before the horse — in fact there probably was no
horse. The propaganda was there, but there was
no clear national policy, no driving power to
action, no organisation to give it effect.

Those women who were conscious of the

urgency of total warfare were prepared for strict

control and a temporary suspension of personal

mg liberties if it meant greater efficiency. But the

Government decided to let us down gently ; they

tried through their propaganda to coax us into

01 making sacrifices voluntarily, with the obvious

result that only conscientious people took any

notice. The methods of appealing to our social

sense were sometimes strangely perverted. For

instance, in our daily papers there was the photo-

:alsj graph of a cunning little boy telling his father to

jts put his money into Savings Certificates in order

to avoid paying income tax!

Propaganda if it is to be effective must be
foj honest and not resort to tricks or side-tracking
from vital issues: any insincerity, patronising or
cajoling only provokes resentment or indiffer-
ence. Women don't expect to be treated like
spoiled children. Activity— getting something
done — is the only approach which will produce
effective results. Often it is woman's practical
common sense which cuts through many a tangle
of red tape, and male officials have been dis-
concerted at a woman's complete lack of respect
for rules and regulations if they are obsolete or
prevent effective action. There are no written
iavvs in the home; each problem is handled as it
arises and as circumstances alter a case; so each
problem receives the appropriate treatment.
That does not mean that every home is well rim
or free from muddles: however dull the routine
may be, there are times when every woman has
J to use initiative. If this is guided by a shrewd

sense of humour it is certain that all the little
trials and troubles in the home will be smoothed
away.

It is precisely this element in home life which
should be taken into account when directing a
policy of propaganda for women — something
practical and good humoured. If we consider
some of the films which have been made about
women or for women we can see the good and
bad qualities of our propaganda in practice.

Fortunately the mediocre films are quickly
forgotten. The better documentary films often
leave a lasting impression, not in details but of
the spirit which is the essence of the film. For
instance Land Girl, which has recently been re-
leased, is not specifically intended as a recruiting
film to persuade girls to join the land army — it
has a more human approach, and what impresses
many people is the fact that here is a girl who has
given up a town job, who undertakes some of the
most arduous work a woman can do, who is
actuated not by high falutin patriotic principles
but by a real love for the job in hand and a
realisation of the need for it to be done: and yet
she finds herself up against difficulties, not
created by the enemy, but by the prejudices of
the people for whom she works. A weaker
woman would have packed up and gone home,
but here is a girl with grit and faith enough to
master the difficulties and by sheer ability over-
come the opposition which threatened to make
her life hard and wretched. The girl is real to the
audience, and she wins admiration and respect
for those qualities which are essential whatever
the job may be. The woman engineer, the woman
in the Forces, the woman who works on trans-
port may be up against this kind of prejudice — it
may be the sceptical attitude of men, or the
scornful pity of women who say, "You look just
awful, my dear, in that ghastly uniform."

The best propaganda films are those which
show men and women doing a really fine job and
in which the individual triumphs over difficulties
and dangers — the sort of films which show
women at their best — not thereby implying that
all women are angels, but proving by a concrete
and genuine example that they can be very
efficient, practical and hardworking people if
they appreciate the need for the job they are
asked to do. Propaganda by example is therefore
the most effective.

One of the difficulties which confronts those
responsible for propaganda films is to make a
universal appeal and avoid the temptation to
present a theme from a limited class angle. Most
of the films on women up to the present have a
middle-class flavour. W.R.N.S. is just such a
film; it represents the women in lh*s service as
rather self-consciously refined young ladies
brought up in the best traditions; to a working-
class girl certain parts of this film might appear
just "silly", and as far as she is concerned, the
recruiting value of the film is lost. She knows
perfectly well that when she is called up she
will have a much tougher job to do, and parading
smartly in uniform doesn't seem to have much to
do with fighting the enemy.

It might be interesting to contrast two films
about women; the one W.V.S. and the other
made in Russia. 100.000 Women. As films they

are very simply made, using a nevvsreel technique
—a panorama of activity. In the Russian film the
women are for the most part tough, working-class
types. Though some of the work they do, as for
example the digging of tank traps, requires great
physical endurance, it is pointed out in the com-
mentary that most of the work they do requires
skill and intelligence rather than strength.

Several times during the film we are made
aware of their indomitable courage, as when the
parachute nurse jumps from a 'plane. The man
who is going into the army entrusts the gathering
of the harvest to his wife: he is seen teaching her
to drive a tractor. She will do the job even
though the German army may invade and de-
stroy her farm. Those parts of the film which deal
with military and defence services are not repre-
sented as parades in uniform but show us the
grim determination on the women's faces and the
arduous nature of their work. There is nothing
smart about the physical appearance of these
Russian women; they reserve that quality for
efficiency in their job.

Nevertheless there is little in this film which
could not be seen happening everywhere in
Britain. The working-class women in this
country are just as efficient and tough, but they
are handicapped by two things — on the one hand
there are the prejudices of the men who have
never employed woman labour, and the men who
are unwilling to teach them their own skilled
work ; and on the other there is the failure of the
Government to supply that kind of propaganda
which makes people believe in the urgency of
their job. People are not yet quite sure whether
they are working for a victory that will take us
back to 1939, or whether victory will bring an
opportunity for righting the social and economic
evils of the past. This is the problem that makes
so much of our propaganda ineffectual.

The film W. V.S. is an example of the varied
nature of the work done voluntarily by women
referred to as "Maids of all work in green
uniforms". Much of the work is uninspiring but
necessary to the war effort, such as collecting
salvage, and sorting clothes. The more interesting
moments in the film are those which show us the
women supplying food to demolition workers
and dockers and waiting with ambulances and
cars to drive shipwrecked casualties to hospital.
And yet this film fails to give anything but the
most superficial idea of the part women are tak-
ing in the war effort. It is not enough to be shown
well-meaning, kindly and industrious women :
we want to feel something of the faith which in-
spires them and the dynamic will to put every
ounce of effort into freeing this country from the
threat of defeat and slavery. It is once more the
official propaganda which is at fault, because it is
ineffectual and avoids the really vital issues.
When we see the women porters at railway sta-
tions, women working on the lines, women as
builders' labourers, or working machines which
men were quite sure they couldn't manage, we
know that the material for films is there, but until
those responsible for commissioning such films
make up their minds to provide something less
refined than we have had up to the present, the
real hard work done by women in this country
will pass unnoticed.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

WE HAVE OUR TROUBLES TOO!

By MARY LOSEY, noted U.S. Documentary Expert.

at first glance an invitation to write about U.S.
wartime documentary propaganda has the ring
of opportunity. But then the eye stops, frozen on
a word — "policy". Whose policy.' Which policy?

Not long ago we learned from our president
that Washington has its Cliveden set, which has
a policy. The exponents of defence have a policy.
So have exponents of offence. There is a business
as usual policy. A business better than usual
policy and an all-out policy. There is the timid
policy that the public is to be informed "in
terms of" facts. How it smacks of all the mimeo-
graphed reports stacked end on end, "dictated
but not read". There's the policy of sending
shorts of South America on subjects that will
offend nobody. And there's a policy that decides
that some producers of prophetic documentary
films are incompetent because they made films
attacking fascism before it was nice to be anti-
fascist.

Occasionally, too, there is thecatch-me-if-you-
can policy of a producer who gets loose and
makes a picture saying that South American
young people are much like North American
young people and therefore have a common
ground for fighting the Axis. Or others wander
off and make a film about nursery camps because
they think they arc important, especially since we
have no plans for the care of young children in
this war.

In Washington they have a dozen different
policies ranging from the sponsors of The Land
(not yet released), to the Office of Emergency
Management which believes in keeping us
informed on the battle of production. The
O.E.M. is telling us that we can and are
making the necessary instruments of war. And
this we are glad to know. The only catch is
that after you've said that we can make tanks
and we can make bombers, and we have a lot of
electric power, then you can go on to say that we
also make cannon and ships, but there is an end
to it eventually and you come smack up against
a rather forgotten commodity — people. One
brush of the O.E.M. with this ticklish subject is
an unforgettable item called Women in Defence.
First you get a girl in coveralls pirouetting a la
Adelaide Hawley while a commentator tells you
that women are going to work in this war, and
they arc going to dress to fit, and becoming too.
Before you quite get your bearings you realise
to your horror that Katharine Hepburn, whom
yOu really like quite a lot when she stays on her
own side of the railroad tracks, is telling you
how our women are doing their bit in industry.
As I remember it the pictures here arc a repe-
titious montage of women doing things that it is
supposed to be remarkable for women to be
doing. You might as well have had the Duchess
of Windsor teaching British film audiences the
Lambeth Walk.

There are some bright spots which lamentably
have nothing whatsoever to do with the U.S.
documentary policy. They have to do with the
National 1 ilm Board of Canada and sonic of the
productions that have reached America from
via the Ministry of Information.
Grierson's polic> of illuminating the Canadian
war effort b\ relating it to the rest of the world is
erhaps not ideally suited to duplication here

since the citizens of these States, like the citizens
of Britain, still have the habit of thinking that the
rest of the world is related to them. All the same
we will get more light from seeing the strategy
series from Canada and more realisation of the
fact that we are fighting a global war than from
any of our own productions. The fact that from
henceforth American audiences will have the
monthly opportunity to see The World in Action
is the best news of the moment.

Perhaps it is not beyond the realm of possi-
bility that Hollywood will have taken a lesson
from the audiences flocking to Target for Tonight.
The time is past when Selective Service was just
a huge joke on a bunch of guys who used to make
fifty bucks a week and now have to work their
heads off for twenty-one dollars a month and a
sergeant who talks and acts like a Brooklyn
Dodger fan. We were pretty pompous a year ago
in our judgment of the British product that came
our way. "London can take it", we said. "Yeah,
but can she dish it out?" I shudder to think what
our snooky spectacles of the latest sweater girl
singing blues in the officers' mess make of our
war effort.

This is not to disparage some notable shorts
such as Eyes of the Navy, The New Spirit, with
Donald Duck to tell you that all you gotta do is
do it, or the easy-to-take friendly advice of a film
like Safeguarding Military Secrets. But with such
notable exceptions and some individual con-

tributions such as those on Out Russian Front,
you can chalk up Hollywood's contribution to
date as a dead loss.

"Some day," says Bob Flaherty, who has dis-
covered quite a bit of America himself these past
few years. "Some day we will wake up and dis-
cover that it takes more than machines to win
this war: it also takes people."

When that day comes it will show in our films.
Then our films will recognise that this is no
football game but a fight ; that we want light, -
not cheerleaders. Then films will begin to shed
light wherever they can. They may begin with
simple geography but however they begin they
will teach, relate and lead.

No one can sit down at his typewriter and out-
line to-day the films that must be made this year
or even this month. But that is not a question for
policy but for plan. Plan will change from week
to week. Policy must be a clear and constant
directive. The American people are free men and
women who wish to fight to make their freedom
lasting and real. Our policy will be to make films
which will help them to understand the job
before them and to fortify the courage and will
to do it.

Living Movement

;;

CARLYLE defined Progress in just those two words!
In paying due tribute to the aptness of the sage's
definition the Kinematograph Weekly translates the
spirit into action. Current events are reported for our
readers in relation to the general advance, artistic and
technical, by which progress in Kinematography is
achieved.

Keep abreast of progress in your craft
— read the

93 LONG ACRE

WEEKLY

LONDON : : W.C.2

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

FILM SOCIETY NEWS

The Film Societ> of Ayrshire reports that the
outlook at the beginning of the season was any-
thing but favourable as the theatre in Prestwick
no longer available. Since there was not
another suitable theatre in the town, the Council
decided to tackle the problem of the eighth
season by trying for a theatre in Ayr, four miles
distant. The management of the Ritz Cinema,
Ayr, appreciated the application for the use of
the theatre and the local magistrates gave their
approval of our performances. From the begin-
ning the Society has been an unqualified success
in Ayr. In Kilmarnock, too, where the same pro-
gramme is shown in the afternoon, the attend-
ances have been regular, with the result that the
Society is approaching the end of its most suc-
cessful season, having upward of 1,400 members
between the two theatres. Perhaps the most
gratifying feature to the Council is that well over
:.()()() members of the Allied Forces have already
availed themselves of Guest Membership. The
season opened with Charles Boyer in Le Bonheur,
on the same programme was La Joie de Vivre,
which was well received. Among other films
shown during the season were Down Went
McGinty. The Life of Emile Zola. Hoppin and
Gross' Fox Hum, Les Disparus de St. Agil, The
Last Night, Kellino's / Met a Murderer, the
Swedish short Early One Morning, the Russian
documentary Conquerors of the North, Cornet de
Bal, Gulliver's Travels. Les Rois du Sport and
Shors. The season will conclude with two special
programmes, the first on Hollywood and the last
meeting on the subject of Crackers. The feature
will be the Marx Brothers* Night at the Opera.

The Edinburgh Film Guild ended a remarkably
I successful season with a special Russian pro-
gramme with Shors as the feature, supported by
I shorts, including Russian Salad. The M.O.I, five-
[; minuter Land Girl and Massingham's And So to
Work were also shown. Claudine was shown on
I February 22nd with some interesting shorts, and
I on March 11th there was a performance of
] prize-winning amateur films. Membership has
| increased steadily since the outbreak of war and
the pre-war total has almost been reached. The
annual meeting will be held in June.

The Manchester and District Film Institute
Society and Manchester and Salford Film Society
report that in association with the British Coun-
cil, the Societies presented Film and Reality at
the Rivoli Cinema on March 22nd. Machines
iMen and Guests of Honour were also shown.
Professor R. A. C. Oliver, Head of the Man-
chester University Department of Education,
I welcomed Mr. Alberto Cavalcanti as the guest
speaker. During the discussion, which lasted an
hour, the Secretary' raised the question of con-
tent and political and social values in cinema,
and recalled Cavalcanti's earlier criticism in
world film NEWS of the Life of Emile Zola on
these grounds while admitting the film's con-
siderable qualities of realism. In reply. Caval-
canti stressed that in making Film and Reality, it
had been found convenient to limit the theme
more to changes in technique in the realist film.
Another member sought an explanation for the
lack of realism in the sound track (faked news-
reel sound, etc.), and some of the technical diffi-

culties of achie\ ing the same degree of realism as
in the visuals at the present stage of sound re-
cording were indicated. This report from the
Manchester Guardian summarises the remain-
ing part of the discussion: "Answering ques-
tions afterwards. Mr. Cavalcanti forecast much
greater demand for realist films in the commer-
cial cinema after the war. lie criticised the
Ministry of Information for making what lie
called a false distinction between theatrical and
non-theatrical films, and for trying to combine
the propagandist appeal of a short recruiting
film with the qualities of documentary realism."

The Pontypool Educational Settlement Film
Society reports : Although the Settlement opened
for its present session last autumn, it was not
until January of this year that we were able to
start the season's series of film shows. So far we
have shown the following films: The End of St.
Peter.shnrgh. The Man II ho Knew Too Much, The
Turn of the Tide and Rembrandt. For our future
programmes we have booked : Spanish Earth,
And So to Work, Kameradschaft, Potemkin, Song
of Ceylon and The Plow that Broke the Plains.
The Dundee and St. Andrews Film Society pre-
sented the French film Seranade, directed by
Jean Boyer, on Sunday. February 22nd. Two
shorts, Transfer of Power and Airscrew were also
shown.

Scottish Churches Film Guild (Glasgow Branch)
showed Try What Love Will Do at their March
meeting. It was considered quite suitable for
religious teaching though the opinion was that it
was insufficient just to shake hands after the
workman had been dismissed and remained un-
employed without any compensation being given.
The Belfast Film Institute Society reports :—
With the showing of La Femme du Boulanger
already reported in D.N.L., the season of seven
shows originally planned came to an end. But
as interest in the Society's work seemed to be
well maintained it has been decided to arrange
one further show for May 9th. For this the feature
film booked is Shors, which would provide
interesting comparison with Chapayev, which
was shown in autumn. It is hoped that we shall
be able to secure some representative recent
Soviet shorts to complete the programme.
Publication of the Society's monthly Film
Review is being continued until June and the
season will end with the Annual General Meet-
ing in late May. At this meeting it has been our
custom to show some sub-standard film of
historic interest but so far no definite arrange-
ments have been made for this year's meeting
(but it would be unfortunate if the practice had
to be broken), for although the Society have
screened many films there has been nothing in
the way of discussion and lecture meetings in this
past winter.

The Workers' Film Association Ltd. is not
allowing the war to interfere with its work of
popularising the film as a medium of education
and propaganda. Proposals are under considera-
tion for the production of a film on the Cavalcade
of Labour. This film will show how the workers
through struggle and comradeship have attained
a position of partnership in the State at the most
critical period of our history.

A Film Summer School is being arranged at
Holywell Manor. St. Hugh's College. Oxford,
during the period 18th to 24th July. The speakers
so far secured are Mr. George Ridley, MP.. Mi
George Pearson "Feature Films and Social
Problems", Mr. Oliver Bell. "How the Film has
become one of our most important ambassa-
dors"; Mr. Pat Mannock. film critic of the Daif
Herald. "The films I review": Mr. Ritchie
< alder, "How the film can be used for scientific
education": Mr. Anthony Asquith, "I turn
III m Critic"; Mr. Ivor Montagu. "Soviei
Films", and finally Joseph Reeves. "Recent suc-
cesses of the Workers' Film Association." Films
will be screened during the week on democracy,
Soviet Union, etc.

v. accommodation will be limited, applica-
tion should be made to Mr. J. Reeves. Workers'
Film Association Ltd., Transport House. Smith
Square, S.W.I, as soon as possible

SCIENTIFIC

FILM

SOCIETIES

With the meeting on March 18th. the Glasgow
Society completed its ordinary meetings for the
present season. Two extra meetings have still to be-
held, the first of these taking the form of a joint
matinee with the Glasgow Branch of the Scottish
Educational Film Association, in the Cosmo
Cinema. The programme will consist of films
suitable for the higher forms of secondary
schools, and should do much to arouse t he-
interest of these students in the activities of the
Society.

The second extra meeting, to be held in May,
will consist of a lecture, with illustrations, on
"Orthochromatics", and will be a joint meeting
with the Photographical Society of the Royal
Technical College.

During the past season, the members have
seen at the six ordinary meetings of the Society,
a total of 49 films, of which nine were semi-
scientific documentary, five were cartoons, and
the remaining 35 scientific films were divided
into groups as follows: —

Natural History ... 4

Zoology .... 6

Embryology ... 1

Botany .... 4

Hygiene and Public Health . 3

Chemistry .... 3

Engineering ... 4

Physics .... 4

Astronomy ... 2

Industrial Chemistry and

Metallurgy ... 4

The Society has not, as yet, built a programme

round a single subject as the members seem to

prefer one constructed on the basis of one film

in each of the following classes: Zoological.

Natural History, Botanical, Engineering, and

Chemical or Physical.

With regard to the zoological films, the policy
has been to start with the lower forms of life and
proceed through a complete series. An innova-
tion this season was the inclusion of a "March
of Time" film in each programme and this was so
successful that it will be continued until the
supply is exhausted.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

NEWS & SPECIALISED THEATRE ASSOCIATION
SHORT FILM BOOKINGS FOR APRIL/MAY 1942

icing Stranger than Fiction 84

The Taller Theatre, Manchc
The News Theatre. Leeds
tav Champions

The Nevis Theatre. Notting

The News Theatre, Manchester
Australia Marches with Britain

Premier News Theatre, Bournemouth
Besieged Odessa

Canin<

uicl.a.i

The Tatler Theatre. Manchestc
Cosmo Cinema. Glasgow
i anhliean Sentinel

The News Theatre, Notiinghar

The^Tatler News Theatre, New

Child Psychology

The Tatler Theatre, Mancheste
Common Heritage

The Tatler News Theatre, New

The Tatler Theatre

The News Theatre.
Donald's Nephews

Eros Theatre, W.l
Early to Bed

Cosmo Cinema, G
Fifty Below Zero

The News Theatre.
Four Legged Soldiers

o the West

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
George Washington Country Gentleman

The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle-
Glorious Vamp

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
Going Places with Graham McHamee No. '

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
Going Places

The News Theatre. Nottingham

May 10th

April I9th
19th

April 26th

May 3rd

April 26th

mngham

B Placi

. s Theatre. . .

Hcddn Hoppers Holl\wood

The News I heatre, Uirii.iiigii.ini
The Taller I heatre. Manchesiei

III Never Heil Again
The News Theatre, Leeds
The Tatler Theatre, Chester

In the Rear of the Enemy

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester

The News 1 heatre. Manchester
Invasion

The Taller Theatre. Chester
The News Theatre, Aberdeen
inirncy in Tunisie

The News Thea

March ol rime No. 9 Vmerica ;

I he News I heatre. \ I ■■ ■ !■■■

The News Ihcatt, '-
March of Time No. 10

Premtet Ni .-, I heatre, Bi tui ne

Old New Orleans

The News Theatre, Bristol

The Premier News Theatre. Bournemouth

The News Theatre, Leeds

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester
Old New Mexico

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester

The Tatler News Theatre, Liverpc
Pampas Paddocks

'I he I. tiler Theatre, Manchester
Plane Sailing

The News Theatre, Birmingham

May 3rd Polar Tra

April 19th
May 4th

April 26th

April 20th

April 20th

April 26th

May 3rd

April 23rd

May 4th
1 0th

Mav 3rd

April 19th
May 3rd
April 19th
April 19th
May 3rd

Eros Theatre, W.l
Pnrkcv s Poor Fish

Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle-
Recruiting Daze

The News Theatre, Leeds
Rolling Rhythm

The News Theatre, Leeds
Russian Salad

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
Sacred Ganges

Eros Theatre, W.l
San Francisco Metropolis of the West

The News Theatre, Bristol
Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat

The News Theatre, Leeds
Shampoo Spring

Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle-
She was an Acrobat's Daughter

The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle-
Ship Shape

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
Sign of Victory

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
Sitka and .luneau

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
Sk\ hue Serenade

The News Theatre, Manchester

1 lie latler Theatre, Chester
Song ol the Clyde

The World's News Theatre. W.l
Waterloo Station News Theatre, S.E.I
I he News Theatre. Aberdeen

April 26th
April 19th

April 201
261

April 26th

May 17

April 19

May 3:

April 19t

May 3rd
April 20th
April 27th

May 4th
April 30th
April 26th

April 26t

May lOt
May 101
April 261
April 27t

May 3i

Spring Frolics

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
Stranger than Fiction 89

May 17th The News Theatre, Nottingham

.1 26th

The News Theatre, Nottingham
st, anger than Fiction No. 93
The News Theatre, Aberdeen

The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastl

Strong Point 42

The Tatler News Theatre, Birmingr
Svniphnnv in Snow

Eros Theatre, W.l

The News Theatre, Manchester
The Carpenters

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
The (.olden Touch

Cosmo Cinema, Glasgow
The Man I Cured

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester
The Old South

Cosmo Cinema, Glasgow
The Poles Weigh Anchor

The News Theatre, Aberdeen

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester

The News Theatre, Leeds
rhe Robber Kitten

The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastl

The Whalers

Eros Theatre, W.l

I Ins Place Australia
The Tatler Theatre, Chester

Trail of the Buccaneers

The News Theatre, Manchester
The News Theatre, Birmingham
The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastl

I i ainiug Police Horses
The News Theatre, Bristol

Three Little Pigs

Cosmo Cinema, Glasgow

llircc Little Wolves
Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle-

I he News 1 heatre. Aberdeen
The Tatler News T heatre. Liverpool
The Tatler News Theatre. Nevvcastle-

The News
Western Isles

The News Theatre, Manchester
What's Lacrosse?

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester

The News Theatre, Birmingham

The News Theatre, Leeds
Willie and the Mouse

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
World Garden

Premier News Theatre. Bournemouth

Cosmo Cinema, Glasgow

Week
encing

May 10th

April 26th

April I9th

April 19th

April 30th
May 3rd

April 20th

May 4th

April 19th

May 11th

April 26th

April 23rd

April 20th

April 19th
19th

May 3rd

May 10th

May I lth

April 19th

April 26th

April 26th

May 3rd

April 26th
April 27th
May 3rd

May 10th

Ma. 10th

10th

I lth

May 4th

\rnl 26th

C. A. RADLEY

DESMOND DICKINSON

Ma; 1 0th

April 26th
26th

May 1 0th

April 20th

/Spril 19th

SELWYN
FILMS

A t Presen t Prod licit ig
for the Air Ministry

j ,,, | ,„ ,i,c W 1

April 19th

19th

Mav 3rd

1 Bournemouth

3rd

-. as 1 heatre, 1 ivcrpool

April 19th

Mickev's Vmateur

II- I.i,l-i News 1 heatre, Newcastle-

April 26!h

Mickey s Trailer

Hie World's News 1 heatre, W.l

■

I he 1 atlcr 1 heatre. C hesier

\pnl 20th

Die latler I heatre. Manchester

\pr.l 19th

I he World's News Theatre, W.l

\pnl 19th

19 LEXHAM MEWS W.8
90 W ARDOUR STREET W.l

WES. 4969
GER. 3265

|)\\ II) Mack \\l

WES. 4969

D. P. I OOPEB

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER APRIL 1942

"OUR FILM"

By RALPH BOND

"our film" is something unique in British film his mates convince the other side that a joint

production, for it is the first entirely voluntary committee is the only way to solve production

and co-operative film to be made by professional problems and step up output. But one of the lads

workers in this country. put his foot in it by some indiscreet remark and

FILMS IN U.S.S.R.

Ermler is working on a film which tells the
story of a raid by a Red Army division, led b\ a
young Soviet General, in the German rear. 1 he
script is by the celebrated writer. Alexei
Tolstoy.

Roshal is making a short film entitled The

It started some months ago when, inspired by Just as il looks as if the argument will have to Murderer Steps Out, depicting the career of a

the epic fight of the Soviet Union, a mass meet-
ing of all employees at Denham Studios passed a
resolution of solidarity with the film workers of
the Leningrad Studios who were working — and
fighting — under fire.
After the meeting it occurred to several people

German fascist leader and showing how he c
to power with the aid of shady German business
men and reactionary politicians.

ittee (representing all the Denham trade
inionists) called another meeting and it was un-
nimously decided that they — the workers, tech-
nicians and artists — would make a film on the
theme of Anglo-Soviet solidarity and offer it
to the Ministry of Information here as part of
their contribution to the national effort.
Three committees were set up — Script, Pro-
tction and Finance. A certain amount of money
was needed to pay for materials and incidentals.
By gifts, subscriptions and raffles nearly £600

start all over again, there is an unexpected inter-
ruption. The door opens and in walks a stranger.
He is one of the Soviet Trade Union representa-
tives visiting England. Forcefully and movingly L Kuieshov, one of the older generation of
he demands that they stop arguing. He describes Soviet film directors, is making a film entitled
Norwegians, depicting the heroism of Norwegian
and So\iet
..... transport. The
ppeal there is superimposed a shot of tanks scenario js by another well known Soviet

the critical situation of the war. There i

that resolutions were not enough. They' must be furth" ^;'rrel1"^ TDhe committee is formed and fishermen who help British airm
prepared to do something specific. So the Works over the face of the Russian as he concludes his saiIor t destroy a German ,

rolling off the conveyor belt ready for action.

That is the story of Our Film and little remains
to be said except that here is a film that some-
how or other should get into every cinema and
every factory in the country. It is extremely well
made and acted, and although there are no
credits, the foremost technicians in the camera.
sound, art, editing and other departments of
Denham have put their best into it.

Our Film admirably fits the needs of the

was raised; all the technicians and artists gave moment. At a time when greater production and
Joint Production Committees to achieve it is the
main topic of urgency in industry, this film makes
a tremendously important contribution. Its pro-
paganda is direct, forceful and entirely logical.
Congratulations to all concerned at Denham.

their services voluntarily. The Management gave
studio space and equipment. Denham Labora-
tories promised to process the film free of charge,
and Kodak's donated 10,000 feet of stock.
After further discussions at Works' Meetings
good, tight script was prepared and production
commenced. Four days of shooting and the film
was completed. It runs for fourteen minutes and
, much less. I saw it in cutting-copy stage.
: and effects had still to be added, but there
doubt that Our Film is a first-class job of
work.
It opens with a domestic scene in a Russian
illage near ihe front line. A family is just sitting
down to a meal. There is a sudden noise, the
camera pans swiftly to the window. A German
soldier fires his automatic rifle at the group
round the table, wiping them out.

Quick dissolve to a domestic scene in an Eng-
sh working-class home. Again there is a noise,
gain the camera pans to the window, but this
me it is a friend of the family pantomiming to
is mates to come out for a drink.
One of the familv is a factory shop steward.
The next sequence, shot in the factory, reveals the
concern of the workers at the delay in production.
Machines are standing idle through lack of
materials. The men are disgruntled and angry
because the Management will not meet them to
discuss the position. The shop steward, a trifle
nervous and hot-headed, bursts into the Mana-
ger's office and plays hell : finally, he is promised
meeting.

The film cuts back to the U.S.S.R. A giant fac-
tory has to be evacuated as the Nazis advance
towards it. The machinery is piled on lorries, to
be reassembled further east and the factory is
blown up by the workers.

in the English factory, the workers are
electing their delegates for the Joint Production
' tee they hope to have formed. The meet-
ng between the managers and the workers takes
place. There is deep suspicion on both sides. The
argument goes on. Finally, the shop steward and

novelist, Konstantin Fedin

Pudovkin is producing an anti-fascist film
based on short stories by Bert Brecht, the famous
German anti-fascist poet and author.

S. M. Eisenstein, in addition to supers ising the
production of short propaganda films, is pre-
preparing the scenario of an historical film en-
titled Iran the Terrible, which will emphasise not
so much the personal character of this ruler, so
often dealt with in films and novels, as his im-
portant historical side, his foundation oi the
Russian State out of disconnected feudal
princelings, his cementing of it by victories
against the Tartars, and his diplomatic relations
with other countries, such as the establishment of
the flax trade with England.

G.-B. INSTRUCTIONAL LTD.

THE STUDIOS • LIME GROVE • SHEPHERD'S BUSH • W.I 2

Contractors for documen-
tary and training films to
Government Departments
and principal commercial
organisations.

Producers of 'Secrets of Life"

Telephone ; Shepherd's Bush 1210

Telegra

: Gebestruct, Chisk, London

!)()( I MENTAR^ NEWS LETTER \PRII. 1942

ARMY FILMS

By R. S. MILES, L/CP1.

I read with great interest the article by John
Maddison in the March issue of D.N.L.. and
would like to give some brief description of what
I have done on similar lines.

Before joining the Army I did some lectures
for troops on behalf of the Regional Committee
on Education for H.M. Forces. I nearly always
insisted on using films and gave talks on "Raw
Materials". "Oil", "The Blockade", illustrated
by films whose titles are too well known for re-
iteration here. At one depot where 1 "filled in"
for a lecturer on holiday with twenty minutes of
rilm, half an hour's talk, and what seemed to be
an endless discussion, the O.C. said that it was
the first talk he had been able to understand.
With a small unit I did twelve lectures on "Film
Appreciation" during the course of which 1
showed Marcus Lycinius, The Great Train Rob-
bery, a Chaplin selection. The White Hell of
Pitz Palu, Potemkin (two reels), various educa-
tional and M.O.I, films, together with such docu-
mentaries as Night Mail and North Sea. They
wanted the course to continue and their interest
was evident by the fact that out of a unit of 60 I
had voluntary attendances of 50— the others
were mainly on picket. Recently 1 was inter-
viewed by the Command Education Officer and
this course of lectures was mentioned apprecia-
tively.

Since being called up 1 have been able to do
some work with films. 1 organised twelve lectures
on "The History and Social Significance of the
Cinema" (horrid title). Attendances varied be-
tween two and fifty. I showed such films as The
Great Train Robbery, Marcus Lycinius, Chaplin
selections, selections from Potemkin, General
Line, Metropolis, The Last Laugh, Caligari (in
full). Song of Cevlon, Night Mail, The Londoners,
Enough to Eat, The River, Transfer of Power. Dis-
tillation, Self-Defence by Plants, The Expansion oj
Germany. The Pilot is Sate, Merchant Seamen.
When the Pie was Opened, etc.

I will not claim that the series was as successful
as 1 had hoped, but out of it I was able to per-
suade the Education Officer to sponsor Sunday
afternoon shows. Many of them have been
rather opportunist in character, but we have
shown The General Line, The Ghost that Never
Returns, Owd Boh, Matio Grosso, Man oj Aran.
The Man Who Knew Too Much, and we had
proposed showing White Hell of Pitz Palu,
Thunder over Mexico, and The Battleship
Potemkin, but various unforeseen circumstances
and the advent of summer have caused the aban-
doning for the time being of these, and by the
coming of winter 1 shall probably not be here at
all.

These last shows have been very successful.
About 180 people have attended and many have
been turned away. For the last show. The Turn
of the Tide, a gymnasium was well crowded.

All these shows were preceded by a brief talk
on the important points of the film, and I felt
that a succession of these films, well mixed in
stones, interest and technique, was not only pro-
viding entertainment but raising the standard of
film going. "Shopping lor films" was being
taught to a large number of men. and thus I
think the film can have some educational value
apart from its undoubted use in the Army, for
vitalising much of Army education and making
technical training more efficient.

In future The Strand Film Company
will be working in eonjunction with
British National Films Ltd. Strand
Films will eontinue to function as a
production unit, and the same Tech-
nical Staff* will carry on.

The British National Studios at Elstree
w ill be Strand Films production head-
quarters. Particulars of new London
offices will be given shortly.

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR
ALEXANDER SHAH

MANAGING DIRECTOR
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION

Owned and published by Film Centre Ltd., 34 Soho Square, London, W.l, and printed by Simson Slmnd Ltd., The Shenrnl Press, London and Hertford

CO NT I. N I S

WAR OF NERVES?

NOTES OF THE MON I II
FEATURE FILM PROPAGANDA

'" I HE. IIAKVISI SHA1 I < ' 'Mi
FEATURE FILM OF THE MONTH
NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

NEWS LETTER

THE WORLD IN ACTION
M.O.I. ROSTER

SCIENTIFIC FILM SOCII I II S

THE WAR — A PEOPLE'S REVOLUT

by Henry A. Wallace

VOL 3 NO 5

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON Wl

WAR OF NERVES?

the most important propaganda event for many months was the
•rime Minister's broadcast of May 10th. Mr. Churchill's insistence
m our greatly increased striking power seemed to foreshadow a
lew military phase in the war and this possibility deeply stirred the
vhole country. For the first time since the outbreak of war we
vere threatening the enemy, not in a spirit of defiant defence, but
n the mood of a strong man who sees a bully cringing before him.
. Churchill tormented the Nazis with the irony of their increasing
'ulnerability to the very weapons they themselves had chosen.
4e jeered at their blunders with all the assurance of a man who
:ould look to the future not only with faith but with complete
onfidence. This, said his listeners, must be the turning point of the
var. For the Prime Minister had said :

"The British, and presently the American, bombing offensive
against Germany will be one of the principal features in this
year's world war.

"Now is the time to use our increasingly superior air strength
to strike hard and continually at the home front in Germany
from which so much evil has leaped out on the world and which
is the foundation of the whole enormous invasion of Russia. . . .
"... We have a long list of German cities in which the vital
industries of the German war machine are established. All these it
will be our stern duty to deal with, as we have already dealt with
Liibeck, with Rostock, and half a dozen important places.

"The civil population of Germany have, however, an easy way
of escape from these severities. All they have to do is to leave
the cities where munition work is being carried on, abandon their
work and go out into the fields and watch the home fires burning
from a distance."

Public feeling was undoubtedly well satisfied with the policy of
itting Germany hard from the air. The British people wanted to go
id finish the war in the only place where it could be finished — in
'ermany. The relentless quality of the speech was good propaganda
id — at the same time — a pretty accurate reflection of the public
lood. The Prime Minister was articulating and integrating public
eling and giving it direction. To add to the expectations he had
•oused of a new military policy he spoke as follows of the crowds
hich had recently gathered in Trafalgar Square to call for a
cond front :

"Is it not far better that demonstrations of thousands of people

should gather in Trafalgar Square demanding the most vehement

I and audacious attacks than that there should be the weepings and

■I wailings and peace agitations which in other lands and other wars

The day after the broadcast the nation stood ready for action —
for intensive bombing of Germany and for some sign of raids or
even an offensive against the continental coast line. The turning
point of the war had come. What they asked was to be the first
shattering manifestation of the new spirit?

At the time of going to press, three weeks have passed and although
our Russian allies are engaged in a battle on which the result of the
war may depend, there has been no sign whatsoever of British
offensive action on land. Worse still, there has been only one air-
raid on Germany of any significance during the whole period.
A people which is very well aware of how little towards deciding the
war was achieved by nightly Nazi air-raids on London for weeks on
end can scarcely be expected to believe that occasional cricketing-
weather attacks on isolated targets in a much vaster and more in-
accessible country is to be the means of beating Germany.

Whatever are the true facts there can be no doubt that the Prime
Minister's broadcast aroused expectations which have not yet been
fulfilled by events. Ordinarily such a state of affairs is not vitally
serious, for in war-time miscalculations are bound to be made. But
this broadcast seemed to be of great and special significance. If
events should continue to give no support to the hopes it held out
the effect upon public feeling will be considerable. No propagandist
will underestimate the effect upon the British people if they come to
think that their leaders are substituting words for actions. The
public, because of its experiences in the last war, is basically cynical
in face of rhetorical attitudes. So far, throughout his period of
office, Mr. Churchill has been careful to measure words by deeds.
Whatever his opinion may be of the importance of propaganda he
must continue to remember that words must be used with responsi-
bility as well as with virtuosity. He would be ill-advised to put his
gifts as an orator at the service of those of our leaders who believe
that occasional air-raids on Germany can be verbally disguised to
look like an offensive which will satisfy the demand for a Second
Front. The crowds whom Mr. Churchill welcomed to Trafalgar
Square were not there to play with words or to be congratulated w ith
well-turned phrases. They wanted action. The professional propa-
gandists know that there is a war-winning mood in this country — a
mood which, if utilised, will make it unnecessary for today's policies
to be inhibited as they are now, by the cautious war economies of
1944. It is the duty of propagandists who know their business and
who wish the United Nations to win the war quickly to articulate
and direct that war-winning mood and to see that it is not dissipated
by rhetorical speeches, however unimpeachable may be the senti-
ments they express. Delay between threatand execution is dangerous.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

NOTES OF THE MONTH

Man-Power

On June 30th a large number of film workers' deferment cases are
due to come up for review. The film industry succeeded last year —
after something of a struggle — in establishing the necessity of retain-
ing what was, in effect, a minimum number of people in order to
maintain a satisfactory output of feature as well as of propaganda
films. The arguments for the deferment of key personnel need no
repetition, since they are just as valid now as they were then (see
D.N.L., April, 1941). Nevertheless, the entire film industry is per-
turbed at the recent action of the Ministry of Labour in setting up a
new man-power panel to deal with films. This perturbation arises
largely from the fact that the new panel, unlike the last, does not
include representatives of the industry. It has three members. Two
of them. Col. Bromhead and S. Rowson, are, it is true, film-men;
but on this panel they appear as government servants, the former
representing the M.O.I, and the latter the Board of Trade. The
qualifications of the third member of the panel — Professor Plant —
would appear to arise from the fact that he was a member of the
Moyne Commission. We have no doubt that these three gentlemen
are sincerely anxious to reconcile the general needs of man-power
with the particular needs of the film industry in war-time; and we
hope that if they find any unqualified or obviously redundant
workers still in employment in films they will take the obvious and
appropriate action. But as far as the documentary and propaganda
side of the industry is concerned, we are certain that the strictest pos-
sible investigation would merely prove once again the fact that the
documentary firms have hardly enough staff to fulfil the increasing
demands of Government Departments for official propaganda,
informational or instructional films. It would, however, be a disaster
if the case for deferment of feature film workers were to be neglected.
It cannot be too often stressed that a healthy national film industry
is not merely a national asset but also a national necessity. Films like
The Foreman Went to France or One of Our Aircraft is Missing show
that the feature film makers have a sense of responsibility as well as
imaginative and technical ability. For these reasons we hope that the
stories of feature film companies having rough passages with the new
panel over the deferment of key personnel are untrue or exaggerated.
If by any chance they are not, we urge the Ministry of Labour to
give the trade every facility to state its case to the new panel, which,
unlike the more representative body which it has superseded, is not
intimately involved in the immediate problems of production and
distribution.

A Box Office Instructional

a NOTEWORTHY example of the value of a British feature film
industry is provided by the release to the public of a film originally
made for troop-training purposes. Next of Kin is having a deserved
success with the public, and is at the same time doing a good job of
propaganda, particularly in its final sequence, which (because it is a
training film) shows the process of war in anything but a romantic
light and thereby punches home its "Don't talk" message in an
exceptionally vigorous manner. Next of Kin was made for the
Department of Army Kinematography, and one would like to hope
that all the films put out by this department (most of which are, of
course, on a much more modest scale) were equally successful in
putting their message or their instruction across with the same com-
pelling vigour. But reports received from a number of men in the
Services appear to indicate very much otherwise. Some of the films,
we are told, are monotonous to the point of somnolence; others
make statements which conflict with current training. Too many
lilms are shown at the same time, often when the audience is already
tired — physically or mentally — or both. In general there would still

seem to be room for improvement both at the production and at the
distribution end of the D.A.K.

Too Many Committees

the basis of democratic government is the committee. But while the
committee is democracy's greatest strength, it can also become its
greatest weakness. For instance, it becomes weakness when a
democratic method of government is losing ground ; for then the
committee, instead of acting as the consultative organisation geared
to vitalise the community, becomes instead a method of stifling
criticism, or of channelling it off into sterility. These thoughts are
provoked by the multiplicity of committees now engaged in con-
sidering all aspects of film and propaganda. Members of the
Editorial Board find that no week passes without their being engaged
at a minimum of three meetings a week. If all these committees led
to constructive action and if all these committees were intended to
have power, nobody could complain. But the thought is beginning
to occur to many people that these committees are being used to
suppress or side-track any critical voice. For years now skilful
method of government has been seized on by vested interests, aimed
at utilising a "get-together" method to achieve all manner of
dubious ambitions of their own. They pander to the innate \anity
of human beings by giving them "off the record" information so
that they, the committee, feel more important than their fellow-men.
They deliberately set members of committees against one another,
skilfully exploiting presumed self interest. They allow resolutions to
be passed and decisions taken which cannot be dealt with until the
next meeting, by which time new deletions and "references back" can
water down decisive action. We wonder whether this present sprawl-
ing mass of committees in the Film Industry, which is multiplied a
thousand times over in other industries, is not an insidious method of
direct governing by vested interests, mainly industrial but also
departmental? While we still talk of "they" and not "we", the com-
mittee still fundamentally remains an opportune weapon for \ested
interests operating a phoney democracy.

The Last House

while the M.O.I. Five Minuters seem, on the whole, to be
achieving a pretty good circulation, we have recently received dis-
turbing reports that some cinemas have taken to omitting them from
their last performance. The last house — particularly nowadays — is
the fullest house, and if the Five Minuters are not shown it must
mean a considerable drop in the total audience figures. We shall be
glad to receive reports from readers of occasions when the Five
Minute film was not shown at the last performance. Please give
time, place, and date.

Stop It

ii vppears that, despite their utter uselessness and wastefulness,
direct advertising films are still being made. Cannot the M.O.I, take
some direct action in this matter either on its own account or in con-
junction with .the Board of Trade? There is every reason for action,
since the latest scandal to be reported is that a very large London
cinema was found, a few weeks ago, to be running a film advertising
tea in place of the M.O.I. Five Minuter. Once more we must
reiterate that the advertising film has no place in the national
effort. If any competent technicians are being employed on the pro- (here
duction of these films, they should be drafted either into units engaged
on work of national value or into the army. In cases of this sort the
Ministry of Labour man-power panel should, always providing it *"
knows its job, have no difficulty in separating the sheep from the
goats. Every advertising film made during war is a waste of film, 'il
of man-power and of mind-power.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

FEATURE FILM PROPAGANDA

during the first two years of war the film was
making its contribution to the war effort almost
exclusively through the medium of the short
documentary. For the most part feature films
continued to provide simple, peacetime-style en-
tertainment and many people in the film industry
appeared to be content with this situation and
happy in the role of providing for cinema-goers
a means of vicarious escape from the painful fact
of war. The majority of film-makers, however,
Felt that they were professionally equipped to
play a more serious part. They did not wish sim-
ply to provide light entertainment for people
engaged in a life and death struggle : they wished
to make films which would themselves be
weapons of war. As a consequence our screens
have lately been swamped with propaganda fea-
tures— films about the war from British studios
which are beginning to be supplemented by
Hollywood's first reactions to Pearl Harbour.
We have the advantage in Britain of something
ike a year's output of propaganda features based
an some consideration of the problems of relat-
ing propaganda and entertainment, and it is to be
toped that Hollywood will study our failures and
(Successes before letting loose their own inevit-
able flood of war pictures. For — let us face it—
1 jur own failures outnumber our successes and

• iilthough by now we have had plenty of oppor-
f, ;unity to arrive at mature decisions the problems
'.) )f the feature war film are by no means solved.

ie To begin with there still exists a tendency to
m pelieve that entertainment value and propaganda
l. /alue must be two separate considerations. With-
out entertainment value a film will be a com-
nercial failure and therefore the mistake has
0 )ften been made of arranging for the entertain-
i0 nent value first and then trying to add such
lr propaganda emphases as will not impair the
«i ntertainment. On this line of reasoning we
generally finish up with an old-fashioned thriller
ncorporating odd irrelevant lines of dialogue
iibout freedom, persecution, fascism ; or one of
!he characters will hold up the action while he
nakes a wordy and self-conscious speech about
l!' democracy. Hollywood has been particularly
M ;uilty of this technique and was self-consciously
- employing it to slip in a good word for democ-
us acy long before America came into the war. It is
h hangover from the days when gangster films
!V( vere being made acceptable to public morality

• ommittees by the addition of a pious peroration
ibout graft-free government.

The obvious weakness of this type of film is

he clear division between what is regarded

>y its producers as entertainment and what has

e,j »een added as propaganda. The audience is over-

of the distinction. They see a conventional
llm made according to a familiar story-formula
.nd either they immediately recognise the propa-
ganda for the awkward appendage it is or they
.re suspicious of the pill which has been so
mperfectly sugared.

I So much for the plots which wear their propa-
ganda pinned on them like a war-service badge,
"here is another type of propaganda feature
ivhich exhibits a similar weakness. This is the
i|ilm with a war-time plot which obeys identically
ihe same dramatic conventions as have become
jraditionally associated in the cinema with
j'urely fictional themes. Here the war back-
I round of realism and fact is subsidiary to a per-
lonal story of romantic adventure — often a

simple love story — and the war is used only to
provide a topical atmosphere. Into this category
fall such films as Ships with Wings (the aircraft
carrier was only a background for the old story of
the reckless flyer in disgrace retrieving his reputa-
tion and the respect of the boss's daughter by
giving his life for his comrades) ; Pimpernel Smith
(absent-minded professor becoming the instru-
ment of justice), and One Night in Lisbon (tradi-
tional spy melodrama). Films of this kind are
bad propaganda because they present the war
in absurdly romantic terms and their entertain-
ment value is impaired by the conflict in the mind
of the audience between the hard facts of real
war and its glamorous embellishments in the film.

Let us consider what has been achieved by the
many recent films which have been specifically
about the war and have not merely used it as
background or made passing references to it or to
underlying political and philosophical issues.
Amongst the most important films in this cate-
gory are 49th Parallel, The Big Blockade, One of
Our Aircraft is Missing, The Day Will Dawn, The
Foreman Went to France (all British), together
with a big batch of American films on the Ges-
tapo. These films take themes such as anti-
Nazism in the occupied countries, the tempera-
mental clash between individual democrats and
fascists, the economic war against Germany, the
menace of secret Nazi organisations in the United
States, and seek to present all these in entertain-
ing form.

The Big Blockade was the most ambitious of
them, attempting as it did the fearsome task of pre-
senting a complete picture of economic warfare.
The producers clearly felt that they had on their
hands a very large propaganda pill which would
need to be generously coated. The result was a
sour-sweet hotch-potch, a curious compound of
academics and box-office tricks, which failed to
be either informative or entertaining. The plain
fact was that the film had attempted too much.
One of Our Aircraft is Missing and The Day Will
Dawn were less pretentious, yet failed for other
reasons to present a convincing picture of the
experiences of British fugitives in occupied terri-
tory. These films, one felt, were the product of
studio-bred imaginations. The episodes and the
dialogue, gestures and glances that composed
them, came not from the war but from some
scenario-writer's handy guide to box-office
appeal. The people in these two films were not
real — and that was not simply because they were
played by familiar actors, handicap though that
is in this type of film. The characters were lay
figures without that indefinable something in
gesture or appearance that distinguishes the man
from the mummer. In 49?// Parallel, however,
Michael Powell did achieve something quite re-
markable with familiar screen faces. Here was a
film with an idea — the personal clash between
individual Nazis of different types and a number
of representative democrats. The idea was good
as entertainment and good as a propaganda
opportunity. Within the simple theme of the film,
propaganda and entertainment were fused — it
was the propaganda itself that was entertaining.
49th Parallel simply proves once again that the
presence of an imaginative idea (that rare asset)
will guarantee the success of any film whether it
be for entertainment or propaganda. The Fore-
man Went to France, the last on our list of films
about the war, is in most ways the best. The rea-

son for its superiority, both as entertainment and
propaganda, over One of Our Aircraft is Missing
is especially interesting. Both films are based
upon a real war-time occurrence yet One of Our
Aircraft is Missing lacks confidence in the
dramatic power of the actual event and has con-
sequently embellished it, translated it out of
terms of ordinary human behaviour and tried to
prove too many generalisations about occupied
Holland. The film has outgrown the strength of
its original anecdote. The Foreman Went to
France sticks to its story and tries to stick to its
human beings. The French are there all the time,
not too much emphasised, not pointed out crude-
ly as heroes or saints to prove a propaganda
point, but left to move easily and naturally
through the scenes as decent people with their
weaknesses as well as their strengths.

This surely is the way to use an entertainment
medium to make propaganda for the things we
are fighting for. Don't try to tell the whole story
of France or Holland or Norway or Britain, but
take some people and show what happens to
them in a credible war situation — it may be a real
situation or an imaginary one — provided it is
credible that doesn't matter. The really important
thing is that the people you choose should stay-
human. The public doesn't believe that the war
is being fought between an army of plaster saints
on our side and an army of creatures with horns
and tails on the other. Outside the cinema they
never meet people from either category and it is
useless to make propaganda in terms of beings
that exist only in the cinema. If you do so your
propaganda will relate only to a cinema war and
— if it has any effect at all — it will create a glam-
orised dream image of war which is vastly more
dangerous than if you had no propaganda at all.
War cannot be conducted according to the
romantic traditions of behaviour which motivate
conventional film scenarios.

The propaganda power of realistic treatment
and the inhibitions of conventional treatment are
admirably demonstrated in The Next of Kin. The
opening reels are cluttered up with conventional
nonsense but wherever the film has to deal with
situations or behaviour on which its army audi-
ences are expert it becomes realistic, and in con-
sequence makes first-class propaganda and first-
class entertainment. For the first time in a studio-
made film we see a real battle between real
soldiers. The Russians understand completely
the importance in propaganda of realistic treat-
ment and credible human beha\iour. Their bio-
graphical films of other wars still make good
propaganda in this. Compare General Suvorov
with Hollywood's Sergeant York. The flesh and
blood of the latter story has been hidden by a
lacquer of glamour and romance. It becomes
simply a new novelettish adventure of Gary
Cooper's. The New Teacher, a pre-war Soviet
film on education, is war propaganda because it is
propaganda for a country clearly worth fighting
for. It is a country inhabited by people who look,
laugh, complain and struggle like people, not like
movie-stars. For a source both of propaganda
and entertainment let the British and American
studios go back to the people who are fighting
this war. Let us see not only why they are fighting
and how they are fighting but let us be inspired by
the fact that the war does not change them —
they remain human beings.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

The Documentary of the Month

THE HARVEST SHALL COME

Production: Realist Film Unit lor Imperial
Chemical Industries. Producer: Basil Wright.
Direction: Max Anderson. Camera: A. E.
Jeakins. Script: H. W. Freeman. Music: William
Alwyn. Commentators: Edmund Willard and
Bruce Belfrage. Cast: John Slater, Eileen Beldon
and Richard George. Running time: 40 minutes
The documentary film has too frequently in the
past and still today been stigmatised as a cold,
objective reporting of facts. Its critics harp
back to the early days of sound when many
documentaries were simply pictures illustrated
by commentary. The critics have taken no heed
of the advances made by documentary since 1933.
Grierson emphasised in this advance the import-
ance of the human factor in relation to whatever
story was being told, but as it was not at first
possible to employ expensive synchronous
sound, the earliest documentaries were restricted
to the bringing alive of ordinary human beings
in visual terms. Grierson brought Robert
Flaherty to this country to add to the docu-
mentary films that quality of human feeling that
Flaherty had so successfully developed else-
where. Parallel with this development went the
development of sound. The documentary was im-
patient with the purely reproductive cinema, and
when it acquired sound, it endeavoured to use it
imaginatively. Grierson brought Cavalcanti to
this country to aid in this development ; so that
simultaneously two developments were proceed-
ing— the development of the human interest and
the development of imaginative sound.

These developments did not obscure the fact
that documentary was not being built up
simply as a method of film-making but as a
means to an end. Its readiness to adopt all the
new developments and to be in the van of tech-
nical progress did not mean that it was neglecting
the possibilities of other methods of evolving
its theories. There were many attempts to adapt
the story. At first documentary naturally looked
to the reporting of true stories from life, and these
found their beginnings in North Sea. There were
two reasons why documentaries did not go more
fully into the story type of film — one was their
desire to master craft; and secondly, the limita-
tion of finance. Films like Merchant Seamen and
Target for Tonight are films modelled on the
work done in the early North Sea period. They
have an immediate dramatic appeal because their
subjects in themselves are dramatic; but today
that side of documentary film-making shows no
signs of advance, except in technical quality.

These remarks are only a preface to con-
sideration of a new documentary film. The
Harvest Shall Come, which marks one of docu-
mentary's most significant steps forward. It is
the first genuine story film made with the docu-
mentary purpose and by documentary method.
The story is that of a farm labourer and his
family, their life from the day when he joins the
farm as a youngster in the nineleen-hundreds to
the present war. The main parts are played by
actors, and the background is filled in by local

Suffolk villagers. Because of the integrity of the
script writing and direction there are no points
where the two groups clash. The actors merge
into their background. There are no false situa-
tions and there are none of the story twists so
dear to the hearts of our professional script-
writers. The films pulls no punches and tells the
unfortunate story of the decay of British agricul-
ture, which in the last forty years has only been
encouraged by the incidence of two wars. The
story is fiction, but it reflects the life of every
British farm labourer and is heart-tearing in its
sincerity and in the power of its deliberate under-
statement. It is a great tribute to that section of
the community — the farm workers — who have
borne the burden of the industry's decay.

The film has all been photographed on loca-
tion and tells its story purely by dialogue. Even
the cottage interiors were shot in the village.
There is a lack of technical polish about the film
which only adds to its quality as a rugged docu-
mentary. It has been argued that a certain tech-
nical brilliance of the photography in The Grapes
of Wrath tended to emphasise the unreality of
certain sequences, particularly in the "Okie"
camp. If there is any criticism to be made it is
that the artificial sequence of the two women

who tip the main character because he is only
farm labourer illustrates the difficulty in adding
to an honest story some extraneous incident to
push the argument home.

The film has deliberately eschewed the lyrical
approach to the countryside so beloved of the
romantic impressionists of documentary. Here
there are no fine billowing clouds and rich
meadow-land looming through the filters. It is
not forgotten that behind the beauty of the
rambler roses and the thatched roof is the
squalor of rural housing. The film is sober in tone
and has that purposeful insistence on facts that is
a characteristic of all good documentary.

The film marks the emergence of one of the
best documentary directors for many years —
Max Anderson — and of the actors, it should be
said that John Slater, playing the main character,
is an outstanding interpreter of working-class
character. There is no doubt that this film must be
shown in the ordinary cinemas, and will un-
doubtedly prove an outstanding success. Its
honesty, its closeness to the hopes and fears of
ordinary people, its reflection of the nobility and
heroism of the ordinary working man, will reach
out to the hearts of any audience.

CHANGE OF ADDRESS

Park Studios

Putney Park Lane

S.W.15.

TEL. unchanged
Putney 6274

I

FILM/ OF GREAT BRITAIN LIMITED

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

The Feature Film of the Month

THE NEW TEACHER

The New Teacher. Production: Lenfilm 1939.
Directed by Sergei Gerasimov. Photography: V.
Yakovlev. With Boris Chirkov as the teacher,
Pavel Volkov as his father, L. Shabalina as his
sister and Tamara Makarova as the girl friend.

\l It's a funny thing about Russian films over the
[,e last ten years or so, those that we've seen over
here at any rate, how few of them deal with
contemporary problems and present day Russian
life. I suppose the main reason for this is that the
old-guard directors, middle class intellectuals to
the last, were heartily bored with the period of
five-year plans and Soviet construction, and
always wanted to be harking back to the good
old days of upheaval, when noble revolutionaries
were having exciting times shooting people. Old
Professor Eisenstein, presented in The General
[Line with the magnificent theme of the revolution
of agriculture by the collective farm and new
techniques, was much more interested in old-
time religious rituals and could find in the
arrival of a new cream separator only a sexual
significance. A village getting electric light for
:he first time, so important to the people con-
fined, to the intellectuals who had always had
was just a bore. Uncle Pudovkin, baulked of
x>mbs and street-fighting at home, ran off to
Germany where there was still some going, to
rake Deserter. Only Dovzhenko calmly carried
>n in his same old line, which as Ivan, Aerograd
ind Shots showed, magnificently survives a
evolution, construction war or any other human
ictivity.

Of course we knew really that there must be
)lenty of other stuff going on under the surface,
young working lads coming on who were part
ind parcel of the new society and not hangovers
rom the old, directors who were from the
>eople and part of them, who looked on them as
iquals and not as queer creatures who must be
alked and teased into doing what they were told,
"red Ermler, from the silent days, carried on (in
.punterplan and others) in his same quiet con-
itructive way. Kozintsev and Trauberg in the
Maxim series got a bit nearer to present day
ituff; there was Dzigan, there was Macheret of
Men and Jobs. And there was a whole run of
ilms which, although second-grade or even
vorse technically, were far more interesting just
>ecause they showed something of contemporary
tussia than all the dreary overdressed historical
reconstructions like Nevsky or Suvorov. All the
ime while watching a poor film like Jazz
Comedy or The Rich Bride you got a feeling of
pxcitement at getting some idea of what up and
taming Russians were feeling and doing.

And now here at last is The New Teacher, the
irst really complete expression of the new Russia,
i fine subject and a fine film. Gerasimov the
lirector is only a young lad— apparently his
.irst film The Seven Brave was shown over here a

few years ago — but in spite of, or rather, prob-
ably because of that, he seems more completely
at home with talkie technique than any other
Russian directors. The film is on the whole as
well made, the people as nicely handled and
placed for the camera, and the detail as full as
anything by John Ford, say, whose films Gera-
simov knows well, I bet. There are one or two
roughnesses of course, but in the end they don't
affect the real quality of the film at all. This
quality is made up of a creative belief in the
possibilities of human life, a firm sense of being
at home in the world and liking it and a warm
human feeling for the pleasantness of people.
I don't remember ever having seen a film where
you got a stronger impression of people with
confidence and independence who were going to
make of life exactly what they wanted. And
when at the end the hero jumps out of the win-
dow, looks out over the moonlit countryside and
exclaims "Ah! Life, life!" you know that here
are people for whom as for the Americans the
world is all fresh and new, a place of limitless
possibilities; but people for whom this vital
innocence and simplicity is based, not as in the
new world on ignorance, but on full knowledge.
You have only to compare this film with any
German film to realise completely where the
hope of the old world with its load of guilt lies.

The New Teacher (a bad title) is a simple story
about a village and a family in the new Russia.
The son, beautifully played by Boris Chirkov
(.Maxim) has been working as a teacher in Mos-
cow and thought of by the village as a lad who
has gone to the big city and made good. He
comes back to the village, and their eager wel-
come of their distinguished visitor turns to dis-
appointment and anger when they find that he's
come not on a visit, but to stay. Clever, dis-
tinguished and pushful relations are all very well
in the big city at a distance from which you can
safely boast about them and their exploits, but
it is altogether a different story when they're on
your own doorstep upsetting your life with their
fancy ideas. The rest of the film tells how he
comes to terms with the village, with his father
and family, with his girl friend and with himself,
and the strength of the film is that all these con-
flicts are honestly resolved and not sentimentally
by-passed. The film is warm and human and all
the people very pleasant, but what is so good is
that the point of the film is not how pleasant the
people are, but where they're getting to. There is
no morbid interest in private emotions: these
people are part of a live community, and their
feelings are all shared feelings.

In a way you could call the whole thing propa-
ganda, but that doesn't matter in the least, partly
because it never tries to twist the truth and partly
because you can always listen to somebody
carrying on if he really cares about what he is

talking about. There is an amazing richness of
detail about the whole film which shows that
Gerasimov really understands what's going on
and hasn't mechanically simplified everything.
There's the set-up in the family itself, father an
old Partisan Bolshevik who dominates the others,
mother under this thumb, auntie under both of
them, and driven silly by continual housework,
daughter very much alive and independent and
obviously quite capable of dealing with dad when
the time comes. There's the understanding of
other people's points of view shown by dad's
practical complaints about the holidays inter-
fering with his moving— he's chairman of the
collective farm. And there's the relationship of
father and son, so often done before but never
so well as this. Father half-proud, half-contemp-
tuous of his son, resentful of his youth and
cleverness, trying to patronise him and half
hoping he's going to make a fool of himself;
son nervous as a cat and falling into priggish-
ness — a conflict honestly resolved, not as, for
instance, in Renon's Man Who Came Back by a
sentimental acceptance of the present, but by a
creative view of the future.

And there's a crowd of detail which is ex-
tremely pleasant not only for its warmth and
humour but for its added feeling of going some-
where : the dance to welcome the son home, with
the girls coming forward one by one to sing
themselves into the company ; his sister and girl
friend lying in bed afterwards listening to father
carrying on and chatting intimately of adolescent
this and that's ; the village question-meeting with
the boy asking advice on an appalling Heath
Robinson invention which won't work ; the holi-
daytime with the two lovers in embarrassed and
frustrated silence while the shouts of people
enjoying themselves together come faintly over
the meadows; and the end, where the teacher, on
terms at last with his girl friend, is warmed all
through at the pleasantness of life in general, lifts
his young sister on to the stairs and kisses her,
goes into his own room, and ga/ing at his airman
pal who is shamming sleep, remarks, "What a
funny fellow", and then jumps out of the win-
dow to have a look at the night and think how
nice life is. The only thing I could have wished
was for him when he came hack into his room to
ha\e fetched out a bottle of vodka, woken his
pal and then had a bloody good booze-up to-
gether. It would have made a perfect end : but
never mind, the film is beautifully made and
beautifully acted, particularly father, son and
sister, and what's more it is a real treat to meet a
director who, well in with the people as he is,
takes for granted the fact that they are pleasant
and goes on from there to tell them what they
should be up to. If up and coming Russia is like
this (and I'm sure it is), there's nothing for
Stalin to worry about, and Hitler is just wasting
his own and e\er\ body's time.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Middle East. Production: Shell Film Unit.
Producer: Edgar Anstey. Direction: Grahame
Tharp. Diagrams: Francis Rodker. M.O.F
5 minutes.

Subject: The importance of the Middle East in
allied world strategy.

Treatment: Plain diagrams with the minimum
of animation, straight commentary and a few
drum rolls. The subject is clearly treated and
well expressed but by its nature it is really no
more than a lecture illustrated by a map of the
world. Only in one place, the illustration of
what the greater length of sea communications
means to us, is there any real use of diagrams.
The film does, however, succeed in giving quite
a clear picture.

Propaganda Value: It is, of course, a very good
idea for the M.O.I, to try and keep the public
informed on issues of world strategy such as
this, and for a middle-class audience no doubt
this film will prove successful ; but for the average
cinema-going public it is all too remote and
didactic. The schoolmasterly approach combined
with the refined and nasal (not so say rheumy)
tones of the commentator will only serve to
make the general public feel that it is something
which does not really concern them. 1 don't
know what the solution is (certainly it will have
to include actuality material) but something
will certainly have to be done to humanise these
informative films if they are to fulfil their purpose.

London Scrapbook. Production: Spectator Short
Films. Producer: Basil Wright. Direction: Derek
de Marney and Eugene Cekalski. Camera:
A. H. Luff. Collected by Bessie Love and Basil
Radford with Leslie Mitchell.
Subject: The films deals with the small changes
and slight, semi-picturesque situations inci-
dental to the more violent distress of war and
through them it seeks to characterise the manner
by which the familiar disasters of London have
altered its outward scenes and the lives of the
people living in it. The film is for American
consumption.

Treatment: The lightness of the subject is re-
flected in the treatment, and Bessie Love is
excellent as the unselfconscious cine-kodak
amateur trying to sell her •"Scrapbook" to a
film-weary Films Division. No criticism of the
superficial jauntiness of the film should overlook
the fact that its purpose is to show those very
subjects which, though less profound and
therefore usually ignored, may, if properly
handled, throw into relief some of the deeper
sufferings which the people of London and other
cities have undergone. For example, the ex-
tremely effeeli\c and nostalgic shot of the empty,
windy playground in Kensington Gardens,
with only one child ("the only child in London")
left to feed the ducks at the feet of Petei Pan,
must be as sharp in its effect on a New York
mother as a complete film on the evacuation of
school children. The extent to which the film
succeeds in this kind of respect is the proper
measure of its propaganda value, lot mere
light-heartedness by itself would not suffice
as a pretext for showing such a film abroad.
In this sense it is to be hoped, without wishing
to be priggish about an extremely funny and

well-made film, that Americans will not make
the mistake of believing that the tragedies of
several million Londoners reduce themselves to
a series of nostalgic spectacles and semi-humor-
ous inconveniences, as they tend to do when
viewed by an American woman living in cir-
cumstances likely to remove from war much of
its more permanent severity. For example,
Bessie Love's difficu'ties over rations are never
so great as when she drops them in the park
on her way to a party.

The film which is very well shot, contains
a good parody on the M.O.I, and one of its
officials (Leslie Mitchell) and is certainly excel-
lent entertainment for anyone making documen-
tary films and almost as certainly for everyone
familiar with Anglo-Saxon cities.
Propaganda Value: An unusually incompre-
hensible paragraph on the M.O.I. programme
sheet runs thus: "Owing to the fact that this
film was in production when America entered
the war, it has had to be re-designed and the
propaganda content is therefore not as strong
as it would have been but for the change of
angle necessitated." Apart from what this may
mean, it is safe to say that the film will at any
rate suggest to Americans the depth of the
sacrifice being forced by a changing environ-
ment upon a people more than usually reliant
(if we are to believe the Americans) upon the
fanvliar and traditional. Incidentally, it is a ques-
tionable whether parish jokes, however good,
about fumblings at the M.O.I, are the most
reassuring way of proving to Americans that our
traditional sense of humour about ourselves has
succeeded in keeping pace with the urgencies of
total war.

Go to Blazes. Direction: Walter Ford. Screen
Play: Diana Morgan, Angus MacPhail. Camera:
Ernest Palmer. M.O.I. 5 minutes.
Subject: Will Hay demonstrates the funny
(wrong) and the funny (right) way to tackle
incendiaries.

Treatment: We are back to the good old days of
blitz propaganda when the siren has always
gone ten minutes ago. The mother and the
daughter are the unsympathetic heroines who
know that the right people no longer use a
spray but a jet, and Will Hay, after fooling brave-
ly with several fires is packed off to the Warden's
Post next to the "Pig and Whistle" to brush up
his A.R.P.

Propaganda Value: If people really lose their
heads over incendiaries as quickly as Will Hay,
or, like him, as soon forget the lessons the> have
been taught under fire, then the film ought to
have been made. Otherwise not.

Men of India. Presented by M.O.I. Made by the
Indian Film Unit, Bombay. Direction: Ezra Mir.
( aniciii J iua raja Bodhyc. Editor: Phatap Parmar.
Production: Alexander Shaw. English Commen-
lai t.I dmund Willard for Strand Films.
Subject, factory production in India and the
part Indians are playing in the war effort.
treatment. Indian fire-fighters at a realistic prac-
tice remind us that air-raids threaten also the war
production of that continent. The forceful com-
mentator he who spoke on "Naval Operations"

— describes how the men of India, of many races
and many religions, work side by side in the
factory where they turn out armoured cars. They
have the common brotherhood of skilled crafts-
men. The feeling of high speed production is put
across well by good cutting. The commentator
reminds his audience that this tyre-fitter's father
sold lamps in the bazaar, this rivetter's father
knew nothing more mechanical than an ox-
wagon. ... It is a pity that we are not shown this
side of Indian life. One cannot help feeling that
the urgency of the factory, so effectively put
across, cannot be as yet an outstandingly im-
portant aspect of life to the average Indian.
Surely the old industries of India — the produc-
tion of rice, hemp, cotton — are still vital.

It is most encouraging to see a film of high
technical quality produced by an Indian Film
Unit.

Propaganda value. The audience, particularly
those members of it who work in factories, will
be given more understanding of the Indian people
and their way of living. Had it been possible to
show the more general picture of Indian life it
might have done an even better job.

In the Rear of the Enemy. Production: Soviet
Children's Film Studio. Direction: Eugen
Schneider.

Subject: This is the first full length Soviet film
since the war to have been dubbed in English.
It presents an extremely realistic picture of winter
warfare which will give British people — civilian
and military— a pretty graphic idea of what
fighting is like in Arctic conditions. The story
is simple enough, but full of interesting detail,
and packed with suspense. A Soviet patrol of
three men is sent out to reconnoitre the head-
quarters of the opposing troops (Finnish, but
officered by Germans).

They reach the objective but are trapped. Two
of them attempt to break back through the
lines, but the third stays to give Soviet H.Q.
the range for an artillery bombardment which
destroys the Finnish guns. Soviet infantry
follow up and annihilate the enemy. The three
heroes are saved.

The story is one of simple courage and
endurance based on that dynamic belief in a
cause that is at the base of Russia's successes
against the Fascist powers. It is a picture that
could usefully be shown to British troops and
to the Home Guard, for in addition to the
natural excitement of the story there are many
lessons in guerilla tactics and the art of camou-
flage. The way the three Russians reconnoitre
the enemy house before entering it is an object
lesson in precaution, although one of them slips
up badly later when he fails to observe a peculiar
mound in the snow which conceals a Finnish
soldier.

Propaganda value: The Red Army men and
officers in the film are all extremely pleasant
people, tough, efficient and human; you get
a feeling that they know their job and nothing
will stop them doing it. All in all, the film is very
good propaganda not only for the Soviet Union,
but for the cause of all anti-Fascist peoples.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

This is Colour. Production: Strand Films for
Imperial Chemical Industries. Producer: Basil
Wright. Location Direction: Jack Ellitt. Camera:
Jack Cardiff. Sound Track: Richard Addinsell.
Dylan Thomas. Marjorie Fielding, Joseph
MacLeod, Valentine Dyall. Made in Tech-
nicolor.

Subject: The history, production and use of
British dyes.

Treatment: This film is a sight for sore eyes. In a
world which war is making drabber every day,
with its camouflage, its khaki and its rationing of
paint and wrappings, This is Colour gives us
seventeen minutes of pure visual pleasure. The
treatment fortunately is academic, thus co-
ordinating what might have easily turned out to
be a colour riot. It first discusses colour in
general terms of landscape, of prisms, of sun-
light and of a red rose in the moonlight. The
discovery of new dyeing methods leads us on to
experiments with dyes and then to their manu-
facture. In a superbly mysterious sequence, with
the camera moving slowly across the dark
paraphernalia of the dye factory with its flam-
boyant splashes of colour, we see the dyes being
prepared and applied. The rollers turn, placing
colour upon pattern and colour upon colour,
reeling out yards of gaiety. So far the film has
swung along, now it stops. A gabbling voice en-
deavours to review, in too neat poetry, the uses of
colour in the world to-day. Scarlet tooth-brush
is followed by green hot-water bottle, book-
jackets by window curtains. This sequence is not
only jarring, it also shows up one of the great
deficiencies of the use of colour in film. The
coloured image lingers in the eye for much longer
than the black and white, and quick cutting pro-
duces an irritating blur.

~ it as if aware of this coloured hiccough, the
film makes up for it by ending superbly. A voice
says: "Now let all the colours dance", and the
last sequence is a beautifully conceived movement
of colour in abstract shapes. Poetry, movement
and colour combine to enchant the eye and ear.
Propaganda Value. Perhaps exports are not of
such vital importance nowadays. If this is so, the
march of events have left the vital propaganda
message of this film behind. But it still remains a
good film and does its job superbly well.

Mobile Engineers. Production: Strand Film Co.
Producer: Donald Taylor. Director: Michael
Gordon. Camera: Bernard Browne. Script and
Commentary: Reg. Groves. Played and spoken
by men of the National Industrial Mobile
Squad. M.O.I. 5 minutes.
Subject. The mobile squads of engineers who
travel from factory to factory helping to train
new workers, and who constantly evolve new
methods of speeding up production.
~ tment. The film kicks off with a nicely
directed dialogue scene in a railway carriage,
in which we meet the gang of mobile engineers
on their way to a new job. Unfortunately the
rest of the film, which shows what they do at the
factory, is commentated somewhat facetiously
by one of them, and there is no further dialogue.
As a result the film is a bit remote, although the
activities of the engineers are clearly enough
explained. The making of a new jig might surely
have been treated with more warmth and excite-
ment. The film is well edited and moves at a good
pace.

Propaganda value. This film is chiefly an informa-
tional job. It tells us that there are these mobile
engineers, shows us the problems they meet and

how they solve them. It impels no action or
thought of action. If its theme had been the
urgency of increased production and if the story
of the engineers had been clearly presented as
part only of the extra efforts needed from every-
one, its propaganda value would have been
excellent.

Storing Vegetables Outdoors and Storing Vege-
tables Indoors. M.O.I, for the Ministry of Agri-
culture. Production: Realist Film Unit. Direc-
tion: M. S. Thompson. Camera: A. E. Jeakins.
Commentator: Roy Hay. Non-T.
Subject: These two films are part of a general
series sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture.
The first shows how to store potatoes and carrots
in clamps. The second deals with the indoor
storing of shallots, runner beans, onions, beets,
haricot beans and tomatoes.
Treatment: The simple, straightforward tech-
nique adopted is admirable for this type of
instructional film. The commentaries state the
essentials and leave time for absorption. Photo-

graphy is very good and the direction doesn't
wander into by-passes that have nothing to do
with the matter in hand.

Propaganda value: As one of those unfortunate
people who heartily detest gardening but have
had an allotment pushed on to me, I found both
films helpful in the extreme. Having been pushed
to the point of actually putting stuff in I want to
know what to do with it when it comes up.
The films tell me that clearly and precisely, but
I would complain that it all looks a darn sight
easier than (to me) it actually is. The lad making
the clamps, for instance, is blessed with soil that
practically fights to get on his spade before it
touches the ground. Not so with me or judging
from what I have seen, with a lot of other sweat-
ing allotmenteers.

Maybe in future films it would be a good idea
to take these factors into account and deal with
some of the difficulties that confront the average
bloke who is trying to anticipate the threatened
food shortage this coming winter.

THE GOLD RUSH AGAIN

Robert Waithman reports on the revival of

Chaplin's film in New York

Reprinted by courtesy of the News Chronicle

the sudden sight of Charlie Chaplin in the Gold
Rush on the canopy outside the Globe Theatre
on Broadway stops you in your tracks. You
haven't seen those words for sixteen or seventeen
years and there's a bitter-sweet nostalgia in the
look of them.

The crowd streaming past the theatre is largely
made up of 1942 soldiers and bluejackets out
for the night on Broadway. They can go into this
and other theatres for little more than a quarter
of the usual admission price. You notice a lot of
them are going in.

"A revival with a new commentary written
and spoken by Charles Chaplin and incidental
music," the sign says. You remember the in-
cidental music last time — the tinny but pene-
trating and tireless music that came from behind
a musty felt curtain in the orchestra pit.-

Golden days, innocent days, days when there
was no blot upon the honourable trade of paper-
hanging, days when a man who spoke of retiring
to a previously prepared position could only have
meant he was going to live on his pension at
Brighton.

You walk up a lush carpet and sit down in the
darkness and there he is, the little tramp pros-
pecting in Alaska. His movements are steadier
now because Hollywood in its wonderful way
has somehow reprinted the film so that it can be
shown at the modern speed instead of with the
old flicker.

And now the confident and cultivated voice
of Mr. Charles Chaplin is breaking in with bits
of talk. He has an actor's voice capable of ranting
melodrama or simple pathos.

" 'Get out of here!' Black Larsen cried,"
Chaplin shouts at one point as he tells the story
he is watching on the screen ; but at another point
where heroine Georgia is visiting the lovelorn
Charlie in his lonely shack Chaplin is saying
softly, "There she stood, her loveliness lighting
the room. . . ."

He calls his image "the little fellow" through-

out the commentary. The Chaplin who is
speaking is 53 and his hair is white, and he is
looking back on his own past. Sometimes he
sounds achingly fond of the picture and its
people.

The acting of his leading lady, Georgia Hale,
was often ludicrous by modern standards and
her make-up would have driven Max Factor
mad. But Chaplin loves her. When she first
appears he speaks her name gently and tenderly,
as though he were talking to himself.

And there is the saloon and Charlie's trousers
are falling down as they fell down in 1925.
1925. — Locarno and the League and the I) ashing-
ton Arms Conference.

Charlie starving in the cabin has cooked and
is eating one of his boots, spitting the nails out
carefully and with refinement and Big Jim is
going mad and they are rushing in and out of
the cabin doors. 1925. — "// ain't gonna rain no
more" and the Dayton monkey trial: the year
before the General Strike.

When the cabin was swinging over the preci-
pice and Charlie opened the door and hung over
the abyss from the knob there came from the
modern Broadway audience that same high-
pitched roar as used to drown out the music of
the pianist.

You believed it had gone with Channel
swimming and the Charleston ; but it hasn't.
It is still there in everyone's throat, waiting for
Charlie Chaplin to awaken it.

You come from the theatre and there's a big
lighted sign looking down Broadway. It says,
WE MUST WORK AND FIGHT FOR OUR
LIVES. The news sign is spelling out sugar

RATIONING TO BEGIN MAY 5.

Two young Marines brush past and one is
saying ". . . If you can use machine-guns so
much the better. ..." There was the music of a
tinny piano and there's the music of machine-
guns. One generation may hear both and another
may come which will hear neither.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

NEWS LITTER

MONTHLY SIXPENCE

VOL. 3 NUMBER 5

MAY 1942

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands for the use of film as a
medium of propaganda and in-
struction in the interests of the
people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of
common people all over the
world.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

is produced under the auspices
of Film Centre, London, in asso-
ciation with American Film Center,
New York.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey
Alexander Shaw
Donald Taylor
John Taylor
Basil Wright

Outside contributions will be
welcomed but no fees will be
paid.

We are prepared to deliver from
3—50 copies in bulk to Schools,
Film Societies and other organi-
sations.

Owned and published by

FILM CENTRE LTD.
34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON

W.l GERRARD 4253

THE WORLD IN ACTION

An estimate of some of the productions of Canada's

National Film Board, which it is hoped will shortly

be available for showing in this country

3.

or-

so par the British public has had no opportunity
of seeing the series of vigorous films on world
strategy in war put out at two monthly intervals
by the National Film Board of Canada.
Although these films have a wide circulation
in the U.S.A. as well as in Canada itself, they
are prevented from being shown here owing to
a clause in the Films Act (1938), under which
they are classified as ""alien" and are not eligible
for quota. At the time of writing there would
appear to be some hope of action being taken
to get rid of this ridiculously anomalous situa-
tion, and it will therefore be of interest to analyse
the purpose and technique of the films in
question.

Known in Canada under the general title of
Canada Carries On and in the U.S.A. as The
World in Action series, the films represent a
definite policy decision taken by the Canadian
Government early in World War 11. This de-
cision arose from the realisation that the widest
possible knowledge of world strategy and of the
significance of each incident of the war in rela-
tion to the confict as a whole, was likely to be
one of the most valuable means of informational
and morale propaganda, and was incidentally
the best way of connecting the work of the
Canadian home front with the world-horizons
which it serves. The Canada Carries On series
was accordingly evolved, and every other month
the issue was devoted to a world survey of some
aspect of the war. The series was furthermore
designed for theatrical use and had to stand or
fall on its box-office appeal.

The question of style was therefore of some
importance, and after due consideration the
National Films Commissioner (John Grierson)
and the Producer in charge (Stuart Legg)
decided that the series should be made in the
same style as the March of Time. This decision
has been kept to in each item so far seen in this
country. Each film consists largely of visuals
illustrating a commentary and accompanied by
music and effects; occasional dialogue scenes
are introduced, and titles are used to punch home
points and to introduce a new angle in the story.
The style is well chosen for the purpose in
hand, and frequently knocks spots off the
March of Time at its own game. But the style is
not so important as the content and the policy
and thought which lie behind. The basic policy
has already been mentioned, and the titles of
the items are in themselves fairly illustrative o\~
the policy— The Battle for Oil, The Strategy of
Metals, I'ood WCapon of Conquest, This is
Blitz, etc.

Behind each of these items one can detect not
merely the brain of the experienced propagand-
ist but also certain attributes without which
any widely-based film cannot be more than
superficially convincing. These attributes are:—
in Constant, intensive and imaginative re-
search work ;
mi Close attention to history, to immediate
strategic considerations, and to the various
possibilities as regards the future;
mil I limination of makeshift \isuals, and con-

centration on welding picture and com-
mentary into an integral whole;
(iv) A strong sense of screen journalism;
(v) Fearlessness and forthrightness— both of
which are impossible unless based on the
preceding attributes.

The makers of these films would probably
make no claim to have achieved perfection ; nor
does this article make that claim. But the value
of the films as a stimulant both to thought and
to action is such that they are worth detailed
analysis.

It may be interesting to begin with a subject
which has a definite parochial basis, and show
how the producers deliberately related the
parochial story to a vivid picture of its relation
to the whole world. The Strategy of Metals
begins with a vigorous, semi-poetic sequence
taking us northward through Canada, past tht
cities and lakes and farms to a barren waste—
the great Laurentian Shield — "'a primaeval
monster, brooded over by an Arctic winter,
with a summer three months long". This, says
the commentator, as the camera moves grimly
across a desolation of rock, snow, stunted trees,
and frozen lakes, is one of democracy's greatest
arsenals, for beneath its surface in abundance
lie nearly all the metals on which our modern
civilisation depends, and without which modern
war could not be waged.

Note here that the attention of the audience
is captured by the elements of suspense and
surprise— not merely a technical trick, how-
ever, for it is valid whether you are already in
possession of the facts or not.

The development of the Great Shield is then
described, with emphasis laid on the fact that
the mining centres depended and depend on air
communications more than anything else.

So far we have had an impressive picture
of this huge storehouse of essential metals being
tapped — a picture which in itself gives us a heart-
ening survey of United Nation resources as
regards the supply of essential metals.

But now, suddenly, we are in British Guiana,
with the ships loading up with a reddish earth
called bauxite, without which aluminium cannot
be made. In a few seconds the whole structure
of the world markets for metals springs to life,
and the Nazi position in this regard is vividly
analysed. — Schacht buying in every market the
metals without which Germany could not re-
arm . . . the pan/er divisions, the stukas, the
submarines and pocket battleships all coming
into existence from metals supplied from every
quarter of the globe.

Note that we have now passed to a complete
international picture, excellently illustrated by
material from all quarters, including Germany.
The menacing years o\' the Thirties gain a kind
o\' perspective, and the stage is set.

But herecomes a point of great technical
interest. No attempt is made to build up anything
out of the outbreak of the war. No time is wasted
on the smashing of Poland. No dramatics.
This line is right ; the film is being shown to us,
who know we are at war and have lived through

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

the period. Here we want not history but a per-
spective on history. And we get it. The war is
signalled simply by one thing which is strictly
relevant to the story of metals — the Allied
Blockade cutting Germany off from her supplies
of raw materials.

A fast moving sequence builds up to an analy-
sis of the point at which Europe cannot supply
the weight of metal needed for the Nazi war
machine, and the need for the mineral wealth
of the Urals is shown to be one of the factors
in the attack on the U.S.S.R. (just as in The
Battle for Oil, the wells of the Caucasus are
shown to play a similar part).

So the film comes full circle back to the great
Laurentian Shield, with its metals, some old
and some very new, pouring out the materials
to win the war now and to build a new world of
peace in the future.

Note that through forceful presentation of
the facts, allied to an imaginative line of ideas
expressed through visuals, The Strategy of
Metals leaves its audience not merely stimulated
but also having assimilated an important story;
not a collection of incoherent facts, but a story
which can be remembered and can clarify many
hitherto disorganised news items read in the
paper or heard on the radio. Note too that the
film is, in trade parlance, "gripping enter-
tainment".

The Strategy of Metals is but oneexampleofthe
series. The other items do not necessarily follow
ts structure, but they all tell a coherent and
dramatic story.

The events of World War II have in nearly
ill cases moved faster than the propagandists.
But it is noteworthy that the series of films under
eview have kept pace with events better, prob-
ibly, than any other films. This is chiefly because
hey are the result of hard thinking and careful
Dlanning ; and it is only in the case of War Clouds
n the Pacific that events have almost entirely
jutstripped the film, whose makers, during
summer, were hardly in a position to foresee
he loss of Hongkong, Malaya. Singapore, and
he attack on an unprepared Pearl Harbour.

Nevertheless War Clouds in the Pacific
:ontains some remarkably interesting sequences.
Dne, stressing the importance of the Aleutian
slands as the stepping stones between Alaska
md Japan, leads into a final sequence depicting
he great activity which is going on along the
Vestern Seaboard of the New World — the air
outes striking ever Northwards to the new
>ases of Alaska. Incidentally the animated maps
a these sequences are striking examples of the
ise of this technique, which is also very much
o the fore in Battle for Oil and Strategy of
Hetals. By using maps shaded to represent
elief and also depicted as a segment of the
';lobe rather than an arbitrary square from
dercator's Projection, they get an effect which is
iar more accurate as regards the sense of size and
%'stance, and which has at times almost a real-
>tic effect — the latter being heightened by super-
mposing moving clouds faintly in the back-
;round. In War Clouds in the Pacific the con-
rast between Mercator's Projection and the
;lobe is very adroitly used to punch home the
eason why the Aleutian Islands are of vital
trategic importance.

The visuals of these Canadian films depend
irgely on the intelligent use of library material.
t is indeed difficult to realise that nearly all the
naterial used by the National Film Board is
lso available over here. Nor is it merely a ques-
ion of availability; it is far more a question of

choice of material and the skilful cutting of
it. In general it may be said that no commentary
phrase in any of these Canadian films lacks an
appropriate visual. In other words they have not
forgotten that the picture must tell the stor> as
well as, and in partnership with, the sound track.
Two especially notable examples of this use
of brilliantly cut librarj material are to be seen
in Churchill's Island, and This is Blitz — the
former an early 1941 production and the latter
completed early in 1942.

Churchill's Island was not made with an eye-
to circulation in Britain. It was rather made to
bolster up Britain's reputation overseas at a
time when it was sagging rather dangerously;
and it certainly paints a picture of us that is
more than flattering. It has a technical
interest over here, firstly because it so largely
draws on material from British propaganda
films, and secondly because it shows the
special uses to which that material can be put.
The most exciting sequence in the film, for
instance, is built up as follows: — The Nazis
blast their way across Europe, France falls,
the channel coasts are manned by Germans.
Using sensational German newsreel material
accompanied by a transcript of Hitler's speech
threatening Britain with destruction, a fearsome
tattoo of danger and aggression is beaten out,
culminating in shots of E Boats approaching
Dover cliffs (alleged) and the huge cross-channel
guns firing. But, as the last gun fires, the film
cuts abruptly to the A.F.S. man from Watt's
Dover Front Line leaning nonchalantly against
a parapet and saying "We see the flash, count 60,
and bang! there she is". This single shot de-
molishes the Nazi panoply in a manner which
could not be achieved in any other way, particu-
larly since there was such a lack of aggressive
film material about England.

This is Blitz contains an amazing visual
analysis of the Blitzkrieg technique, using
Poland as an example. In broad outline it brings
the chapter-headings of F. O. Miksche's book
"Blitzkrieg" to life, and for this alone it must be
of especial value in the U.S.A. today, where the
citizenry are wanting to learn about war in real
earnest. The one weakness of this film arises in
its second reel (each of these films is two reels
long) owing apparently to the lack of satis-
factory counter-attacking material of a blitz
variety from British sources. This will no doubt
be very shortly remedied.

This is Blitz and its companion pictures
Forward Commandos and Food— Weapon of
( om/uesi are significant for special reasons
other than those already mentioned. When the
National Film Board first started its production
activities it had to face the fact that the United
States was still, in name at least, a neutral
country. This rather difficult situation (particu-
larly difficult because of the instinctive tendency
for Canada and the U.S.A. to tie up together
more and more) was ingeniously enough ex-
ploited by Grierson and Legg, as may be seen
from the earlier films already referred to. But
today the new batch of films makes it clear that
the Film Board is now in a much freer position.
The tendency to identify the national interests
of the U.S.A. and Canada as a vital part of the
War effort of the United Nations is a noteworthy
aspect of recent productions.

In Food — Weapon of Conquest, for instance,
there are two sub-titles which gain immensely
by antithesis. One is a statement by Morgenthau
of U.S.A. indicating that one of the major
problems of New World agriculture must be

the supply of adequate food after the war to
a Europe whose food supplies and transport
systems will have been dislocated. The other
(referring to the use of starvation or semi-
starvation by the Nazis) is a quotation from
Hitler in which he stales that no action, however
cruel, is unjustified in wartime if that action
accelerates the conclusion of the war.

It is actually around these two themes thai
the food film is built up. Like This is Bin: it
contains scenes (all the more eloquent because
they are so sparsely used) which depict in full
horror the effects on ordinary people of the Nazi
war system. Over against this it puts the enorm-
ous possibilities of a scientifically planned New
World agriculture system acting on an interna-
tional and co-operative basis.

There is no space further to detail the specific
examples of the propaganda approach of the
Canadian films. To sum up their main achieve-
ment, it is probably just to say that thev are not
merely interpreters of policy but actually the
pacemakers of policy; and this remark is a
tribute not merely to the makers of the films but to
the far-sightedness of one of the most powerful
of the United Nations, the democracy of Canada.

The fact that this series of films is having a
considerable box-office success in the theatres of
Canada and the U.S.A. makes it more than
probable that they would have a similar success
in this country. Their propaganda and informa-
tional value is certainly important enough to
make it an urgent matter that the present regula-
tions under the Films Act should be amended to
enable them to achieve Exhibitors' quota, and
thereby normal distribution on the screens of
Britain.

SIGHT

and

SOUND

SUMMER NUMBER

Articles on: —

CHILDREN AND FILMS

RUNNING A SPECIALIST THEATRE

WHITHER THE SHORT

and

NEWS FROM NEW YORK

6(1.

Published by: The British Film Institute,
4 Great Russell Street, London, W.C.I.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

ROSTER OF M.O.I. FILMS, SEPTEMBER 1st, 1941 TILL
31st MARCH, 1942

We are indebted to the Ministry of Information for permission to publish the

following lists of films and statistical analysis which brings up to date the

lists published in our issue of October, 1941

1. THEATRICAL AND NON-THEATRICAL RELEASES

* Indicates a five-minute film. Names in brackets do not appear on the credit titles of the films concerned. "O" indicates that a
film has been sent overseas. "O.O." indicates primarily for overseas use, and "O.O.O." indicates exclusively for overseas use

PROD. UNIT PRODUCER DIRECTOR LENGTH

RELEASE DATE

Atlantic Charter

•Builders

Building for Victory
Chacun Son Dieu

Compost Heap (Making A

•Corvettes

I iiiintr\ Women, The
Cultivation

* l>:iiit;trs in the Dark

•Dig for Victory

Empire's New Armies

Ferry Pilot
•Few Ozs. A Day, A

Fighting Allies
•tilling the Gap

Fire Guard

I o, ( h.ldren Only
Germany Calling

He Went to the Cupboard

H.M. Navies Go to
•Hospital Nurse
" ' n the Spot

Keeping Rabbits lor Extra Men

•Knights ol St. John
•Land Girl

Listen to Britain

London, Autumn. 1941

Men of Tomorrow

• Mobile I ngineers
More Eggs from your Hens
•N'aval Operations

'Newspaper Traill
' .0(111, (MM) Women

Out and About

Plastic Surgery in Wartime

Post 23

R.A.F. in Action
♦Royal Observer Corps

Storing \ egetables ( Intdoii

•Tale of Two Cities

They Met in London

J.Carrand Muriel Bakei

S. Box

(I. Dalrymple) (H. Watt)

Paul Rotha Pd.

Paul Rotha

D. Alexander

Movietone

—

Crown

—

-

Paul Rotha Pd.

Paul Rotha

J. Chambers

Paul Rotha Pd.

Paul Rotha

H. Nieter

Crown

(I. Dalrymple)

P. Jackson

Pathe

Strand

—

R. Keene

See Winged Messengers.

Realist

(F. Sainsbury)

(Margaret

Spectator

I. Scott

Seven League

J. Page

Realist

(F. Sainsbury)

Margaret

Thomson

Public Relationship

~

R. Massingham
and G. Wallace

Spectator

(M. Hankinson)

—

Pathe

_

_

Crown

I. Dalrymple

P. Jackson

Paul Rotha Pd.

Movietone

Realist

(F. Sainsbury)

-

Shell

E. Anstey

G. Bell

A. Shaw

J. Eldridge

Spectator

—

—

Films of G.B.

A. Buchanan

Verity

S. Box and

J. Carr

H. Cass

Movietone

G.B.S.S.

F. Searle

Films of G.B.

A. Buchanan

Strand

R. Bond

Verity

S. Box and

J. Carr

H. Cooper

Strand

—

R. Bond

Strand

D. Taylor

J. Lewis

Rotha Pd.

D. Alexander

J. Page

Crown

I. Dalrymple

H. Jennings

Films of G.B.

Technique

S. Box and

J. Carr

A. Travers

Strand

D. Taylor

M. Gordon

Sound Services

J. Rogers

Shell

E. Anstey

G. Tharpe

Realist

L. Lye

Soviet Film Agencv

G.B.I.

S. Irving

Realist

J. Taylor

F. Sainsbury

Strand

(D.Taylor)

R. Bond

Movietone

Spectator

(M. Hankinson

G. Gunn

20th Cent. Fox

(E. Black)

Realist

(F. Sainsbury)

MarThc!mson

Realist

(F. Sainsbury)

Margaret

I. Dalrymple ( Hasse

I. Dalrymple) .1 Monck

3 42 Commentary by John Snagge.

3,42 O. Commentary by Leslie Mitchell. Partly Newsreel

— 10 41 O.I

iagrams designed by the Isotype Institute.

. Producer (Edgar Anstey).

— 142 O. /

O. Partly compiled Ir. .in How to Dig and Cultivation

1 42 O. Designed by tl

. Devised and T
h Joan Stemdale-Bennett and Hay Petrie.

O.O. Newsreel compilation.

O.

A.S. Min

I. Diagrams by I rank Rodker

O.

O. Library compilation.

O.O.O. Commentary b\ Sir Harold Gillies. In
Technicolor. \ short addition (330ft.) is titled Plastic
Surgery.

Hay.

3 42 O. Commentary by Colin

Producer:
Producer:

ills. ( ompiled by John
with British Paramount

e prepared by

< 42 O. Maps only With J. Horrabin

DOCUMENTARY NEWS

LETTER MAY

942

75

TITLE

PROD. UNIT

PRODUCER

DIRECTOR

RELEASE DATE
LENGTH NOTES
Feet T. N.T.

Way to Plough (A)

♦Winged Messengers

Winter on the Farm
•W.R.N.S.
W.V.S.

Youth Takes a Hand

Venn

G.B.I.

Green Park
Strand

Films of G.B.

S. Box and
J. Carr

D. Taylor

S. Box and

J. Carr

C. Hornby

Mary Field

R. Keene
1. Moffat
Louisa Birt

A. Buchanan

1,431 —
675 6 41

1,347 —

746 11 41
2,034 —

1,125 —

12,41
9 41

2 42
1 42

O. Commentary by Frederick Grisewi
Producer: Edgar Anstey.
Commentar> by Colin Wills. Issued as
under the title Carrier Pigeon.
\ssoc. Producer: Edgar Anstey.
O.

O. A slightly shorter British version i
scenes of Mary Welch and Lady Readi
prepared.
O.

N.I. Film
nulling the

2 NEWSREEL

TRAILERS

TITLE OR THEME

PROD. UNIT GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT RELEASE
CONCERNED DATE

NOTES

Empty Houses
Address Clearly
Fuel Economy (Heating)

Pathe
Universal
Films of G.B.

Home Security
G.P.O.

Mines

9'4I
9/41
1241

| Food Advice Centre

si Economy (Cooking)

Fuel Economy ( Hot \\ ater i

Pub. Pics.

G.P.O.

Pub. Pics.

Supply

Strand

Health

Films of G.B.

Mines

N.S.S.

W.O.

Pub. Pics.

Food

Films of G.B.

Mines

Films of G.B.

Supply

3 COLONIAL FILM UNIT PRODUCTIONS

This is a Searchlight
This is a Special ( unstable
This is a Barrage Balloon
These are Paratroops
This is an A.R.P. Warden
This is an Anti-Aircraft Gun
Our Indian Soldiers
Self Help in Food

Soldiers' Comforts

4 STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

NUMBER OF FILMS DELIVERED

Year ending Year ending Seven months in
Aug. 31, 1940 Aug. 31, 1941 ending Mar. 31,

COMBINED FOOTAGE OF FILMS DELIVERED

ding Mar. 31. TOTAL

5- Mm
Films for

Films for

general T. us
ly for T. us

inl) for non-"

Films for

general I . i
inly for T. u

Colon, al film Unit Prod

4,616

29,970

14

490

49

076

458
16,426

3,420
14,290

4

884

733

8

762

2,107

5,102

4

733

11

►42

_

42.987

19

743

62

730

-

3,225

15

252

18

4?^

23,607

98,994

63

835

186

436

510

2,380

1

500

4

190

3,980

10,149

13

'.62

27

491

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

SCIENTIFIC FILM
SOCIETIES

The increasing strain of ei\il defence dunes
has in no way lessened the interest taken in the
scientific films shown during the third session
by the Aberdeen Scientific Film Club. True,
membership this year was not quite as large as
in the preceding session, but this can be ac-
counted for almost entirely by the shift of
personnel due to war conditions. The greatest
difficulties encountered were in getting first
class talkie films. The club started offby showing
programmes of the best films which could be
procured, without any padding from comedy or
historical films, with the consequence that the
curtailed supply was to a certain extent reflected
in the programmes presented. Nevertheless the
marks awarded by the audiences, who are
trenchant critics, seldom fell below seventy
per cent on the average. How long this can
be maintained is a question not for the club
promoters but for the film producers. The
effect of mechanised warfare, and an apprecia-
tion of the significance of machines, has evolved
an audience which will absorb films like Distil-
lation and Hydraulics with relish, but will
display only passing interest in pseudo-biological
films. Real teaching and information take pre-
cedence every time over anything which savours
of "talking down to the audience".

At the forthcoming Conference on the Scien-
tific Film the Club will be represented by
Dr. Archibald Clow, lecturer in Chemistry in
the University. One of the things which it is
hoped will come out of this Conference is the
realization that the film is an excellent medium
for the presentation of experimental set-ups,
which are expensive and from which nothing is
gained by having to prepare the material at,
say, yearly intervals, for presentation to a fresh
audience or race of students. Industry, too, is an
almost unexplored field for good films explana-
tory of industrial processes. If the fractionation
of oil can be made interesting and intelligible
by a film like Distillation, what is to prevent us
having a series of similar films illustrative of
industry as a whole? The youth of practically
every community has in its neighbourhood
a selective industrial environment, and has little
opportunity of learning about industry as a
a whole. If we are to have a planned economy,
it is just as important for the London youth to
know about the quarrying of the Aberdeen
granite, of which the Embankment is built, as
for the Aberdeen youth to appreciate the
significance of Portland cement.

The London Scientific Film Society held the
fourth and final performance of the season on
May lfuh in the Imperial Institute Cinema, when
the programme included This is Colour, Imperial
Chemical Industry's new technicolor film on
dyes; Boulder Dam, the United States Govern-
ment's record of the Colorado River project,
ami (ialapagos, Dartington Hall Film Unit's
famous document on animal evolution, the
production of which was assisted by the Zoolog-
ical Society. A commentary to the last film was
spoken by Dr. Julian Huxley who answered a
number of good questions from a lively audience.
This has probably been the Society's most
successful season since its inception.

MAY 1st, '41-
MAY 1st, '42

FIVE MINUTERS

Visit from Canada
News Train

Victory Over Darkness

Filling The Gap

Work Party

NON-THEATRICALS

(1 Reel)

Living With Strangers

When The Pie Was Opened
Canadian Fighters
Cultivation

Storing Vegetahles Indoors
Storing Vegetahles Outdoors
Compost Heap
Hedging
Ditching

Good Value

Canada in Londo

SPECIALS

Plastic Surgery in Wartime

(Three Reels Technicolor)

Plastic Surgery

(Supplement 1 Reel)

Goodbye Yesterday

(2 Reels)

The Han est Shall Come
(4 Reels)

REALIST FILM I Ml

17 OXFORD STR E ET, W. 1

Telephone: GERRARD 1958

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

THE WAR-A PEOPLES REVOLUTION

This time the common man in all lands will build a new world, says HENRY A. WALLACE*

Reprinted by courtesy of Reynolds News

this is a fight between a slave world and a free
world.

Just as the United States in 1862 could not
remain half slave and half free, so in 1942 the
world must make a decision for complete
victory one way or the other.

As we begin the final stages of this fight to
the death between the free and the slave world,
it is worth while refreshing our minds about the
march of freedom for the common man.

The idea of freedom is derived from the
Jible with its extraordinary emphasis on the
dignity of the individual. The prophets of the
Old Testament were the first to preach social
justice.

But that which was sensed many years before
Christ was not given powerful political ex-
pression until our nation was formed as a federal
union 150 years ago: even then, the march of
the common people had only begun.

Most of them were unable to read and write,
and there were no State schools to which all
children could go. Men and women cannot be
really free until they have plenty to eat and time
and ability to read, to think and to talk things

If we measure freedom by standards of
nutrition, education and self-government, we
might rank the United States and certain nations
of Western Europe very high. But this is unfair
to other nations where education has become
widespread only in the past 20 years.

Russia, for example, has changed from an
illiterate to a literate nation within one genera-
tion, and in the process Russia's appreciation of
freedom has increased tremendously.

Everywhere reading and writing are accom-
panied by industrial progress and industrial
progress inevitably brings a strong Labour
Movement.

Fundamentally, there are no backward peo-
ples, lacking in mechanical sense. Russians.
Chinese and Indians all learn to read and write
and operate machines just as well as your
children or my children.

Everywhere the common people are on the
march. By millions, they are learning to read
and write, learning to think together, to use
tools. They are learning to think together in
Labour Movements, some of which may be
extreme or impracticable at first, but which
will settle down to serve effectively the interests
of the common man.

In the countries where the ability to read and
write has been acquired recently — 62 per cent
of the people of the world are still illiterate —
where people have had no long experience of
governing themselves on the basis of their own
thinking, it is easy for demagogues to prostitute
the mind of the common man to their own base
ends.

Such a demagogue may get financial help
from some person of wealth.

The demagogue is the curse of the modern

world ; of all demagogues, the worst are those
who are financed by wealthy men who sincerely
believe their wealth is likely to be safer if they
can hire men with political "it" to change the
signpost and to lure the people back into the
most degraded slavery.

The march of freedom of the last 150 years
has been a long drawn-out people's revolution.

In this great revolution of the people there
were the American Revolution of 1775. the
French Revolution of 1792, the Latin-American
Revolution of the Bolivarian era, the German
Revolution of 1848, and the Russian Revolution
of 1917.

Each spoke for the common man in terms of
blood on the battlefield.

Some went to excess, but the significant thing
is that people broke their way to the light.
More of them learned to think and work
together.

The people's revolution aims at peace, not at
violence, but if the rights of the common man
are attacked, it unleashes the ferocity of the
she-bear who has lost a cub.

The people are on the march towards even
fuller freedom than the most fortunate people
of the world have hitherto enjoyed.

No Nazi counter-revolution will stop it.
The common man will smoke the Hitler stooges
out into the open in the L'nited States, in Latin-
America, and in India. He will destroy their
influence. No Lavals or Mussolinis will be
tolerated in a free world.

The people, in their millennial and revolu-
tionary march forward, are manifesting here
on earth the dignity that is in every human soul.
They hold as their credo Roosevelt's Four
Freedoms, which are the very core of the revo-
lution for which the United Nations have taken
their stand.

We in the United States may think there is
nothing very' revolutionary about freedom of
religion, freedom of expression, and freedom
from fear of secret police.

But when we begin to think about the signifi-
cance of freedom from want for the average
man, then we know that the revolution of the
past 1 50 years has not been completed either here
in the United States or in any other nation in the
world. We know this revolution cannot stop
until freedom from want has actually been
attained.

We failed in our job after the World War-
We did not know how to go about building an
enduring world-wide peace. We lacked the nerve
to follow through and prevent German rearma-
ment. We did not build a peace treaty on the
fundamental doctrines of the people's revolution.
We did not strive to create a world where there
could be freedom from want for all peoples.

But by our very errors we have learned much ;
and after this war we will be in a position to

* Vice-President of the United States

utilise our knowledge and build a world which
will be economically, politically, and. I hope,
spiritually sound.

Modern science, which is a by-product and
essential part of the people's revolution, has
made it technologically possible to see that all
peoples throughout the world get enough to eat

Peace must mean a better standard of living
for the common man, not merely in the United
States and England, but also in India, Russia.
China and Latin-America — not merely in the
United Nations, but also in Germany, Italy and
Japan.

Some have spoken of "the American Century'-'
I say that the century we are entering, which will
come into being after this war, can be, and must
be, the century of the common man.

Perhaps it will be America's opportunity to
support the freedoms and duties by which the
common man must live.

Everywhere the common man must learn to
build his own industries with his own hands.

Everywhere the common man must learn to
increase his productivity so that he and his
children can eventually pay to the world com-
munity all that they have received.

No nation will have the God-given right to
exploit other nations. The older nations will
have the privilege of helping the younger nations
to get started on the path of industrialisation,
but there must be neither military nor economic-
imperialism.

Modern science must be released from
German slavery.

The international cartels that serve American
greed and the German will to power must go.

Cartels in the peace to come must be subject
to international control for the common man
as well as being under the control of the respec-
tive home governments.

In this way, we can prevent the Germans
again building a war machine while we sleep.

With international monopoly pools under
control, it will be possible for inventions to
serve all people, instead of only a few.

When peace comes, the citizen again will
have the supreme duty of sacrificing a lesser
interest for the greater interest of general
welfare.

Those who write the Peace must think of the
whole world. There can be no privileged peoples.

If we really believe we are fighting for a
people's peace, the rest becomes easy. Pro-
duction? Yes, it will be easy to get production
without strikes or sabotage, production with
whole-hearted co-operation.

I need say little about our duty to fight.
It is true American youth hates war with a holy
hatred. But because of that fact and because
Hitler and the German people stand as the very
symbol of war. we shall light with tireless en-
thusiasm until war and the possibility of war
has been removed from this planet.
(continued on p. 78)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

War — A People's Revolution

(continued from p. 77)

1 am convinced that the Summer and Autumn
of 1942 will be the time of supreme crisis for
us all.

Hitler, like a prizefighter who realises he is
on the verge of a knock-out, is gathering all
his remaining forces for one last desperate
blow.

We may be sure Hitler and Japan will co-
operate— perhaps an attack by Japan against
Alaska and our North-West coast, at a time
when German transport planes will be shuttled
across from Dakar to furnish the leadership and
stiffening for a German uprising in Latin-
America.

We must especially prepare to stifle fifth
columnists in the United States who will try,
not merely to sabotage our war plants but,
infinitely more important, our minds.

We must be prepared for the worst kind of
fifth column work in Latin-America, much of it
operating through the agency of governments
with which the United States is at present at
peace.

When I say this, I recognise that the peoples
both of Latin-America and of those nations
which are supporting the agencies by which the
fifth columnists work, are overwhelmingly on
the side of the democracies.

FILM SOCIETY

NEWS

The Manchester and Salford Film Society

reports that the result of their questionnaire on
programmes to their members has established
that:— (a) Members of the Manchester and
Salford Film Society have a preference for
Soviet films; (b) Members of the Manchester
and District Film Institute Society have a prefer-
ence for French films; (c) The most popular
films shown during the past season were La
Grande Illusion and We From Kronstadt ; (d) The
films most desired for the coming season are
La Bete Huniuinc, Alexander Nevski, L'Lselave
Blanche and The Rich Bride. The joint Man-
chester Societies are considering the possibilities
of a joint summer session consisting of three
programmes in association with the official
representatives of three of the United Nations —
France, Czechoslovakia and China. The latter
country will be represented by Iven's 400,000,0011
and details of the other programmes will be
announced later. A 16 mm. programme of
Soviet shorts is also planned.

As originally planned the Belfast Film
Institute Society's season was to have ended in
early April, but so unexpectedly favourable
have conditions been that it was decided to hold
an extra show. It seemed the obvious policy to
make this a special Russian show, so Musical
Story was booked, with a supporting programme
of Russian shorts, some actualities, others
cartoons. The one non-Russian film of the
programme was a revival of I en I ve's Colour
Box. With this, the eighth show ol the season,
the Society ended its Repertory series. I he
Annual General Meeting follows in June and
at this it is the Society's custom to show a film
classic on sub-standard film. This year an early
Russian silent film will be screened.

NEWS & SPECIALISED THEATRE ASSOC-
IATION SHORT FILM BOOKINGS FOR

MAY/JUNE 1942

The News Thealre. Nottingham
The Tatler Theatre. Chester
An Airman's Letter in Hi- Minim
The News Theatre, Nottingham

Cosmo Cinema, Glasgow
Beautiful Columbia

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyn<
Bravest >,l the Brave

Eros theatre, W.l.
Bridge Across the Skies

I he News Theatre, Aberdeen
Child Psychology

The News Theatre, Leeds
City of Conquest

The Tatler Theatre. Chester
City of Ships

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
Dartmouth

The Tatler Newsreel Theatre, Newcast
English Summer

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
forgotten Victory

Cosmo Cinema, Glasgow
I iiiiiidaiioiis ol the Earth

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tym
Free France

The Tatler News Theatre, Liverpool

The Classic Cinema, South Croydon
Furnaces of Industry

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
(,atewa% to the Sky

The Tatler Newsreel Theatre, Newcast
Glacier Trails

The News Theatre, Notts
Happiest Man on Earth

The News Theatre, Nottingham

The Tatler Newsreel Theatre, Newcastle
The News Theatre, Manchester
The News Theatre, Bristol
the News Theatre, Aberdeen
llisioiu-al llighspols.il American Histon
Cosmo Cinema, Glasgow

The Tatler I hcatre, I hestet
The Tatler Theatre, Manchester
March ol time. 7th Year. No. 10—
The Argentine Question
The News Theatre, Nottingham
I he News I heal re. Aberdeen
March ol 1 ime. No. II— 7th Year
I he World's News I heatre, W.2
The News Theatre. Newcastle on Tyne
Cosmo Cinema, Glasgow
I he tatler 1 heatre. Manchester
I he News theatre, Aberdeen
The News I heatre. Nottingham
March ol Time, No. 12 7th Year
I ros I he., ire, W.l

Waterloo Station News I heatre. S E.
March ol lime. No. 1.1 7th Year

Victoria Station News Theatre, S.W.I
Modern Highway

The Tatler Newsreel Theatre, Newcastle
The News Theatre, Manchester
Moscow Moods
I ros Theatre. W.l

Mother ( se liens Hollywood

Waterloo Station News Theatre, S.E.I
Mouse Trappers

I he tatler Thealre. Chester
Movie Magic

The News Theatre, Newcasllc-on-Tyne
Merseysidc

I he I atler Newsreel I heatre, Newcastle
< >iu I irliiing Allies

Watciloo Station News theatre, S.E.I

Victoria Station News t heatre. S.W.I

the World's News Theatre, W.2

May 24th

I'oles Weigh Anchor

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-T
Poplar Trappers

\ ictoria Station News Theatre, S.V
Plane Sailing

The News Theatre, Manchester
Play the Game

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-T
riawug with Neptune

The News theatre, Nottingham

Sage Brush and Silver

The Tatler Newsreel Theatre, Newcastle
The Tatler Theatre. Manchester
San Francisco

The News Theatre. Newcastle-on-Tyne

June 14th
May 31st

The News Theatre

Leeds

25th

Joining Forces

News Theatre. Ne

17th

Journev in Tunisia

The News Theatre

Newcastle-on-Tyne

June 7th

Kings of the Turf

The Tatler Newsreel Theatre, Newcastle

May 17th

The News Theatre

Birmingham

17th

King Salmon

The News Theatre

Newcastle-on-Tyne

Land of Fun

The Tatler Theatre

, Chester

June 7th

Letter from Cairo

The News Theatre

Nottingham

7th

The News Theatre

Leeds

May 18th

The Tatler Theatre

, Chester

1 3th

Man Who Changed t

e World

Soviet Songs and Dances

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
Snow Dogs

The News Theatre, Leeds

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester
Speaking of the Weather

The Tatler Newsreel Theatre, Newcastle
Swnphony in Snow

News theatre. Newcastle-on-Tyne

The News Theatre, Leeds

The News Theatre, Birmingham
That Lncertain Feeling

The Tatler Theatre. Chester
The Fox Hunt

Waterloo Station News Theatre. S.E.I

The World's News Theatre, W.2
The Great Train Robbery

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
The Hockey Champ

Eros Theatre, W.l
The Jungle

The News Theatre. Newcastle-on-Tyne

News Theatre. Newcastle-on-Tyne

Embassy. Notting Hill Gate
Thinking Aloud

The Tatler Newsreel Theatre, Newcastle
Town and Gown

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
Tyneside

The News Theatre. Aberdeen
Village in India

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tvne
\\ est ot the Rockies

The News Theatre, Manchester
Western Isles

Waterloo Station News Theatre. S.E.I

Western Isles

\ ictoria Station News Theatre, S.W.I

The News Theatre, Bristol
Work Mates

Embassy. Notting Hill Gate
World Garden

The News Theatre, Manchester

The News Theatre. Bristol

The Tatler Newsreel Thealre. Newcastle
FEAR RE REVIVALS
A Musical Stay

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester
Anthony Adverse

The Classic, Henjon. N.W.I4

TheClassic. Southampton
I- light ( ommand

The Classic Cinema. South Croydon
Gaslight

Vogue < inema, S.W.I 7

I he i lassie. HeiKton. N.W.I
< icncral Suvorov

The Tatler Theatre. Leeds

The Tatler Theatre. Manchester
Hudson Bay

The Classic. Baker Street. W.l

Love on the Dole

17th

Embassy. Notting Hill Gate

Marx Brothers Go West

The Vogue Cinema. S.W.17

Pastor Hall

The (lassie Cinema. S. Crovdon

Quiet Wedding

May 31st

Embassy. Notting Hill Gate

Seventh Heaven

Classic. Baker Street, W.l

24th

Spring Parade

31st

TheClassic, Hendon, N.W.I

June 14th

May 17th

June 7th

Maj 31st

June 7th

May 24th

17th
June 7th

June 7th
May 24th

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

THE PROPAGANDA VALUE OF
ACHIEVEMENT

EDITH MANVELL

1 when people are asked to make sacrifices for the the sustained efforts of the people working in

war effort the result is very like giving up sugar in industry, on the land, and in the services, it must

:ea during the Lenten fast. Those who give up a be made more real to us and not cheapened by a

ittle luxury are often the most complacent about certain type of journalistic sensationalism. We

heir contribution to war-time economy and the must present to the world the example of every-

:all for "austerity". They seem to have no sense day human achievement of the common people

3f proportion. The same may be said of the which by its sincerity and determination com-

il propaganda policy: it is a very mis- mands respect and admiration.
:ellaneous assortment, technically on the same It is in this that Documentary films can do
evel as commercial advertising. It appeals to the some of their greatest work. Through this
nstincts of fear or personal vanity; if it tries to medium the relationship between the individual
irouse a sense of patriotism, it often does so by a and the forces at work in the world to-day are
legative approach. The effect wears off in a very seen in terms of human values and not as the
;hort time; slogans and cliches soon become in- statistician, the economist or the mass observer
effectual and the lack of co-ordination and pur- sees them. Too few films with a propaganda pur-
poseful drive leaves one with the feeling that pose base their appeal on those qualities which
things are not so vitally urgent. inspire loyalty, a desire for mutual service and
In reaction to this vague perception of what maintenance of the decencies of life. Newsreel

Itotal war means, those men and women who
know that defeat would involve the loss of hope
better future, feel compelled to keep up a
:onstant stream of criticism most of which is
(justified. It is understandable that the most active
and socially - minded people are more easily
discouraged by constant frustration in their de-
to achieve something than the passive-
minded people. This war has already proved that dri'
inactivity leads to despondency sooner than
hardship and danger. The Nazis know this and
have applied this insidious weapon against their
intended victims. Criticism is necessary, and it is
often effective as a spur to action but it should
not make us feel that nothing will ever go right.
A more positive attitude must be taken, even
though the war situation looks grim. We want to
hear about achievements, not only on the battle
front but on the home front as well.

In the U.S.S.R. great achievements and hard
work in industry receive the honour of public
recognition. In this country, courage in the face
of great physical danger, in battle or in civil de-
fence, is publicly recognised, but toil and sweat
day after day and week after week pass un-
noticed. We hear of things that go wrong, of
strikes and absenteeism, but rarely of the endur-
ance and effort which are an example of a
dynamic will to victory.

As a statement of the much demanded war
aims, the principles expressed in the Atlantic
Charter will have to suffice for the present ; they
at least allow for varying interpretation which
avoids provoking any violent dissension. But a
mere expression of ideals cannot inspire a nation
with a dynamic faith and will to victory. We need
the influence of great leadership and exemplary
behaviour. And the example must not be limited
to those who rule in high places but must be
drawn from amongst the men and women with
whom we work and come in daily contact. Dur-
ing the heavy raids, it was the leadership of those
1 who were on the spot helping their neighbours
which kept up the morale of the people, and not
the official organisations at distant headquarters.
It is the same spirit which has made the U.S.S.R.
and China resist the most ruthless aggression.
We need a propaganda policy which will recog-
nise and encourage this spirit that makes possible

types of film, instructional and recruiting films,
and films which merely record events are use-
ful in their way, but there have been far too few
true documentaries. We need a truer perspective
of democracy as a whole, striving to attain those
ideals which at present seem blurred and in-
tangible. Faith in the deeper spiritual values
which have inspired mankind is the ultimate
force to action.

S.O.S. for copies of

WORLD FILM NEWS

We should like to buy for
2s. 6d. each, copies of the
following numbers of

WORLD FILM NEWS

No. I. Vol. I
No. 4. Vol. I
No. 5. Vol. II

Please send copies to

D.N.L., 34 SOHO SQUARE
LONDON, W.I

It's been going on for years . .

EACH week renews the interest which readers feel
in their copy of the "Kinematograph Weekly".

This interest is nothing new. It's been going
on for years, and the reasons are to be found quite
easily in the way in which the "Kinematograph
Weekly" gets down to "brass tacks", and presents
them in a newsy way which never becomes "spiky".

This week, next week, for as long as there is a
"Kinematograph Weekly", its extensive field-work
will ensure a complete recording of current and future
happenings in the artistic and technical progress of
Kinematography.

KIi\e

WEEKLY

93 LONG ACRE

LONDON

W.C.2

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942

CORRESPONDENCE

DEAR SIR,

there are four cinemas in the district where I
live. This week the four main features are
H. M. Pulham, Esq., Keep 'Em Flying, Ladies in
Retirement, You'll Never Get Rich. Of these only
one film — Keep 'Em Flying — is remotely con-
nected with the w^r and that in a frivolous and
pointless way. All the other films, so I am told,
are good; they are all American, made before
America came openly into the war, and so do
nothing but instil that feeling of pre-war com-
placency among thousands who flock to see them.
H. M. Pulham, Esq., is one of those romantic
dramas: Keep 'Em Flying has comedy, songs,
romance, and aviation thrills — guaranteed to
drive away any wartime blues; Ladies in Retire-
ment is a murder thriller, and lastly You'll Never
Get Rich promises to be a mixture of chorus girls
and Army camps. These are the films I've got to
choose from if I want to go to the pictures next
week. Five minutes of newsreel is the nearest I
will get to the war.

Before the war while feature films lived in a
make-believe world of their own, documentary
film makers, particularly in this country, were
trying to break down the complacent, airy-fairy
attitude that was existing everywhere and show-
ing the public something of themselves — what
they were really like, not what they thought or
hoped they were like.

By September 1939, documentary films had
achieved some success and were able, with the
help of the Ministry of Information, to change
over to wartime needs and conditions in a mini-
mum of time and with the minimum of fuss. The
war presented new problems and the use of the
film was one way to solve them. But the feature
film makers still went on making their films be-
hind their smug, bogus mask. For some time after
the outbreak of war there was little or no sign in
feature films that their makers were aware of the
drastic change in conditions. They carried on
working out their love affairs, blaring out their
musical comedies, and solving their mystery
thrillers. It wasn't until after Dunkirk and the
Battle of Britain that the possibility of war as a
subject for feature films was at all fully realised.
The M.O.I, five-minuters were coming regularly
each week but only to fill in a gap in the pro-
gramme. The war didn't go very well for us for a
long while. People became more and more de-
pressed and the cinema became more and more
a means of escape.

The war has been on for nearly three years and
we are only just beginning to come out of our
coma. The Foreman Went to France, One of Our
Aircraft is Missing. The Day Will Dawn— these
films have been released during the past month
and the Trade papers are preparing us for more.

This may or may not be a change in propa-
ganda policy but whatever it is we are at last
beginning to realise the potentialities of the
feature film as a propaganda medium. The fea-
ture film cannot help but be the mainstay of any
normal cinema programme and the sooner it is
geared to the war effort the better. The feature
film industry must be governed by a definite
propaganda policy. The feature film industry
must become part of, not a distraction from the
war effort.

Yours etc.

"FILMOOER."

In future The Strand Film Company
will be working in conjunction with
British National Films Ltd. Strand
Films will continue to function as a
separate production unit, and the
same Technical Staff will carry on.

The British National Studios at Elstree
will be Strand Films production head-
quarters.

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR
ALEXANDER SHAW

MANAGING DIRECTOR
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION

New address: —

Offices: 1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l.

Tel.: CERRARD 6304/5.

Studios: BRITISH NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE.

Tel.: ELSTREE 1644.

Owned and published by Film Centre Ltd., 34 Soiio Square, London, W.l, and printed by Sinson Sltand Ltd., The Shenval Press, London and Hertford

DOCUMENTARY

NEWS LETTER!

CONTEN IS

I I IMP] m I NCY — TWO VARIE1 II
NOTES Ol III! WON I li

THE DOCUMEN1 \ K 1 ID1 > 1942

k CANADIAN EXl'I KIMI N I

by Donald W. Buchanan

Nl \V IKIIUMI N I \HY I II MS

POST-WAR fULI LIRE
CORRESPONDENCE

I II \1 SOCIt [ Y NEW

NEWS AND SPECI \I 1SI I) I III \ I l<

FILM LIHRARIE!

VOL 3 NO 6

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON Wl

COMPLACENCY-TWO VARIETIES

wishful thinking and complacency are still amongst the most
dangerous elements in Britain to-day. Far too many people are
accepting the day-to-day war situation without making any intellec-
tual or imaginative effort to view that situation in some sort of
perspective. Mental laziness, laissez faire, lack of real energy, lack
of a sense of responsibility — all those elements, in fact, which caused
the failure of democracy as a positive force in the armistice of 191 8—
1939, are still far too much in evidence. Not enough people, for
instance, are comparing the success of the air offensive in Europe
with the difficulties that are likely to arise from the intensification of
the U-boat campaign in the Atlantic.

This complacency takes various forms, however. While, for
instance, the second-fronters claim that the war can be finished
quickly, those who oppose the second front produce their own sort
of complacency by preparing for a long war without any real sense
of the issues involved.

But whatever the form which this dangerous attitude of mind
may take, its implication is quite clear. People do not think hard
enough. But the men and women in the factories and in the mines,
no less than in the Forces, are doing magnificent work; and it is
amongst them, particularly the factory workers, that a good deal of
hard thinking is taking place, as may be judged by the breakdown of
the electoral truce.

Nevertheless, taking the country as a whole, there seems to be a
real danger of people blindly accepting various broadcasts, films and
newspaper articles, which in their cumulative effect add up to the
impression that the Axis is already beaten, that it is only a matter of
time, and that the only question is — how long? In a recent interview
the head of Bomber Command gave the impression (intentionally or
unintentionally) that the strategy of this war is to be determined by
bombing, which will probably take a very long time but will in the
end be the decisive factor. At a time when, despite the lack of
published figures, there is considerable disquiet regarding the
sinking of the United Nations' ships, particularly in the Atlantic, a
one-sided picture of this sort is just the sort of thing which leads to
unthinking complacency.

On a parallel with complacency about the immediate war situa-
tion there runs a second complacency, which is equally dangerous, a
complacency in regard to the post-war period. There are two schools
of thought. The first, which although less powerful than a year ago,
still exists, particularly in Tory circles, claims that our job is to win
the war now and not bother about the peace until it arrives. The
second is represented by a large number of well-meaning and well-
staffed reconstruction and planning committees, which, each in their
own way, are engaged on drawing up a great variety of blueprints

for the world after the war. Between these two extremes the bulk of
the citizenry continue to vacillate. Too many people are failing to
realise that the new world which we all hope and intend to build
after the war will not come without a hard struggle. Too few people
are planning the concrete action without which the blueprints of the
planners will not be worth the paper.

It is quite certain that what happens after the war is most intim-
ately related with what is happening now. In order to win the battle
against the Axis by military and economic means, each nation is
being forced to make revolutionary changes in its social and
economic way of life. In this country an increasing degree of
nationalisation is being forced on reluctant vested interests; but it is
only too frequently being done in terms which make it clear that
those interests expect to be in a position to get their grip back soon
after hostilities cease. The new scheme regarding the mining industry
is an example of this. Yet the action taken now has a direct bearing
on the post-war problem, and people must realise this.

To use economic jargon, it is vital that the post-war period should
be geared to the needs of the consumer ; and the consumer means
you and me and all the ordinary people of this country. Therefore the
problem is our own and without our action it will not be solved, ex-
cept in a negative and reactionary sense.

There is one ultimate danger to this country, and that is the danger
of relaxation and laissez-faire when hostilities cease. On the day
when some sort of armistice is signed we shall need to go on working
just as hard, if not harder, if the enormous sacrifice and misery of the
war are to be worth while. There will be so many problems. For
instance, the feeding of all Europe and much of the East— a problem
which will be in the hands of the British Commonwealth and the
United States. This problem will in itself be a continuation of the
war problem, but it will carry with it the organisational needs for a
new Europe. It will be an international problem and bound up with
the home front problem of each of the United Nations.

It is not too much to claim that part of our war effort now should
be the planning of a great propaganda campaign that can swing into
action on a new front the moment hostilities cease. More than this ;
a certain proportion of our propaganda effort from now on should
be devoted to making people realise that they must get used to the
idea of continued effort of a very active and hard-working and posi-
tive nature in the interests of the peace-time world which is coming.
We hope that the Ministry of Information is making plans to this
effect and, as far as film propaganda is concerned, the sooner these
plans are put into operation the better. Meantime, the situation in
Libya is doing much to stop one sort of complacency.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

NOTES OF THE MONTH

An Important Article

we draw special attention to the article by John Grierson on the
opposite page, in which he discusses not only the present develop-
ments of the documentary idea but also the duties and responsibili-
ties of propagandists in general. We believe it to be a statement of
the utmost importance to all those who are concerned with the
use of the various media of public persuasion, both as regards the
present crisis and as regards the future crises which the first years of
peace will bring.

Sponsors

nothing throws the abysmal wastefulness of the advertising film
into sharper relief than a survey of the activities of those
organisations who engage in the production of films as part of their
public relations. In peace-time, interests such as Shell and the
British Commercial Gas Association regularly produced films which
redounded to their credit, both as contributions to the civic enlight-
enment of our own people and also as valuable weapons of propa-
ganda in overseas countries. Now, in time of war, these same
sponsors are placing the bulk of their filmic resources at the disposal
of the Government, and the addition of Imperial Chemical Industries
to the list of documentary sponsors has increased yet again the
potential film supply of the Films Division of the M.O.I. Shell's films
of instruction and information are now paralleled by I.C.I. 's
sponsorship of The Harvest Shall Come, a film which is not only a
feather in their cap but also is bound to be welcomed by at least
three government departments — Information, Agriculture and
Labour.

The Real Thing

the weekly newsreels flash by. A snippet of this and a snippet of
that and a good noisy sound track. The cinema audience wants to
see the news but the newsreel editor is obviously hard put to it to
find his weekly footage. Battles take place in inaccessible places and
very often at unfilmable speeds. Even when, and if any, celluloid
reports do get here they are usually yesterday's sensation. The good
old stand-bys have gone; the Melbourne Cup, the Braemar Games,
the Trooping of the Colours, Ascot fashions and those jolly Italian
officers, riding their horses up and down cliff faces, greet us no
longer. It is not a great loss but it rather puts the newsreels on the
spot. Armament production stories fall rather flat unless they are
properly dramatised, army exercises have been done too often, our
rulers are too busy to indulge in many personal appearances, ration-
ing and the party truce have removed banquet speeches and excite-
ment from elections. Russia, China and America seem, so far, to have
sent us little to fill the gap. Therefore we salute Paramount News
who, a week or two ago, presented us with something new and
something exciting. They devoted a whole issue to one section of the
war and they told their story through the eyes and in the words of
their cameraman on the spot. The issue was called Burma Front, and
the cameraman-reporter was Maurice Ford. The story was not basic-
ally good nor inspiring, and one's first thought was that we were in
for a gloomy retrospective review. This was far from being the case.
The editing and the commentary combined to put the sad story of the
Burma retreat into perspective and even to make it exciting and
heartening. The film was excellently shot under obviously the most
tiresome conditions and for the first time really showed us some-
thing of what war in that part of the world is like. By carefully
putting the catastrophic side of the picture first the editor was able
to build up his triumphant finale of British bombers at work raiding
the Japanese occupied towns, and the film made its points without
being false or underestimating anybody's intelligence. Our con-
gratulations to Messrs. Paramount and to Maurice Ford.

An Encouraging Development

with the end of the 1941-42 season the Film Society movement in
this country is once again to be congratulated on its continued vigour
despite the difficulties of war-time. The Film Society page in
D.N.L. over the past six months provides sufficient evidence of the
imagination and initiative which has kept this progressive move-
ment going so well during the past three years. But the most notable
thing of all has been the rapid development, particularly during the
past year, of the Scientific Film Societies. In this, as so often, Scot-
land has been a pioneer; but in England too the movement is
spreading, and the London Scientific Film Society is able to report
its most successful season ever. The value of Scientific Film Societies
is of special importance now, when it is more than ever necessary for
the work of the scientist to be identified with and understood by the
people at large. It is to be hoped that after the war these Societies
will be enabled to continue their work on a larger and more ambi-
tious scale.
Counter-criticism

we have received comments and correspondence with regard
to the review of the five-minute film Middle East which appeared in
our last issue. The reviewer is criticised on the ground that in his
condemnation of the absence of direct reference to people in this
diagrammatic film he lost sight of the importance of what the film
did in fact contain. Some of our readers point out that the film was
designed solely to give the public new information about broad
world strategies and has been a success with working-class as well
as middle-class audiences on this basis. It seems to us that the whole
question of the role of the individual in relation to strategical films
is so admirably dealt with in John Grierson's article in the current
number that little more need be said on the subject. The review of
Middle East — as is true of all D.N.L. reviews — expressed the
opinion only of the reviewer, an opinion which was not necessarily
shared by the Editorial Board. In any case the M.O.I. Films Division
is to be congratulated on sponsoring, well in advance, a film which
anticipated the serious character of coming events in this vital
theatre of war.
Films and India

in the March issue of "The Journal of the Film Industry" (pub-
lished in Bombay), an editorial refers to the Governmental attitude
to Indian films as being characterised by short-sightedness, apathy
and lack of imagination. "Ever since the years 1927-28." continues
the editorial, "arguments and appeals have been periodically placed
before Government, right till the declaration of the present War,
without any response. Had Government taken any heed of those ap-
peals the cinema in India could have reached, by 1939, the propor-
tions it has, in the same period, attained in England, when at least
positive raw film, shortages in which are at present causing con-
siderable loss to the industry, could have been indigenously manu-
factured. Then even the production of powerful anti-Nazi, as of war
propaganda, films, which up to date have come exclusively from
America, could have been rendered possible instead of the unprofit-
able eleventh hour well-digging processes practised during the last
couple of years. But what is equally, if not more, important is that
Hindu-Muslim unity, for the achievement of which budget provi-
sions are being made — though not used — since last year in the hope
of doing something, could, through preachment in films, have been
secured long ago without any danger of the country's political ad-
vance being rudely checked as hitherto." Although no mention is
made of the all-Indian units established and trained by Alex Shaw
daring 1941, it may be assumed that these are to be regarded as
a possible jumping-off ground for a new approach to the problem
of Indian film production, particularly as regards the enormous
population figures, the high percentage of illiteracy and the varia-
tions of languages, all o\~ which are equally involved.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

THE DOCUMENTARY IDEA 1942

By JOHN GRIERSON

This is a slightly abridged version of a letter from Grierson to a member of the Editorial Board of DNL.
Its content is so important that it can be regarded as a considered and categorical article on propaganda policy.

The first part of our work in Canada is done.
They have a film organisation now that will
do great things for the country if they look
after it in good faith till the young people
develop. Much of it has been pulled off the
sky. On the other hand, there are special
reasons why the national use of films should
have fitted so quickly and progressively into
the Canadian scene. The need to achieve
unity in a country of many geographical and
psychological distances is only one of them
and not the most important. More vital, I
think, is the fact that Canada is waking up
to her place in the world and is conscious, as
English speaking countries do not seem
sufficiently to be, that it is a new sort of
place in the world. A medium which tries
to explain the shape of events and create
loyalties in relation to the developing scene
is welcome. I cannot otherwise explain the
measure of support we have been given, nor
particularly the long range hopes that have

i been placed in this school of projection we
have set up.

Thank particularly Legg, who has been
such a worker as you never saw: with one a
month in the theatre series for a couple of

;al years, and stepping up now to two. It will be
easier as the research staff grows, for the key
to that sort of thing is in the first place
academic. There is first-rate support in the
fields of economics and international affairs.
This is a characteristic of Canada and will
have considerable influence on the develop-
ment of the group. Legg is looking after his
own films and fifty or sixty more on the
stocks while I am away, with Ross McLean
in general charge. McLean represents as well
as anyone what Canada is about nowadays
and keeps it marching into a dream of the
Canadian future which in these parts excites
almost everyone under forty. I support him
in this, with a special affection for the French
Canadian viewpoint. The co-operative and

] peasant movements down there in Lower
Canada will affect the picture greatly. This
young and critical nationalism is an easy
binding force and lights up eyes and energies
in a remarkable way. It would be silly to ex-
pect too much now but, in vigour and
confidence and the will to do a public work,
jthe Canadian unit is as good as anything of
the kind anywhere.

The World in Action series is the particular
; interest of Legg and myself and of Lash, the
Director of Public Informatiom It says more
of what is going on in our minds. The films

in this series develop in authority and com-
mand good critical attention both in Canada
and in the States. fWe have helpful spectators
on papers like Time, the New York Times,
and the New Yorker, and one gathers the im-
pression from Variety's reviews that it has at
last found in the war something tougher and
bloodier than itself. The policy behind them,
I think you know fairly well. We are con-
cerned primarily with the relation of local
strategies to larger world ones. This is partly
in reaction to what some of us regard as a
dangerous parochialism in much English-
speaking propaganda: but also because
Canada is moving as swiftly toward a world
viewpoint as England in recent years has been
moving away from it.

The style comes out of the job. Since it is
a question of giving people a pattern of
thought and feeling about highly complex
and urgent events, we give it as well as we
know, with a minimum of dawdling over
how some poor darling happens to react to
something or other. This is one time, we say,
when history doesn't give a good goddam who
is being the manly little fellow in adversity and
is only concerned with the designs for living
and dying that will actually and in fact shape
the future. If our stuff pretends to be certain
it's because people need certainty. If our maps
look upside down, it's because it is time people
saw things in relativity. If we bang them out
one a fortnight and no misses, instead of sitting
six months on our fannies cuddling them to
sweet smotheroo, it's because a lot of bravos
in Russia and Japan and Germany are banging
out things too and we'd maybe better learn
how, in time. If the manner is objective and
hard, it's because we believe the next phase of
human development needs that kind of mental
approach. After all, there is no danger of the
humanitarian tradition perishing while the
old are left alive to feel sorry for themselves
and make "beautiful" pictures about it.
Sad to say, the beating heart of the Stuarts
was all they had left; and so it is with
vanishing polities.

The penalty of realism is that it is about
reality and has to bother for ever not about
being "beautiful" but about being right. It
means a stalwart effort these days : one has
to chill the mind to so many emotional de-
fences of the decadent and so many smooth
rationalisations of the ineffective. One has
even to chill the mind to what, in the vacuum
of daydreams, one might normally admire.
In our world, it is specially necessary these

days to guard against the aesthetic argu-
ment. It is plausible and apt to get under the
defences of any maker in any medium. But,
of course, it is the dear bright-eyed old
enemy and by this time we know it very well.
Documentary was from the beginning —
when we first separated our public purpose
theories from those of Flaherty — an anti-
aesthetic movement.

What confuses the history is that we had
always the good sense to use the aesthetes.
We did so because we liked them and be-
cause we needed them. It was, paradoxically,
with the first-rate aesthetic help of people
like Flaherty and Cavalcanti that we mas-
tered the techniques necessary for our quite
unaesthetic purpose. That purpose was plain
and was written about often enough. Rotha
spent a lot of time on it. We were concerned
not with the category of "purposiveness with-
out purpose" but with that other category
beyond, which used to be called teleological.
We were reformers open and avowed: con-
cerned— to use the old jargon — with "bringing
alive the new materials of citizenship",
"crystallising sentiments" and creating those
"new loyalties from which a progressive civic
will might derive." Take that away and I'd be
hard put to it to say what I have been working
for these past fifteen years. What, of course,
made documentary successful as a movement
was that in a decade of spiritual weariness it
reached out, almost alone among the media,
toward the future. Obviously it was the public
purpose within it which commanded govern-
ment and other backing, the progressive social
intention within it which secured the regard of
the newspapers and people of goodwill every-
where, and the sense of a public cause to be
served which kept its own people together.

These facts should have made it clear that
the documentary idea was not basically a
film idea at all, and the film treatment it in-
spired only an incidental aspect of it. The
medium happened to be the most convenient
and most exciting available to us. The idea
itself, on the other hand, was a new idea for
public education: its underlying concept that
the world was in a phase of drastic change
affecting every manner of thought and prac-
tice, and the public comprehension of the
nature of that change vital. There it is, ex-
ploratory, experimental and stumbling, in
the films themselves: from the dramatisation
of the workman and his daily drag to the
dramatisation of modern organisation and

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

the new corporate elements in society and to
the dramatisation of social problems: each a
step in the attempt to understand the stub-
born raw material of our modern citizenship
and wake the heart and the will to their
mastery. Where we stopped short was that,
with equal deliberation, we refused to specify
what political agency should carry out that
will or associate ourselves with any one of
them. Our job specifically was to wake the
heart and the will: it was for the political
parties to make before the people their own
case for leadership.

1 would not restate these principles merely
out of historical interest. The important point
is that tiiey have not changed at all and they
are not going to change, nor be changed. The
materials of citizenship to-day are different
and the perspectives wider and more difficult ;
but we have, as ever, the duty of exploring
them and of waking the heart and will in regard
to them. (Documentary is at once a critique of
propaganda and a practice of it.) That duty
is what documentary is about. It is, moreover,
documentary's primary service to the State
to be persisted in, whatever deviation may
urged upon it, or whatever confusion of
thought, or easiness of mind, success may
tiring. Let no one tell you that a few bright-
eyed films or a couple of Academy awards —
from Hollywood of all places! — mean any-
thing more than that a bit of a job was done
yesterday. To-morrow it is the same grind
with ever new material — some easy, some
not so easy — to be brought into design ; and
no percentage in it for anyone except doing
the rightest job of education and inspiration
we know how for the state and the people.
Considering the large audiences we now reach
and the historical stakes that depend on
Tightness of approach, it is a privilege worth
a measure of personal effort and sacrifice.
If there is common agreement in the
"strategy" 1 have indicated, differences in
daily "tactic" will not seriously affect unity.

We should see equally straight regarding
the social factor in our work over the thirties.
It was a powerful inspiration and very im-
portant for that period. Without Housing
Problems and the whole movement of social
understanding such films helped to articu-
late, I think history would have found
another and bloodier solution when the
bombs first rained on the cities of Britain.
But that Indian summer of decent social
intention was not just due to the persistence
of people like ourselves and to the humani-
tarian interests of our governmental and in-
dustrial colleagues. It may also have marked
a serious limiting of horizons. It may have
been an oblique sign that England, to her
peril, was becoming interested only in her-
self. Some of us sensed it as we reached out
in every way we knew for an opportunity of
wider international statement. We did not,
I am afraid, sense it half enough and we
share the guilt of that sultry decade with all
the other inadequate guides of public
opinion. The job we did was perhaps a good

enough job to have done at all, but our
materials were not chosen widely enough.

Nothing seems now more significant of the
period than that, at a time so crucial, there
was no longer eager sponsorship for world-
thinking in a country which still pretended to
world-leadership. Russia had its third Inter-
national and Germany had that geo-political
brains trust which, centred in Haushofer,
spread its influence through Hess to Hitler
and to every department of the Reich. In the
light of events, how much on the right lines
Tallents was and how blind were the people
who defeated his great concept! For docu-
mentary the effect was important. The
E.M.B. which might have done so much for
positive international thinking, died seven
years too early; and it was hardly, as we
comically discovered, the job for the G.P.O.
There was the brief bright excursion to
Geneva: there was that magnificent scheme
for the l.L.O. ; there was my own continuous
and fruitless pursuit of the bluebird we called
the Empire and the momentary hopeful
stirring in the Colonial Office under Mal-
colm MacDonald; there was the Imperial
Relations Trust, five years too late, and
affected from the first by the weight of
impending events. The international factor,
so necessary to a realist statement of even
national affairs, was not in the deal.

It is, of course, more vital than ever to a
documentary policy. We, the leaders and the
people and the instruments of public opinion,
have been out-thought by Russia, Germany and
Japan because we have been out-thought in
modern international terms. Because docu-
mentary is concerned with affecting the vital
terms of public thinking towards a realistic
comprehension of events and their mastery,
its duty is plain. To use the phrase of these
present days, you can't win the war, —
neither "outside" nor "inside" — without a
revision of the public mind regarding Eng-
land's place in the world and the larger
morale that goes with a sense of being on
the bandwagon of history. Thumbing a ride
to the future is not nearly good enough.

I look back on Munich as representing a
milestone in my own outlook on documentary.
From that time the social work in which we
had been engaged seemed to me relatively be-
side the point. Munich was the last necessary
evidence of how utterly out-of-category our
English political thinking was and how literally
most of our political leaders did not know
what it was all about. From that point it
seemed clear that we had, willy-nilly, to relate
the interests of the English people to new
world forces of the most dynamic sort — physi-
cal, economic and ideological. It was inevitable
that our first instinct should be to put our head
in the sand and in a last frantic gesture, try to
avoid the implications of the future; but the
significance of our indecision in regard to both
Germany and Russia was plain to see. World
revolution had broken out on the biggest pos-
sible scale, and to the point of having people
like Churchill recognise it as such. Win or

lose, the economy of England and her place in
the world were under threats of serious altera-
tion and, however we might presently hide our
eyes, people's minds had to be prepared and
made fit for them if what was great and good
in England was to survive. It was not much
concentrating on changes in a status whose quo
was being challenged from every active corner
of the world and apt to be blown to historical
smithereens. Internal social issues were no
longer enough when the deeper political issues
had become the whole of realism.

This was one person's reaction. I knew it
meant the exploration of a healthier basis for
the public instruction which documentary
represented than the reactionary regime at
that time allowed. But 1 was altogether
doubtful of where the journey would lead. I
hoped, vaguely I must admit, that youth and
the viewpoints their world position imposed
upon them would bring a measure of pro-
gressive strength from the Dominions. I did
not know how that strength could ever be
articulated in time to save documentary
from its greatest set-back : the assumption of
official sponsorship by the old, the obstinate
and the inept. That period, thank heaven, is
over and, in the combined strength of what
you have so hardly won the right to do in
England and what has now been developed
elsewhere, it should be possible to create a
new strength of thought and purpose. You
must not allow anyone to forget the part of
Beddington in this: and of Elton. Beddington
was, personally, under no obligation to the
documentary viewpoint and, like myself, he is
under compunction as an official to think of
other considerations besides those which are
the especial considerations of the documentary
group. The documentary idea may be the most
progressive and most valuable one for a de-
partment of propaganda, and I would even
maintain that it is the only approach which
could, developed, match the depth and
thoroughness of the German and Russian ap-
proaches. But it cannot in practice be the
whole menu. There have to be "corn" de-
partments too and a good practical propa-
gandist will have a pretty selection of them if
he is to keep the "fules and bairns" satisfied,
save himself from fighting a hundred un-
important battles, and hold his energy for
what is long-term and fundamental.

The danger, 1 frequently observe, for both
the propagandist and his purpose, is when
the success of the corn begins to overshadow
what is fundamental. It is because of this
danger that the documentary idea is so
necessary a guide and its constant propaga-
tion the best service a paper like D.N.L. can
do to organisations like Beddington's and
mine. Because it insists on comprehension it
may be a hard and academic taskmaster but
you certainly can't fool around with it. There
is perhaps a point where the official mind is
apt to say: — it is all very well in peace-time
for the documentary people to turn the pub-
lic occasion to their special purpose, but in
war it is different. This sounds plausible, but

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

I see no reason to fear it. If the documentary
idea is to be the conscience of propaganda, its
job at times is to be uncomfortable; and so
long as the Service of the State remains its first
interest, only the devious will wish to resent it.
I would only make this qualification, that to
fight at every drop of the hat is suicide and to
be "pure" you don't have to be a purist.

In spite of many difficulties and confusions
in the public scene, documentary can do an
increasingly useful job, here and now and
within the limits of official sponsorship.
Some of the difficulties are constantly quoted
to me and particularly from England. We
are, it is emphasised, far from articulating
our war aims. We insist on tolerations and
freedoms which often, some say, merely dis-
guise the "freedom" to go back to England's
status quo ante and the "tolerance" of past
stupidities. We have not yet learned to state
lew creative terms which will give reality
to "freedom" and "tolerance" in an actual
future. We denounce fanaticism in others
because we have not ourselves discovered a
shape of things-to-come to be fanatical
about. We still stand bravely but vaguely be-
tween two worlds and talk the language of
ndecision: resting our case on hopes of
Russia and the U.S., the bravery of our
youth, and our capacity to stand up to other
peoples' offensives. That is what they say,
and there is reason behind the criticism. But
the practical view-point is to gauge exactly
the historical reasons behind these pheno-
mena and see what, even within those limita-
tions, can presently be done. Take the lack
of of war aims, for example. 1 am told that
re documentary can't do a lot without war aims
rj and must mark time with the non-contro-
ia versial badinage of the humanities: with art
e! for art's sake, the sweetheart, playing peep-
;n bo round the corner. No war aims, I am told,
1 becomes "no policy" for documentary. Yet
id those who insist on "no policy" are correctly
« reflecting a phase which dares not go right and
H dares not go left and has no easy solution to
el offer except first winning the war. It would be
(vise to see the "no policy" business for what
it is, a present political necessity for govern-
lments which, for many reasons — some schizo-
tphrenic, some more realistically involving
■allies- may not speak theirminds;and explore
what can be done nonetheless and in spite
of it.

The situation is too deeply laid to believe
that you can nurse or wheedle or fight a "no
policy" for propaganda into a positive one.
At the same time official personnel counts
for something, and England is luckier with
the present set-up than anyone could ever
have expected. Nursing and even fighting
count for something, in so far as the way at
least be prepared toward a positive policy of
"political warfare". There documentary can
most deeply serve England. Let me explain.
As usual, I take the position that, while I
believe political issues are the whole of
■ealism, the "agency" of correct political
:hange is not my concern. It may come in

any colour of the rainbow, and call itself
the British Council or the Society of St.
George for England, Canterbury, Inc. — as
one great realist put it, it may come "even in
its nightshirt" — so long as it is the midwife
of correct political change.

To put it in its simplest and nai'vest form —
which it is still well to remember and maintain
— correct political change will be that align-
ment of political principles and loyalties
which, in the circumstances of the world to-
day, will best serve the interests of peoples of
all lands, and the English people in propor-
tion, and actively mobilise the native heart and
mind to these ends. It will be that alignment
which actively eliminates the evil forces, wher-
ever they may be, which are against such in-
terests ; and all decadent forces, wherever they
may be, which are not competent to control
the developing scene. That is something on
which all healthy elements must agree ; and the
unhealthy elements present events are suffi-
ciently taking care of. War has this grim com-
pensation, that only the successful generals
are considered good ones; and there is a
daily measuring stick for leaders in that most
powerful quarter of public appraisal, the
stomach muscles of the people.

It is also fairly plain what areas of chaos
have to be reduced to order, whatever politi-
cal alignment develops. The armies and air
forces of the world are carving out new
geographical concepts and shapes. The pro-
cesses of total war are developing new econo-
mic concepts, and more modern methods of
administrative control. First things are
miraculously coming first, including the food
and faith of the people. Though minor social
changes are not major political ones, and the
radish may be one colour outside and another
in, the present flow of social decency must
lubricate the development of state planning,
corporate thinking and co-operative citizen-
ship. The most important of the British films
have, of course, been those which have seized
on one or other of these changes, and it is of
first-rate political significance that Jack
Beddington should have sponsored them.
Their importance is that in explaining the
shape of these developments they are explor-
ing the inevitable shapes of the future, rough
and jerry-built as they may now appear. It
does not matter if the films are at first not so
good. The history of documentary is the
history of exploring new fields of material,
always with difficulty first, then easier and
better. Its chief temptation has been to aban-
don exploration and, doing better what has
been done before, pursue the comfort of
technical excellence. You will remember that
this also was one of the reasons for Russia's
attack on "formal art".

The new fields of positive material are wide
and we have, all of us, only scratched the sur-
face. The field of social changes is not, per se,
the most important of them. Kindness in a
queue at Plymouth, which means so much to
the B.B.C. overseas broadcasts, does nothing

about India. The important shapes are obvi-
ously those directly related to the national and
international management of industrial, eco-
nomic and human forces. They are important
in winning the war without. They also repre-
sent, on a longer term view, a new way of
thought which may be the deepest need of our
generation. In so far as documentary is
primarily concerned with attitudes of mind,
this aspect of the matter is worth a great deal
of attention. "Total war" is said to require
"total effort" but this has not been easily
come by in nations which still have a hang-
over of nineteenth century thinking and
laissez faire. "The methods of the nine-
teenth century will not work in the People's
Century which is now about to begin," says
Vice-President Wallace. At a hundred points
to-day wrong attitudes are still being taught:
some in innocence of the dynamic change
which total effort involves: some in calcu-
lated defence of the sectional and selfish in-
terests which total effort must necessarily
eliminate. This psychological fifth column is
more deeply entrenched than any other, and
all of us have some unconscious affiliation
with it as a heritage from our out-of-date
education. Rotted in the old "untotal" ways
and in the privileges and pleasures we enjoyed
under them, we have to examine every day
anew what in our words and sentiments we
are really saying. A critique of sentiments is a
necessary preliminary to propaganda and to
documentary as its critical instrument.

It will certainly take continuous teaching
of the public mind before the new relation-
ship between the individual and the state,
which total effort involves, becomes a fami-
liar and automatic one. A beginning has been
made, but only a beginning. The capacity of
the individual for sacrifice has already been
well described and honoured. So has team
work, particularly in the fighting services.
So has the mastery of some of the new tech-
nical worlds which the war has opened up.
So far so good, but it is the habit of thought
that drives on toward the integration of all
national forces for the public good, which
goes to the root of things. Here we come face
to face with the possibility of integrating
these forces in a thousand new ways and the
release of co-operative and corporate ener-
gies on a scale never dreamt of before. To
consider this simply as a temporary device of
war is to mistake its significance and by so
doing to dishearten the people ; for it is what
people in their hearts have been harking for
and represents the fulfilment of an era. Total
war may yet appear as the dreadful period of
forced apprenticeship in which we learned
what we had hitherto refused to learn, how to
order the vast new forces of human and
material energies to decent human ends. In
any case, there it is, a growing habit of
thought for documentary to watch and de-
scribe and instil at a hundred points: serving
at once the present need of England and the
pattern of the future.

Total effort needs, in the last resort, a

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

background of faith and a sense of destiny;
but this concept of integrating all resources
to an active end gives the principal pattern
for a documentary approach. It will force
documentary more intimately into a con-
sideration of active ends and of the patterns
of integration which best achieve them. It
will also force documentary into a study of
the larger phases of public change which
may not have seemed to it necessary before.
To take a simple example, we have an ex-
cellent film from Anstey on how to put out
incendiary bombs and handle the local
aspects of fire watching ; but we have had no
film covering the basic revolution of strategy
in anti-blitz activities which the experience
of blitz inspired. England's discovery of the
intimate relationship between the social
structure and defence gives point to its new
"dynamic" interest in the social structure,
provides an excellent example of "total pat-
tern" and indicates the revolution in public
viewpoint required by total effort. Consider,
at the other end of the field of war, Time's
report from Burma: "The Japanese fought
total war, backed by political theory and
strengthened by powerful propaganda. They
made this total war feasible by cornering
economic life in conquered areas, utilising
labour power and seizing raw materials to
supply continuing war from war itself. It is a
type of war thoroughly understood by the
Russians and the Germans, half adopted by
the Chinese, and little understood by Britain
and America". If it is "little understood" it
only means that in this aspect of activity, as
in so many others, effectiveness depends on a
new way of thought which we have not
mastered deeply enough to practice in new
circumstances. The result of the war lies in
the hands of those who understand it and can
teach it.

One phrase sticks out like a sore thumb
from the reports of the Eastern war and re-
veals a further perspective. Referring to the
loss of native Burmese support we are ac-
cused of "lacking sound political theory".
England's failure to understand other points of
view may again be the heritage of a period
in which we were powerful enough and rich
enough not to have to bother about them, but
that day has gone. Again new attitudes have to
be created in which England sees her interest
in relation to others. You may call it, if you
like, the way of relativity. It involves an atti-
tude of mind which can be quickly acquired
rather than a vast knowledge of what those
interests are. It will mature more easily from
a consideration of the patterns of real and
logical relationship with other countries (geo-
political and ideological) than from exchanges
of "cultural" vacua. The latter have never
stood the test of events; yet England makes no
films of the former. In this field, documentary
might do much to de-parochialise some of our
common ways of thought. There arc many
opportunities. Let me take an oblique ex-
ample in Aiistey's Naval Operations. Here
was a neat, tight little film with that cool

technical treatment which has always been creation of new loyalties or bringing people to
the distinction of the Shell Film Unit. But new kinds of sticking points. Times press and
there are other fleets besides the English, so must production; and with it must go a
including the Russian, Dutch, Australian and harder and more direct style. A dozen reasons
Canadian. They also have "relative" im- make this inevitable. There is the need of
portance in a "total" view of naval opera- striking while irons are hot, and this is
tions. So has the German. So have the especially true of front-line reporting and has
American and the Japanese, for even if the its excellent examples in the German films of
film was made before Pearl Harbour, the Poland, the West Front and Crete, and in
"fleet in being" is also a factor in naval London Can Take It, the Commando raids
operations. In this film, good as it was, the and War Clouds in the Pacific. There is also
relative view-point was not taken because the the need to create a sense of urgency in the
total view-point was not taken, and the public mind, and gear it in its everyday pro-
design of it, on the theory I am urging, be- cesses to the hardness and directness which
longed to the past. Do not mistake me. I am make for action and decision,
not complaining of a film I liked very much;

If there is one thing that good propaganda
must not do these days it is to give people
catharsis. This again, not just because "the
war has to be won", but because, as far as
the eye can see, we are entering an era of

I am' merely indicating how various are the
opportunities for the relativity approach.

Once consider that England is only im-
portant as it is related to other nations, and its

problems and developments only important as action, in which only the givers of order and

they are recognised as part of wider problems the doers generally will be permitted to sur-

and developments, and many subjects will vive. Someone winced when I suggested in

reach out into healthier and more exciting England recently, that in times of great

perspectives of description than are presently change the only songs worth writing were

being utilised. The past lack of relativity in marching songs. This makes the same point

England, which has been called "subjec- except that the term must be read widely to

tive", has been responsible for a good include everything that makes people think

deal that seems trivial and even maudlin and fight and organise for the creation of

to other peoples. However stern and manly order. One doesn't have to associate oneself

the voice that speaks it, it is still what it with the German definition of "order" to see

is and does not of course give an account that their insistence on activism is an all too

of the reality of the people of England, successful recognition of the same need. So

The falsity of the impression comes from with a spectacular flourish, is the Herr

the falsity of the approach. It will not be Doktor's "when anyone mentions the word

easily cured, for it derives from historical culture, I reach for my gun". It is not

factors of the deepest sort, and even docu- peculiarly or specially a German sentiment,

mentary is bound to reflect them, however In the name of the inaction they call culture

objective it may try to be. The fact that it is we have permitted a wilderness, and it will

being presently cured at good speed repre-
sents indeed a triumph of clear thinking in
difficult circumstances. A deliberate attempt
to relate English perspectives to others would
help the process. It may be the key to it.
Incidentally, this relativity approach, apart
from being one of the guides to a logical and

certainly not be in the name of culture that it
will blossom again.

In its basic meaning, culture is surely the
giving of law to what is without it. That hard
but truer way of culture will not go by default
if we search out the design in the seeming
sure internationalism, is a necessary gukte chaos of Present events and, out of to-day's
to retaining allies. It is worth noting that experiments in total effort create the co-
there is a difference between making a film operative and more profoundly democratic
of the Polish forces to flatter Poland, or ways of the future. The verbs are active
making a film of a Dominion to show what To go back once again to Talents Mill
that Dominion "is doing for England", and quotation, the pattern ot the artist in this
making a film in which England takes her relationship will mdicate the living principle
due place in a "total" pattern. of action.

So much for new materials and new ap- So the long windy openings are out, and so
proaches. Styles are more difficult to talk are the cathartic finishes in which a good brave
about, for they must inevitably vary with tearful self-congratulatory and useless time
countries. 1 think, however, that it is possible has been had by all. The box-office— pander to
to make certain generalisations. Since events what is lazy, weak, reactionary, vicarious,
move speedily, and opportunities pass just as sentimental and essentially defeatist in all of
speedily, the tempo of production must us— will, of course, instinctively howl for
change -accordingly. A lot has to be done and them. It will want to make "relaxation", if
done quickly if the public mind is to be tuned you please, even out of war. But don't, for
in time to what, amid these swift-moving God's sake, give it. Deep down, the people
changes of public organisation, is required want to be fired to tougher ways of thought and
of it. It is not the technical perfection of the feeling and to have their present braveries ex-
film that matters, nor even the vanity of its tended to the very roots of their social exist-
maker, but what happens to that public mind. ence. In that habit they will win more than a
Never before has there been such a call for the war.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

A CANADIAN EXPERIMENT

The author of this article is himself in charge of
the non-theatrical scheme which he outlines. The
work being done in Canada, amongst communities
on the whole more scattered and diverse than in
this country, is of special interest at a time when
r own non-theatrical schemes are developing so
rapidly.

To bring the full story of Canada at war to iso-
lated rural areas by means of films, has been the
aim of an experiment in adult education fostered
by the National Film Board of Canada. The ob-
ject at the same time has been to stimulate com-
munity discussion regarding the objectives of the
war. Concentration has been placed on motion
pictures explaining Canada's part in industrial
and agricultural production and in armaments.
The project began in January 1942, and now in
June, forty-three travelling theatres using 16 mm.
portable projectors are in operation, under Film
Board direction, from Comox on Vancouver
Island, to the Atlantic coast fishing villages of
Nova Scotia. Over two hundred and fifty
thousand persons now attend these rural show-
ings each month.

The Canadian Council of Education for
Citizenship has co-operated from the start. Funds
have been given the Film Board by the Dominion
Office of Public Information, and in addition,
eight provincial Departments of Education and
seven University Departments of Extension are
assisting.

The travelling theatres operate on circuits,
each one of which reaches twenty communities
monthly. Each village served knows that the free
films will return on the same day each month.
There are afternoon showings for children and
evening ones for adults. Community participa-
tion has proved encouraging. Besides locally-
sponsored talks, there are many platform dis-
cussions and forums. Thus in Manitoba, where
large settlements peopled by farmers of German
and Ukrainian origin, are on the circuits, a field
representative of the Film Board gives the
following report on one form of discussion
technique which has proved successful :

"A group of five to seven local citizens con-
sented to take the platform with me during a
half-hour intermission in the middle of the film
programme, for a round-table discussion. The
intermission followed the picture Tools of War
which provided an excellent jumping-off place
for the discussion of issues connected with our
war effort. The Canadian part of the picture
impresses people with the amount Canada is
already doing (many were very surprised) and
the German part impresses them with the
much greater amount that must yet be done.
The general theme of the round-table dis-
cussions was "How We Can Increase our War
Effort'. Criticism was not lacking but was
usually quite intelligent, and the discussions
always took a decidedly positive direction.
Very constructive consideration of social
issues came to the fore."
The projectionists serve remote districts by
train, by automobile, and sometimes during
snow storms by sleigh. Where electric power is
not available, portable generating units are used.
Canadian films produced by the Film Board,

By DONALD W. BUCHANAN

along with a few items from Australia and Great
Britain, make up the programmes. The theme of
the opening presentation in January was Peoples
of Canada. There then followed programmes
about the Commonwealth Air Training Plan, and
Canadian armament production. In April,
several films about the Navy and a new educa-
tional picture about the MacKenzie River dis-
trict of the Canadian sub-Arctic were shown. A
special teaching film is also added each month for
schools.

The programme beginning June 6th centres on
the theme of the The Canadian Army. The follow-
ing items are included: Fight for Liberty, Letter
from Camp Borden, Wings of a Continent,
( anadian Landscape (in colour), and Hen Hop — a
comic designed to promote the purchase of War
Savings Certificates.

In general, these film circuits have been re-
stricted entirely to rural areas. Only here and
there are villages or towns of as many as one
thousand inhabitants included. The films there-
fore go to regions which do not usually see
motion pictures, in fact one report from the
Lac St. Jean district in Quebec states that over
90 per cent of the audience had never heard or
seen a sound film before.

The travelling 16 mm. theatres are distributed
as follows: British Columbia 3, Alberta 8, Sas-
katchewan 8, Manitoba 5, Ontario 5, Quebec 7,
New Brunswick 4, Prince Edward Island 1,
Nova Scotia 2. The average attendance in

February was over 1,500 a week on each circuit.
In Alberta, especially fine progress has been
made with the help of the Department of Exten-
sion of the provincial University. There, several
supplementary circuits are being operated by
farm organizations such as the United Grain
Growers. Also in Saskatchewan the Wheat Pools
are maintaining similar travelling theatres under
this scheme.

Most of the circuits in the Province of Quebec-
show French language films, and here the Quebec
government has provided the services of itinerant
lecturers who accompany the film projectionists
on their travels. The largest audiences are found
in some of the parishes along the lower St.
Lawrence.

Communities of "New Canadian" settlers in
western Canada, of Ukrainian, Scandinavian.
German, and Polish origin, are reached by many
of these showings. Here the response has been
particularly worth while. A school principal from
Angusville, Manitoba, writes:

"Many of the people of this district, being
but slightly conversant with the English
language, are not readily reached through the
medium of the spoken or printed word ; but in
the case of visual presentation the appeal is
instantaneous and the effect more positive.
Thus, these films are advantageous in influenc-
ing the attitude to the war, in educating, and in
provoking thought along lines not ordinarily
pursued."

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DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

NEWS LITTER

MONTHLY SIXPENCE

VOL. 3 NUMBER 6

JUNE 1942

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands for the use of film as a
medium of propaganda and in-
struction in the interests of the
people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of
common people all over the
world.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

is produced under the auspices
of Film Centre, London, in asso-
ciation with American Film Center,
New York.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey
Alexander Shaw
Donald Taylor
John Taylor
Basil Wright

Outside contributions will be
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FILMS AND SCIENCE

The Scientific Films Committee of the Association of Scientific Workers has been engaged,
since its foundation in 1937, in compiling information about scientific films available in Great
Britain. The recommendations published below represent criteria for the collection of
scientific films which have been drawn up for the guidance of the National Film Library. The
Committee points out that ideally all scientific films should be preserved, but that, if this is
not possible, the lists indicated below ensure at least a representative selection.

Transfer of Power

Distillation

Malaria

How Talkies Talk

Petroleum Films Bureau

Kodak Medical Film

Library
Central Council for

Health Education

National Film Library

KtCnMMhNDATIONS TO THE NATIONAL FILM
LIBRARY

The stated objects of the National Film Library
are to obtain a selection of films to (1) make the
collection representative of the art of the film,
(2) provide historians of the future with their
raw material.

To do this, its Selection Committee have had
as their aim "to acquire for pie;ervation pur-
poses copies of films both old and new, illus-
trating either the development of the art of the
cinema or of contemporary history" (1939 report
of the British Film Institute), and they bear in 3. There are a large number of amateur
mind "the need to record the life and habits of scientific films in this country which are im-
the present day, such as our taste in clothes, portant from the point of view of the growth,
houses and foods, our mannerisms, our accents, use and position of the film. They are therefore
our turns of speech, and in so doing to throw given a section to themselves. These films are
light on our changing ideals and social outlook" generally made by individuals in teaching I
(1941 report of the N.F.L.). establishments and research stations for a limited

The Scientific Films Committee of the Asso- use and distribution. Occasionally, more than
ciation of Scientific Workers would like to one copy is made, and the film is then distributed
interpret these objects of the National Film more wlde'y-

Library into criteria for the collection of scien- Vitamins Educational & General

tific films. It is the opinion of this committee Services Ltd.

African Lungfish ,, „

Tomato Growing ,, ,,

Galapagos „ „ ,,

Colour Senses of Bees Dr. Use. 2 Copthall

Close, E.C.2.
Virus Diseases in Rothamsted Experiment-
Plants al Station, Herts
Rhythm of the Heart Prof. Davies, Dept. of
Anatomy, Sheffield
University

. C. Barton Esq., The
Ridgway, Hempstead
Road, Watford, Herts

4. A selection of the best current instructional
films for both child and adult audiences should
be made periodically to illustrate the extent to
which each subject is covered by existing films.
If a subject, such as chemistry or psychologv .
should have few films on it distributed in this
country, a representative should be kept even
if it is not a first class film.
Agriculture:

Protection of Fruit Petroleum Films Bureau
Associated British Film
Distributors

that all scientific films should ideally be pre-
served because of the illustrations they afford
of the varied uses to which the film is put and
of developing film technique. If this is impossible
under the present circumstances, a compre-
hensive selection should be made and the
following examples are a contribution to that list.
1. Representative films which show the tech-
nical standard of scientific films during the
previous decade should be preserved. Especially
interesting and worthy of keeping would be Ocean Tides
examples of very early scientific documentary
films. The technical development of the film is
already well covered by films in the N.F.L.
except where the presentation of science is con-
cerned. The Scientific Films Committee would
like to know whether the National Films Library
have examples of all the different colour pro-
cesses.

The following films are recommended.
First Ten Years of Flying Shell Film Unit
Exhibition Days

Mouvements Vibratoires Film Centre
Industrial Britain Central Film Library

ClimbingPlants(andother Gaumont British
early biological films) Equipments Ltd.

2. Films which illustrate any recent advance
in film technique which is specially useful for or
specially adapted for use in portraying science Coelenterata
and thus increasing the scope and possibilities Annelid Worms
of the scientific film should also be preserved. Arachnida
A series of films showing the development of the Chemistry:
moving diagram would be valuable. Slow and Colloids in Medi
speeded-up motion films taken with infra-red cine

light, cine-radiography, stroboscopic technique. Crystals
can be illustrated by films in this category.

Speed the Plough

British Colloids Ltd.
Gaumont British Equip-
ments Ltd.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

Chemical Work in Miss Hadfield, National Manufacture of Gas
the Centrifuge Physical Laboratory,

Cone Teddington, Middx.

Science Films

Engineering:
Transfer of Power
Springs

How the Motor
Works

Petroleum Films Bureau

Private H. L.' Elw'i'tz,
13801140, 87th Coy.
Pioneer Corps., Pem-
broke Dock, South
Wales

Ministry of Information,

C.F.L.
Gaumont British Equip-
ments Ltd.
Petroleum Films Bureau
Anglo - American Film
Corporation
(This last film has been withdrawn, but it is
an important film and should definitely be
preserved.)

British Commercial Gas
Association

Production of Nickel Mond Nickel Co. Ltd.,
Thames House, S.W.I

Shipyard Gaumont British Equip-

ments Ltd.

Central Film Library

6. Films on the History' of Science have been
given a separate section from Section 4 because
of their wide significance in connection with the
aims of the National Films Library. There are
a number of films having historical approach to
science and illustrating the development of
science. These are very important and their
numbers will increase in the future.

Vision

Malaria

Men in Danger

Oil

Petroleum Films Bureau
Gaumont British Equip-
ments Ltd.

National Film Library

mathematics:

X - X = 0

Generation of Invo-
lute Gear Teeth ,, „

Vector Illustrations M. J. Kauffman Esq.,
ofa3-phaseField Upper Stanhope 5
Liverpool

Wave Form Illus-
trations of a 3-
phase Field ., „

'hysiology:
Breathing

Vision
Muscles
Rhythm of the
Heart

Psychology:
Psychology Today

mysics:

Cathode Ray Os-
cillograph
How Talkies Talk
Micrometer Cali-
pers

Kodak Film Library
Prof. Davies, Dept. of

Anatomy, Sheffield

University

Brent Laboratories.
Cricklewood, N.W.2

Sociology:
Dark Rapture Twentieth Century Fox

Pecheurs d'Oiseaux Film Society
Mediaeval Village Gaumont British Equip-
ments Ltd.
(Medical Films, because of the restrictions
on their showing, have not, as a rule, been
viewed by the Association.)

5. Films which show industrial machinery
ind manufacturing processes of all kinds should
3e collected.

iikirscrew
bil from the Earth
ABC of Oil

Petroleum Films Bureau

Ministry of Labour
Central Film Library

Petroleum Film Bureau

Harvey and the Circu-
lation of the Blood
Vitamins

Mediaeval Village

Colloids in Medicine

Prelude to Flight

Pasteur

Edison

The Magic Bullet

Physiological Film Li-
brary, Oxford

Educational and General
Services Ltd.

Gaumont British Equip-
ments Ltd.

British Colloids Ltd.

Capt. D'Arcy Cartwright

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Warner Bros.

7. Interpretive films or films with a socio-
logical basis, which express some current
scientific methods and ideals and their connection
with society as a whole are increasingly being
made. It is very important that a representative

selection of these films be kept for the future.
A short selection of films illustrating the impact
of science on social conditions are given.

Learning to Live Central Film Library

Smoke Menace British Commercial Gas

Association
Kensal House
Housing Problems
On the Way to Work
Children at School
The City-
Malaria
Tins for India
Pipeline
The Filter

Anybody's Bugbear
Enough to Eat?

The Scientific Films Committee have viewed
the majority of scientific films distributed in
England. The viewing has been done by volun-
tary committees convened by the S.F.C. of
members of the Association of Scientific Workers
during the last four years. About 400 films have
been appraised during that time, and the above
examples have been chosen from them. The work
of appraisal is being actively maintained and the
committee will be glad to add to the examples
as further films are viewed.

G. L. bell, M.A., Chairmen.

M. GREGORY, B.SC, Hon. S(C.

It's been going on for years . .

EACH week renews the interest which readers feel
in their copy of the "Kinematograph Weekly".

This interest is nothing new. It's been going
on for years, and the reasons are to be found quite
easily in the way in which the "Kinematograph
Weekly" gets down to "brass tacks", and presents
them in a newsy way which never becomes "spiky".

This week, next week, for as long as there is a
"Kinematograph Weekly", its extensive field-work
will ensure a complete recording of current and future
happenings in the artistic and technical progress of
Kinematography.

WEEKLY

93 LONG ACRE

LONDON

W.C.2

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Fruit Spraying. Shell Film Unit Direction: Kay
Mander. Camera: Sidney Beadle. Production:
Edgar Anstey. M.O.F 25 minutes.
Subject: A survey of the equipment, methods and
chemicals used by commercial fruit growers and
nurserymen.

Treatment: This is a film essentially for specialist
audiences, and as such it can legitimately dish
out nonstop information for two and a half reels.
This information is certainly presented in a very
orderly fashion so that it never becomes con-
fusing and certainly never boring. If the layman
does not retain much of it after one viewing, the
film should be very helpful and instructional
to the people concerned with the job.

It is shot with a pleasing precision and
economy. One gets the impression that the shoot-
ing has been disciplined to a nicety to very careful
scripting. This makes for an efficient and al-
most slick production. If it also means that the
film is cool and impersonal, concerned only with
the processes, and never with the men doing the
work, the answer seems to be, in this and all
instructional films, that you can't have it both
ways and that a compromise distracts from the
main drive of the film and untidies it. The
director must make up his mind whether he
wants a tidy film or a human film. Fruit Spraying
is extremely tidy.

Winter on the Farm. Green Park Productions.
Directed by: Ralph Keene. Photographed by:
Erwin Hillier. Agricultural Adviser: Ralph
Wightman. Musical Director: William Alwyn.
Associate Producer: Edgar Anstey. M.O.I, non-
theatrical. 15 minutes.

Subject: The first of four films showing farm-
life through the seasons in wartime.
Treatment: This film is a delight to the eye. It has
some of the most beautiful exterior photography
that has been seen in recent years.

Too long has the general public considered the
land as a kind of lucky dip, and the people on the
land as having plenty of grouses but little know-
ledge or training. Winter on the Farm puts farm-
ing in its right perspective, as hard and never-
ending work which demands as much skill as
the making of an aeroplane or a lank.

The construction is simple: a farmer's daily
round of inspection introduces the different as-
pects of farm-life, some of which the farmer
describes himself. This holds the film together
well, and leaves the layman impressed by the
number of ways in which land-workers need
skill.

Since the film has been centred round the
people and work on a particular farm, and, pre-
sumably, for comparison the other three films of
the series will also be made there, one would
have liked to have gained a better geographical
sense of the farm itself. This would have been
achieved by a freer use of the true long shot, in-
stead of a slightly repetitive and confining mid-
shot. A hint of this feeling is already conveyed
in one scene in the film (sheep in the foreground
and a farm-cart passing across a field in the dis-
tant background), but it is not carried far
enough.

As it stands, (he film gives the impression that
farming, even in winter, is a verj pleasant,
almost a romantic, occupation. This is a pity, be-

cause it must tend to make the layman envy the
farmer his apparently happy lot, rather than
make him conscious of the complexities and
obstacles which confront land-workers. One of
the reasons for this very fine gilding of the
ginger-bread was a bad stroke of good fortune,
which gave the unit on location nothing but fine
weather for their shooting. And, just as there are
arguments in to-day's urgency against waiting
for good weather when you have bad, so there
are possibly even more against waiting for bad
weather when you have good.

But this is not wholly responsible for that im-
pression. Partly, one feels, it is because the farm
itself goes too well. We should have learnt more
by seeing some actual problem or misfortune — a
fox at the chickens; a dog run over; a sick calf:
even one of the cows kicking over a bucket of
milk in the dairy. Any one of these, or a better
example, would have strengthened the film, by
showing that Providence does not provide
especially for people on the land.

This main criticism, however, does not de-
tract from what is a first-class film. A homely
commentary, by commentator and farmer, and
some really successful and pleasant music round
off a well-made job which has gained im-
mensely from its imaginative and distinguished
photography.

Propaganda value: Any film which increases our
knowledge of the work and problems of a section
of the community, will help to strengthen the
nation's unity. And a film which carries this
information as ably and pleasantly as Winter on

i.

the Farm becomes also an asset as a film.

New Towns for Old. Strand Films. Direction:
John Eldridge. Camera: Jo Jago. Script: Dylan
Thomas. Production: Alexander Shaw. M.O.I.
Five minutes.,

Subject: The re-planning of British towns afte.
the war.

Treatment: The film confines itself to one indus-
trial town in the North of England. It shows
what has so far been done — both good and bad
— and details the essential problems which must
be solved in the period of reconstruction after the
war. Sensibly enough, the film aims not at the de-
tailing of expert opinion but rather at making the
citizenry conscious of their own responsibility as
regards planning as well as of the difficulties
volved. The style adopted is very pleasant,
consists of a dialogue between two men as they
walk through the various areas of "Smokedale'
and discuss the things they see. One of the men
takes the lead and is virtually the commentator
as he has a particularly attractive Yorkshire ac
cent, everything he says gets home with a punch
— notably at the end of the film, when he turns
abruptly to the audience and points out that the F
realisation of the ideas of the planners rests
entirely in our own hands.
Propaganda value: Very good for the Home
Front, particularly since the film makes it clear
that plans for the future are bound up with the V
war effort which we are all engaged in here and jj
now.

{Continued on page 95)

PUBLIC RELATIONSHIP FILMS

INCORPORATING EVERYMAN FILMS

LIMITED

New Address :

57

SOIIO SQUARE,

LONDON,

W.I

Telephone: t. fit II AMI 7345

FILMS HEARING COMPLETION

WE SI'I Ak TO I MM A
VOI X. AND HEALTHY
BELIEVE IT OH MOT

Ministry of information

t "vntral f'ounvil for Health Ednration

Rod Cross and St. 'John War Organisation

'

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

POST-WAR CULTURE

Reprinted by courtesy of the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, New York City

I.

he subject of intellectual co-operation may
»r ound out of place after the picture of necessary
^construction in the basic services such as the
istribution of food, housing, sewage, water sup-
ly, and resettlement, or even in relation to the
;-education essential to the development of a
eaceful society within the Nazi- and Fascist-
I ominated countries of Europe. And, since all co-
ll perative planning must be global, because de-
astation and disorganization extends to Asia as
'ell ds to Europe, the material problems of the
'eriod of reconstruction appear to be so gigantic
s to exclude other considerations.
Yet, if we consider China first, we will be re-
funded that the Chinese, even under the scorched
arth policy, preserved their educational institu-
ions, if not their educational establishments, and
lave transported some of their laboratory and
ibrary equipment with them in order to continue
heir educational and cultural life. Moreover,
publications on the higher levels of scholarship
lave in some cases been maintained. In the re-
onstruction interval in the Far East, therefore,
ssistance should be given for the continuance of
11 phases of cultural and intellectual, life, else
nuch of the precious heritage of civilisation will
: forfeited.

The situation after the last war was simple in
omparison with what we must anticipate after
his one; for more schools and universities,
braries and laboratories, have suffered de-
duction and disorganisation than formerly,
"he training of teachers will perhaps be more
lecessary than finding housing and equipment.
Nevertheless, co-operative projects for the re-
quipment essential to study and investigation
vill have to be undertaken.

The use of educational motion pictures at
idult levels as well as within schools must be
provided for. Preparation for this exigency should
>e begun now within and among the countries
lhat are not yet experiencing war inside their
erritorial boundaries. Standards of evaluation
hould be agreed upon, and institutes created
or accrediting, storing, and distribution of such
ilm libraries. Canada has done a good job even
r-time in developing this field of activity,
t is not too much to ask that educational institu-
ions and agencies in the United States and in
.atin America should work actively and co-
)peratively here and now, setting up institutes for
evaluation and distribution, in preparation for
his form of intellectual co-operation, for the sub-
ect matter of the films can be extended to teach-
ing improved methods of agriculture and other
:ssential tasks of rehabilitation as well as to the
general content described as the social sciences —
;eography, history, and economic, social and
political relations.

Something similar should be undertaken in the
ield of educational broadcasting. Schools of the
of various sorts will need to be established and
naintained. The success that Columbia has had
n the use of radio in mass education suggests
possibilities at the lowest educational levels,
iome of the developments in the United States
n the dissemination of public addresses and
Educational forums, such as the University of

Chicago Round Table, only indicate the range of
opportunity. The possibility of distributing
electrical recordings of good educational content
suggests the present need for the establishment of
special libraries of educational electrical trans-
criptions comparable to the institutes proposed
as clearing-houses for educational films.

The re-establishment of museums, including
folk museums, and the encouragement of educa-
tion and activities in the field of music are
measures essential to the restoration of the cul-
tural life of various peoples. Such re-establish-
ment will contribute to their morale, and to their
consciousness of identity and worth, for among
Europeans, as among Asiatics, even the peasants
have pride in their own particular heritage.

The pioneer work that was done under the
direction of the International Committee on
Intellectural Co-operation in the early nineteen-
twenties for facilitating exchange of information
concerning scientific and scholarly work may not
have to be repeated in exactly the same form ;
instead it may be essential to provide the ways
and means for the continuation of scholarly in-
vestigations, and to reopen the channels for the
exchange of ideas. The American Library
Association, anticipating one of the needs, has
collected files of educational and scientific jour-
nals, which will be forwarded to libraries and
universities in the war areas after reconstruction
can be begun. This isolated project is but illus-
trative of the possibility of beginning here and
now, in order to be ready for immediate and
effective action when the opportunity offers.

Many associations in their individual capacity
can and will do much. But the task is too large
to be left to individual initiative or private enter-
prise. Perhaps the best method of procedure
would be through the establishment of an
International Cultural Relations Committee to
parallel the International Labour Organisation,
an International Health Agency, and such
groupings in the economic field as will be
immediately essential. A Cultural Committee
could have divisions, sections, authorities or
boards, depending upon the choice of nomen-
clature; and these divisions, with the assistance
of representatives of related international bodies
that now exist, and suitable representatives from
the United Nations, should plan and provide for
the administration necessary for carrying out the
planning in the following fields: —

Education : its content and personnel ; educa-
tional equipment: a related matter; inter-
change of educational films and educational
radio broadcasting, as a means of re-education
for those beyond school age as well as within
the curriculum ; re-establishment and re-
conditioning of museums and the loaning and
interchange of art ; support of musical oppor-
tunities and activities ; encouragement of scholars
and scientific work with provision for the ex-
change of information concerning their findings.
Such a correlated group of correlating agencies
might evolve into a permanent body, if its pro-
gramme were well directed.

Although intellectual co-operation has some-
times been thought of as something removed

from the life of the multitude, in reality it em-
braces the programme and content of education
from the elementary stages through adult educa-
tion, both formal and popular, including the ex-
changes of the most erudite groups of scholars.
Formerly, correlation in all these fields was
handicapped by diversities of national practice
and set political patterns; the post-war situation
will offer the opportunity, the necessity, and the
challenge to rebuild for and in terms of education
for life in a co-operating world society.

All this will take funds and effort, and the pro-
gramme to a degree must be applied to the United
Nations as well as to the "occupied areas". But
intellectual co-operation with re-education will
be essential to the functioning of a reconstructed
economic, social, and political order.

CORRESPONDENCE

TO THE EDITOR,

Dear Sir,

Because the shorts film business is working to
capacity the powers that be seem to assume it is
happy. But a more careful scrutiny of the situa-
tion would reveal that documentary isn't getting
a fair deal.

I should say at a guess that eighty per cent of
documentary workers are technically expert,
that seventy per cent are ethically and socially
honest, and that (taken all in all) around sixty
per cent are downright capable from whatever
angle they are viewed.

Yet in growing measure do we come up against
a bureaucratic interference from Government
sponsors who, only rarely, are qualified to take
a hand in technical matters of presentation and
treatment, and even less often are capable of
deciding approach and questions of subject
matter.

Arrant ineptitude and a mistaken sense of
values have for too long characterised the
majority of sponsors, both civil and military.
To any less vigorous industry such a situation
would cause no alarm, but to documentary this
surely must become untenable. It is nothing less
than a challenge to its very raison d'etre.

The labourer is worthy of his hire, but, more
than this, the expert is worthy of his opinion —
worthy of his knowledge and experience.

All this is counted for naught among the petty
martinets, and apart from the fact that the right
message is not being put over, nor the full scope
of the medium exploited — it can be stated that
the time wasted over inessential details is directly
sabotaging the war effort.

By analogy, would the Press feel satisfied
were they similarly placed? They may have to
rely upon Government departments for most of
their material, but they can virtually present it
and interpret it in any way they please. Editorial
comment is still, thank God, their birthright.

Nor is the Newsreel shackled by the mailed
fist of sponsorship. It is a sign of the times
that the Denham workers have taken the matter
into their own hands and made a forthright
statement of what was in their minds. If neces-
sary we must all be prepared to do the same.

Documentary has always prided itself — and
justified itself— by the ability to say something
potent and significant, and to say it with skill
That it should now have to suffer dictation from
puppets and jacks in office with inferior qualifi-
cations, will if allowed to continue, evaporate
that peculiar quality of documentary which has
always been its essence.

(Continued on page 92)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

CORRESPONDENCE

(a

ted)

I think one can safely say that shorts tech-
nicians would accept without cavil a much more
tightly regimented working day ; would be pre-
pared to work for less money were this deemed
necessary; but one thing which must be wholly
abhorrent to them is a dictatorship and inter-
ference beyond the minimum that is really
essential. For the situation wherein experienced
men are being "told their business" by inex-
perienced upstarts is rapidly approaching a state
of farce.

I can say from bitter experience that unless
one is prepared to fight — and fight hard — almost
every inch of the way, the production in hand
will either be meddled with until it is incoherent,
or be out of date by the time it is eventually
finished. It is only natural that many directors
in the end give up the ghost, and let the customer
always be right; it is akin to letting the baby
poison itself, but at least it prevents our asylums
becoming overcrowded.

Continued interference over infinitesimally
small points soon kills that goodwill and initia-
tive without which any film becomes a dull
catalogue of events.

It is my belief that unless some concerted
action is soon undertaken there is every chance
that at least three quarters of the films being
made will become sterile and valueless.

On the purely instructional side the Forces
need a large number of good, straightforward,
quickly made, training films, with the minimum
spit and polish — not a series of dolled up bas-
tardised "glamour" films (played down to the
intelligence of the lowest nitwit) which neither
train nor amuse.

And although few technicians would in peace
time cherish the thought of turning out films
that weren't "one hundred per cent" (or as near
as dammit) — I think most of them are today
alive to the fact that a little less shine and a deal
more speed bring results that more than com-
pensate for any lack of "finish".

For every one man who knows his job in any
Government film department, there are a
hundred who don't. Why is it that everyone
thinks he knows how to make a film?

Playing at the game is a pernicious enough
habit even in peacetime, but in war it is un-
pardonable. For instance, the time wasted in
printing and re-printing to produce a spotless
show copy, before the release of a training film
to the troops is allowed to proceed, is nothing
short of scandalous.

The qualifications for entry into government
film departments are far too loose and often
quite invalid, and even where our film officers are
intelligent they are in too many cases completely
untrained for the specialised job in hand. In
consequence films are not being allowed to pull
their mighty weight, and fight. Documentary
must insist upon the full mobilisation of its re-
sources and their correct use — or die in the
attempt.

If we believe in the medium that we have built
up over the years, if we believe in its function —
then let us gear it to the present task, and fight
till it is established as an all conquering arm,
fit to take its place alongside its blood brothers;
for anything less than this deserves its immobil-
isation, and the conscription of its man-power
into the Services.

Yours, etc.,

DARRl L CATLING.

MAY 1st, '41-
MAY 1st, '42

FIVE MINUTERS

Visit from Canada
News Train

Victory Over Darkness

Filling The Gap

Work Party

NON-THEATRICALS

(1 Reel)

Living With Strangers

When The Pie Was Opened
Canadian Fighters
Cultivation

Storing Vegetables Indoors
Storing Vegetables Outdoors
Compost Heap
Hedging
Ditching

Good Value

Canada in London

SPECIALS

Plastic Surgery in Wartime

(Three Reels Technicolor)

Plastic Surgery

(Supplement 1 Reel)

Goodbye Yesterday

(2 Reels)

The Harvest Shall Come

(4 Reels)

REALIST FILM UNIT

47 OXFORD STREET, W . 1
Telephone: GERRARD 1958

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

FILM SOCIETY NEWS

From the Sheffield Trades Technical Societies

comes an interesting catalogue of regular shows
of technical films, held twice a week at the
Central Library. This enterprising move covers
all types of subject, as the following two specimen

programmes show :

Tool Steel: manufacture of tool steel; high
frequency and crucible melting, forging, etc., at
the works of Messrs. Edgar Allen & Co. Ltd.
The Milling Machine: construction, operation
and uses; milling cutters; right and wrong
methods ; fixing and setting the job. The Manu-
facture of Edge Tools: processes in the making of
edge tools at the works of Messrs. Wm. Marples
and Sons Ltd. The Weigh of the World: historical
survey of weighing devices from early primitive
types to modern testing machines for metal-
lurgical purposes. Strong Silent Axles: making
motor car rear axles for the Austin car; drop
forging, casting, welding and machine cutting
the spiral bevel wheels, pinions, etc. Aircraft
Design: use of wind tunnel ; forging and heat
treatment of light alloys for construction ; scenes
of planes taking off, flying and aerobatics;
Metallurgical Department at National Physical
Laboratories. Air Operations: a raid on Ger-
many by the Bomber Command (M.O.I.). Top of
the World: wonderful scenery in the Rocky
Mountains of Canada. The Use of Power: man's
development of power from wood cog wheels,
windmills and water wheels, to the modern steam
:urbine and motor car. Faraday: the discovery by
Faraday of electro-magnetic induction is re-
constructed, together with other inventions.
fight Mail: the journey of the "Postal Special",
the Post Office deals with the night mail
jy up-to-date methods. As Time Goes By: a his-
orical survey of transport, the horse coach, early
steamship, railway and modern steamship
ransport. Moscow: scenes in the city — the Krem-
in, underground railway, the shops, the main
itreets. Strong Point 42: Soviet guerillas and
roops reduce a Nazi strong point.

The number of films shown in this way between
March 12th and May 21st was no less than 111.
Kn M.O.I, film is usually included in each
>rogramme.

The Belfast Film Institute Society had its last
ihow of the season in May with Musical Story
ind a supporting programme of Russian news-
li-eels and documentary shorts. The last of the
Monthly Film Bulletins for the season was sent
>ut at the beginning of June and the annual
;eneral meeting was held on June 10th to hear
he Treasurer's and Secretaries' reports, and to
:lect officers and committee for the next season.
n retrospect the past season has been very
iatisfactory as eight shows have been given as
igainst the six usual in peace-time, and some of
hem have been of exceptional quality both as re-
gards feature films and supporting snorts. So far
t has not been necessary to revive any films pre-
iously shown, though the choice, particularly of
French films, is growing limited. French come-
dies such as La Femnie du Boulanger remain still
nuch the most popular films, despite the interest

taken in Russian productions. The most promis-
ing event of the season was the Society's good
luck in finding a home in a cinema again after an
exile of three years in a public hall. To have
comfortable seating is a great boon, and the
better technical reproduction of sight and sound
were highly appreciated. Financially the Society
broke even on the season, ending with a tiny
balance almost exactly the same as the one with
which the winter began. In the next few weeks
much work is to be done to plan a new series of
shows and in September the publication of the
monthly Film Review will be resumed and a
prospectus of the coming season will be circu-
lated to members.

The Merseyside Film Institute Society lost all
its possessions and records when its offices in
Bluecoat Chambers were gutted by fire. May 3rd,
1941. Its sectional activities would in any case
have been cramped by the war, but the equipment
of the new Philharmonic Hall (completed 1939,
and generally pronounced to be the finest and
most comfortable concert hall in the country)
with first-rate projection and sound-track, has at
least enabled the Society to attract an intelligent
public for special occasions. Lenin in October was
shown on a Sunday afternoon in January, in co-
operation with British Council House, and Film
and Reality on a week-day evening in May. An
U.S.S.R. film will be shown in July. Over 4.000
secondary school pupils in one day were enter-
tained to a H hours programme of carefully
selected "shorts" at a small charge per head, at
the end of last July and last December ; and a
similar programme is planned for still larger
numbers this term.

The arrangement being made by the Liverpool
Philharmonic Society to part with the actual
ownership of its hall to the Corporation, in re-
turn for a large subsidy, and to devote its energies
entirely to the promotion of music on an abun-
dant scale, provides a challenge to the M.F.I.S.
to step in and develop the cinematographic possi-
bilities of the hall on a similar scale, when peace
returns, in co-operation with the Educauon
Department, various educational and social
movements, scientific societies, etc.

Calder, George Pearson, Joseph Reeves. Pat
Mannock and Oliver Bell.

For the purpose of catering for a growing
public interested in the film as a medium of
education, a Week-End School is being held on
Saturday and Sunday, September 26th and 27th.
at the Royal Hotel, Woburn Place, W.C.I, at
which Mr. Herbert Marshall has been invited to
lecture on "What we have to learn from Soviet
Films" and Basil Wright on Film and Reality.
Anthony W. Bingham has been asked to open a
discussion on "Modern Documentary Films".
On September 5th and 6th, at the same hotel,
a continuous programme of films will be ex-
hibited for the benefit of those who wish to hire
films next season. The show will start at 10 a.m.
on Saturday and continue till Sunday evening.
It is intended to display all new releases of Soviet
films during the week-end. The Association has
now come to an agreement with the Film Unit
of the London Co-operative Society Ltd.
(Pioneer Films) whereby all films produced by
that Unit are to be distributed through the
library of the Association. The W.F.A. has
agreed to place the production of 16 mm. films
(direct recording) with this unit when the ap-
proval of sponsors has been obtained, and in
return the unit will agree that the bodies associ-
ated with the Workers' Movement should only
be approached through the W.F.A. Ltd.

Plans are in hand for a big increase of Soviet
propaganda films to be available for distribution
through the machinery of the Workers' Film
Association.

Additional screening units are being installed
so that with the appointment of agents in various
parts of the country, at least twenty film shows
can be projected simultaneously. The Scottish
Co-operative Wholesale Society Ltd., having
become agents for Scotland, the extension of the
field of coverage has been considerably in-
creased. The prospective activities of the Associa-
tion include a Film School at Oxford from July
18th to 24th inclusive, when the lecturers will be
Anthony Asquith, Ivor Montagu, Ritchie

S.O.S. for copies of

WORLD FILM NEWS

We should like to buy for
2s. 6d. each, copies of the
following numbers of

WORLD FILM NEWS

No. I. Vol. I
No. 4. Vol. I
No. 5. Vol. II

Please send copies to

D.N.L., 34 SOHO SQUARE
LONDON, W.I

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

NEWS & SPECIALISED THEATRE ASSOCIATION
SHORT FILM BOOKINGS FOR JUNE/JULY 1942

Week

Week
commencing

A Dog in the Orchard

March of Time No. 11— 7th Year. New Englan

1 In ( mkoo I.Q.

1 he Classic, Hammersmith, W.fi

July 5th

X Million Yankees

The News Theatre, Leeds

A.I. at Lloyds

I he Classic. S.W.I 7

28th

The Face Behind the Mask

June 21st

The Classic, Portsmouth

July 5th

Eros Theatre, W.l

A Qua Play

March of Time 7th Year. No. 12

The Green Girdle

The Tatler Theatre, Chester

July 5th

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester

June 28th

I he Embassy, Nottmg Hill G.

\ Star is Hatched

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne

28th

The Gun

The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle

12th

The Tatler Theatre. Birmingham

28th

The News Theatre, Nottingha

V Sleeper Awake

The Classic Cinema, South Crovdon

28th

The Happiest Man on Earth

The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle

5th

Mar, 1, „l lime No. 12 America's New Army

The Tatler Theatre, Chester

July 12th

The News Theatre, Bristol

June 21st

The News Theatre, Nottingham

12th

The News Theatre, Newcast e-

lianiv.inl Steam Buggy

the Tatler News I heatre.Newcastle
li invest ol the Brave

World's News Theatre, W.2
Call of Canada

The News Theatre, Birmingham

The News Theatre, Manchester

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
< apital Sidelight

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
Cash and Carry

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
Coastline

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
i mm Favourites

The Classic, Hendon, N.W.4
Crazy House

The News Theatre, Leeds
Cuckoo I.Q.

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
Czechoslovaks March On

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tvne

The News Theatre, Leeds
Dartmouth

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
Dizzy Doctors

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
Dog in the Orchard

Tatler New Theatre, Liverpool

Victoria News Theatre, S.W.I
Don Winslow of the Navy

The News Theatre, Aberdeen

Dragon Fly

The News Theatre, Birmingham

The Tatler Theatre, Chester

The News I he. are. Manchester
Eyes on Brazil

Waterloo Station News Theatre, S.E.I
I .nililiil l,,i I- \er

The News Theatre, Nottingham
Fun on Rollers

The News Theatre, Manchester
Gay Nineties

The News Theatre, Manchester
Gallepin Gals

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester
Ghost Treasure

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester
Glacier Trail

The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle
Going Places

The News 1 heatre, Nmii meli.n,
Green Girdle

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
Happy Days

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
I I, ,1,1,', Horses

The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle
Host to a Ghost

The News Theatre, Leeds
I low t.ocs Chile?

Waterloo Station News Theatre, S.E.I
Hundred for One

Classic, S.W.17

The Classic Cinema, South Croydon

The Classic, Southampton
Hvstciical Highspols ol Vilicriian llistor\

The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle
I'll Never Crow Again

The News I heatre. Birmingham

The News Theatre, Leeds
I Love to Singa

The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle
Imperial Delhi

Eros Theatre, W.l
India Durbar

Ihe< lassie, Hammersmith, W.6
In the Zoo

The Tatler Theatre. Manchester

World's News Theatre, W.2

The News Theatre, Leeds
Jungle Fishing

I he Taller I heatre, Bin

I he latlcr I heatre, Manchester

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester
March of Time. No. 10— 7th Year.
Argentine Question

July 5th
June 28th

March of Time No. 13— 7th Year. Far East
Command

The Classic, Baker Street, W.l

Meet the Champ

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
The Tatler Theatre, Manchester
The News Theatre, Birmingham

Memories of Europe
The News Theatre, Nottingham
The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
The News Theatre, Bristol

Modern Highway
The News Theatre, Leeds
Waterloo Station News Theatre, S.E.I
The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne

Natives, U-Boats
The News Theatre, Birmingham
The News Theatre, Manchester

Nightingale

The News Theatre, Leeds

Northern Neighbou

The Tatler News Theatre, Liverpool
World's News Theatre, W.2
The News Theatre, Leeds
Old M, Donald Duck

The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle
The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tvne
The Tatler Theatre, Manchester
The Tatler Theatre, Leeds

:, Leeds
s, Leeds

The latlcr News Theatre, Newcastle-
Out of the Darkness

The Tatler News Theatre, Liverpool
Pampas Paddocks

I he News I heatre, Manchester
Pest Pilot

The News Theatre, Leeds
Plavine with Neptun

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
Private Lile of a Bone

The News Theatre, Nottingham
Qui/ Kids No. 1

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
Recruiting Daze

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
Road In India

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
Sagebrush and Silver

The News Theatre, Leeds

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne

The News Theatre, Birmingham
Screen Snapshots No. 9"!

The Tatler News Theatre. Newcastle

The Tatler Theatre, Birmingham
Shampoo Springs

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
Shooting Mermaids

The Tatler Theatre, Birmingham

The News Theatre, Bristol

The Tatler Theatre Manchester
Snow Dogs

The Vogue Cinema, S.W.17

The News Theatre, Bristol

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
So You Think You Know Music

The Tatler Theatre, Birmingham

The Tatler News Theatre, Newcastle
Speaking of

The News Theatre, Nottingham
Storv ol Dr. Jenner

Eros Theatre, W.I

Waterloo Station News Theatre, S.E.I
Stranger than Fiction

The News Theatre, Nottingham

The News Theatre, Nottingham

I he News I he. i lie. \berdcen
lee Up

The Tatler News Theatre. Newca

luly 12th

une 28th

Jul\ 5th

The News Theatre
The Little Mole

The News Theatre,

The News Theatre, Newcastle-oi. ._..
I be Man who (hanged the World

The Classic, Baker Street, W.l
The Orkney Saga

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
I liev live Again

Victoria News Theatre, S.W.I
I Ins »,, iisum Business

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
Toddlers' Town

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tvne
Trail of the Buccaneers

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
I riiimpb \\ ithout Drums

Eros Theatre, W.l

Waterloo Station News Theatre, S.E.I

Tatler News Theatre. Liverpool

World's News Theatre, W.2

The News Theatre, Bristol

The News Theatre, Birmingham

The News Theatre, Leeds

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tvne

Victoria News Theatre, S.W.I
I hiough the Woods

The Tatler Theatre, Birmingham

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tvne

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
Western Isles

The Classic Cinema, South Croydon

The Tatler Theatre, Chester

Tnlv 12th 'J
June2liF

Tune 21st .1

28th f.
July 1 2th -

SIGHT

and

SOUND

Film Societies !

Thanks to a new arrangement,
the London Film Society's
collection of films is now with
the British Film Institute.

The Institute is also ready
to help and advise on next
season's programmes.

THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE,

4 GREAT RUSSELL STREET,

LONDON, W.C.1

DOCUMENTARY NKVVS LETTER JUNE 1942

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

(Continued from page 90)

Water. G.B. Instructional Ltd. for Imperial

hemical Industries. Direction: Mary Field.

Camera: Jack Parker and Percy Smith. Ten

ninutes.

si Subject: The elementary physics and chemistry of

.vater. All the everyday things around us contain

vater yet water is rarely found pure; the minute

| juantity of impurity contained in water is often

jj he very thing which gives it a particular pro-

4 jerty ; water does perhaps more than any other

M >art of our physical environment to condition

he way in which we live.

Treatment: The film is set in a framework of
a iaive question and simple answer, both voices
>riginating with unseen commentators. The
juestions and expressions of incredulous sur-
prise are sometimes on the stupid side and the
:rs faintly patronising. The film does, how-
:ver, deal satisfactorily and clearly with the
issorted points raised. The visual demonstra-
ions — as, for example, the diagrammatic illus-
ration of the water-content of certain simple
)bjects— are lively and help to hold the general
nterest of the film from beginning to end.
ij 'instructional value: This film never appears to be
bsolutely clear about what precise scientific
rround it is trying to cover and for what level of
ntelligence. As a miscellany of tit-bits of interest -
ng information it will, however, whet the appe-
ite for further knowledge of a subject too vast
o be tackled in such a limited footage.

<Vork Party. Production: Realist Film Unit,
- vith the Herrick Family. Director: Len Lye.

ant Director: Bert Pearl. Camera: A. E-
eakins. Director of Music: Dr. Meyer. M.O.I.
;ive minutes.

tubject: The work of women in munition
actories.

nent: The film is built round a large family
f which the mother and a whole covey of
laughters are all engaged in a factory turning
»ut gun barrels. One of the daughters is having
twenty-first birthday, and the factory scenes
vhich form the central part of the film are
ramed in the morning and evening reactions to
he birthday event. This is a good enough idea in
;self, but unfortunately, the home scenes have
,>een shot in such a way that they give an im-
iression of indescribable drabness and sordidity
riiich is not merely unfair to the people in the
lm but also the people who have to see it.
"he crowded party scene at the end might just
ave come off had the sound track-been built up
vith a really popular current song instead of a
airly esoteric swing record. Something like
Knees up. Mother Brown" or even "The Lam-
>eth Walk" might have saved the situation. But
s it is, the whole film is anything but a recom-
nendation for or of factory workers. It must be
idded that the factual shots of the workers are
ery well photographed.
Propaganda value: Nil or even minus.

JOTE.— Reviews of documentary films represent
he opinions of the reviewers and are not neces-
arily the same as those of the Editorial Board of
O.N.L.

STRAND TO FILM
THE BRAINS TRUST

RADIO'S most popular feature
. . . The Brains Trust ... is
to be filmed by the Strand Film
Company.

Dr. C. E. M. Joad, Commander
Campbell and Dr. Julian Huxley,
the three resident members of the
Brains Trust and Question-Master
Donald McCullough will be appear-
ing in the films ; in addition there
will be many well-known Guest-
members.

Donald Taylor, of the Strand
Film Company, will be producing
and directing the films in close
collaboration with Howard Thomas,
producer of The Brains Trust.

The films will all be produced
at The British National Studios at
Elstree.

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR - MANAGING DIRECTOR
ALEXANDER SHAW - DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION

New address: —

Offices: 1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l.

Tel.: GERRARD 6304 5.

Studios: BRITISH NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE.

Tel.: ELSTREE 1644.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1942

FILM LIBRARIES

Borrower* of films are asked to apply as much in advance as possible, to give alternative

booking dates, and to return the films immediately after use. H. A hire charge is made.

F. Free distribution. Sd. Sound. St. Silent.

Association of Scientific Workers, 30 Bedford
Row, W.C.I. Scientific Film Committee, (nailed
List of Films. A list of scientific films from many
sources, classified and graded for various types of
audience. On request, Committee will give ad-
vice on programme make-up and choice of films.

Austin Film Library. 24 films of motoring in-
terest, industrial, technical and travel. Available
only from the Educational Films Bureau, Tring,
Herts. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Australian Trade Publicity Film Library. 18 films
of Australian life and scenery. Available from
the Empire Film Library. 35 mm. & 16 mm.
Sd. & St. F. 3, sound films on 9.5 mm. available
from Pathescope.

British Commercial Gas Association, Gas Indus-
try House, 1 Grosvenor Place, S.W.I. Films on
social subjects, domestic science, manufacture of
gas. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & a few St. F.

British Council Film Department, 3 Hanover
Street, W.l. Films of Britain, 1941. Catalogue
for overseas use only but provides useful synopses
for 100 sound and silent documentary films.

British Film Institute, 4 Great Russell Street,
London, W.C.I, (a) National Film Library Loan
Section to stimulate film appreciation by making
available copies of film classics. 35 mm., 1 6 mm.
Sd. & St. H. (b) Collection of Educational Films.
The Institute has a small collection of educational
films not available from other sources. 35 mm.,
16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

British Instructional Films, 1 1 1 Wardour Street,
W.l. Feature films; Pathe Gazettes and Pathe-
tones; a good collection of nature films. A new
catalogue is in preparation. 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Canadian Pacific Film Library. 15 films of Cana-
dian life and scenery. Available from the Empire
Film Library. 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Canadian Government Exhibitions and Publicity.

A wide variety of films. Available from the
Empire Film Library.

Central Council for Health Education. Catalogue
of some 250 films, mostly of a specialist health
nature, dealing with Diphtheria, Housing,
Maternity, Child Welfare, Personal Hygiene,
Prevention of Diseases, Physical Fitness, etc.
Most films produced by societies affiliated to
the Council, or on loan from other 16 mm.
distributors (e.g. B.C.G.A.). Si\ films produced
direct for the Council also available, including
Feai ami Pete, Brown, (airy on Children, and
Breath of Danger.
35 mm. and 16 mm. Sd. and St. H. and F.

Central Film Library, Imperial Institute, S.W.7.
Has absorbed the Empire Film Library and the
C.P.O. Film Library. Also contains all new
M.O.I, non-theatrical films. No general catalogue

Coal Utilisation Joint Council, General Buildings,
Aldwych, London, W.C.2. Films on production
of British coal and miners* welfare. 35 mm. &
16 mm. Sd. F.

Dartington Hall Film Unit, Totnes, South
Devon. Classroom films on regional and eco-
nomic geography. 16 mm. St. H.

Dominion of New Zealand Film Library. 415
Strand, W.C.2. 22 films of industry, scenery and
sport. Includes several films about the Maoris.
16 mm. St. F.

Educational Films Bureau, Tring, Herts. A selec-
tion of all types of film. 35 mm. & 16 mm.
Sd. & St. F.

Education General Services, 37 Golden Square,
W.l. A wide selection of films, particularly of
overseas interest. Some prints for sale. 16 mm. &
St. H.

Electrical Development Association, 2 Savoy Hill,
Strand, W.C.2. Four films of electrical interest.
Further films of direct advertising appeal are
available to members of the Association only.
16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Empire Film Library. Films primarily of Empire
interest, with a useful subject index. Now merged
with the Central Film Library. 16 mm. and a few
34 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Film Centre, 34 Soho Square, W. I . Mouvements
Vibratoires A film on simple harmonic motion.
French captions. 35 mm. & 16 mm. St. H.

Ford Film Library, Dagenham, Essex. Some
50 films of travel, engineering, scientific and
comedy interest. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Gaumont-British Equipments, Film House, War-
dour Street, W.l. Many films on scientific sub-
jects, geography, hygiene, history, language,
natural history, sport. Also feature films. 35 mm.
& 16 mm. Sd. &St. H.

G.P.O. Film Library. Over 100 films, mostly
centred round communications. Now merged
with the Central Film Library. 35 mm., 16 mm.
Sd. & St. F.

Kodak, Ltd., Kingsway, W.C.2. (a) Kodascope

Library. Instructional, documentary, feature,
western, comedy. Strong on early American
comedies. 16 mm. & 8 mm. St. H. (A separate
List of Educational Films, extracted from the
above, is also published. A number of films have
teaching notes.) (b) Medical Film Library. Circu-

lation restricted to members of medical profes-
sion. Some colour films. Some prints for outrighl
sale. 16 mm. St. H.

March of Time, Dean House, 4 Dean Street
W.l. Selected March of Time items, including
Soldiers with Wings, Britain's R.A.F., Dutch Easi
Indies. 16 mm. Sd. H.

Mathematical Films. Available from B. G. D
Salt, 5 Carlingford Road, Hampstead, N.W.3
Five mathematical films suitable for senio
classes. 16 mm. & 9.5 mm. St. H.

Metropolitan^ ickers Electrical Co., Ltd., Traf
ford Park, Manchester, 17. Planned Elect rifica
tion, a film on the electrification of the windin
and surface gear in a coal mine. Available fo
showing to technical and educational groups
16 mm. Sd. F.

Pathescope, North Circular Road, Cricklewood, f
N.W.2. Wide selection of silent films, includin
cartoons, comedies, drama, documentary, trave
sport. Also good selection of early America
and German films. 9.5 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Petroleum Films Bureau, 15 Hay Hill, Berkelel ffl

Square. W. 1 . Some 25 technical and documentary j
films. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Religious Film Library, Church Walk, Dun* Pl
table, Beds. Films of religious and temperanc co
appeal. Also list of supporting films from oth«
sources. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Scottish Central Film Library, 2 Newton Plao "
Charing Cross, Glasgow, C.3. A wide selectio

of teaching films from many sources. Contail $

some silent Scots films not listed elsewher ^

Library available to groups in Scotland onl] lb
16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Sound-film Services. 27 Charles Street. Cardiff ,
Library of selected films including Massingham
And So to Work. Rome and Sahara have Frenc| ":
commentaries. 16 mm. Sd. H.

South African Railways Publicity and Trav n

Bureau, South Africa House, Trafalgar Square, ||
W.C.2. 10 films of travel and general interes „•
35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & 4 St. '

Southern Railway, General Manager's Offic
Waterloo Station, S.E.I. Seven films (one i
colour) including Building an Electric Coa<A\ f
South Africa Fruit (Southampton Docks
Covent Garden), and films on seaside towr
16 mm. St. F.

Wallace Heaton, Ltd., 127 New Bond Stree
W.l. Three catalogues. Sound 16 mm.,
16 mm., silent 9.5 mm. Sound catalogue contain
number of American feature films, includii K
Thunder Over Mexico, and some shorts. Silent 1
mm. catalogue contains first-class list of e;
American, German and Russian features i
shorts, 9.5 catalogue has number of early Gel f
man films and wide selection of early America
and English slapstick comedies. 16 mm. & 9.
mm. Sd. & St. H.

Workers' Film Association, Ltd. Transpo
House, Smith Square, London, S.W.I. Filnl
of democratic and co-operative interest. Notes
and suggestions for complete programmes
Some prints for sale. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. &
St. H.

Owned and published by Film Centre Ltd., 34 Soho Square, London, W.\, and printed by Si-nson Shand Ltd., The Shenval Press, London and Hertford

CONTENTS

MORALE FRONT

NOTES OF THE MONTH

WAR OF IDEAS

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

FILM SOCIETIES

NEWS LETTER

FILM OF THE MONTH
CORRESPONDENCE

PROPAGANDA PRINCIPLE!

SHOR IS HIIIIKIM.S

FILM LIBRARIE

VOL 3 NO 7

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON Wl

MORALE FRONT

the situation in regard to the opening of a second front in
Europe is having a most alarming effect upon British morale and also
upon inter-Allied relationships. It is not for us here to deal with the
purely military feasibility of the second front. Yet as a publication
concerned with the function of propaganda in creating a war-
winning morale, it is our duty to draw attention to the fact that this
is not simply a military question. Perhaps by the time these lines
are in print, a second front will have been opened. On the other
hand wisdom may dictate that the attempt should not be made this
year. Whatever the decision the Government must never forget that
the British people believe they have given an undertaking to invade
the Continent during the next few months, and if there is to be
postponement then the spectre of a dishonoured national pledge
will become a very formidable ghost to be laid by our propa-
gandists. There is already sufficient evidence that — whatever the
rights and wrongs of the past — the second front issue has become
inextricably tied to the morale and to the political unity of the
United Nations. Even if this could ever have remained simply a
matter for the military experts, it is no longer possible for it to do so.
It has deliberately been made a public issue by the Allied Govern-
ments and if the public is now to be rejected from second front
councils it may prove equivalent to shutting the people out of the
war altogether.

It may be argued that the present uncertainties and second
front rumours constitute a "war of nerves" against the Germans. It
is true that a "war of nerves" exists, but surely it is the Allies who
suffer most from it? In Germany, uncertainty in the west is more
han balanced by great victories in the east. At this moment the
Germans are scarcely fit subjects for psychological warfare. Can we
claim as much for ourselves?

In the field of morale the British people appear to be inbewildered
retreat. The fact must be faced that if the second front should fail
to come into being before the Russians have been forced per-
manently on to the defensive, British morale would by then have
fallen so low here that it is doubtful whether it could recover suffi-
ciently to avert defeat in the inevitably ensuing all-out German
attack. No more curious and yet no stronger evidence of this could
be found than in the eerie summer-holiday atmosphere that has
fallen on the country. At the August Bank-holiday week-end, when
the rivers of south Russia ran red with blood, the people of Britain
fought their tiny private wars in the corridors of holiday trains.
Paddington station became the principal centre of interest on the
western front. For this horror let no one blame the people. In their
factories they have been working long, gruelling hours and yet have
found time in great demonstrations to express their will that the

country play a more martial part. They have called to their leaders
for action and if the call has gone unanswered who can object if they
seek escape from bewilderment in whatever pale imitation they
can find of pre-war holiday pleasures. Yet the fact must be faced that
this present situation is having the effect of definitely discouraging
the public from attempting to understand the war situation. Has the
Minister of Information drawn the attention of his colleagues in the
Government to the inevitable consequences of such a discourage-
ment in terms of dwindling support for the war effort?

Let us look at the general picture of British reaction to current
events. The common people see in the East every indication that the
war (not merely the Russians' war) is being lost at a horrifying pace,
while in the West nothing of consequence is being done to save the
situation. Yet this growing image of defeat gives rise in the minds of
more privileged members of the community to somewhat different
thoughts. Lady Astor declares that Russia is fighting not for us but
for herself, and goes back into the past in search of latent anti-Soviet
feeling. The M.C.C. declines to send a message of greeting to Soviet
sportsmen on the ground that it prefers to "keep aloof from any-
thing savouring of politics". In the half-guinea seats of a West I iul
cinema, a newsreel appealing for a second front is received with
elegant boos. These occurrences — each small, perhaps insignificant
in itself — together become symptoms of another threat to morale.
They seem to many perhaps over-sensitive democrats to indicate the
existence of a growing attempt to divorce us from the Nazi-Soviet
war, even to hark back to appeasement and to peace by negotiation
with Hitler. To many anti-fascists in this country and overseas it
begins to appear that the political "right" is retreating from the
common cause.

There is a third group of the community which sees the situation
in a special light. Those small numbers of our Forces who actually
are fighting the war in Egypt and in bombers and lighters over Ger-
many and occupied Europe, not unnaturally feel sometimes that the
appeal for the second front does not take into account the cost o\'
the efforts we already are making. For many of them the call for the
second front is a parrot cry from an ill-informed mass of agitators.
Here is a difference of v iew between soldier and worker which must
be tackled before it becomes serious. The breach will only be
widened by exaggerating for political reasons the importance of our
present military accomplishments. The "dressing-up", for example,
of our air-raids on Germany to give them the appearance of a
"second front" only adds to the cynicism of the vast majority of idle
and impatient servicemen who are even more anxious for a fighting
war than are the civilians.

I hese widely divergent attitudes to the current war situation form

DOCl MENTAR1 NEWS LETTER JULY 1942

then, a chaotic pattern of morale. The state of national mind which
they represent is capable of proving no less disastrous than the Rus-
sian defeat. It has been said ad nauseam that this war is a battle of
wills. How long, if the present situation continues, can weexpectthe
British will to remain strong and united enough for victory?

Any failure on our part to keep Russia in the field as an ally cap-
able of taking the offensive would be interpreted by the common
people of Britain as revealing some chronic national weakness
throwing open to question the whole democratic ideology. On top of
this disaster would come inevitably a breakdown in sympathy and
understanding between the Allied partners and the peoples of
occupied Europe.

These are the considerations which, as propagandists, we must
urge should be counted with the chances of military success or failure
for the second front. It may well be that outweighing the risk of
military failure and the heavy sacrifice of life involved in an imme-
diate invasion of the Continent is the certainty of a complete break-
down in morale and political alliances if it should fail to be attempted
in time. In these circumstances it is surely idle to consider the
second front as a purely military question and a matter only for the
military experts. It is idle also to say that the only criterion by which
the wisdom, or otherwise, of a second front can be decided is
whether or not it can be a military success. The second front must
be thought of as a part of the military strategy, the political strategy
and the morale of the United Nations as a whole. Its chances of suc-
cess or failure in the west must be balanced with Russia's chances
of success or failure in the east, and with the effect of its presence or
absence on inter-Allied relationships. More important still is it to
remember that a single military failure is less of a threat to the
ultimate victory of the United Nations than is a collapse of morale
through political weakness. For morale is the decisive weapon.

NOTES OF THE MONTH

Hunting for Material

one thing everyone in the movie business is agreed on— and that
is the misery of trying to find stock shots or library material. To-day
when so many films are being made on subjects for which original
material cannot be shot, the problem of finding the material and
of getting prints and dupe negatives made is becoming acute. The
main sources at present are the newsreels, the Crown Film Unit
(which houses all M.O.I, material), and the cut-outs vaults of in-
dividual companies. For one reason or another all these sources
involve considerable delay. What is needed is a central library of
stock shots with an efficient card-index system strong in cross
references. This would be an enormous asset to the whole trade as
well as to the M.O.I, and it surely should not be difficult to arrange
some system of finance. The library would be expensive to set up
and moderately costly to maintain, since the secret of such an organ-
isation lies in a large and well-trained staff. But the cost would be
amply repaid in terms of time saved. Either the Trade or the Govern-
ment, or both jointly, should consider some such project.

Critics on the Air

si ( ( issiyi B.B.C . film critics, airing their Sunday views of the
week's films, have usually earned neither praise nor blame. Lilian
Dull' did indeed draw upon herself the wrath of Wardour Street, by
daring to criticise adversely some of their more expensive produc-
tions. They contended that a film which had cost many thousands
of pounds to make, and on which much time had been spent, should
not be criticised on the air, unless the criticism was going to be what
has come to be called a "good" criticism. In fact what Wardour
Street always wants is a boost, a hunk of praise and a pat on the
back. This weakness, which has always been present in this strangely
sensitive industry, docs the film producers no good service. There
are all too few channels of completely unbiased criticism and good,

constructive comment can only help the sound growth of the
cinema. We therefore welcome the arrival on the air of Miss C. A.
Lejeune, whose film column has, for many years, been a guide to
better film going for those who are not content with just "dropping
in at the movies'*. At the moment her performance is more interest-
ing for its matter than for its manner of presentation. The micro-
phone is probably disconcerting after the ordered columns of the
Observer. But when Miss Lejeune has settled down and learnt that
good intentions do not make up for lack of technique, she should do
a job that can be of great service to the film industry.

A Good Move

although it comes somewhat belatedly, all parties concerned are
to be congratulated on the new Order in Council bringing up to date
the quota regulations in so far as they affect propaganda films.
Two new regulations are embodied. The first exempts from the
operation of the Quota Act such foreign short propaganda films as
may be exhibited to distributors free of charge. The second regula-
tion enables the Board of Trade to register short propaganda films
as British notwithstanding the fact that they contain more foreign
or newsreel footage than was formerly allowable. The Order in
Council will do much to clear the way for the distribution in this
country of such outstanding propaganda from overseas as Canada's
"World in Action" series. The development of the type of film
which is capable of portraying broad world strategies is perhaps the
most urgent task before the film propagandist. It is essential there-
fore that no obstacle should remain in the way of utilising all rele-
vant film footage, no matter where it may have originated.

Walter Leigh

the death of Walter Leigh in the Egyptian campaign has come as a
great shock to all those documentary workers (and they are many)
who had the advantage of working with him. To the rest of the world
Leigh was probably best known as a serious composer of exceptional
talent who also had the gift of writing light music of an excellence
hardly attained by any other contemporary composer. Partnered by
V. C. Clinton Baddeley and Scobie Mackenzie, as librettists, he
composed "The Pride of the Regiment" and "Jolly Roger" — two
light operas of which the latter proved that there is a large public
for intelligence, as well as gaiety, in music. But to all of us in
documentary, Leigh meant something much wider and important.
When sound recording first became available to the G.P.O. unit
at Blackheath it was Leigh, first and foremost, who showed us the
path to those experiments in sound which have since become famous.
With an enormous grasp and knowledge of music, a fertile imagina-
tion, and an astonishing gift for really concentrated work, Leigh
evolved a series of sound scores built up not merely out of voice
and music but out of the whole range of natural sounds — to say
nothing of the many synthetic new noises which he created himself.
As he himself often used to say : "In film work I regard all sounds in
the world as possibilities for my orchestral score." His masterpiece
was the sound-track for Song of Ceylon, on a detailed script for
which (involving sometimes seven tracks — unheard of in those prim-
itive days) he worked without pause for over three weeks before
starting that long series of experiments in the recording studio
which so many documentary people who were roped in from time to
time remember so \i\idly. Leigh was too modest ever to admit the
fact that without him Song of Ceylon would have been little more
than an ordinary travelogue; nor has he ever received sufficient
recognition for it. Space forbids mention of the many other films
on which he worked. The last two scores he composed before he
volunteered for the Tank Corps were for Rotha's The Fourth Estate
and the G.P.O.'s Squadron 992. After he joined the Army his help
was much missed by workers on documentary films; that he will
never work with us again, will never give us the benefit not merely
of his talent and imagination but also his companionship and his
warm sense of humour, is an irreparable loss. On behalf of everyone
in documentary we send our deepest sympathy to his wife and three
children.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JULY 1942

WAR OF IDEAS

the most horrifying implication of the de-
bate on the Libya defeat did not emerge until
a few days after it was over. By that time the
House of Commons had turned its attention
to the Ministry of Information and as our
■leaders carried out a disgracefully per-
Ifunctory examination of the national propa-
ganda policy it became clear that they saw
ino clear relationship between the battle of
[tanks, guns and aircraft and the battle of
; ideas.

I Members of the House of Commons, from
lithe Prime Minister downwards, are so
lanxious to discuss the dive-bomber and the
llanti-tank gun that they seldom pause to
Iconsider whether perhaps after all the war is
jnot being won and lost in the minds of men
[rather than in the sands of Libya and Egypt.
I Let us not exaggerate. Success in the field
■of battle is vital, but attending upon it — or
[upon the lack of it — is a factor without which
Ifinal victory is impossible. We can only
■survive military defeats and win the war if we
■mobilise and use one weapon which never is
■out of date — the weapon of the public will.
1 It cannot be denied that the Libya debate
[provided a propaganda dilemma. It was
going to be more difficult after it to ask the
workers to continue to make heavy sacrifices
when so much of their past efforts seemed to
have been useless. Yet any propagandist
worth his salt (and who was also fighting
the war on behalf of the people) would have
recognised the situation as providing a
propaganda dilemma capable of conversion
■into a great propaganda opportunity. The
[debate on the Ministry of Information which
followed showed that there was no propa-
gandist in the House who recognised and was
prepared to use that opportunity. The
■evelation of incompetence in high places
was not to be used as a challenge to the
people to put their house in order ; it was to
be skated over whilst members orated for
lours, not about the basic policy, but about
he tactics and machinery of propaganda.
This is not a war between countries : it is a
vorld revolution. It has to be regarded as the
Fight of the common man to overthrow the
yranny of privilege and reaction wherever
t may be found. In spite of this our Ministry
)f Information was content smugly to defend
tself with piddling accounts of petty suc-
xsses which affect the outcome of the war
rieither one way nor the other. The Films
[[Division is still the shiniest apple in Mr.
bracken's basket, but even after picking out
this glowing fruit for examination Mr.
trhurtle could tell us only of Target for
m'onight, and a vast number of instructional
{ films. This apparently was all that the Films

Division could find to congratulate itself
upon. Lenin has said: "For us the cinema
is the greatest of all arts" but for the Ministry
of Information the cinema was a new kind of
blackboard in the class-room. Instruction is
essential and the evolution of the instruc-
tional film is a great war-time accomplish-
ment, but it is propaganda we need to win the
war.

Enough was said during the propaganda
debate to make it clear that the Government
does not intend in our propaganda to regard
the war as essentially different from a
nationalistic war on the old, familiar pattern.
There is to be no talk of revolutions. The
recent revelations of gross incompetence
and neglect on the part of the Ministers
whose duty it was to prepare our defence
against Fascism are not to be used to establish
the danger of entrusting the fate of this
country to reactionaries. Not a single
speaker in the House has indicated any
connection between defeat in Libya and the
ideologies of past leadership.

The people of this country are not
mobilised for war. The Russian and the
German armies believe they see a cause for
which a man may properly sacrifice his life.
We have no such cause. Singapore sur-
renders. Sebastopol does not surrender.
With no hope of relief Sebastopol fights on
hoping not to stop but merely to delay the
enemy advance. To keep the Nazis out only
for an hour was believed by the people of
Sebastopol to be worth hundreds of lives.
/The people of this country must believe
with equal fervour in their cause before there
can exist the slightest hope of our victory.
It is not sufficient to call upon them to fight
to defend the pre-war Britain. It must be
recognised that the post-war order for which
we must fight will be unwelcome to certain
sections of the community. We cannot
necessarily count on the co-operation of
certain privileged groups. This world of the
Common Man which Henry A. Wallace,
Vice-President of the United States, has
indicated as the goal, will bring material
benefit to the vast majority of citizens, but
not to all of them. Moreover it is not a
world to be built by narrow patriotisms.
The patriotic issues belong to the dying
traditions of a past age. It is useless to argue
that the Russians are fighting for their
country in the old sense: their soldiers are
fighting to defend a way of life which they
themselves have created within their own
lifetimes. And the people of Britain will
fight with an equal passion when they come
to believe, or, better still, know, that they

also are fighting to create a new way of life.
During the debate on propaganda and
subsequently in the Press it has been argued
that we must avoid politics in our approaches
to the people of enemy and enemy-occupied
countries; that, for example, we must appeal
only to the Frenchman's love of France, and
hope thereby to unite Frenchmen of every
political colour in our cause. If we do this
we surely throw away the one weapon in our
armoury which the Nazis can never match —
the weapon of true social progress. Without
it we have nothing with which to counter the
Nazis' spurious promise of a New Order.
Without it we should find ourselves fighting
for the past against a conception of the
future which — however horrifying— has the
strength of looking forward and not back-
ward.

/We must continue to present to our Allies
overseas and to the people of Britain a pic-
ture of a future world which will be only in
part a product of this current war for liberty.
^The fight for the world of the Common Man
will not finish with the war. The major part
of the battle against privilege, exploitation
and oppression and the fight for Roosevelt's
four freedoms will be fought not across
national boundaries but within them. Fascism
is only secondarily a phenomenon of inter-
national relations. It is primarily an evil ex-
isting within each individual community to
be stamped out only by the people of that
community. It is this picture of continuing
revolution, with the war as one of its phases,
that must become the rallying cry for the
freedom-loving people of the world. It is the
task of the propagandist to present the war,
not simply as a defensive struggle against
evil forces, but as a great opportunity to
move forward. The people of the world have
never been more ready to listen to the advo-
cate of social progress. Defensive tactics in
political warfare are doomed from the start
to failure, and we must therefore wrest the
ideological offensive from the Nazis. We
must declare to the world that through
Allied victory there exists an unprecedented
opportunity not to re-build the pre-war
world but to re-design it. Here then is the
task of the propagandist.

Whenever we are told that 'propaganda'"
is something abhorrent to decent people
and that we can do without it, let us re-
member that the word was originally used
and must still be considered in relation
to a faith — "De Propaganda Fide." Let there
be no mistake about it. this war will be won
not simply by tanks, planes and guns, but
by whichever proves to be the stronger of
two warring faiths.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER .ILLY 1942

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Dockers. Realist Film Unit. Direction: Frank
Sainsbury. Production: John Taylor. Camera:
A. E. Jeakins. M.O.F Five minutes.
Subject: Achievements of the dockers, and their
working conditions in wartime.
Treatment: With lively novelty, this film con-
fines itself strictly to presenting the dockers from
their own point of view. The commentary is
spoken by their own accredited representative,
and the group of actual dockers who appear in
the film fill in the gaps with a number of tough
remarks. The film falls roughly into two sections.
The first explains the method of employment and
reminds us that dockers to-day have little or no
choice; they are required to work in any port,
however far from their homes, according to the
demands of the Government. The method of
allocating men to their jobs in a given port is
shown in some detail ; in mood and mise-en-scene
it is reminiscent of a cattle auction. On the other
hand the film reveals that a minimum wage for
all dockers is now in operation, so that if there is
no immediate work for, say, some of the older
men, they can still draw some money. The second
part of the film vividly portrays the operation of
unloading a meat ship, and gives a very good idea
of the tough work involved. The speed at which
ships are turned round (the dockers are breaking
records every week) will, backed especially by
these visuals, not merely encourage audiences but
also impel a strong feeling of admiration for the
men on the job. Finally, there is a dialogue pay-
off which with great good humour rams home
the point that these men, doing a hard and often
dangerous job, at times far from their homes,
rightly resent criticism by people who know
nothing about the work.

Propaganda value: Good. The film definitely tells
the community as a whole a good deal about how
one of its sections works. It also clears the mist
of contradictions and accusations which arose
as a result of the dockers' strikes ; in future those
who have seen the film will be in a much better
condition to make a considered judgment on the
problem. More short films of this nature would
be a good thing.

Start a Land Club. Production: Films of Great
Britain. Ltd. Direction: Andrew Buchanan.
Assoc. Producer: Edgar Anstey. M.O.I.
Five minutes.

Subject: The film shows how it is possible for
urban workers to put in their spare time helping
farmers, by doing unskilled jobs on the land
during week-ends and holidays.
Treatment: "I am a farmer" says the commenta-
tor, •"and I want to tell you about the good work
town people arc doing by giving us a hand during
rush periods and when we are short of labour."
We arc shown school children, typists, business
men, at work on some of the jobs on the land
weeding and planting potatoes, etc. These people
belong to land clubs. The organisation of a club
and its contacts with the farmers of the district
is sketched in lightly. The film ends with an
appeal for more, bigger, and better clubs.

The idea of using a farmer as a commentator
is an excellent one. though it seemed to be a
tactical error not to introduce him visuall)
straightaway instead of waiting till halfway
through. Otherwise the film has little originality,
and is in fact rather dreary, being neither

particularly well shot nor well cut. And why, with
a simple rural subject like this, must the title
music come booming in like the storm music in
some Tod Slaughter melodrama?
Propaganda Value: This is quite a worthy subject
for a M.O.I. 5 minuter. There must be thousands
if not millions of people who feel that their
regular jobs are so futile that they would like to
sake their consciences by doing something really
useful in their spare time — a fine comment on
our war effort. This film certainly creates an
interest in the work of land clubs. It also slips in,
for those who are listening hard, some informa-
tion about how to join or start one. It is a pity
this information was not more emphasised and
elaborated, because it slipped by without most
people taking it in, thereby defeating the avowed
object of the film.

The Right Man. Army Film Unit. M.O.I. Five
minutes.

Subject: The right man in the right job. The way
in which the Army tests men to see that they are
fitted into the most suitable work.
Treatment: The producers, in spite of lacking
confidence in the entertainment value of their
subject, have made an interesting film. It was
surely unnecessary to drag in an actor to play the
part of a major, however well he may have
played it, simply so that he could show an
American officer round. Their little tour and its
accompanying dialogue gives endless opportunity
for smug backchat about America and England
both doing the same thing.

But the work itself is fascinating, and, although
it consists of adaptations of the familiar tests of
selection, rejection and fitting together puzzles,
it has an excitement all its own. If a little more
time could have been spent on the tests anda little
less on the padding this film would have been one
of the most entertaining five-minuters put out
so far.

Piopaganda Value: Forget the framework and
the film gives information about an important
subject of general interest.

Troopship. Army Film Unit. M.O.I. Five
minutes.

Subject: A record of life on board a troopship,
destination unstated.

Treatment: Somebody had a camera and the sun
shone. That's what it looks like. They shot this
and that and everything that was handy. They saw
nothing new but they didn't shoot what they did
see badly. Physical training, bathing, dancing;
the echo of peace-time pleasure cruising. Skim-
ming lightly over the surface, matching the sun
with smiling laces, we see the fun and the games
of a war-time long sea voyage.

The material has been well put together
and Richard Addinsell's "Mold Your Hats On"
lively tune, carries the film gaily over any difficult
considerations of recent farewells or grim
anticipations of ultimate landfalls. The narrative
is in the form of a letter written by one of the
soldiers on board and this rather naive approach
works surprisingly well

Propaganda I alue \t a time when an increasing
number o\ people's thoughts are with families
and friends on the seas, a film which gives in-
formation, as this one does, is doing a good
propaganda job.

Rat Destruction. Paul Rotha Productions.
Directed by: Budge Cooper. Camera: Peter
Hennessy. Musical Director: William Alwyn.
Subject: The importance of clearing rats from
shopping areas, and how it is done.
Treatment: The film ends by asking everyone
concerned to consult their local authority about
destroying rats, for the main theme is not so
much how to destroy rats yourself as a descrip-
tion of the measures which should be taken by the
local Rodent Officer when he is brought in to
investigate a case. Dispassionately one watches
the Rodent Officer (a rather impersonal, munici-
pal sort of Holmes) tracking the rats to a hide-
out in an embankment in the suburbs, where in
the words of the commentary "a heaped teaspoon-
ful of cyanide" does most of the rest. The whole
thing is efficiently done and one gets the im-
pression that no time is lost in destroying them.
The film is on the whole well photographed
and shot, though it suffers from a too-literal
substantiation of commentary by picture.

Balloon Site 568. Production: Strand Film Com-
pany. Producer: Alexander Shaw. Direction: Ivan
Moffat. Camera: Jo Jago. Script: Dylan Thomas
and Ivan Moffat.
Subject: W.A.A.F.'s take over a barrage balloon

A dress shop assistant (blonde s
appeal), a domestic servant (practical-Scottish),
and an office secretary (feminine-efficient), i
traded by posters or by friends already in the
Service, apply to join the Balloon Service. A
pleasant interviewer warns them the job is tough ;
but they accept it, want to do something more
productive than they found their civilian jobs.
After some weeks of training — splicing wire
cable is tough on the hands, but has got to be
learnt just the same — the girls go off to "a place
in the country," recognisable to those who saw
Squadron 992. They get familiar with their
floppy elephantine charges. The weird flock of
balloons going in to bed makes a striking pic-
ture, suggests a whole world of new interests. The
girls get along happily with new friends and new
jobs. The cheery domestic servant takes to driv-
ing a winch ; our blonde shop assistant, at a can-
teen dance, turns down a date — the group is
going off to its balloon site next day. It's not a
inviting place, in an industrial town, with winter
slush underfoot. But they know they are doing
important work.

These stages in a balloon girl's training are
shown as short episodes; the story flows natur-
ally, usually by a dialogue reference to the next
stage. I his snappy exposition, and the good
technical quality keep interest alert right through.
I here is a pleasant sound opening of the girls
singing one o\~ their choruses.
Propaganda Value: A job, which the film admits
must at times be hard. e\en depressing, is shown
to be an inviting one. Burdensome military dis-
cipline is not to be seen— but the girls drop their
sing-song in the recreation hut quickly enough
when an operational order comes through. The
film should bring in recruits to the Service.

There is an important wider issue. Women are
ready to don uniform and get down to a job ;
which can be tough. We have moved a little
since Squadron 992 so pleasantly mirrored our (
then conception of total war.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JULY 1942

FILM SOCIETIES

First Scientific Films Conference of the

Association of Scientific Workers
This Conference in London represented something
of a landmark in film history and following
important speeches by Mr. Paul Rotha and
Dr. Klatzow, the Chairman, Mr. Arthur Elton,
summarised the proceedings as follows: —
"The Scientific Film Society movement is now
flourishing and has moved from isolated societies
and groups into the realms of an organisation
which can call a national conference. The im-
portance of this movement and this meeting can
be summed up something in this way. To the
ordinary man and woman, if you say that you
are a bus driver, this means something quite pre-
cise. The person you have spoken to can fit you
into your environment and can readily under-
stand how you are contributing to the national
ife. But, if you say that you are a scientist, it's
twenty chances to one that the person you speak
to will not know where to place you. He may think
vaguely that you are a mysterious person not of
the common herd who has special powers of
magic at your disposal ; or he may think of you
as someone who is inseparable from a micro-
scope ; or he may think of you vaguely as some-
one who cuts up things ; but it's twenty chances to
one against his regarding you as a worker like
any other worker taking his place in society. The
ordinary man does not understand that not only
is a scientist working at a job which has no
mysteries if you settle down to learn its technique
but that he is as much a workman as a man who
drives a bus : they just have different jobs. There
are routine workers in bus driving and routine
workers in the laboratory; there are grades of
transport workers culminating, I suppose, in a
General Manager responsible for the planning of
bus routes ; in the same way there are grades of
scientists culminating ultimately in a Director of
Research.

"You can look at the same problem from
another point of view. Just as I believe it to be
essential for a scientist to feel himself a worker in
the community and for the community to look
on him as a man practising a job not so very un-
like other jobs, so is it important for the com-
munity to look on its own jobs — whatever they
may be as scientific jobs. That is, the community
must in our present world become a community
of scientists. Indeed, the bus driver is driving his
bus by practising scientific method: he would
:r get very far if he started running it on the
a priori methods of an eighteenth century crafts-

man. The only way in which the people of this
country can manage their environment and con-
trol it is through understanding it, and the way
of understanding it is to learn what I can roughly
call the scientific method of approaching it.
Everyone can acquire the ability to analyse the
workings of the world around them into its parts,
to examine each part in relation to the others, and
to deduce from these two processes the way to
govern and to improve their surroundings. This
was important in peace, but it is more than ever
important in war. The soldier who has a know-
ledge of the internal combustion engine and
ballistics and metallurgy— and he can acquire
these things in broad outline quite easily— is a
better soldier. If we are to win the war quickly,
every man and woman of us must become a
scientist. And one of the ways in which all of us
can become scientists is through the scientific
film.

"The London Film Society was started about
16 years ago. In those days the film was looked
on as a vulgar and horrifying contamination of
public taste. We felt otherwise and from that first
Film Society performance in London many other
Film Societies have sprung. And these Film
Societies were not isolated groups of people
drawn together to edify themselves. They have
raised the whole standard of film production and
film appreciation throughout the world — so
much so, that today Film Societies must be hav-
ing difficulty in finding suitable films because the
kind of films they want to see are being publicly
exhibited in the ordinary cinemas. Small groups
like this are pressure points. Imperceptibly they
begin to affect people round them. They are cata-
lysts turning the amorphous batch of men and
women called the general public into an articulate
thinking social organism. If, as I believe, it is
essential for the conduct of this war and the con-
duct of the peace after it for everyone to have a
scientific understanding of their environment,
then you can be quite sure that one of the ways
of achieving this is through the Scientific Film
Society, however humble its beginnings. Before
you know where you are the cinema manager will
be pricking up his ears and beginning to believe
that there must be something in all this scientific-
stuff. And that is what is the real importance of
the Scientific Film Movement and of a conference
like this — not that the societies are important in
themselves, but that they are growing points of
public taste and public appreciation and public
education."

Belfast Film Institute Society. With Musical
Story and an all-Russian programme the Belfast
Film Institute Society finished a season which
included La Marseillaise, C/iapayev, Zero de
Conduile. Monkcv Business, Janosik, l.e Roi
S Amuse, Gens clu Voyage, and La Femme du
Boulanger.

Belfast, with almost as many cinemas as linen
mills, still cannot be persuaded to make a cinema
available to the Society for an evening pro-
gramme, and Sunday shows, of course, are still
unthinkable. After Spartan limes in a hall lack-
ing in creature comforts, however, the Society
has found a pukka cinema for Saturday afternoon
shows. Remission of Entertainment Duty by the
Northern Ireland Government has enabled the
Society to pull through financially in spite of
high running expenses and low paid-up member-
ship. Future prospects are uncertain, but hopes
for another season in the autumn are fairly high.
The link with the British Film Institute has
proved invaluable.

Some hilarious last-moment excitement was
provided by the Security Censorship authorities
over La Femme du Boulanger, which was sent
from London to belligerent Belfast via neutral
Dublin and consequently impounded when it
crossed the border into Northern Ireland. The
censors ran through the film to be sure that it
contained nothing likely to undermine the State.
No cause for alarm or despondency was noted
and the film was released with the censor's
blessing to delight the Society's largest audience
of the year.

Liverpool. The Merseyside Film Institute Society
held its annual meeting on July 29th, and elected
its committee and officers for the ensuing twelve
months. Mr. W. Lyon Blease is Chairman, Mr.
T. F. Wilson, Hon. Secretary, and Mr. A. F.
Harrison, Hon. Treasurer. The Society will con-
tinue to give shows in the Philharmonic Hall as
and when suitable dates and films can be found,
but cannot resume its sectional activities or
publication of its bulletin for the time being. It
will function, during the war, without an office.
Correspondence may be addressed care of "The
Bluecoat Society of Arts, Liverpool, 1."

General Suvorov was shown by the Society on
July 22nd to a large audience, a veritable cross-
section of the population — the Russia Today
Society helping in the sale of tickets. On the pre-
vious day some 4,000 secondary school pupils
had come to the same (Philharmonic) Hall
three "houses" in school hours — to enjoy a pro-
gramme of shorts, organised as previously under
the ;egis of the Society.

Spectator Short Films Limited

18 Old Burlington Street,
W.l.

Tel: Regent 0611.

IHH I All \ I AKY NEWS LETTER JULY 1942

R1WS LETTER

MONTHLY SIXPENCE

VOL. 3 NUMBER 7

JULY 1942

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands for the use of film as a
medium of propaganda and in-
struction in the interests of the
people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of
common people all over the
world.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER
is produced under the auspices
of Film Centre, London, in asso-
ciation with American Film Center,
New York.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey
Alexander Shaw
Donald Taylor
John Taylor
Basil Wright

Outside contributions will be
welcomed but no fees will be
paid.

We are prepared to deliver from
3 — 50 copies in bulk to Schools,
Film Societies and other organi-
sations.

Owned and published by

FILM CENTRE LTD.
34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON

W.l GERRARD 4253

FILM SCHOOL

An Account of an American Experiment
By IRVING JACOBY

the situation was obvious by the end of We had long hoped to have Grierson, or at
1939. If documentary was to grow in the least part of Grierson, in the States, but with
United States it would need new blood — not the increasing importance of the Film Board
transfusions, i.e. not imported experts and not to Canada's war effort such hope gradually
expensive names from Hollywood, journal- faded. Here we had to be content with his
ism and Broadway — but a whole new gener- advice, criticism and too infrequent blitz
ation of ambitious, believing youngsters, visits. But his name cannot be kept off the
The first generation (contemporary with Institute of Film Techniques' credit cards.
England's second) was almost through. The He scorned us into action, filed down our
documentary idea was spreading in a big, vanities, unmuddled our political thinking,
stretched-out country. Some of those who and most important, through his work in
were familiar with the idea were needed to Canada, gave us vistas of a hopeful future,
spread it ; they had to leave the camera and It was under such circumstances that we
cutting table to organise, sell and promote, accepted the invitation of the City College
They no longer had time or temperament for of New York to introduce a series of co-
painstaking production. Others were en- ordinated extension courses that would be
vious. Why shouldn't they too (good specifically planned to fill the personnel
cameramen, cutters, writers) be graduated needs of our own field. We were to provide
into direction, production, promotion? In a curriculum. We were to give the instruc-
1940 half the members of the Association tion. To all of us it was a question of working
of Documentary Film Producers were job- in film during the day and of teaching at
less because they could not or would not night. For from the beginning it was under-
work at their jobs. Paradoxically this un- stood that academism and amateurism could
employment merely disclosed the need to be avoided only by confining the instruction-
get more people into the field. We were al staff to active professionals,
getting too big for our pants. There was no We divided the work into three series of
one around to make pictures. courses: A — Use, B — Production, C — History
Two needs were apparent, One, technicians, (as related to Use and Production). Each
Youngsters who could learn to handle film and series began with a general orientation course,
film ideas with honesty and professional skill, broad, theoretical, cathartic and setting a
Two, film users — a new breed of public servant pattern for practical instruction to follow. In
who could administrate film business for "A" this orientation course was called the
government, education and industry — who had film at work, in "B" introduction to

the documentary idea in their heads, who
could handle film money ethically and effi-
ciently. They would need no more than a work-
ing knowledge of the film making techniques.

FILM PRODUCTION, in "C" TRENDS IN FILM

progress. The titles are self-explanatory,
but the basic courses have a two-fold purpose
that should be explained, that derived from the

as against a thorough knowledge of audience fact that the Institute was open to all comers,

purpose techniques. to professionals, amateurs, and kids with

Who would take the trouble to train this nothing more than an impulse. The first

new generation? The Association of Docu- courses were to act as levellers — were to

mentary Film Producers tried an educational enable us to begin at a beginning, taking

programme, directed at its associate member- nothing for granted, and possibly to help us to

ship. The Rockefeller Foundation, chiefly arrive at a similarity of thought and judgment

through American Film Center, gave a few hitherto lacking in this country. It was a

apprentice fellowships to young hopefuls, matter of giving the students a common'

But neither plan worked — for different vocabulary, not of trying to push them into a

reasons in each case; yet in both were these preconceived mould.

faults: (l)a preoccupation with their own The second course in each series involved

production interests, (2) the absence of a grappling with specific film problems. In

complete and unifying gospel to hand down, "A" it was called film and EDUCATION.

the impossibility of reaching an agreement Audiences of various levels are assigned to

on the word to be preached. groups of students, who aim films at them,

In only one film centre in North America, varying approaches, checking effectiveness,

was there any sign of an organised, directed working out non-film tie-ups. fitting film

movement for training youth. And the into established curricula or programmes.

National Film Board in Ottawa obviously learning the mechanics of using film libraries

had enough to do. To train the Canadians and projection equipment, and learning to

needed for carrying out a national film pro- analyse specific audiences in film terms

gramme would be a heroic task in itself, rather than the other way around.

DOdMKMARY NEWS LETTER JULY 1942

In the k'B" scries the second course is
workshop. Small student units make films
themselves under the supervision of an ex-
perienced film maker, filling the positions in
the unit according to their own preferences,
talents and experience. In our original plans
the films were to be made in 35 mm. size. The
, war, with its priority handicaps, and a con-
jcomitant perfecting of 16 mm. equipment,
may alter this. In "C" the second course is
film criticism, in which standards and
criteria in other art forms are broken down
with a view to applying their elements to our
medium. Leading architects, sculptors, musi-
cians, dramatists help the students approach
films with logical and aesthetic objectivity.
(This is one play course against a dozen
devoted to work.)

The third course in each series is a con-
tinuation of the general-to-the-particular
process. In Use, the course is film pro-
paganda in which the students are trained
to organise audiences and film materials for
specific campaigns on various sections of the
community, using both theatrical and non-
theatrical technique. In Production, the
students begin to specialise as production
assistants, specific courses being offered in
photography, editing, sound recording and
writing. In the History sequence, the stud-
ents begin to apply their critical findings to
production and distribution problems. The
fourth semester is composed of honours
courses in which the students act as under-
graduate teachers in the basic courses of their
specialisation.

The instructional staff is drawn from the
body of documentary people according to
availability. This year, the students heard
Grierson, Legg, Ivens, Flaherty, Steiner,
Ferno, Rodakiewicz, Lerner and about a
dozen others. Next term some of these men
will repeat, and people like Van Dyke and
Kanin who have been on location will take
the place of those no longer in the city. This
is one of the advantages of working in a
centre like New York, through which film
makers are constantly coming and going.

But more important than curriculum, in-
itructors or facilities are the students. At the
beginning of this term registration had to be
:losed (for reasons of physical capacity) when
the enrolment totalled 185. Ages ranged from
17 to 55 although most of the students were
between 20 and 25. A number of them were
indergraduates of local colleges and univer-
sities. Many were still photographers, teachers,
mblicity men. There were other professionals
irom medicine, journalism, and the fine arts,
wt most of the students were high school and
college graduates employed throughout the
:ity in the type of small, unfulfilling job to
vhich post-depression youth has been limited.

A large part of each class was made up of
beople now employed in the film industry,
some work at present in subordinate posi-
I ions in local laboratories, studios, and dis-
ribution plants, but some are directors,
sameramen and writers who wanted a review

of the groundwork of film making or an
idea of what documentary production was
all about.

Most amazing was the effort and enthu-
siasm which lasted throughout the term.
Attendance was exceptionally regular and
assigned work was done with a seriousness
rarely encountered in extension courses. I he
examination papers, written at the end of
the term, were startling as a manifestation
of the students' comprehension, adapta-
bility and general intelligence. Of the 125
registered in the Production Course, at least
50 could be turned into competent film mak-
ers in a short time.

Most of the students came from poor
families, for although small fees were charged
for Institute courses, the City College is a
municipal institution which offers free higher
education. Because such youngsters cannot
afford to buy their own cameras or raw
stock, because they have no social connec-
tions that might help them get film jobs, the
Institute will open the door to a new type
of film maker, too rarely found in the field
at the present time. Considering the nature
of the films that concern us and the necessity
for complete co-ordination between film
makers and the community, we believe it is
most important that this door be opened and
kept open.

It is worth mentioning that on a number of
occasions when we showed films dealing with
social problems to these students, they took
the conditions shown on the screen for granted,
and reacted very differently from the usual
sympathetic but distant audience. If films are
to be used among the people from whom these
students come, for the making of a better post-
war world, certainly it would be an advantage
to have their knowledge of class idiom and
their instinctive pattern of approach to certain
subjects.

Another aspect of the Institute's connec-
tion with the City College is of interest. A
faculty committee of professors in the arts,
sciences, and education serves in an advisory
and administrative capacity. The Institute is
not, then, an isolated professional school.
It is part of the stream of diversified intel-
lectual activity of a democratic educational
institution. It is able to draw on the special-
ised talents and training of experts in lan-
guages and literature, education, psychology,
the sciences and the social sciences. The re-
sults of such co-operation will be of value to
film workers and educators alike. Research
projects and experimental investigations
become inexpensive and feasible. The effec-
tiveness of a film teaching a special skill can
be studied in the appropriate laboratories;
films that deal with broader subjects can he
shown to classes of all levels and types, and
their effectiveness gauged under scientific
controls.

Finally, because of the relation between
the City College and the municipality, the
Institute is in a position to serve as a pro-
duction unit working in close co-operation

with city, state and federal governmental
agencies using films. Production services
can be offered on a non-profit basis, and
distribution problems can be analysed in
terms of metropolitan audiences and nearby
rural centres. Instructions can then be co-
ordinated to professional work in hand and
have all the advantages that are typified bj
medical education co-ordinated to hospital
practice. It is the system o\' learning by
doing that worked so well in Moscow in the
20's, in Soho Square in the 30's and is work-
ing again in the 40's on the banks of the
Ottawa River.

But shortly after the plans described above
were conceived and put into operation, Ameri-
ca went to war. What had been an internal
problem for the documentary people became a
pressing need of the community. The federal
government alone started at least 25 huge
film programmes, some of them requiring as
many as 500 highly skilled employees.

Civilian departments, as well as the armed
services, were required to turn out and dis-
tribute vast numbers of special films. Quickly
they absorbed all of the slack in the person-
nel market and had to begin the retraining of
certain types of workers. Hollywood became
the favourite source of technicians, who,
although willing to give up their fabulous
salaries for a chance to participate in the war
effort, found their lavish working habits a
handicap in government film production.
Although the documentary film makers were
first regarded with suspicion because of their
political views, most of them have, by now ,
found jobs because of the general scarcity.
Film technicians' labour unions (laboratory
workers, in particular) have organised cam-
paigns to recruit workers to the film field.
Rich and powerful government agencies are
forced to employ amateur cameramen on
important expeditions. The day has come in
documentary when the demand for film
makers exceeds the supply.

The same situation is true in the field of
film use. In the short period the United
States has been at war, government officials
have already found out how difficult it is to
get effective distribution of their product.
Particularly in the use of civilian and
military training films, a bottleneck was
discovered in the lack o\ visual education
experts who could put the films to work on
the jobs for which they had been made. In
man} army training camps and in many
civilian technical training schools good films
are resting on shelves because officers and
instructors have not the time to learn how to
use them properly. Production all down the
Mne has outpaced distribution.

But these technical troubles must not con-
ceal from us the fact that a great forward step
has been taken. Official America had never
been really conscious of the potentialities of
documentary : the war has made the difference.
Not only are the potentialities evident, but
films are actually in use. The) will never
(Continued on page 105)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JULY 1942

FILM OF THE MONTH

The Young Mr Pitt

faced with the problem of reviewing an his-
torical film, the critic can either search the shelves
to see what somebody else has written, and then
smartly tick the producers off for using a wimple
instead of a snood, or he can forget history and
treat it as film entertainment only. Either course
is difficult. If it is bad history, it only serves to
obscure the so necessary lessons of cause and
effect, and if it is good entertainment, it is all
the better if it treats history with respect. The
films which showed Marie Antoinette as an arch
flirt, Henry the Eighth as a blustering lecher,
Queen Victoria as a doting hausfrau and domin-
eering dotard, would have been none the worse
for also showing them in historical perspective.
The way in which the school text books avoid the
real meaning of history, which is no dull subject,
in favour of the highly coloured and the high
born, is faithfully copied by most historical
films.

The Young Mr Pitt marks a step forward and
in the right direction. First of all it takes a dull
figure in that little known period of English
political history which lies between the French
Revolution and Trafalgar. And if the subject was
chosen with an eye on useful box office and
patriotic angles, it is not necessarily the worse for
that. For Mr Pitt was obviously a dull man. He
does not shine in history's pages with the glitter
of adulteries or grand passions, nor were his
triumphs of the sword and the dagger. He was
just an earnest politician with a message and an
idea. He believed that Britain was a great

country but that it had got to pull its socks up
if it wanted to stay great.

It was, in spite of its easy and obvious appeal
to the public to-day, not a bad choice for a
subject. In fact it might even be called a brave
choice, and it has been bravely treated. The film
succeeds in being continuously interesting with-
out any of the tricks which are usually considered
necessary. If somebody had taken just a little
more trouble with the script this might even have
been a great film.

The film shows Pitt confronted by the menace
of a Napoleonic invasion from across the Chan-
nel and by the cat-calls of the appeasers on the
Opposition Bench led by Charles James Fox.
This is the theme of the film. Pitt, watching Napo-
leon's movements and realising the danger; Fox,
playing up to the people's wish for peace and
always advocating a policy of appeasement. It
makes a good story and the audience obviously
liked it, perhaps because it gave them something
to think about and because the producers had
not considered it necessary to bring in the usual
rag-tag and bobtail of comic servants and court
mistresses.

The film ultimately fails to reach the top grade
because after they have finished with the charac-
ters of Pitt, George the Third and Charles James
Fox the script writers just have not bothered
any more. Perhaps all the in-between bits are
on the cutting-room floor. But it is difficult to
believe that with Sheridan, Wilberforce, Talley-
rand, Nelson, Gibbon of the Decline and Fall,
and Napoleon to use, there could not have been

a little more life among the supporting characters.
They cannot all have been as dull and as dumb
as the film suggests. And if they were not chrono-
logically at hand to fill the gaps, there was an
often repeated shot of the corridor of Number
Ten Downing Street, a coach rolling up the
drive of a country mansion or a crowd of people
jumping up and down in the streets, all of which
became monotonous and suggested that some-
one had slept.

Donat does a good solid job as Pitt. He has got
the drive and the sincerity and as usual made the
whole thing seem credible. Robert Morley
attacks the part of Fox with great gusto and it is
none the worse for having a coat torn in it.
Raymond Lovell is excellent as George the
Third, agricultural interests, seabathing and all.
The rest of the cast all suggest that they could be
good if somebody would only give them a chance
to do something. Napoleon comes off worst.
All his appearances are treated with the greatest
respect and the maximum amount of careful art
direction. He tucks his hand in his coat, glares
at the floor and takes up all the traditional poses
on very splendid sets. But he never remotely
suggests anything other than Madame Tussaud's.
A grave fault, because it sets Pitt and England
against a waxwork. Cecil Beaton's costumes and
sets are exceptionally good throughout the film.
The music, usually of the greatest help in the
more awkward moments of historical films, was
undistinguished, it neither helped nor hindered
and added nothing to the story.

The film is good entertainment, but is it good
history? I don't know and I don't suppose the
audience did, either. That Young Mr Pitt may
have been several kinds of bad man. But Mr.
Donat and Mr. Carol Reed, carefully directing,
have used him for a good solid film.

It's been going on for years . .

EACH week renews the interest which readers feel
in their copy of the "Kinematograph Weekly".
This interest is nothing new. It's been going
on for years, and the reasons are to be found quite
easily in the way in which the "Kinematograph
Weekly" gets down to "brass tacks", and presents
them in a newsy way which never becomes "spiky".
This week, next week, for as long as there is a
"Kinematograph Weekly", its extensive field-work
will ensure a complete recording of current and future
happenings in the artistic and technical progress of
Kinematography.

WEEKLY

93 LONG ACRE

LONDON

W.C.2

SIGHT

and

SOUND

The
A utiirnn Issue

is noiv

OUT

6d.

THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE,

4 GREAT RUSSELL STREET,

LONDON, W.C.1

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JULY 1942

CORRESPONDENCE

TO THE EDITOR,

Sir,

was a great shock to hear the sad news of the
death of Walter Leigh who was killed in action
in the Middle East last month.

English music, and English film music,
suffered a loss it can ill afford, and I should like
to pay a personal tribute to the memory of a
most distinguished and versatile composer.

Almost the first documentary film I saw was
Song of Ceylon, and his music for this, with its
immaculate technique and instinctive beauty,
made a lasting impression on me.

Not only was Walter Leigh a composer of
delightful and original "light" music — his n-
for The Jolly Roger and the Farjeon revues
probably be best remembered by the general
public — but he was a serious composer of dis-
tinction and recognised and admired as such by
his contemporaries.

is fitting that we who are working in docu-
mentary films for a cause which demanded his
life should remember him and his work with
gratitude.

I am, believe me,

Yours sincerely,

WILLIAM ALWYN

Film School (Com. from page 103)
A again be absent from any serious concept of
mass education.

Our own college is this mass educational
world in microcosm. It has become a '
training centre for the duration. Yet many of
the innovations that spring from the needs of
the emergency will carry over into peace and
affect the nature of peacetime educational
thought. This fact is already unmistakable
las we see a startling revision of academic
[attitudes toward efficiency in teaching methods,
■relations to the community, practical values
las against cultural prestige. It is no accident
jithat the I.F.T. is so popular in the college
ilto-day. Documentary is the form the educa-
tional revolution must take.
1 The Institute of Film Techniques was
■established to find relief for just such prob-
lems as American wartime educators and
ipublic information officials are facing today.
lOur job was to co-ordinate thought and its
([communication, in films at least. We planned
||to train film makers who would know w
j'the educators are trying to do and to train
iteducatois who would know how films are
wnade. We realised that it was necessary for
Iboth groups to talk to each other in a com-
ijjmon language.

I We began too late to stave off the current
■(famine in film personnel, but that is only a
treason to go ahead at increased speed.
jrhe youngsters we are training in war film
[techniques to-day will play their part in
I shaping the new patterns of peacetime film.
iThey have the advantages of growing up i
(the discipline and urgency that goes with
rmaking films that must win campaigns. With
-ibruised sensibilities but with inner strength,
tjsweaty but fearless, they will become the
jjducators and propagandists, the film directors
land producers of a changing world.

No. 4

THE PHEASANT AND HIS MATE

A pheasant had made his nest in a cornfield late in the
year, and at reaping-time his Mate was still sitting in
comfort on her eggs.

Early in the morning the workmen came to the
field, took off their coats, whetted their scythes, and
started one after another to reap the wheat and stack
it in stooks. The pheasant flew up to see what they were
doing, and when he saw a workman swing his scythe
and cut a rat in two, he rejoiced and flew back to his
mate, and said: "Have no fear of the workmen, they
have come to cut the rats to pieces for us".

But his mate said, "The workmen are here to cut
the wheat, and with the wheat they are cutting every-
thing in their way, the rats, the pheasants' nests, and
the pheasants' heads. My heart forebodes no good;
but I cannot carry away the eggs, nor bear to leave them
in the nest".

When the reapers came to the pheasant's nest, one
of the workmen swung his scythe and cut off the head
of the pheasant and of the pheasant's mate, and put the
eggs in his bosom, and gave them to his children to
play with.

As for the pheasant and his mate, they made a tasty
dish and their tail feathers a decoration for bis wife's
hat.

From which you can draw your own conclusions.

REALIST FILM UNIT

47 OXFORD STREET, W . 1
Telephone: GERRARD 1958

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JULY 1942

PROPAGANDA
PRINCIPLES

Excerpts from an article on Bolshevik propaganda
by Yaroslavsky. (Pravda, July 10th, 1942.)
from the very first days the Bolshevik Party was
formed Lenin and Stalin emphasised the import-
ance of propaganda. It was when the Bolshevik
Party had switched over from a narrow frame-
work of illegal Party groups to mass propaganda
that its influence over the masses had begun to
grow in the Czarist days. Lenin and Stalin had
taught the Bolshevik propagandists the burning
passion of the Bolshevik truth. Every town, every
factory, every large local Party organisation had
its speakers to whose words the masses listened.

Many a time the words of Bolshevik propagan-
dists dispelled the last shreds of doubt, when
the necessity of a demonstration or a strike was
being discussed. Many a time backward or waver-
ing people were swept off their feet, made to
follow the small Bolshevik vanguard.

Lenin said .... "Lucidity of propaganda is a
basic condition. If our opponents admit that we
have done miracles in the development of propa-
ganda it is not because we had many propagand-
ists and a large quantity of paper. It must be
understood that the truth that was contained in
the propaganda has penetrated the heads of the
people, and it is impossible to get away from this
truth".

When the threat of a new intervention by the
German imperialism appeared over our country
in the shape of the Hitler Armies, Comrade
Stalin spoke to all the toilers of the U.S.S.R. on
3rd July, 1941. With the greatest precision he
put to the many millions of Soviet people the
urgency of understanding the whole weight of the
danger. For it is a question of life and death for

the Soviet State, a question of life and death for
the peoples of the U.S.S.R., an issue between
freedom and slavery.

In our Bolshevik propaganda the grim truth
combines with burning passion, with conviction
in the justice of our cause. This passion evokes
hatred for the enemy, courage and daring. It
makes the people fearless, makes them strain all
their energy in order to conquer.

Lenin and Stalin always appeal to the best
instincts in the people, to their best qualities,
to courage, dauntlessness, loyalty to the common
cause, to their love of their Socialist Fatherland.
They appeal to their great fighting traditions.
They often turn to history.

The strength of the Bolshevik propaganda lies
in its aggressiveness. The enemy must be in-
cessantly unmasked, his plans, his cunning, his
catches, all his meanness must be revealed. He
must be beaten not only by shells, bullets and
grenades, but also by the words of our propa-
ganda which will drive out all the remnants of
complacency and indifference and make the
blows on the enemy harder. Some impressive
literary image, a piercing or pointed poem, deadly
irony, satire — all this must be used by the Bol-
shevik propagandist as his arms.

We need not only professional propagandists.
The best workers in factories, etc., must act as
such. Where conditions permit workmen, col-
lective farmers, employees, members of the
Soviet intelligentsia, Red Army men, Red Navy
men must hear the upright, burning, hard-
hitting words of the Soviet propagandists. It is
necessary to educate propagandists to raise them
from below, help them to grow politically, to
accumulate knowledge, work on the culture and
purity of their language. The wireless can play
an enormous part in this. It is necessary that the
entire country should hear by wireless the best
orators of our Party.

Park Studio
Putney Park Lane
S.W.15.

Managing Director :

ANDREW BUCHANAN

TEL. Putney 6274

HOLLYWOOD
IN ARMS

The following opinions by U.S. directors orli"'
Hollywood war policy are reprinted from the
National Boai d <>/ Review Magazine:
PRESTON STURGES

I don't think there should be the slightest differ j r ■■»
ence in the type of pictures made. The contem f
porary picture naturally deals with its time, whio, .
means contemporary pictures made now wil £,
have heroes, either trying to get into uniform te
or in being invalided out of uniform. This merely *
because heroes must be heroic. I'm certain, how-
ever, that a picture laid in 1906 would be just as
interesting, and the same goes for a picture laid
in the year 1690, or in the year 2,000, showing a
beautiful love story in a world that has returned m
to agriculture. I haven't had much time to think ^
this out, but that is what I believe.
ERNST LUBITSCH

In this present crisis the leaders of the motion
picture industry had to take into consideration
not only what the public wants to see, but also
what an audience should see. This is no time
for the makers of motion pictures to trail behind
its public. Never before was leadership more
necessary than right now. Our only aim can be — I
winning the war, and our motion picture policy '-■ ■
must be dictated accordingly. That of course |j
doesn't mean that every picture showing in the W
theatres from now on should reek with battle P
scenes and marching soldiers. We must have a fc
sufficient number of escapist pictures ; pictures Jf
which for a short while will relieve the defence |
worker and the soldier on vacation from the r
present-day grim realities. Nostalgic stories that foi
remind us that this world of ours has been pretty J1
good and that it is something worthwhile fighting >.;
for. But without question, a part — and not only a ^
small one — of the motion picture programme f
must be devoted to dealing with current situa- J,"
tions. The enemy as pictured on the screen I
must not be under-rated, but also not over- JJj
estimated. We must make clear to our audiences bs
what we are fighting for, that the future of our "
and ourchildren'slives depends upon our ultimate
victory. We must familiarise them with the great
hardship that lies ahead of us if we want to bring I
this war to a successful conclusion.

ARCHIE MAYO

We're at war. The business of fighting is one
thing; and the busines of sustaining the fighters
is another thing.

It's true that equipment, foods and medical
supplies are most essential in the subsistence of »
our lighting forces, but there is another element ^
called morale, which on the surface might seem jj»
insiiMiiikani. but in realit\ is all-important. It ^
means point o\' view; it means faith; it means »l
the reason why "Yankee Doodle Dandy" clicks. &!

In my humble opinion. I believe motion pic- I
tures can best serve our fighting men and our £
civilians by building up morale to the tune of I
comedies, which, for a moment, give us contrast $
to this grim crisis that is upon us.

If this were a war in which the issue were con- j!
fused to the point that we did not know what we
were fighting for, or why, I would feel that pic-
tures should then be made that would tell our I
objectives. But we do know what we are fighting i
for ; we do know the seriousness of the issues at «
stake; we do know the difference between right
and wrong so, in our spare moments win not
laugh?

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER Jll.Y [942

SHORTS BOOKINGS
JULY-AUGUST

The following shorts bookings uie \elei nil lioni
9B covering its members supplied by the News
Socialised Theatres Association. )

rcliiticts "I Kngland

The News Theatre, Aberdeen

ristocrats "I hcnnels
_ Eros, W.l.
'Victoria Street News Theatre,

1

all of Canada

The News Theatre, Leeds

July 27th

anine Sketches

Classic, S.W.17

»ild Psychology

The News Theatre, Newcastle-o

July 19th

Dlour in Clay

The News Theatre, Newcastle-o

August 2nd

ookie Carnival

,

Cosmo Cinema, Glasgow

July 26th

zechoslmaks March On

Tatler Theatre, Manchester

i

I,

Waterloo Station News Theatre

S.E.I

July 19th

on Winslow of the Navy

The News Theatre. Aberdeen

July 19th

The News Theatre, Aberdeen

26th

The News Theatre, Aberdeen

August 2nd

The News Theatre, Aberdeen

9th

arly News Reels

11

The News Theatre, Aberdeen

July 19th

■

World's News Theatre, W.2

19th

1

Classic. South Croydon

August 2nd

:i ashing Blades

re Tatler News Reel Theatre, Newi

July 26th

lardcns of England

"World's News Theatre, W.2
Eros theatre, W.l

26th

Victoria Street News Theatre, S

M Waterloo Station, News Theatre

, S.E.I

16 VoBue Cinema, S.W.I 7

9th

formation Please No. 5

Classic. South Croydon

July 26th

the Zoo No. 2

Waterloo Station News Theatre

S.E.I

\imust 2nd

The News Theatre, Nottingham

3rd

The News Theatre, Aberdeen

9th

I

The News Theatre, Newcastle-o

i-Tyne

July 19th

s a Hap — Hap — Happy Day

ha

Tatler Theatre. Manchester
B. Pricstlo s Broadcast

August 2nd

'!

The Classic. Baker Street, W.l

July 26th

:;

Vogue Cinema, S.W.17

Classic. Portsmouth

26th

August 9th

arch of Time No. l-8th year. India Crisi

News Theatre. Newcastle-on-Ty

9th

[Victoria Street News Theatre, S

W.l

July 26th
26th
26th

- Waterloo' Station News Theatre

S.E.I

'.World's News Theatre. W.2

26th

"'TTatler News Theatre, Liverpol

August 9th

.eJratler Theatre, Manchester

TViciona Street News Theatre, S
letscow Parades

9th

W.l

July 26th

August 2nd

"Ivict Songs and Dances

The News Theatre, Leeds

August 10th

reading the News

Tatler Theatre, Manchester

2nd

Tatler Theatre, Manchester

July 19th

on

FEATURE REVIVALS

...

chelor Mother

Tosmo Cinema, Glasgow

Week

July 26th

: 'Vogue Cinema, S.W.17

19th

llngcrous Moonlight

^Jailer Theatre, Leeds

20lh

: lfcosmo Cinema, Glasgow

August 9th

L'lassic, Southampton
T'lassic. S.W.17

July 26th

tlassic. Portsmouth

9th

Brno ( Inema, Glasgow

2nd

jMice and Men'
M Vatler Theatre, Leeds

July 27th

"atler 1 heatre, Chester

27th

linol Pcnnsxhania

;:*atler Theatre, Leeds

August 3rd

|Ends Our Night

3rd

: " .-§• Ghost Breakers

'!■ SeaHawk

jU atler Theatre, Chester

July 19th

20th

lef of Bagdad

i 1 atler Theatre, Leeds

August 10th

'fthering Heights

l.,lv ?fith

ANNOUNCEMENT.

THE STRANI0 FILM
COMPANY HAVE BEEN
APPOINTED OFFICIAL
FILM ADVISORS TO
THE NOR WE G I AN

GOVERNMENT.

'ALL FOR NORWAY," The first
Production to be made by STRAND
for the Norwegian Government is
now being produced. Several other
films are in course of production.

THE STRAND FILM COMPAIYY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR - MANAGING DIRECTOR
ALEXANDER SHAW ■ DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION

New address: —

Offices: 1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l.

Tel.: GERRARD 6304/5.

Studios: BRITISH NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE.

Tel.: ELSTREE 1644.

J

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JULY 1942

FILM LIBRARIES

Borrowers of films are asked to apply as much in advance as possible, to give alternative

booking dates, and to return the films immediately after use. H. A hire charge is made.

F. Free distribution. Sd. Sound. St. Silent.

March of Time, Dean House, 4 Dean Street,
W.l. Selected March of Time items, including
Soldiers with Wings, Britain's R.A.F., Dutch East
Indies. 16 mm. Sd. H.

Mathematical Films. Available from B. G. D.
Salt and R. A. Fairthorne, Kirk Michael. Hill-
Held Road, Farnborough, Hants. Five mathema-
tical films suitable for senior classes. 16 mm. &
9.5 mm. St. H.

Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co., Ltd., Traf-

Association of Scientific Workers, 30 Bedford Central Film Library, Imperial Institute, S.W.7.

Row, W.C.I. Scientific Film Committee. Graded Has absorbed the Empire Film Library and the

List of Films. A list of scientific films from many G.P.O. Film Library. Also contains all new ford Park, Manchester, 17. Planned Electrifica-

sources, classified and graded for various types of M.O.I. non-theatricai films. No general catalogue ''<"j> a film on tne electrification of the winding

audience. On request, Committee will give ad- yet issued. A hand list of M.O.I. films is available.

vice on programme make-up and choice of films. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

and surface gear in a coal mine. Available for
showing to technical and educational groups.
16 mm. Sd. F.

Austin Film Library. 24 films of motoring in-
terest, industrial, technical and travel. Available
only from the Educational Films Bureau, Tring,
Herts. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Australian Trade Publicity Film Library. 1 8 films
of Australian life and scenery. Available from
the Empire Film Library. 35 mm. & 16 mm.
Sd. & St. F. 3, sound films on 9.5 mm. available
from Pathescope.

British Commercial Gas Association, Gas Indus-
try House, 1 Grosvenor Place, S.W.I. Films on
social subjects, domestic science, manufacture of
gas. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & a few St. F.

British Council Film Department, 3 Hanover
Street, W.l. Films of Britain, 1941. Catalogue
for overseas use only but provides useful synopses
for 100 sound and silent documentary films.

British Film Institute, 4 Great Russell Street,
London, W.C.I, (a) National Film Library Loan
Section to stimulate film appreciation by making
available copies of film classics. 35 mm., 16 mm.
Sd. & St. H. (b) Collection of Educational Films.
The Institute has a small collection of educational
films not available from other sources. 35 mm.,
16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

British Instructional Films, 111 Wardour Street,
W.l. Feature films; Pathe Gazettes and Pathe-
tones ; a good collection of nature films. A new
catalogue is in preparation. 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Canadian Pacific Film Library. 15 films of Cana-
dian life and scenery. Available from the Empire
Film Library. 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Canadian Government Exhibitions and Publicity.

A wide variety of films. Available from the
Empire Film Library.

Central Council for Health Education. Catalogue
of some 250 films, mostly of a specialist health
nature, dealing with Diphtheria, Housing,
Maternity, Child Welfare, Personal Hygiene,
Prevention of Diseases. Physical Fitness, etc.
Most films produced by societies affiliated to
the Council, or on loan from other 16 mm.
distributors (e.g. B.C.G.A.). Six films produced
direct for the Council also available, including
Fear and Peter Brown, Carry on Children, and
Breath of Danger.
35 mm. and 16 mm. Sd. and St. H. and F.

Coal Utilisation Joint Council, General Buildings.
Aldwych, London, W.C.2. Films on production
of British coal and miners' welfare. 35 mm. &
16 mm. Sd. F.

Crookes' Laboratories, Gorst Road, Park Royal,
N.W.10. Colloids in Medicine. 35 mm. & 16 mm.
Sd. F.

Dartington Hall Film Unit, Totnes, South
Devon. Classroom films on regional and eco-
nomic geography. 16 mm. St. H.

Dominion of New Zealand Film Library. 415
Strand, W.C.2. 22 films of industry, scenery and
sport. Includes several films about the Maoris.
16 mm. St. F.

Educational Films Bureau, Tring, Herts. A selec-
tion of all types of film. 35 mm. & 16 mm.
Sd. & St. F.

Education General Services, 37 Golden Square,
W.l. A wide selection of films, particularly of
overseas interest. Some prints for sale. 16 mm. &
St. H.

Electrical Development Association, 2 Savoy Hill,
Strand, W.C.2. Four films of electrical interest.
Further films of direct advertising appeal are
available to members of the Association only.
16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Empire Film Library. Films primarily of Empire
interest, with a useful subject index. Now merged
with the Central Film Library. 16 mm. and a few
34 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Film Centre, 34 Soho Square, W. 1 . Mouvemcnts
Vibratoires A film on simple harmonic motion.
French captions. 35 mm. & 16 mm. St. H.

Ford Film Library, Dagenham, Essex. Some
50 films of travel, engineering, scientific and
comedy interest. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Gaumont-British Equipments, Film House, War-
dour Street, W.l. Many films on scientific sub-
jects, geography, hygiene, history, language,
natural history, sport. Also feature films. 35 mm.
& 16 mm. Sd'&St. II.

G.P.O. Film Library. Over 100 films, mostly
centred round communications. Now merged
with the Central Film Library. 35 mm., 16 mm.
Sd. & St. F.

Pathescope, North Circular Road, Cricklewood,
N.W.2. Wide selection of silent films, including
cartoons, comedies, drama, documentary, travel,
sport. Also good selection of early American
and German films. 9.5 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Petroleum Films Bureau, 15 Hay Hill, Berkeley
Square, W.l. Some 25 technical and documentary
films. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. F.

Religious Film Library, Church Walk. Duns-
table, Beds. Films of religious and temperance
appeal. Also list of supporting films from other
sources. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Scottish Central Film Library, 2 Newton Place.
Charing Cross, Glasgow, C.3. A wide selection
of teaching films from many sources. Contains
some silent Scots films not listed elsewhere.
Library available to groups in Scotland only.
16 mm. Sd. & St. H.

Sound-Film Services, 27 Charles Street, Cardiff:
Library of selected films including Massingham's
And So to Work. Rome and Sahara have French
commentaries. 16 mm. Sd. H.

South African Railways Publicity and Travel
Bureau, South Africa House, Trafalgar Square,
W.C.2. 10 films of travel and general interest.
35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. & 4 St. versions. F.

Southern Railway, General Manager's Office,
Waterloo Station, S.E.I. Seven films (one in
colour) including Building an Electric Coach,
South Africa Fruit (Southampton Docks to
Covent Garden), and films on seaside towns.
16 mm. St. F.

Wallace Heaton, Ltd., 127 New Bond Sticet.
W.l. Three catalogues. Sound 16 mm., silent
16 mm., silent 9.5 mm. Sound catalogue contains
number of American feature films, including
Thunder Over Mexico, and some shorts. Silent H
mm. catalogue contains first-class list of earh
American, German and Russian features anc
shorts, 9.5 catalogue has number of carl\ Uer
man films and wide selection of e;«lv. Arneflcar
and English slapstick comedies. 16 mni' & 9.5
mm. Sd. & St. H. , ' . % jj -

Workers' Film Association,. .Ltd.'-" Transpor
House, Smith Square. London. SAV.l. Film
of democratic and co-operative interest. Note
and suggestions for complete programmes
Some prints for sale. 35 mm. & 16 mm. Sd. &
St. H.

Owned and published by Film Centre Ltd., 34 Soho Square, Lomion, I

I, and printed by Slrnson Shand Ltd., The Shenval Press, London I

NEWS LETTER

CONTENTS

MAKE UP YOUR MIND, MR. DALTON

NOTES OF THE MONTH

SECOND FRONT FOR PROPAGANDA

FILM OF THE MONTH

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS
J— SCIENTIFIC FILMS
gj^ FIVE-MINUTE FILMS

NEWSREELS AND RADIO

FILM SOCIETIES

WASHINGTON S PLANS FOR FILMS

HO SHORTS BOOKINGS

VOL 3 NO 8

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON Wl

Make Up Your Mind, Mr. Dalton

THE President of the Board of Trade answering a question in the
House, inferred that the Film Industry could look for no
guarantee that its present inadequate studio space could be main-
tained, neither could there be any guarantee that there would be
no further calls upon its already restricted man-power. This is a
serious statement for a responsible Minister to make, for obviously
no such statement would have been made without serious con-
sideration. If further studio space and man-power are withdrawn it
will hasten the disintegration of the British film production industry.
The President made some pious remarks on the subject of Govern-
ment and Service film units and he paternally patted them on the
head stating that their interests would be protected. Does this state-
ment of Mr. Dalton's mean that an industry which successive
Presidents of the Board of Trade have been at such pains to build
up, is going to be allowed to die without serious consideration of
the factors involved?

It is some fifteen years since the Quota Act was placed on the
statute book to ensure the maintenance of a living British Film
Industry. The new Quota Act of 1938 has only been in operation
for four years, more than two of them while the country has been at
war. All that was said when the Act was drawn up remains true and
even more true for a country that is fighting to keep its own culture
and way of life alive. What stirring speeches were made and what
clamorous articles were written, what battles were fought with
reluctant American film interests to ensure that Britain should not
only express herself to her own people by film but that her culture
and way of life should be shown to the world! Can it be that when
we need full sympathy and understanding among the Allied nations,
one medium of our expression should be sacrificed to stack a few
more tons of sugar in a film studio or recruit a few hundred men for
the armed forces? Even now the rate of British feature film produc-
tion has dropped from two hundred in pre-war years to around
forty in the last year.
Cinema's Vital Part

It is strange too that the film industry should be faced with these
possibilities when so many successive members of the War Govern-
ment have paid tribute to the cinema's vital part in maintaining
morale and in propaganda.

It has been recognised in America that their film industry is a vital
part of the war effort. Can it be that in the different attitudes of
America and Britain towards film lies the answer to the continued
neglect and possible further restrictions of the British industry?
In America the cinema is a part of everybody's life from the Execu-
tive downwards. Going to the movies to them is as integral a part of
their lives as having food. Whereas here, certainly the governing

classes (and this includes Labour, Liberal and Conservative
politicians and civil servants) regard the films as something vaguely
not quite nice — the "flicks". That this is so has been continually
proved by the governing classes' lack of interest in the potentialities
of the film.

There is no doubt that a good deal of the mistrust and dislike of
the film industry in responsible circles arises from the fact that the
cinema industry is exceedingly immature. Morally and financially its
methods are still those of the nineteenth century. In America after
some forty years, the industry has become reasonably mature and
respected. For the reason that our industry here is still in such an
immature state of development, its leaders are frequently the
Barnums from the early days, or financial gamblers.
Forty Films a Year

This highly individualistic, anarchic industry too, does not lend
itself to organised representation, in fact it is only likely to come
together when its financial interests are threatened. This has been
the cinema industry's greatest failing for many years. Still to-day,
when the film production industry is severely threatened it has be-
come apparent that no joint organised representations are to be made
to the Board of Trade, but each individual trade association has seen
or will see the Board of Trade to represent their own interests — or
the national interest as they frequently put it.

The situation then is roughly as follows. With its depleted studio
staffs and with studio space at a premium, the feature film produc-
tion industry can with luck produce forty films a year if it loses no
further studio space and no more personnel. The American feature
films imported into this country will be roughly four hundred, so
British screens will carry far less than ten per cent of British films.
It should be pointed out here that the Quota Act obliges all cinema
owners to show fifteen per cent British films. Although they mani-
festly cannot carry this out, and none of them were very keen about
it at any time, the Board of Trade has no plan and by not supporting
the film industry, is denying its own Act.

In addition it appears that Government and Service film units
are to be fully protected and given every facility. It is to be wondered
whether past instances of film technicians being de-reserved, then
called into the army and thence transferred to a Service film unit.
are to be repeated, only in a more wholesale manner. Is studio space
and equipment to be diverted to those units on the same basis'? It
would be interesting to have a report on what effective work the
technicians in these Government and Service units are doing and
whether their ever-increasing requisitioned equipment is being put
to proper use. In factory terms — has anyone examined the com-
parative quantity and quality of their output. Again, the President

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER AUGUST 1942

of the Board of Trade made no mention of that very important
section of the film production industry — the commercial makers of
Government films. Are they likely to retain their already over-
burdened and over-worked staffs? Are they likely to retain their in-
sufficient equipment and inadequate studio space? They are the
people who made the short propaganda film possible in this country.
It appears, however, that they are no concern of the Board of
Trade, though many of them are linked with the feature film industry
and all of them are dependent on an active feature film industry
being in existence — personnel, studios, laboratories, etc.

What everybody is looking for, from the Board of Trade officials
to the lowliest technician, is a plan. In default of a plan we may well
see a competition between four interests to gain control: the first
interest is monopoly American capital, which would like to see
independent production in this country come under its control. That
the Americans succeeded in doing this in the last war when British
films were in a much stronger position, is to them a happy augury of
things to come. By the elimination of independent British produc-
tion they would succeed in controlling all production and so be able
to dictate their own terms for the rental of films to the second
competitor— British monopoly capital. This competitor, in the body
of the circuit interests, has control of the majority of the best

cinemas of this country. It hopes by controlling more and more
cinemas to dictate the terms which will pay for American films. It is,
therefore, in their interests to maintain as much British production
as possible in case the American interests should withhold their
films or sell against them in order to obtain better terms.

The third competitor is probably a weak entry, but it is conceiv-
able that the Board of Trade, being unable to reconcile the warring
interests, may propound a mild version of state capitalism similar to
the National Coal Board. These proposals will probably throw I
British and American monopoly capital into one another's arms and
the bureaucratic proposals would then undoubtedly be defeated.
The fourth competitor is monopoly British Labour. One branch of
the vested interests of Labour in the film trade has already put for-
ward a plan for the complete nationalisation of the film production
industry. This competitor is not likely to be a strong entry at the
moment, as all the Trades Unions representing cinema workers are
not yet united. The plans for nationalisation are not likely to make
much headway until the capitalist power grows much weaker. The
most this interest can hope for is that it might bring about the
objectives of competitor No. 3.

These are the four warring interests jostling for position, and still
the film production industry grows smaller and its facilities less.

i

NOTES OF THE MONTH

So So

u u si idelman is in London. You may not have heard of him —
but he has heard of you. The following paragraphs from Today's
Cinema will explain why : "The enthusiastic tribute he (Joe) paid to
C. M. Woolf and the G.F.D. set-up was no lip service. Universal
know how much they owe to CM. and are grateful for it. 'Britain',
said Joe, 'represented 50 per cent of the income to Universal'.

"WELL (Cinema's caps) it must be the first time in history of
films that a British company lias achieved that relative importance
to the American market. Great work! 'CM. is doing a marvellous
job', said Seidelman.— Just quietly and gratefully!"

Mr. Seidelman should be quiet and grateful but what reason the
British film industry or its trade papers have got for congratulating
either Joe or CM. it is difficult to see. We know we lost our film
industry in the last war and that we stand a good chance of doing it
again. But why cheer about it. Incidentally, Mr. C. M. Woolf is
also chairman of the British Film Producers' Association. Nice
work if you can get it!

\ very different reception to that given our "Joe" was Today's
Cinema's of the British Ministry of Information's roneo" Suggestions
for Feature Producers". It was just a roneod pamphlet with not un-
reasonable suggestions for feature producers to follow if they
wanted any co-operation from the M.O.I. It said that the Ministry
would "support all types of pictures including purely dramatic or
comedy kind provided these were of the highest quality and neither
maudlin, morbid, nor purely nostalgic for the old ways and days".
It went on to say that "its special support would be given to realistic
films dealing with events not directly about the war, but featuring
events in factories, factory hostels, workshops, mines and on the
land, and to other serious films dealing with historical and dramatic
themes, provided they showed the positive value of British national
characteristics and the democratic way of life".

Surely this wasn't so unreasonable. It was practically the first
official statement on what was considered good film propaganda
and it was not a bad statement. But no! The Cinema which can say
•good work" to an Englishman and an American who are shifting
the boodle out to support the American industry, can only say of
their own miserable M.O.I. "And now let us turn to the lighter side
of Life. High up among the headlines dealing with the lighter side
of life I should put this latest pronunciamento from the Ministrj
of Information.

"It is the funniest thing that has happened for years. Just savour
this sentence quoting the Ministry's views, for the British Film
Producers." The Cinema then quotes the paragraph we have quoted
above, and ends up by saying, "It is high time this government
department recognised that entertainment is an art. Matters of art
are best left to artists who have studied them".

The only bright spot in the grimy story was the Cinema's issue
two days later. The M.O.I, had apparently opened one eye and
looked at them, and there were seven humble paragraphs of apology.
Rumour

practically everyone in the country has heard the storj b> now
of the American soldier going into a pub and saying to the barmaid,
"Give me a glass of bitter — and give it to me quicker than you ran at
Dunkirk." Practically everyone will have heard which pub it hap-
pened in, who was there at the time and so on. [f you think back a
year or so you may remember another rumour. Haw-haw said that
the clock in such and such a barrack room was three and a half
minutes fast, and that he knew all about it. Two days later when the
clock had been put right Haw-haw had said. "We notice your clock
was put right this morning". At the time an investigation proved
that nothing even vaguely similar had been said over the German
wireless. It was all just a rumour. It had whipped round the country
at incredible speed and had been told of nearly every public clock
in the country. The story of the American soldier is just the same.
To one pub in London five distinct versions of this story came in one
week. One from Bristol, one from ( ambridge. one from Notting-
ham, one from Glasgow, and one from Piccadilly. Each one about
a definite named pub.

Rumour used like this seems to be one of the cheapest and
quickest forms of propaganda there is. 1 heie are stones of German
agents dressing as Americans, and going into pubs, but it doesn't
seem really necessary. All they have got to olo is to tell the storv to
someone. We do the rest. Considering the importance of good
feelings between British and Americans, it might be a good idea to
make first some film about the real Americans and what they are
like. And secondly, a good rumour film. Not dreary melodrama,
but a good straightforward analysis of rumours, using the ones
that nearly all people will remember and tracing them back to
their invisible sources. Not trying to shock or browbeat the
audience, but just simple explanation.

(Continued on page 114)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER AUGUST 1942

SECOND FRONT FOR PROPAGANDA

THE M.O.I. Films Division has changed its production and
distribution policy for propaganda films. The Five Minute film
is to be abolished and a monthly film lasting 15 minutes is to be
substituted, with free distribution to all cinemas. In addition there
are to be twelve two-reelers a year, sold in the open market, and a
tain number of "specials" — possibly up to feature length — also
for straight commercial showing.

The pros and cons of this change are discussed elsewhere. But a
further question remains. Is there going to be a change of heart as
well as a change of machinery?

It is easy for Ministry officials and film makers alike to be too
satisfied with a mere flow of so-called propaganda films and with
the knowledge that they are being widely shown. Everyone is work-
ing hard, and under difficult conditions. Everyone tends to look at
the trees and to fail to see the wood.

Once again it is time rigorously to question the value of our
propaganda services. Ln our last issue we referred to the lamentable
debate on propaganda in the House of Commons ; and to-day the
impression of failure and stultification is becoming more and more
intensified. Britain has built up a huge propaganda machine and is
failing to use it to good effect.

Look at the situation objectively. The war has reached its greatest
crisis. Whatever the day to day victories or reverses may be, the
basic situation is one of imminent peril and extreme difficulty. Ship-
ping and supplies, quality and quantity of armaments, man-power
and woman-power, military tactics and strategy — in all these
spheres we find danger and dissatisfaction.

Basic Morale

Victories and defeats are reflected by day-to-day morale. But what
of basic morale — the morale which can increase or stifle the all-out
effort of the nation? And what of the need to bind together the
efforts of the people of the United Nations, to increase their under-
standing of each other's problems? What is being done about it?

Propaganda is not just a method of making friends and influencing
people. Propaganda, as the Jesuits well knew, is concerned with
faith, and if it has no faith it is a waste of effort.

In Britain our propaganda began by working from the belief that
we were winning. After Dunkirk it switched to the belief that we
should win provided we tried. To-day it is doing little more than run
around in small circles trying to equate platitudes with certain in-
escapable facts which involve clear thinking, unconventional action,
and a burning faith,

Make no mistake about it. No propagandist can ply his trade if
this freedom of faith is denied to him. And where is that freedom
to-day?

Poppycock, say the cynics (i.e. people afraid to face up to issues),
we are fighting a war between good and evil and that's faith enough
for the common folk. The good United Nations against the evil
Axis — that's enough to impel an all-out effort.

Basically it might be. if righting against was all that's needed. But
what about righting for? People all over the world have been led up
the garden path of war too often now to have a real belief that the
end of a conflict means millenium. They look to a post-war world
representing their own simple specifications, even if they don't attach
nigh falutin' ideological phrases to them. They look at Russia, and
observe a faith which removes mountains, and when they think
about Russia, it occurs to them that this faith is not that blind
patriotism into which the old-guard so glibly rationalise their ad-
miration of Soviet effort, but rather the fact that the people of Russia
are fighting for a world which is theirs and which they themselves
rave built.

It's not much of an exaggeration to say that the only people in
Britain lighting in similar terms are a comparatively small group
whose world, if the war is to be won. must vanish unregretted. ( in-
versely, the people of Britain and America and China have to fight
for a world which they have not yet built, and thev seek, at least.
confirmation that there will be a chance to build it.

It is by now well known that the reason why the M.O.I, has
had. at best, a limited success is simply that the Government has no
desire for the active propaganda, which is the only solution to this
and other paradoxical problems.

Propaganda without confirmative action is negative and must end
in collapse. Goebbels is beginning to find this out. Sooner or later —
to-day almost certainly sooner — the pronouncements of the propa-
gandists must be proved by action and result to be true. Truth in
propaganda means nothing more nor less— a fact which the House
of Commons speakers egregiously forget. But to-day most of our
propaganda is hot air.
Backed by Action

To take a possible example. Films and radio can plug the idea of
total effort and equality of sacrifice till they are black in the face.
They can take concrete examples — rationing in various fields, com-
munal restaurants and what not. But what earthly use is it unless it is
backed up by action? The removal of the basic petrol ration is a fact.
The institution of compulsory communal restaurants for all alike
would be another fact. Two facts, two bricks to shore up the
hitherto shaky foundations of our propaganda system.

We sympathise with the officials at the M.O.I, and the B.B.C.
They have no direct instructions on policy, nor have they permission
to institute a policy of their own. They are fighting in a fog.

But if they believe in this world revolution which is so bloodily-
being fought on a scale never before imagined, they've got to get out
of the fog. They've got to smash the petty-mindedness, the timorous-
ness, and the reactionary stupidities which stand in their way as
much as in the way of everyone else. They must even risk losing their
jobs — a thing which revolutionaries have sometimes been known
to do.

They must insist on a policy which is positive and categorical, a
policy which says in detail what hitherto has been oh so carefully
expressed in cloudy phrases and political catchwords. And they must
insist, above all, on complete freedom to interpret this policy once
it has been laid down.

All this may sound like an unnecessary repetition of the A B C.
Do not forget that in Britain to-day the A B C of propaganda, of
total effort, of true democracy, still remains painfully to be learnt.
Nor will it be learnt from our present teachers, but from men and
women with a belief and bravery far beyond the tired old ushers who
even yet are getting their palsied thumbs stuck in the machinery.

WHAT CAN FILMS DO ?

IT can easily beseen that the success of the new M.O.I, films policv
will depend not merely on first-class technique, important enough
though this will be, but also, and especially, on their choice of
subject matter and the way they treat it.

First and foremost these films must be identified with the will of
the people.

Secondly they must be tough and uncompromising.

Thirdly they must be international rather than parochial; in-
formational rather than hortatory.

These three needs are based on the fact that a full realisation o\'
our peril in active rather than fearful terms is still lacking, and that
total effort has not vet, but must immediately be achieved.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER AUGUST 1942

The coming winter will be one of hardship
for the civilian population. Ifs not enough to
ask them to grin and bear it. You have to
explain why, and do so in such forthright
terms that your film is also impelling greater
activity, even under conditions of very real
discomfort. But even here the best possible
film will be at a loss if the facts of the case do
not bear it out. If there is less food, less coal
and less transport it will be essential for the
public to see for itself that, for instance,
higher income levels do not, as at present,
have an unfair advantage over lower income
levels. Your film must be based on fact, and
this is a problem which the M.O.I, must most
seriously face, since it represents one of the
greatest difficulties if active films are to be
made.

Similarly the M.O.I, will no doubt (and
quite correctly) wish to relate the present
need for total effort to the constructive
future for which the peoples of the world are
fighting. This again cannot convincingly be
done save in definite relation to the present.

And remember that people need a lot of
convincing on these points when they read
speeches in the House saying that we should
not try to stir up revolutionary activity in
occupied Europe, or when they see notices on
bombed areas in which private building
interests call for offers for new clients, or when
they hear of a commission being set up to
consider the future of public schools instead
of the future possibilities of the boarding
school system as a whole.

In these columns we have stressed over and
over again the necessity for the Cabinet to
commit itself to a definite policy of propa-
ganda, which of course involves the question
of total effort (which in turn postulates total
equality). That policy must be boldly stated;
and it must be a policy which will stand up
to the practical appraisal of the ordinary
citizen — not the 1922 Committee or the
fogeys of Transport House.

Without such a policy it would be wise for
the M.O.I, to confine most of its work to the
instructional films at which it excels.

Wc do not propose to attack the Films
Division for past sins 01 omission or com-
mission. Its officers, equally with film-makers
and radio-producers, have been working for
three long years under impossible conditions.

But wc suggest that more fight must be
shown, so that the existing machinery can be
geared to a definite instead of an indefinite
purpose.

The time has come for the M.O.I, people
to have the guts to present an either-or to
their Minister, and through him to the
Government. Either establish a policy, or
admit you are not interested in revolutionary
propaganda, which is the only propaganda
which can express and give a lead to the ideas
and wishes of the people.

Otherwise, the new production plans will
represent a change of method only. They
should essentially represent a change of heart.

FILM OF THE MONTH

Mrs, Miniver

Delight of the upper middle classes, delight of
that -4 per cent of the population whose in-
comes ranks higher than £2,000 per annum, was
the occasioned column in '"The Times" headed
"'Mrs. Miniver". Its cosy charm, elegantly
transmitted, in a less hitter style than Miss
E. M. Dela field, had an irresistible appeal for
that class that looked hack with such infinite
regret to the spacious Edwardian days. While
the life it purported to portray had a winsome,
near-aristocratic flavour, its heyday was dur-
ing 'appeasemenf, and while the writer was
so obviously a part of that life, its constant
danger was its tendency to be not so much a
participant's story but a rather flushed out-
sider's appreciation of a stratum of society. Our
correspondent's review suggests that this effect
was realised in Mrs. Miniver's translation to
the harsher lights of the screen.
Mrs. Miniver is not one of the easiest films to
review because in some ways it is very good
and in a lot of others it is just repulsive. You
can sit in the Empire and hear practically
the whole house weeping — a British audience
with three years of war behind it, crying at
one of the phoniest war films that has ever
been made. So you can tell it is well made —
superlatively well made. It is hard to be
unkind to Mrs. Miniver because William
Wyler is such a good director, but the film is
so untrue that it has got to be done.

On Mrs. Miniver, her husband and three
children William Wyler has lavished all the
qualities that make people likeable. The
Minivers are a comfortably-off professional
family. They have a big house with a river
frontage — landing stage and motor-boat; a
£400 Lagonda and a son at Oxford. They
live in a world which seems to consist of
giggling housemaids with their bucolic
young men; doddering, servile station-
masters; glee singers in their feather boas;
duchesses and their granddaughters, black-
mailing, comic grocers and truculent ever-
leaving cooks.

Gross Misinterpretation

The film has already been described by a
leading British critic as "the best film on
English war-time life". The film was, I
suppose, well-intentioned in its praise of the
people of Britain and their ability to "take
it'. But though I fear many of the less woi thj
will accept the film as congratulation many
more will be disgusted by its gross misinter-
pretation of character and types.

These pseudo-comic characters arc no
strangers to the British stage or indeed to
the British film. And if the film had made a

less strenuous attempt to be realistic on.
could have accepted them for their enter
tainment value. But the film sets out to tell ;
true story of blitzed England and comes to<
close to a historical record to treat it thu
lightly. We, therefore, take grave exceptio:
to the view that the Minivers were and are th<
backbone of Britain. The subject of the filn
is important and the excellence of the film
important, so the impact on audiences o
this Hollywood idea of Britain's behaviou
in war-time is of some moment. The Miniver
or people like them, were there under th<
bombing (though the little Minivers wen
assuredly tucked away in a safe area anc
quite rightly too) but the Minivers were ir
the minority. The cooks and housemaids
grocers and stationmasters, bargees anc
tugmen were certainly there in the middle o
it and overwhelmingly in the majority.

Why does Wyler fail?

In The Little Foxes Wyler made the
negroes into dignified sensible people. The)
were the people who grew the cotton, spur
the cloth, grew the food, looked after the
white people's children, sang songs and livec
true and well, while around them then
masters bickered over pennies and mistresse;
killed masters for a few musty deeds in a tir
box. Why, when he comes to an all-white
story does Wyler fail? Surely he cannot
believe that the four hundred thousand men
Mr. Miniver goes to rescue from the beaches
are the morons that he shows in the rest ol
the film. I can well believe that the story and
conception of the people are Jan Struther's
but surely Mr. Wyler who, with all his skill
can turn a family of drones into good human
people can surely clean up a script or else
in the actual direction make the forty -se\ en
odd million people in Britain just a little
more realistic.

It is an awkward case to argue. One atti-
tude of mind presents the working classes as
a grand, flawless people and the middle
class as mean, vicious and effete. The other
presents the woiking classes as stupid dolts
and the middle classes as nice kind bene-
factors of mankind. Must we blame Wyler
because he was misinformed'.'

1 1 is a pity that so much ability has beei
misused by an allied countiy in presenting
Britain so badly. It might be a good idea if
the Ministry o\' Information had someone in
Hollywood to act as adviser on films about
Britain and also to keep a check on our
nationals who go overseas and write stories
o\~ the Miniver type.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER A IT, I SI U)-12

NEWS LETTER

MONTHLY SIXPENCE

VOL. 3 NUMBER 8

AUGUST 1942

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands for the use of film as a
medium of propaganda and in-
struction in the interests of the
people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of
common people all over the
world.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

is produced under the auspices
of Film Centre, London, in asso-
ciation with American Film Center,
New York.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey
Alexander Shaw
Donald Taylor
John Taylor
Basil Wright

Outside contributions will be
welcomed but no fees will be
paid.

We are prepared to deliver from
3—50 copies in bulk to Schools,
Film Societies and other organi-
sations.

Owned and published by

FILM CENTRE LTD.
34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON

W.l GERRARD 4253

New Documentary Films

Front Line Camera. Production: Arm) Film

Unit.

This is a film with appeal to the general public.

It is luckv enough to have the right suh

war as n is being fought in England; the right

commentator— Ed. Murrow, and it may also

have had unique facilities in its shoot n,

the Army Film Unit is responsible. Wil

advantages it has a good start, but it is also well

made.

The Front Line is the South Coast and we are
shown a bit of the real fighting with German
bombers that is going on, and a good deal of
manoeuvres and preparations for the offensive.
The film indicates that the Front Line is passing
out of its state of defence and adopting the ag-
gressive attitude. The commentary carries the
aggressive and cheerful note throughout and
whatever may have been omitted in the showing
or the telling, the film has a tonic effect and will
do much to improve morale.

Essential Jobs. Production: Paul Rotha. Direc-
tor: John Page. Story: V. S. Pritchett. Camera:
Stanley Rodwell. Recording: Leo Wilkins.
Editing: Sylvia Cummings.

The purpose of this film appears to be the con-
solation of those who work in seemingly un-
essential jobs. In the style of "The Old Woman
and Her Pig" fairy-tale, it begins with a man
who has the humble job of making small wire
nails. His workmate jeers at him. But it appears
that these wire nails are going to be very im-
portant in the end. In the next stage the nails
appear in the hands of two '•browned off" factory
girls who use them in the job of packing cocoa —
admittedly an extremely tedious job. This cocoa
is also highly important for it is to cheer and
warm the lorry driver in an all-night cafe, a fact
that may seem insignificant. But no. the lorry
driver is carrying boxes of soap to a factory where
leather is being dressed and the workers need it
to ward off anthrax. Just as all the other workers
are either grousing or being groused at, the
leather worker is complaining bitterly because
his wife has no respect for his job. The next link
in the chain is a factory where girls are using the
leather to make gloves which they complain are
"fit for duchesses". They get together on this
complaint and decide to stop work. This is the
signal for the rounding off of the film. The man
in charge of the shop addresses the girls, ex-
plaining the vital importance of the gloves, for
they are to warm the hands of the girls on the air-
craft defences. He takes the opportunity of
moralising on the relative importance of war jobs
and generally telling the girls off for their
behaviour.

This film is competently made and has prob-
ably a value for the more simple-minded, but it
tends to a schoolmasterly attitude and Millers a
good deal from lack of humour.
They Speak for Themselves. Production: Seven
League. Made by; H. M. Neiter. Paul Rotha.
Miles Malleson, Rex Warner. One-reeler,
M.O.I, non-theatrical.

In this a number of young people air their \ iews
on war and the future of Britain. It is snappilj
cut. is never allowed to become tedious, and its
technique offers a more or less fresh avenue for
future films of discussion. The picture content is
confined to the group of speakers, and the direc-

tion had been sulliciently good to overcome this
limitation.

The young people's vocal offerings seem a
little over-practised and they present nothing
very new. However they do give one the im-
pression of being a thinking, enquiring section of
the community and full of a sense of responsi-
bility for the future of their country.

Twelve Days. Product

Mil

M.O.I, for M.O.I'.

Dinsdale.

i. Editor: Catherine

This is an account ol the distribution of meat
under war conditions. A farmer finds that he has
not sufficient feed for his sheep and decides to
sell some of them. He discovers that he must give
notice of his intention to the Ministry ol I ood
twelve days in advance of market day. The film
devotes itself to showing the organisation that
goes on in these twelve days. It is an account of
the meat rationing system and though not con-
spicuously entertaining, the story is well told,
taking into consideration the highly complicated
organisation that has to be clarified.

They Keep the Wheels Turning. G.B. Screen Ser-
vices. Direction: Francis A. Searle. Camera:
Walter Harvey. Recording: John Douglas.
Editing: Enid Mansell.

A film about the labour shortage in the motor
industry. The solution is the bringing of women
to work in the machine shops. A competent,
pedestrian job of work with no high lights.

The United Nations. Crown Film Unit.
The Crown Film Unit has done a good job on
this from the points of view of finish, timing,
music and colour. If you are susceptible to
pageantry you may even cry with emotion. It
should give the newsreel boys something to think
about, or could they do it a lot better if they
had the time, the money and the equipment'.'

Air Force Newsreel Material

During the past month, the Air Force through
the M.O.I, presented the newsreel companies
with thirteen hundred feet of film shot over
France and Germany. The newsreels at first
rejected it but were finally persuaded to use it.
In the end all the reels came out with nothing
else in them but the despised scoop.

The point at issue was not the quality of the
material, for that was beyond reproach, but the
fear in the minds of the newsreel companies that
their job might in the end be done by service
units. The Service attitude to the newsreel com-
panies' coverage of material of this kind is that
there are too many difficulties involved in letting
civilian cameramen fly on operational flights.
In fact, even now, the Air Force cameramen are
ordinary working members of an air crew with
a specified job apart from handling a camera.

This thirteen hundred feet of material is much
superior to anything yet turned out by Germany.

Actually the newsreels have not presented it
very well. They did not, for example, build up
the crossing of the French coast and there was no
explanation of the night bombing to tell audi-
ences that the pin points oi light were in fact
large scale fires and not just bad black-out. At
all events, hats off to the R.A.F. I ilm Unit. I hey
have certainly presented a good argument for the
Air Force shooting its own material.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER AUGUST 1942

Notes of the Month

(Continued)

Celluloid Front

Hollywood was willing and eager to help.
In the long pre-war days the world's biggest
cinema industry piddled around making training
films for the armed forces, an occasional hammy
patriotic picture of its own, tried its hand at
box-office propaganda and got smeared by U.S.
Senate isolationists for its pains. After Pearl
Harbour, Hollywood pleaded with Franklin
Roosevelt's Government Films Co-ordinator,
white-haired, volcanically patient Lowell Mellett,
for an important assignment.

Last week, four months later, Hollywood at
last got its marching orders. They called for
little more than a short hike. For Government
account, the industry will make 26 shorts on
war subjects provided by Mellett. Having set
a man to do a boy's work, Mellett returned to
Washington.

Just over the border the Canadian National
Film Board, with no Hollywood to call on, is
shooting more than 100 pictures a year. 'Its full-
time executive head, voluble John Grierson, who
prepared England's slick Government film set-
up, was busy visualising the war for Canadian
citizens.

For its own celluloid front, the U.S. still has
no pattern except that which Mellett will provide
when he gets around to it. Hollywood's and the
Government's few war documentaries have been
a hodge-podge of patriotic appeals, expositions
on tank construction, sugar-coated shots of
training troops, etc. These films have failed to
keep the U.S. public informed on the progress
of the war, to tell it why tyres have to be rationed,
to relate the vast complexity of global war to the
individual citizen's job, etc.

Who's Baby?

The new production and distribution policy of
the M.O.I, for propaganda in public cinemas
has come into being without much criticism. Yet
a very serious change has been brought about —
the five-minute film has been dropped and a
monthly fifteen minute film substituted. It
appears from what statements have been made
that this was almost wholly brought about at the
wish of the exhibitors. They claimed that a
weekly five-minute film was too difficult to fit
into their programmes. They could not drop
their advertising films, their slide advertisements
for local traders, their organ interludes. How-
ever without a battle the M.O.I, lets them drop
live to seven minutes of Government informa-
tion. There is plenty of evidence that the public
liked the five-minute film and the production
quality was constantly improving. It would be
interesting to know if, when the C.E.A. dictated
the new form that government propaganda was
to take, whether they made any guarantee that
their members would show the monthly fifteen-
minuter more loyally than they showed the five
minuter. It would also be interesting to know
whether anyone has worked out the number of
limes a member of the public is likely to see
one of these longer films. Is the regular twice or
three times-a-weeker liable to sec the same film
perhaps six times or more? Once again, that
Jekyll and Hyde, the films Division of the
M.O.I., has thrown aside the bristling mane-like
robe of a lion and disclosed a wee, wee mouse.

No.

THE GARDENER AND
THE BABOON

there was once a Gardener, who loved gardening to
that degree that he wholly absented himself from the
company of men, to the end he might give himself
up entirely to the care of his flowers and plants. He
had neither wife nor children; and from morning till
night he did nothing but work in his garden, so that
it lay like a terrestrial paradise. At length, however, the
good man grew weary of being alone, and took a resolu-
tion to leave his garden in search of good company.

As he was soon after, walking at the foot of a moun-
tain, he spied a baboon, whose looks had in them nothing
of a savage fierceness natural to that animal, but were
mild and gentle. This baboon was also weary of being
alone and came down from the mountain for no other
reason but to see whether he could meet with anyone
that would join society with him. So soon, therefore,
as these two saw each other, they began to have a
friendship one for another; and the Gardener first
accosted the baboon, who, in return, made him a pro-
found reverence. After some compliments had passed be-
tween them, the Gardener made the baboon a sign to
follow him, and bringing him into his garden, regaled
him with a world of very delicious fruit, which he had
carefully preserved; so that at length they entered into
a very strict friendship together; insomuch that when the
Gardener was weary of working, and lay down to take a
little nap, the baboon, out of affection, stayed all the
while by him, and kept off the flies from his face. One
day as the Gardener lay down to sleep at the foot of a
tree, and the baboon stood by, according to his custom,
to drive away the flies, it happened that one of those
insects did light upon the Gardener's mouth, and still
as the baboon drove it away from one side, it would
light on the other; which put the baboon into such a
passion that he took up a great stone to kill it. It is true
he did kill the fly; but at the same time he broke out two
or three of the Gardener's teeth. From whence men of
judgment observe that you have to know the tunc as
well as the words.

REALIST FILM UNIT

4 7 OXFORD S T R E I . T . \\ . 1

Telephone: GERRAKD 1958

DOCUMKMARV NEWS LETTER AUGUST 1942

SCIENTIFIC FILMS IN BRITAIN

By FOUR- WAY

Civil DEFENCE artists parade in the National
Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Political and
war training pamphlets monopolise the book-
stalls. Aesthetics is being shown the door. Art for
art's sake takes one nowhere it" one is stalking a
U.X.B. or getting ready for a second front. But
aesthetics is still strong, still kicking, even though
its kicks may be the kicks of its death throes. The
war kids too many people into believing that our
intellectual junk shops have been bombed every
time the shutters are put up temporarily.

In films, at any rate the aesthetic approach is
being eaten up by the practical "What can I learn
from this?" approach. The series, Canada Carries
On, and Fire Guard, to quote two widely differing
examples, make this plain. Not that the change is
a new one. In Britain it dates at least from
Drifters and from the time when the British gas
industry decided to base its film programmes on
sociology rather than on beauty or sales talk.
3ut the war has speeded up the change enorm-
ously. It has rearranged the values of movie
making by evolving a new set of box-office
criteria. "Is it true?" is beginning to take the
place of "Is it entertainment?" Which means that
this is one of the periods of history when public
taste is in advance of public leadership — one of
the periods when the leaders may be asked to
give account of their stewardship.

This change in public taste and public values is
shown significantly in the growth of the scientific
11m movement, which has taken place almost
wholly within the war period and has overtaken,
in a matter of two years, ten years of stately
motion of what may be called the cultural film
society movement.

The origins of the earlier cultural type of film
society, and the scientific film society are a study
in comparative sociology. The former was started
in 1925 by a group of people particularly inter-
ested in the art and technique of making films.
Through these early film societies Russian and
German classics were screened. The names of
Eisenstein and Lubitsch began to come into the
same sentences as Aldous Huxley and Virginia
Woolfe. The cultural film society movement
helped to turn the film from the popular mytho-
logy it had been till 1925 into an "art" and an
"industry". (Compare Shoulder Arms with The
Dictator.) In short, the cultural film society
movement, by creating standards of criticism,
helped to make the film industry respectable. But
the cultural film society movement was— and is
imarily interested in films as films; it has
usually avoided the consideration of films as a
social force, though the progressive Edinburgh
Film Guild is arranging programmes designed to
explain the outlook, cultural and economic life
of various countries.

The Scientific Film Society movement was
started in 1937 by the Association of Scientific
Workers. In that year the Association set up a
Scientific Films Committee (a Film Study Group
had been active since 1936) "to further the in-
terests of the scientific film, co-ordinating and
improving on what is already being done . . .".

The Association of Scientific Workers had, of
course, no interest in films as such, but it held
that its function as a trade union representing
working scientists could not be fully developed

until there was better public understanding of the
work of scientists and of the scientific method
The scientific film was one obvious weapon to
achieve this purpose

In detail, the Scientific I ilms Committee was
charged "to make ... a complete file of informa-
tion concerning (</> scientific films available
graded according to merit; (/>) projection equip-
ment available ..." It was to maintain a panel
of scientific advisers to aid film producers, and a
panel of film producers to aid scientists. It was to
issue certificates of merit to suitable films, to pro-
duce films and to arrange shows of films "on a
national scale".

Of these various duties, only the first — the
compilation of graded lists of films, and the last
— the arranging of film shows on a national scale,
have been fully developed.

The Scientific Films Committee set up panels
of film viewers and began to go through all the
available scientific films, assessing them for ac-
curacy of subject matter, clarity of exposition,
and suitability for various types of audience. The
conclusions of the viewing panels are published
from time to time.

In 1938, the Scientific Films Committee was
responsible for starting the London Scientific
Film Society — the first of its kind, and now run-
ning independently of the Association of
Scientific Workers. In the same year the A.S.W.
arranged a series of important scientific film
shows in Cambridge, and in 1939 Nan Clow
started the Scientific Film Club of Aberdeen.

Today there are no less than seven flourishing
scientific film societies in Scotland alone — at
Aberdeen, Ardrossan, Ayr, Dalmellington, Glas-
gow, Kilmarnock, and Prestwick — all save the
first started since the war. In England, with the
exception of the London Scientific Film Society
(which survived the blitz with difficulty but is
now flourishing) there were,*till recently, no
organised societies, though local A.S.W. com-
mittees arranged no less than fifty-one shows in
the eight months ending May 1942. There are
now signs that England will follow the lead of
Scotland and set up formally constituted film
societies. (Sporadic shows — however successful
— cannot hope to become growing points of
public interest.)

At first there were some differences of opinion
between those who thought that the A.S.W.
should support only "films of pure science", and
those who thought it should support also films
illustrating the relations between science and
society ; between those who thought the Scientific
Films Committee should represent mainly
scientists who wished to see films, and those who
considered the Committee's principal duty to be
the interpretation of science to the public
through the medium of films. These difficulties
were, however, academic and disappeared as
soon as the Committee proved its usefulness by
undertaking both types of duty, and by arranging
to book complete programmes of scientific
films for anyone who required them, compiling
each programme according to the tastes of the
audience to be catered for.

In April, 1941, the Scientific Films Committee
published a Memorandum* distinguishing be-
tween the film of instruction and the film of inter-
pretation, urging the need for the wide and
organised distribution of scientific films and

drawing attention to serious gaps in the subjects
covered by existing films. (Scottish teachers,
through the Scottish Educational Film Associa-
tion, had already drawn up a list of subjects on
which films were urgently needed.)

By early 1942, the Scientific Film movement
had developed to such an extent that it was pos-
sible to hold a National Scientific Film Confer-
ence. The tone of the conference was set by the
notice convening the London Session, part of
which read :

"If we are to avoid disastrous mistakes in
social planning, both during and after the war,
it is vitally necessary that there should be a
widespread understanding of the scientific
method. The creative potentialities of science
need to be brought vividly into the conscious-
ness of every citizen. . . . Enormous potential
audiences are ready, in the factories, in Civil
Defence, and in the Armed Forces. . . . The
general purpose of this Conference is to see
that the films are brought to the audiences."
There were two sessions, the first at Ayr on
Saturday and Sunday, August 1st and 2nd, the
second in London on August 16th. Arthur Elton
took the chair during the afternoon meetings at
each session.

At the Ayr session, 33 delegates attended,
representing 27 organisations including the 7
Scottish Film Societies and such organisation: a
the Glasgow Corporation, G-B. Instructional,
the Educational Institute of Scotland, together
with two delegates representing London interests
and delegates from Nottingham (Boots' Cine-
Club), Birmingham, and other English towns.
The Saturday morning meeting was taken up
with reports from the Scottish Film Societies and
the passing of resolutions, subsequently en-
dorsed by the London session, and discussed be-
low. The afternoon meeting was opened by the
chairman, who pointed out that just as the Cul-
tural Film Society had had a profound effect on
the film by creating critical standards, so could
the Scientific Film Society movement have an
equally profound influence. To win this war
efficiently, economically and equitably, it was
necessary that we should become a nation of
scientists. Not highbrows immersed in technique,
but citizens with minds orientated methodically
to environment. t Seven other speakers dis-
cussed practical problems of setting up societies,
choosing programmes, and film appreciation.

On the Saturday evening there was an exhibi-
tion of amateur scientific films, one on Blood
Transfusion, one to recruit women into industry,
and one on a deficiency disease in sheep. The
makers of these films were primarily interested in
conveying a useful message. From this it followed
that each film was of greater than local import-
ance, for each could be used (and in two cases
was already being used) in the Scottish libraries
as a direct part of the war effort. For as soon as
the amateur gives up competing with the pro-
fessional in terms of film technique, camera
movement or acting, and begins to compete with
him in terms of clarity of exposition or intrinsic
social importance of subject matter, the amateur
is on level terms with the professional, or even at
an advantage over him. Infacl.theainaieurceased
to be an amateur; he becomes professional.

•See D.N.I . Vol ii . No. 4. pane 6!.
s.v I) N I 101.

(Continued overleaf)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER AUGUST 1942

The London session was attended by 105
people, representing 28 organisations, the Press,
members of the general public, Scientific Film
Societies and others. The session endorsed the
resolutions passed in Scotland which, with new
resolutions, have become the national policy of
the Scientific Film movement. The main decisions
of the meeting may be summarised as follows:

(1) There shall be an English Scientific Film
Association similar to the Scottish Scientific
film Association already set up. The two
Associations shall be financially independent
of each other, self-governing and local in
character. The Associations will be primarily
concerned with the domestic detail of viewing
films, arranging programmes and instigating
film shows and Film Societies.

(2) Both Associations shall be embraced in a

National Scientific film Federation, which
shall be a central authority devoted to national
planning and execution.

(3) The Associations and the Federation are to
call on all bodies making or commissioning
films, inviting them to encourage and finance
the production of scientific films.

(4) Education and welfare officers, the Sen ices.
Civil Defence Service units, including the
Home Guard, and factory managements and
trade unions, shall be urged to use the
scientific film for educational purposes.

(5) The Kincmatograph Renters Association and
the Cinematograph Exhibitors Association
were urged to increase the number of scientific
films in the public programmes.

Such were the decisions and recommendations

of the first National Conference. From this, it is
hoped, will spring a national scientific film move-
ment, geared to the war effort. Clearly, the
federation has within it the possibility of some-
thing very important after the war, but the
speakers, evidently believing that it is easy to
think so much about what will come after the
war that the conduct of the war itself is for-
gotten, only called attention to this point in
passing. The meeting had not time to consider in
detail relationships with other countries, but it
was hoped that, even in war, there will be a free
exchange of scientific films. Not only can such an
exchange of films serve a short-term purpose in
war education, but each film will carry something
of the spirit of the country which made it, and
will help each country to understand the econo-
mics, outlook and culture of its neighbours.

5-MINUTE FILMS

FOR APRIL-JULY, 1942

Title

Theme

Director

Prod. Unit

Release
Date

FILLING THE GAPi

Dig for Victory

—

Realist & Halas-Batchelor

6/4

THE OWNER GOES ALOFT

National Savings

Ivan Scott . .

Spectator

13/4

THE MIDDLE EAST

The strategy of the Middle East

G. Tharp

S.F.U

20/4

BALLOON SITE 568

W.A.A.F.s at work

I. Moffatt

Strand

27/4

MEN OF INDIA2

India's industrial effort

Ezra Mir

Indian F.U.

4/5

GO TO BLAZES

Dealing with an incendiary bomb

Walter Forde

Ealing

11/5

FREE FRENCH NAVY

French naval units at sea. .

R. Carruthers

Spectator

18/5

THE FIVE MEN OF VELISH3
PARTNERS IN CRIME

Nazis in Russia

The Black Market

Launder & Gillial . .

Soviet War News Film

Agency

Gainsborough

25/5
1/6

WORK PARTY

The factory effort

Len Lye

Realist

8/6

DOWN OUR STREET

National Savings

T. Bishop . .

Merton Park

15/6

WOOD FOR WAR
THE RIGHT MAN

Canadian soldiers and lumbermen

in Britain

Occupational selection in the Army

—

Canadian Army F.U. ..
Army F.U.

22/6
29/6

START A LAND CLUB .

The agricultural effort

A. Buchanan

Films of G.B

6/7

NEW TOWNS FOR OLD

Plans lor the future

J. Eldridge . .

Strand

13/7

TROOPSHIP

The Army en route for the front

-

■\i m\ F.U.

20/7

DOCKERS

The industrial effort

F. Sainsbury

Realist

27/7

(1) Cartoon. (2) Re-edited in Britain. (3) Libra

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER AUGUST 1942

Newsreels Lack
Flavour of War

THE news reels continue to be dull and un-
imaginative with only an occasional break in
the fog which appears to cover most physical
manifestations of the world at war. It is alarming
to consider to what extent the war has become
for British people a battle of words— literary
rather than physical. How few are the oppor-
tunities either in the press or in the cinema to see
what war looks like. From Russia and from
Germany has come something of the true flavour,
but British and American films rely either on the
lath-and-plaster fictions of the studios or upon
conventional and stagey news-items not funda-
mentally dissimilar from those of peace-time.

Frontline Episode

It is true that from time to time a courageous
cameraman will send back scenes of a convoy
battle (the recent Malta convoy was an out-
standing example) and occasionally a corre-
spondent will convey the immediacy and emotion
of a frontline episode. (Genock and Rose of
Paramount have given us graphic war pictures
and moving commentaries to go with them.)
Apart from these purple passages we find only
manoeuvres and inspections with a little sport or
comedy for relief.

It may, of course, be argued that what we lack
is a war-front adequately exciting for the pur-
poses of the camera. In support of this case it
must be admitted that the Libya coverage and
the recent scenes in Egypt have shown almost
everything that could be revealed by the camera.
Yet the lack of fighting to photograph is not a
complete reason for the present newsreel defici-
ency.

It is not only on the battlefield that war has a
physical and photographable existence. Total war
is something which influences the whole life of a
people.

Workers of Britain

Imaginative newsreel treatment would succeed
in conveying to the screen the facts of war by the
presentation of episodes which are to be found at
the very doors of the newsreel offices. There is no
need to go to the front to photograph a war of
the people. Let us see the citizens and workers of
Britain in their homes and at their benches and
see what they are like and what they are doing.
Let us have personal anecdotes of the contribu-
tion of individual men and women and children
to the total power of a nation at war. Let us pick
individuals out from the crowd and tell their
stories briefly with skill and imagination. These
cameos will— as examples— have a strong
propaganda value. They will also possess that
quality of humanity which the newsreels have
always most lacked ; the quality which because
it is lacking now, prevents the newsreels from
showing us Britain at war. From the beginning
of their history the newsreels have never been
deeply and intimateh interested in people. Until
this is changed they will never give us the realism
which should be their principal characteristic.

RADIO

Work of the Feature Department

The B.B.C. gets kicked about a good deal for the
programmes it puts out, day in and day out, year
in year out — and who are we to say the kicks
aren't, in general, well deserved? But by casting
around the wastelands of the Radio Tiim you
can occasionally pick up the scent of something
important, and more often than not it will be a
production by the Feature Department.

B.B.C. features correspond in part to docu-
mentary films. They are concerned with both long
and short term propaganda as well as with at-
tempts to keep the small pennant of "culture"
flying among the forests of banners proclaiming
the joys of Vera Lynn, cinema organists and
what not.

The Feature Department is in charge of
Laurence Gilliam, a B.B.C. old-timer who has
never lost his integrity. Under him works a team
of producers including Louis MacNeice, Stephen
Potter, D. G. Bridson, John Glyn Jones, Walter
Rilla, Robert Barr and Maurice Brown. Technic-
ally these people are not afraid to experiment.
Ideologically they are putting out material which,
a few years ago, the directorate at Broadcasting
House would almost certainly have frowned on.

Worth-while Programmes

People interested in the documentary technique
might do worse than make a comparative study
of the work of the Feature people. Here are a
few programmes to look out for:
Marching On (every Thursday at 9.40). Produced
by John Glyn Jones and Robert Barr. This is a

tluit\ minute programme with a lot of guts. It

takes the latest news and dramatises it often
putting it in a new perspective. Often concen-
trates on events which owing to paper shortage
get crowded out of the dailies. Cracks jokes —
often neat and political. Chief fault : tendency to
over-sentimentalise things. ( Ihief merit : by means
of amazingly good teamwork, manages to put
across spot-news in a constructive instead of
scatty manner.

C ontcinporary Portraits. Produced usually by
Stephen Potter. Dramatised biographies of living
people, for instance Lord Nuffield, I ay Compton
and Low. Variable in quality (perhaps according
to subject). Perhaps a few portraits of ordinary
folk without fame or notoriety would pep this
series up.

New Judgments. Writers of to-day re-value
writers of the past, often with dramatic re-
constructions. Plums so far have been V. I. S.
Pritchett on Defoe, James Bridie on Barrie. and
Elizabeth Bowen on Jane Austen.

Black Gallery (usually produced by Walter Rilla).
A series of violent smacks at various Axis
leaders. Variable — sometimes tough and vicious
- sometimes puerile.

The "Salute" Scries. Louis MacNeice's Salute to
the United Nations was one of the most imagina-
tive broadcasts ever. MacNeice productions are
always worth an ear.

"Yes, Yes, Dr. Johnson, but .

usefully

t£ A M^N," said Dr. Johnson, "is never mo

employed ih'in when earning money".
"But", as Grindon remarked, "there is another maxim
fully as important, and founded on as great a principle,
and that is, the INTERVALS of business must be attended to.
No one can sharpen his intellect wd faculties, or widen the
range of his knowledge, without becoming nine skilful and
successful in the business or profession in which he is
engaged".

So, for pleasure and profit, road, every week, the

WEEKLY

93 LONG ACRE

LONDON

W.C. 2

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER AUGUST 1942

Film Society [Vews

Scottish Churches Film Cuild

Slowly, but surely, the Church of Scotland is
becoming film conscious. True, war conditions
have greatly hindered this development, but
they have not arrested it. While the more outlying
branches of the Scottish Churches Film Guild
had to suspend their activities owing to most of
the leaders being away on some form of service,
in Glasgow and Edinburgh a good deal was done
during last winter and spring to bring the reli-
gious film before people's notice. In Glasgow
during a special Week of Witness, in which all
the Protestant Churches took part, films were
shown at Rallies held in various Picture Houses;
others were used at district meetings of teachers
held under the auspices of the Scottish Sunday
School Union, and visits were paid to a military
hospital and to canteens. The work of reviewing
new films was maintained, and two classes of
instruction in the use of the projector were held.
In Edinburgh, nine reviewing meetings and five
open displays were held. Interest was added to a
number of these by having talks by experts on
the more technical side of film production.

At the General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland, held in May, a committee appointed
last year to advise on the use of films in the
Church made its report. The committee strongly
recommended that the Church should make every
effort to utilise this modern medium of instruc-
tion and inspiration for its own purpose; and
the Assembly appointed a permanent Committee
whose business it will be to co-ordinate the work
already being done by certain departments of the
Church, to do everything in their power to en-
courage the production of films suitable for
Church purposes, and to form a centre to which
ministers might apply for guidance and help in
organising film displays.

It was reported to the Assembly that under the
auspices of the Edinburgh Presbytery an experi-
ment had been made during the winter in holding
Film Services in five of the Edinburgh churches.
Some twenty such services were held in all, and
the majority of them were said to have been
thoroughly successful. Some of the films had
proved disappointing.

It becomes increasingly clear that if we can
only get the right kind of films there is a great
future for film-work in the Church.

The Devon and Exeter Film Society hopes to
continue activities. It has recently been in abey-
ance through disorganisation caused by enemy
raids.

British Oxygen Co. Films

Members of scientific film societies will he
interested to learn that the British Oxygen Co.
Ltd. has issued a catalogue of their library of
16mm. educational films. These films have been
employed as a supplement to the practical and
theoretical lectures given in their instructional
classes. They arc available on loan, free of charge
(except for return postage) to all bona-fide
lecturers, institutions, schools, clubs, etc.. and at
least ten days' notice should be given by the
borrower.

The address is: The Photographic (Publicity)
Dept., I ho British Oxygen Co. I Id.. North
Circular Road, Cricklewood, London, N.W.2.

THE FIRST OF A NEW
SERIES OF FILMS

THE B.B.C. BRAINS TIM ST

has been completed

Those taking part :

Comma nder Ca mpbell
Rt. Hon. Col. Walter Elliot
Professor Julian Huxley-
Professor C.E.M. Joad
Miss Jennie Lee

QUESTION MASTER:

Donald McCulloch

PRODUCERS:

Howard Thomas and Donald Taylor

No. 1 will he ready for commercial distribution in September.
No. 2 now in production.

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR - MANAGING DIRECTOR
ALEXANDER SIIAW - DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION

Offices: 1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l.

Tel.: GERHARD 6304/5.

Studios: NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE.

Tel.: ELSTREE 1644.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER AUGUST 1942

Washington plans wider use of film
for Educational Purposes after war

By JOHN STUART, Jr.

When the war is over the United States De-
partment of State hopes to be in the motion
pictures business in a major way.

Plans are maturing, it is learned in Washing-
ton, substantially to increase the motion picture
activities of the Department's Division of Cul-
tural Relations. For the present this increasing
interest in the screen is to be confined to the non-
theatrical motion picture.

The department charged with the administra-
tion of the country's foreign affairs is carrying on
its current screen work through existing emer-
gency and permanent government agencies with
authorised film programmes. State Department
appropriations for its own motion picture sec-
tion are small in comparison with the screen bud-
gets of other agencies. The current fund is said
to be less than $50,000 a year.

But through the Co-ordinator of Inter-
American Affairs, Office of War Information, the
film division founded by Colonel William
Donovan (formerly Co-ordinator of Information)
and other agencies the State Department is voic-
ing an increasingly potent say on what kind of
non-commercial, non-theatrical pictures shall be
sent to other nations with Government blessing,
or direct sponsorship.

Looking ahead to the day when peace comes.
certain officers in the State Department foresee
curtailment of the motion picture activities of
these emergency agencies, and a slash in the huge
film funds which many of them are now expend-
ing. They hope that much of this overseas screen
exchange will revert to the State Department. It
is possible that a permanent motion picture pro-
duction and distribution machinery may be set
up within the division of cultural relations,
operating on a permanent budget.

The exchange of non-theatrical motion pictures
with other nations would he undertaken by the
department. All countries would be included, not
just the Latin American republics, the United
Nations and friendly neutrals. The objective would
be the free display of pictures about the U.S. in
other countries, and the exhibition here, through
educational and other outlets, of pictures about the
rest of the world.

Interchange of 16 mm.

"There would be a huge interchange of cul-
tural, scientific and educational information via
16 mm. pictures specially produced or edited,"
one source close to the project explained. He dis-
counted the "propaganda" aspects of such a pro-
gramme, asserting that there is great curiosity
about the United States, and its customs and

traditions. The film programme would be merely
an official attempt to fill this need, he said. It is
envisioned as a potent force for good will and
understanding.

The entertainment, and commercial motion
pictures previously sent abroad have not been
sufficiently specialised or accurate, it was said.
The type of picture envisioned for cultural ex-
change would be 16 mm. scientific, educational
and documentary reels presenting "in vivid and
dramatic form" pictures of U.S. civilisation.

At present the Department of State, through
the division of cultural relations, is working
jointly with the Inter-American and War In-
formation agencies. Their productions must be
submitted to the State Department for review
prior to export. Foreign missions of the State
Department, through the cultural attaches now
stationed in them, participate in the distribution
of these pictures.

Suitability

A reviewing committee, representing the prin-
cipal divisions within the department, is charged
with looking at the pictures to determine their
suitability for the countries for which they are
destined. The department also will examine other
commercial or educational non-theatrical pic-
tures destined for free circulation abroad. If it
approves them they may bear official U.S.
sanction.

How this machinery works was described in
Motion Picture Herald for October 11, 1941 .

There have been reports of frequent friction,
however, between other Government agencies
and the State Department. The producing agen-
cies have charged the State Department with de-
laying their programmes with red tape, and slow
approval by the reviewing committee. Also, they
have expressed ofT-the-record irritation at main
of the changes in pictures or scripts which the
State Department has asked before sanctioning
their distribution through the cultural attaches.

To smooth this liaison the Division of Cultural
Relations is now seeking to expand its film staff.
Also, these new additions would be the nucleus
of a post-war organisation.

Overseas

Technical consultants, film distribution experts
and contact men who can handle overseas requests
for special subjects are joining the staff. Their
salaries, in several instances, will he paid out of the
special Inter-American funds and they will be in
direct liaison with the Rockefeller office.

Also, it is planned to assign film men to many
of the principal American missions abroad. They
will aid the cultural attach, in exhibiting the free
American motion pictures and will obtain native
pictures and suggest subjects for exhibition in the

United States. The first of these assignments
probably will be made in South America where
already 30 of the 16 mm. projectors arc in use.
and 75 more are on order.

Currently the film programme of the State
Department is in charge of John Begg, assistant
chief of cultural relations. With a small staff,
headed by Irene Wright, historian and for many
years the supervisor of all the State Department
film work, he has administered the exhibition of
the Rockefeller office pictures and requests for
State Department review of pictures destined for
South America. He has a background of newsreel
work in the Courtland Smith organisation.

Charles A. Thomson is chief of cultural rela-
tions. He is the former Latin American editor of
the Foreign Policy Association.

According to Mr. Begg, there is already evi-
dence of a great post-war demand for non-
theatrical pictures from the United Slates. He
cited figures from the Rockefeller committee's
exhibitions in South America, showing an
audience increase within six months from 6,000
to 100,000 persons monthly. This, he declared, is
just touching the surface of the field. Technical,
scientific, instruction and ideological pictures are
all receiving an enthusiastic reception, he said.

Post-war films

Special production will be required for main
of the post-war motion pictures, it was said. The
facilities of Hollywood as well as the docu-
mentary and non-theatrical producers would
be used, on contract, to make the special
reels and to adapt existing pictures. Many would
be scored in foreign languages while others,
particularly the technical and scientific pictures
destined for limited audiences, would be sent
abroad with written translations of the English
titles and sound track.

CORRESPONDENCE

n i im EDITOR

Sir, To see the better Ministry of Information
films one at a time is sometimes quite pleasant
To see a miscellaneous batch of home and over-
seas, theatrical and non-theatrical, all at the
same time, is one of the most unpleasant sur-
prises that anyone who is interested in winning
the war, in giving a good impression to our
allies, or in film making, could possibly have.
These are the films that were shown :

The day that saved the world. A long reel: the
subject in the Ministry's own words. "Proving
that Britain won the first victory over the Nazis."

Poland's New Front. The Polish army in Russia.

Newfoundland at war. Visual letters home from
the Newfoundland soldiers, sailors and airmen.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER AUGUST 1942

Free house. A five-minuter of sailors from all the
allied navies proving through the example of
beer why things have got to be different after the

India in action. A tribute to Indian troops who
have fought in the various African battles.

Women away from home. A five-minuter ex-
plaining how women who go away to work in
factories get on.

Individually one or two of the films weren't
too bad; but collectively they were just depress-
ing.

The M.O.I. Films Division will undoubtedly
say the films were not supposed to be seen to-
gether, and in some months' time I expect they
will also be able to say that the individual films
like Newfoundland at war were very successful in
the countries or special fields for which they were
made. But all the same, seeing a collection of
Ministry films together is pretty depressing. The
reason : because in the whole lot there was not a
shred of hope, not a constructive idea ; there was
nothing definitely negative about them, but there
was certainly nothing even approaching positive.

It is no good comparing them to Russian films :
the circumstances are so different. But try
Canada : here is a country that in itself has been
fairly remote from the war. But the films that
they have produced have been vital and hopeful :
people may disagree about the style, but at the
end you are stimulated, and Canada, the war,
and life, seem just a bit easier.

Britain obviously has no policy: not even a
dishonest one. The Films Division's policy seems
to be to give the public all the factual informa-
tion that you can — don't try and clear up what is
happening politically or with the war — don't put
out any positive ideas — just stick to information
and you will be all right — if you do go off the
information line the films won't be shown any-
way. We are not going to risk our jobs for any
films.

The memorandum they put out the other day
for feature producers on what was good and
what was bad, was sound and sensible — the only
trouble is that the Ministry — maybe because of
pressure from above and lack of fighting spirit in
themselves — can't — won't — don't try to make
films themselves on the lines of their own
memorandum.

The personnel of the Films Division is better
than most similar people in the Civil Service.
They have produced a vast number of films:
they have succeeded despite the film trade in
getting them shown. If they were replaced the
next lot would probably be fifty times worse —
we've all seen a British Council film. But even so
is it worth their time and the one hundred odd
people who make the films time — to go on
turning out this information stuff? It is time they
sat down quietly and had a look what is on their
credit side and what is on their debit side. They
have reached a peak on production and distribu-
they haven't even sti

vitality, hope, honesty
If they are being he
e they made a fight

mbing on

SHORTS BOOKINGS
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER

( The fallowing shorts bookings are selected from t
lis! covering its members supplied by the News i.
Specialised Theatres Association.)

\ Modern Miracle

The News Theatre, Leeds
All the World's a Stage

The Tatler Theatre, Chester
Arrow Points

The Classic, Portsmouth
At the Country Fair

I he Tatler I heatre, Manchester
\ustialia Marches with Britain

The News Theatre, Bristol
Beautiful Ontario

The Tatler News 1 heatre, I oerpool /

Birds in Sprint:

Cosmo Cinema, Glasgow

< ailing Ml Cirls

The Tatler Theatre, Manchester
Ca\alcadc of Aviation

The Tatler Theatre, Chester

The Taller Newsreel 1 heatre. Neweastle-un-Tvri'
Coastline

The News Theatre. Newcastle-, ,n-Tyne /

The News I heatre. Aberdeen S

Flashing Blades

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
Gardens of Fngland

The I lassie. Baker Street, W.l /

The News Theatre, Leeds

The Tatler News Theatre, Liverpool
Getting His Wings

The News 1 heatre, Birmingham /

The News Theatre, Manchester
Heroes ol the Atlantic

The Tatler Theatre. Manchester

The News Theatre. Leeds
Highway of Friendship

Tatler Newsreel Theatre. Newcastle-on-Tsne
Historic \ irginia

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne /

Inhumation No 5 Wendell W illkic finest ol Hon

l he Vogue, S.W.I 7
Information Please No. 12

The Tatler News I heatre. 1. i\erpool t

John Bulls' Other Army

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
Journey in Tunisia

The News Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne
.liiiuiii Battle Fleet

Tatler Newsreel Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne t
Man Who i hanged the World

Embassy, Notting Hill Gate 5

March of Time No. 13— 7th Year

T lie Vogue, S.W

Classic, llendon, N.W.4

I he News 1 heatre. Newcastle-on-Tvm

Victoria Street News Theatre. S.V
Classic, Southampton
News Theatre, Aberdeen
Tatler News Theatre. Liverpool

"1 avler 1 heatre, Manchester
Taller "1 heatre, Leeds
Tatler J heatre, Chester
The News Theatre, Leeds

MiikcCs Birthday

I atler I heatre, Manchester

Miracle Makers

Waterloo Station News Theatre. *

Modern New Orleans
Classic. South Croydon

Morning Paper

The News Theatre, Birmingham
The News Theatre, Bristol
The News Theatre, Leeds

Nature's Artisans
The News Theatre, Leeds

Nature's t -Boats
The News Theatre, Leeds
I atler I heatre, Chester

Our Film

( ,mim < iiicnia. Glasgow
The News Theatre, Bristol
The News Theatre, Birmingham

The News Theatre, Newcastle-oi
Seoul Schoolchild

The News Theatre, Leeds
Superman No. 2

The News Theatre, Leeds
Take it or Leave it No. 4

The News Theatre, Newcastle-. >
I he African To-dav

Tatler Newsreel theatre Newca
Hie lighting 69th and a Half

The News Theatre, Leeds
Thrills of the Sea

News Theatre, Aberdeen
Through the Woods

The News Theatre, Bristol

The News Theatre, Aberdeen
U-Boats in the Pond

The News Theatre, Bristol
Where Tour Continents Meet

Tatler Theatre, Manchester
Winter Serenade

Tatler Theatre, Chester

from above it is
n or lose, [f they
don't the Films Division and the people they em-
ploy to make their films arc wasted man-power.
materials and money.

Yours, e

REWINDER.

Paint Pots

The News Theatre, Ncwcastle-o
Peaceful Ouelicc at War

T he News Theatre, Aberdeen
Ships of the s,-.i

I he News 1 heatre. \berdecn
So vein think von know Mum,

The News Theatre, Newcastle-o
So Now You Know

I he Nev H itri \\ i rd
Song of the ( Ivdc

FEATURE REVIVALS

Bitter Sweet

(lassie, S.W. 17

Aug. 30th

( lassie. South Croydon

30th

Divorce of Lady X

24th

Jailer 1 heatre, Chester

17th

Freedom Radio

Tatler Theatre, Chester
Hurricane

Tatler Theatre, Chester

Sept. 7th

14th

It's a Date

Tatler Theatre, Leeds

7th

I las,,c,S.W.17

6th

Major Barbara

( lassie, S.W. 17

Aug. 23rd

Classic, South Croydon

30th

1 mbassv, Notting Hill Gate

Sept. 6th

Embassy, Notting Hill Gate
Pygmalion

Classic, Southampton

Aug. 30th

23rd

The Duke of Westpoint

Tatler Theatre, Chester

Till We Meet Again

Tatler Theatre, Leeds

Sept. 14th

1 upper I akes a Trip

Tatler Theatre, Chester

Aug. 31st

SIGHT

and

SOUND

The

Autumn Issue

is now

OUT

6d.

THE BRITISH HEM INSTITUTE,

4 GREAT RUSSELL STREET,

LONDON, W.C.1

NEWS LETTER

CONTENTS

TODAY NOT TOMORROW
NOT] S OF THE MONTH
M.O.I. — WHAT PLANS IIAVI

spiri I UAL mil NSI\ l

NEW MINI VRY IILMS

FILM OF THF MON HI

CANADIAN FILM BOARD AT \

TO INSTRUCTIONAL FILM MAKFR;

SHOR IS MOOKINC.S

VOL 3 NO 9

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON Wl

TODAY NOT TOMORROW

The prime minister, reporting to the House of Commons on the
Russian position, said that he had found it difficult to explain to
the Russians the problems of this country in failing to come more
rapidly to Russia's assistance. He said that it was difficult for a
great land power to understand the difficulties facing a great sea
power in planning any considerable offensive. While this lack of
understanding is bad for political reasons, it is a disgraceful reflec-
tion on our information and propaganda services, that after so
many months of association, we have still not explained ourselves,
or our contribution to the war effort, to our Ally.

How badly we have failed is well illustrated by recent newspaper
despatches from Russia on our film showing and distribution there.
Films are a method of propaganda and information well recognised
by the Russians, and a medium that they have powerfully and suc-
cessfully used in this country. Apart from the deep sympathy for
a country that is carrying the major burden of a war, the people
of this country have been given a greater appreciation of Russia
through the amazingly good film propaganda they have done.
There is no doubt that we have the films to do a similar job in
Russia. In quantity and quality of production there is a great
body of films that would give the Russian people an accurate
picture of our contribution to the joint effort.

There is no doubt, as the Prime Minister has endorsed, that the
Russian Government and people are profoundly disturbed by our
seemingly small contribution. Yet we have a great story to tell —
we carried the burden of the fight against Fascism alone for a long
period— we are now making a great effort in the weakening of
Fascist resources. That story is on the screen, but it does not get to
Russia. It appears that a certain few films have been sent, but at
least one of them was not well calculated to improve Anglo-Russian
relations.

There are two instances in recent newspaper reports: in the
first, a report on a two-day congress arranged by the Soviet Film
Committee and Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Coun-
tries. At the congress all the great figures of the Soviet cinema
spoke— Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko — and The Times man
who reported the congress said that, "it was inevitably mainly of
the American cinema that most of those who took part spoke,
though British newsreel operators were mentioned by the director
of that remarkable documentary film Leningrad at War, . . .
British documentary films, the most notable achievement of the
British film industry, appear to be virtually unknown here.

"Speakers were interested in the cinema as a political instrument

and urged that the Western film industry, with all its immense
technique and experience, should now concentrate on the task of
interpreting the war." It appeared that British films, at the congress,
were represented by the Private Life of Henry VfH and a newsreel
of a Mediterranean convoy. The Times correspondent went on to
say that, "it is to be hoped that before long steps will be taken to
bring to Moscow a representative collection of British documentary
films which, even if they are shown only to a restricted audience,
would aid much to cement the cultural relations that are growing,
in spite of all difficulties, between the Allies."

The second instance is the message sent by the film workers of
Russia to British film workers. In their message they said that they
had seen the films entitled London Holds Ota. British A. A. Gunners,
Women in the Air Service, and other films.

It is disgraceful after so many months and with such a wealth
of film telling our story, that we should be represented in this way
in Russia. Many tales are told of transport difficulties ; in fact The
Times in a leader, said it considered the matter of vital importance,
and stated that only six pounds a fortnight can be sent by air and a
package takes three months by sea to get to Kuibyshev. But Russia
has been in the war a long time and we have made a great many
films for a long time, and an aged feature film and a newsreel is
surely not well calculated to give the Russian film workers a good
impression of the job which Britain is doing to interpret the war.
Presumably the transport problem cuts both ways, and if Russia
can flood this country, indeed she has flooded all the Allied coun-
tries, with film, these difficulties of transportation may be ones of
imagination or incompetence. There is a rumour that a ton of film
has been in a warehouse in a country adjacent to Russia. That
kind of excuse is not good enough. We can explain ourselves to
Russia, and film is by far the best medium. To quote The Times
leader in conclusion: —

"This is the more deplorable in that we have just the kind of film
which Russian people would be likely to appreciate. Into the develop-
ment of British 'documentaries', which set out to dramatise the
worker, the organisation in which he works and the social problems
which beset him, there has gone more energetic thinking and more
integrity of purpose than into any other kind of English film. They
have been made not with one speculative eye on what it might please
a particular audience to be shown, but with the simple minded purpose
of studying their subjects and of disengaging from them what is
significant. As evidence of what we are doing and of what we are,
they have the impartiality of honest art."

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER SEPTEMBER 1942

NOTES OF THE MONTH

Five Minutes and Trailers

exhibitors, especially independents, have given thousands of hours
of free running time to the country and on top of that have booked
and paid for quite a number of the better propaganda films.

But there are also some cinemas, especially among the circuits,
who have never shown a five-minuter and quite a large number,
50 per cent, who go to the trouble of cutting the trailers off the end
of the newsreel.

The excuse is usually that there is not time to fit the 1 \ minute
trailer or the 6+ minute film into the programmes. Quite a number of
these cinemas have found time to run advertising films however.

Now, not running an ordinary propaganda film is not helping
the country or the war. But recently the Ministry issued a film
called A New Fire Bomb and it was of vital importance that everyone
in the country should see the film immediately. Even this film on
which the lives of people actually depend, was not run in some cine-
mas. Knowing the exhibitors' love of business you would have
thought that they would have been inclined to run it just to keep
their audience alive so that they could continue coming to the
cinema. But joking apart, any exhibitor who did not run this film
moves from the unpatriotic class and becomes an actual traitor.

Falling Stars

pity ihe film stars. At the age of seventeen, dewy and innocent,
they commence their careers. If they are lucky, they may make the
grade somewhere around the age of twenty-three, still dewy but
hardly as innocent. Featured players, lovely, young, the delight of
the camera. The world is at their feet, every advertisement, every
magazine, tells us the charming secrets of their blameless private
lives. The box office gives them a welcome which, if it is not enthusi-
astic, does at least show promise of better things to come. They
shine brightly for a few films, sometimes their names even figure
in front of the film's title in the advertisements. Clark Gable and
Miss So-and-So with the magic, prestige-giving word, IN, after the
much plugged name. They look as though they are set for stardom.
But then comes a kind of a shadow, a lull in this busy career. The
bright star fades a little. Interest wanes. How many pretty faces
can one dimly remember fading, fading, only to be remembered
when the yellowing leaves of some old film magazine are idly
turned. Youth and beauty and a tiny talent are obviously not
enough.

To this story there are exceptions. The lives of those whom some-
body so aptly called the cinemoppets must be another kind of hell,

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands for the use of film as a medium of propaganda and
instruction in the interests of the people of Great Britain
and the Empire and in the interests of common people all
over the world.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey Alexander Shaw Donald Taylor
John Taylor Basil Wright

We are prepared to deliver from 3 — 50 copies in bulk to
Schools, Film Societies and other organisations.

Owned ami published by

FILM CENTRE LTD.
.34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON W.l GERRARD 4253

first trying to look years older than they are and then, as time's
withering hand falls, trying desperately to look years younger.

The names which delight us and the box office have been with us
many, many years. We pay to see Jean Arthur, Garbo, Claudette |
Colbert, Myrna Loy, Dietrich, Margaret Sullavan, Bette Davis
Even among the men, to whom presumably age should not offer
such perils, it is Gable, Boyer, Crosby, Gabin, Chaplin and Laurel
and Hardy to see whom we willingly pay our shillings. With due
respect to our acknowledged favourites and at the risk of seeming
ungallant we suggest that none of these charmers, male and female,
could be called chickens. Many years of hard work and lots of
experience have brought them to the top. Compare luscious Miss !
Lana Turner with Miss Dietrich. Miss Turner has youth and even '
more than it takes, but somehow Miss Dietrich makes much more ]
of a mark. And yet Hollywood is thought of as a paradise of youth.
Many years have passed since The Atonement of Gosta Baling, \
Ten Cents a Dance, The Blue Angel, Manslaughter, The Man who
Played God and the Fu Manchu films showed us Garbo, Stanwyck,
Dietrich, Colbert, Bette Davis and Jean Arthur, all of them still
stars even if they have, in their long careers, suffered temporary
eclipses. Can you remember Myrna Loy as a perpetual Eastern
temptress. Ginger Rogers as a chorus girl with a couple of lines,
William Powell a snake in the desert? It all took place many years
ago. And yet it must be admitted that one gesture of any of these
favourites is worth all the curves of an Oomph. Ping or Ting-a-ling
girl or any bronzed young man however laughing his torso.

So pity the poor dears, who in the flush of youth, when Nature
is with them, beck and nod and wreathed smile included, know
that the laurels of true stardom cannot be won until they present
more than somewhat of a problem to the camera. At the age of
twenty-three they have Youth and Beauty, but only passing time,
brushing them gently here and there, giving experience but taking
the bloom, can give them pre-eminence and the ability to give the
perfect and enchanting performance. It must be a hell of a life.

Comings and Goings

there will be a general welcome on both sides of the Atlantic
to the appointment of George Archibald to take charge of official
British film activities in the United States. No one is better equipped
by experience and temperament for the task of bringing into closer
and more efficient relationship the use of the film as a weapon of
war in the two countries. Archibald's main job will be to build up
in America a wide distribution of films calculated to present a
picture of Britain, the British war effort and the British vision of
the future (if any should be officially forthcoming). In addition to
this, however, his presence will contribute substantially to the gear-
ing together of the propaganda machines of the two continents.
Archibald is a man of wide experience with many contacts and
interests outside the world of film. It is his experience as the head of
United Artists' European organisation which gives him his first
qualification for his present post, but his earl) days as a lawyes
and his recent experiences as a farmer, together with his contacts
with politics and civil defence (as Deputy Regional Commissioner
for the Midlands) will make him a figure of some significance in
the American scene.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER has been pressing for a long time
for the appointment of qualified overseas representatives to assist
the film effort. One good appointment has been made and we under-
stand that others are shortly to follow. Let us hope that in making
them the Ministry of Information will continue to remember that
the war has become now a very practical matter; that it is the man
who will get results with his sleeves rolled up in the workshop of
his job, rather than the scintillating drawing-room conversationalist,
odio will most impress our Allies.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER SEPTEMBER 1942

M.O.I.-WHAT PLANS HAVE YOU?

A deal of controversy rages around the M.O.I. Film Division. The

following two articles, though by different writers, present a similar

point of view

The harvest is gathered and there is
already a slight sharpness in the early
morning air. It can be felt in the fields and
in the streets and by the open windows. It
promises refreshment but it also tells of
hard days ahead. Days in which we shall
discover whether the work of the summer
has been well, done, whether the days of
preparation were well occupied.

We wonder whether this warning chill
has yet penetrated into the labyrinthine
corridors of the Ministry of Information.
Do those stout walls and wooden-hutted
door-keepers insulate against the weather as
efficientlyastheyseemto guard the inhabitants
against all other changes in the outside
world? We cannot believe that some wanton
eddy of cold air has not at least strayed,
however daringly, into that particular corri-
dor where the indestructible butterflies of
the Films Division still flash and flicker
in the shafts of the already departing sun.
Where Purple Emperor and Red Admiral,
Sulphur Yellow and Camberwell Beauty,
Swallowtail and Cabbage White dance and
dart about their business as though high
summer were eternal.

Perhaps, pretty creatures, they feel that
their toil has earned them exemption from
winter's rigours as indeed their honest
labours have given them a life which, com-
pared with the butterflies' few hours, must
seem eternal. But can they keep their colours
fresh and their wings strong when the
buddleia no longer flowers and the brave
young seedlings are cabbages, stiff and
lonely in the snow? What plans have our
gay and cynical butterflies got to carry them
through the dark days? The chill air whispers
of destruction for those who are not pre-
pared, the destruction of death, or the worse
and living death of working in a vacuum,
without results. They have many times in
the past given us fresh hope and new visions,
but now we ask ourselves whether they have
the will to do so in the future.

But enough of these entomological paral-
lels, they have but served to introduce our
question. Have the Films Division got a
plan for the future, or did they indeed ever
even have a plan for the future which is now
past? There was a time when the mere fact of
their producing films of any kind appeared
to be a sort of miracle. When the present
gang took over, after months of Civil Service

mumpings and mouthings, they faced a
lough task.

But they did manage to get films made
and to them must go the credit. They have
made all kinds of films, some good, some
bad, but good or bad they all possess one
grave defect and that defect arises from the
fact that, as far as one can tell, the films
were made to no plan. At first this lack of
planning was not apparent, but as time went
on, putting their programme into perspec-
tive, it became more and more obvious.
Production figures soared. Their films began
to cover this country at war. Factories and
food, the Services and agriculture, science
and the arts. The camera eyes of many units
were sent to look at everything and they
looked well and honestly. They collected
vast libraries of material and they turned
them into films. Everybody was busy and
enthusiastic.

It was when the Films Division came to
inspect these films which they themselves had
ordered and the scripts of which they had
finally approved, that the minds of the
film-makers were troubled. Firstly, these
films which had often taken much sweat and
toil to produce, occupying many peoples'
minds and time, were made to seem of no
importance. Officials came to the theatre as
to a torture chamber, moaning and groaning
as if in anticipation of grievous pain. There
were indeed occasions when they bounded in
all wreathed with smiles, but the smiles quickly
turned to frowns when they discovered that it
was not the latest Paramount musical which
they had been invited to see.

Then after the showing comes the inquest
and here the complete lack of planning
begins to show itself.

The officials are prepared to praise or
blame, to argue the nicety of a cut or the
quality of a piece of sound, to regale the
company with their own personal reactions
to the film even before it has ceased running.
But few ever talk of the film in relation
to a programme, whether it supplements
another film or whether it falls into its place
in a scheme. Few ever discuss whether
that film is going to carry any message to
anybody or whether the many and varied
audiences who will see it will respond to it.

This state of pother continues. Films are
ordered and after many struggles with this
department and that they get made and

are eventual!) shown. To what purpose is
all this activity?

Surely propaganda, to be effective, must
present different aspects but they must all
be aspects of the same truth. And where,
in any Ministry film is that binding, inspiring,
vitalising truth to be found. This film says
kill your rats, this film says give your baby
black-currant juice, this film says look at
Britain enjoying itself, this film says here is
a bombing raid and this film says here are
the healers at work. All these films give their
immediate message more or less well — the
dance hall is as large as life, the bombing
raid bears the stamp of truth, the rats are
artfully destroyed. But nothing adds up, the
total effect is only as great as each single
film. What has gone before and what is to
come raise no cumulative image to inspire
and fortify. Yesterday we showed you a
factory worker, today we give you food,
tomorrow we will show you Russians.
Unless we have a bright idea and decide
to show you potted shrimps instead.

The Big Job

Nobody would deny that the films being
made are doing part of a good job, but many
believe that they could do more. The line is
missing, the flaming, burning belief in the
message is not there. This belief should run
through all the films from rats to Hurricanes,
transforming them, integrating them and
strengthening them.

That is the big job of the Ministry. There
is a job vacant. "Wanted. An Angel complete
with flaming sword to guard the Ministry
doors and cry continually, 'Embrace Belief
all ye who enter here'."

It would need an angel ; but in the mean-
time the Films Division could help by tidying
up their house a little. While doing so they
might even discover the angel tangled up in
the telephone wires or smothered under the
memos and minutes. Their organisation and
planning seems specifically arranged to
produce chaos and nothing else. Their
elementary arithmetic is that of the clowns
in the harlequinade dividing up the fish.

It would appear that they usually start
by making an effort to organise. This
company shall make this film plus a certain
number of others, another company shall
make such and such. It is all very fair and
very just and entirely crazy. For having
apportioned their films they sit back and
wait results. They do not take into account
the fact that some of the films may be in
preparation for weeks, some may get bogged
in inter-Ministerial arguments and some
languish and die because nobody is in-
terested. On paper a film unit may be fully
occupied, in reality the entire unit may be

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER SEPTEMBER 1942

doing nothing, while two script writers
wrestle with innumerable official problems.

One of the most frequent causes of delay
is due to the fact that the film-makers, who
have no official status, are often left to do
jobs which should be done by the Ministry.
This often suggests lack of co-ordination
between the Ministry of Information and the
particular Ministry concerned with the film in
hand. That the Films Division in consultation
with their film-makers, should decide how the
message should be turned into celluloid
no one will deny, but there should surely be
some agreement between the Films Division
and the relevant Ministry on what that
message should be. At present the film-
maker shuttles to and fro between Minis-
tries, a tiring referee in some eternal boxing
match. Or again, within the Films Division
itself, there is often disagreement. One
person passes a script and the film is put in
hand. Somebody else within the Films
Division then sees the script and disagrees
over certain points. Work on the film is
stopped while everybody argues the toss.

A film is commissioned and work on the
script started. The first draft is approved
with minor alterations, the second is ap-
proved, a shooting script is prepared —
everything is running smoothly. The unit
is ready, the budget prepared. Then every-
thing falls to pieces. It is discovered that
other, expert, departments have heard
nothing of the film at all and are perhaps
rightly annoyed that they have not been
consulted. They are usually in a strong
enough position to hold the film up and so
we go back to the beginning again with
a new treatment wanted.

An Efficiency Plan

Perhaps a film on a certain technical
subject is given to a unit to make. The film
is a success and obviously by the time it is
shown there are two or three people in that
unit who have learnt a good deal about the
subject and have got to know the experts
involved. The Ministry decide to have
another film made on another angle of the
same subject. Do they go to the unit who
made the first film? Of course not. They
give it to a different unit who start at the
beginning and go through all the same
preliminary stages again, learning the stuff
from the letter A. Nobody wants to spend
a life-time making films on one subject,
but there is surely room for an efficiency
plan here, a plan whereby it is not neces-
sarily the same directors that make every
film, but a plan that allows for the same
script writers and contact makers.

There are a dozen other instances which
could be cited by any film unit whereby
the work in hand could be organised and
made efficient, but before we leave this
question, we would like to mention very
softly and quietly the matter of the
Ministry of Information Library. We are

not quite certain who is responsible for this
delightful little cess-pit, whether it is the
Crown Film Unit or the Films Division,
but as it contains all the Films Division
material, it should be their job to see that it
is run properly. By now it must contain the
finest and most comprehensive collection of
material ever assembled. Library material
is often an essential part of war propaganda
films, saving as it does, time, money and
labour. Often the material is unique and
cannot be shot again. So rich in material
is it that, in fact, it should be nearly always
possible to use library shots that have
never been seen before by the public.

Can anybody get a shot out of it even
when instructed to do so by the Films
Division? No. There are editors who but
yesterday were sane and healthy and who,
to-day, are gibbering lunatics, staring wild-
eyed at those strips of celluloid which carry
the words "Missing Scene". Editors who
have made the long sad journey to Pinewood
and wrestled for hours with the chaos in
the library. There are cutting-copies which
have grown old and dusty waiting for the
one missing shot which somebody once
glibly said could be got from the library.
But enough of this horrible subject. We
have only forced ourselves to mention it —
and the mere thought is an acute pain —
because we believe that to make a muddle
of the everyday things is also to muddle the
major issues.

And so it goes on. Many of the difficulties
are of course, merely part of the inevitable
hold-ups due to the war for which the films
are being made, but many are just the result
of plain bad planning.

Thus there is a situation in which film
propaganda is being emasculated for want of
a major plan, which means first of all a lack
of faith, a need for a belief. On a secondary
plane it is doubly difficult to make film propa-
ganda owing to the lack of day-to-day
planning by the executives of the Films
Division — the two problems are we believe
inter-related.

Let the Films Division have an autumn
cleaning and put their house in order and
then let them pause and ask themselves
exactly what they are getting at. We shall be
surprised if they find an immediate answer.
The mere fact of considering the matter
may, of course, only result in yet another
carefully initialled file. We prefer to believe
that they could find a solution which could
be a message of faith to us all.

In the summer time the butterflies flew
bravely and gave us fresh hope. Now, if
they would do the same glad job in the dark
winter months and bring us and our Allies,
the Americans, the Russians and the
Chinese, heartening messages of ourselves at
war, they must plan.

Peacock and Fritillary, Red Admiral and
Purple Emperor, what are you doing and
where are you going?

Spiritual

Offensive

Mr. brendan bracken recently made
one of his rare public pronouncements.
The Minister of Information had made a
discovery about the British people. "The
British" he said, "have a sort of relish for
bad news. The Government were never
more popular than when the news was
absolutely frightening. It was when they got
a victory or two that people said, 'How much
longer are these old codgers going to remain
in office?' "

If the British people were indeed as com-
placently masochistic as Mr. Bracken sug-
gests (it is interesting that his opposite
number Dr. Goebbels, put forward a similar
idea during the blitz) then no one would have
to bear so much of the blame as the man
whose professional responsibility it is to
minister to British morale. Fortunately,
however, Brendan Bracken cannot be
accused of turning us into passively appre-
ciative spectators of national crises, he can
only be suspected of not minding if we
should become something of that kind.

The Bracken tendency

We do not know whether the Minister
of Information is interested in films. Yet
even if he is quite unaware of the work of
the Films Division, the fact remains that the
Bracken tendency to turn a beaming eye
upon warning signals appears to be influ-
encing even this Division — the most realistic-
ally-minded of his Ministry. For the Films
Division increasingly shows signs of being
lost in the abstract philosophical con-
templation of triumph and disaster as
equally transient phenomena ("impostors",
Kipling called them) which are incapable of
affecting the manifold and delightfully
quixotic virtues of the British people. "We
British people are wonderful" they seem to
say. "Quite apart from how the war is
going, look how tough the people of Dover
still are, look what a jolly time working-
class people have when they throw a party
and look what a bunch of bright boys work
in the docks." For these are the main
propaganda messages to be derived from
21 Miles, Hoik Party and Dockers, three
recent five-minuters selected at random and
above average in imagination and sincerity
of approach. Other films show how even the
most apparent l> useless jobs may be part of
the war effort (Essential Jobs), how the
Army makes sure to put the right man in the
right job (The Rig/it Man), how pleasant it
is on a troopship (Troopship) and how we
won the Battle of Britain back in 1940
( This Da) Saved the World). All these films
have been made in the last month or two

nod \ikm\k\ news i r: i ikk September IV42

and during the same period we have had
a few films discreetly hinting at social
reform — New Towns for Old and Rehabili-
tation for example.

What is the total propaganda effect of
the foregoing list of productions? Together
with a number of first-rats technical instruc-
tional films they represent a considerable
proportion of the recent M.O.I, output for
home distribution. Surely we can say no
more for them than that they tell us (and,
in some cases, our Allies too) that we are
a remarkable people engaged in a variety of
wonderful activities. We have our whimsical
forgivable little faults of course, but for the
most part we are God's gift to civilisation.

Notice also that the message of British
magnificence which they carry is presented
not with fire or passion but only with a hum-
drum self-assurance. In none of these films is
there any quality which tears at the heart as
would a true picture of a great people in the
critical agonies of a struggle to survive.

Although in its present phase, we are losing
the war, only very occasionally do we get
any hint from an M.O.I. film of the great
historical importance of the days through
which we are passing. No attempt is made to
inspire us with the grandeur of the issues.
Strangely enough we can do it for other people
but not for ourselves. Bad news or good news,
it's all the same to us, says the Minister and
his Ministry. But we can feel more deeply
about China — for look at Chiang Kai-shek
Visits India, a supremely simple and supreme-
ly moving little film.

The Films Division must show* us in its
propaganda what are the "vitalities", the
living issues involved. The people of this
country have no "relish for bad news".
If they have become indifferent to news,
good or bad, it is because the good news
they really wish to hear, the news of a new
and vital world to be won, has always been
withheld from them.

But it is not only a question of viewing the
war with passion. There is a demand also
for reasoned films of world strategy which
will take good news and bad news out of the
chaotic jumble of parochial conceptions and
fit them into a world pattern. Such films
are the best possible antidote for jingoistic
complacency.

Before the war it was widely suspected
overseas that Britain was in decay. The
principal symptom was a national listlessness
and want of vitality. The events of 1940
began to disprove the theory, but the proof
will not be complete until we have demon-
strated a vitality which not only can defend
us against seemingly hopeless odds but which
also can take the spiritual offensive. In
inspiring and articulating this national
renaissance Mr. Bracken and his Films
Division have a task for which they should
be prepared to forsake the amused or
admiring contemplation of English idio-
syncrasy.

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

His Majesty's Jollies. Production: Paramount
News. Director: G. T. Cummings. Two reels.
Subject: The Royal Marines. M.O.I.
Treatment: Everybody slips up now and again,
and the better they are the harder they fall.
Paramount News have the well-earned reputa-
tion of presenting first class material in a first-
class way. In this film they have certainly got the
material — there is one staggering pan shot
across a parade ground which looks like a de
Mille arena shot and some superb invasion
practice stuff— but nothing much has been done
with it. There is a half-hearted attempt to peg the
whole thing on to one young recruit but this
doesn't get us very far. No character will come to
life just because a few shots are taken of him at
random. Probably more natural sound would
have helped.

I'lo/hiK'ciiida Wiluc: The film covers the ground
and shows us what the Marines' job is and how
they train. That's about all.

As a recruiting film it will probably do a good
job. The commentary has managed to get across
the idea of a select body of men with tradition
and determination and a feeling of adventure.
But with such a grand subject it could hardly
have done otherwise.

[note : We were sorry that Ian Coster was not
in time for inclusion in the film. Perhaps one
day he will give us the real story which this film
might have told.]

National I ire Service Mobilising Procedure. Shell
Film Unit. Director: Kay Mander. Camera:
Pat Gay. Producer: E. Anstey. Two-reel
training film. M.O.I.

This is an exhaustive treatment of fire-fighting
organisation under blitz conditions, made with
painstaking accuracy. It refuses to be side-
tracked into dwelling on truly magnificent blazes
shown but briefly in the film and sticks grimly
to the mobilisation of pumps and appliances.
Despite the background of inferno, the film gives
a picture of calm, efficient organisation carried
out by immaculately uniformed and closely co-
operating staffs. Hell may have broken loose in
London, but one has the comforting impression
that reason is in process of controlling if not
mastering the effects of maniacal destruction.
The film carries out its job of exposition com-
petently, and should prove to be useful for
training purposes.

C.E.M.A. Strand Film Co. Producer: Alex
Shaw. Directors: John Banting, Dylan Thomas,
Charles de Lautour, Alan Osbiston, Peter Scott,
Desmond Dickenson. Camera: Charles Marl-
borough. Two reels. M.O.I.
If this were not a non-theatrical film one would
feel justified in complaining about the tedious
and unattractive introduction in which Richard
Butler, President of the Board of Education,
outlines the purposes of the Council for the
Encouragement of Music and Art. Otherwise
the film is rich in picture and sound. It takes one
to rehearsals, to concerts, plays and recitals,
and succeeds in giving the impression that the
workers of Britain are getting entertainment of
a high standard in their spare time. What it
omits to tell is how much of this entertainment
is given and how widespread it is. It does show
the use being made of available buildings,
churches.

In this film an experiment in production was
made by utilising dilferent directors for different
episodes. As the film that follows Mr. Butler's
introduction is impressionist and not explana-
tory, the experiment would seem to have suc-
ceeded in giving added colour and vitality.

H. M.S. King George V. Verity Films. Compiled
by L. Laurence from material shot by Raymond
Elton. One reel. M.O.I.

An account of life on the battleship with but
little omitted in showing "how the wheels go
round". An intelligent schoolboy would be im-
pressed though perhaps not thrilled or inspired
to join the Navy. The chief defect is that the sea
plays no part in the film and the battleship seems
capable of every function but that of sailing.
As a result the ship does not acquire a personality
and inspires no devotion or affection. However,
the film gives a great deal of information and
leaves one impressed by the efficiency and
ingenuity displayed by shipbuilders, engineers,
and by the Navy.

Chiang Kai-shek in India. Indian Film Unit.
Director: Ezra Mir. Re-commentated for Britain.
Five minutes. M.O.I.

Most has been made of the slender material
available, mainly newsreel, and of a sympa-
thetically worded commentary. The film gives
some slight information about China, shows
us brief pictures of the Chinese people and
devotes most of its time to showing Chiang Kai-
shek and his wife on their visit to India. It is
a pity that more information about the objects
of the visit had not been given in the commentary
and that the significance of the event had not
received greater emphasis.

Worker and War Front No. 2. Non-Theatrical.
Composite production by several units. One reel.
M.O.J.

This series may well turn out to be a refreshing
break-away from the routine M.O.I, film. The
second issue covers three or four subjects.
The opening one gives a telling comparison
between the great social event, the Agricultural
Show of 1939, and a war-time agricultural show
which is down to earth and down to business.
A second item deals with the National Seamen's
Union and its advantageous removal from
bombed-out London premises to a country
mansion and estate. A lively item is from
Russia showing factory workers entertaining
their fellows during leisure hours.

Clamping Potatoes. Realist Film Unit. Ministry
of Information for Ministry of Agriculture.
8 minutes.

An instructional film for farmers. A pleasant,
well-made film. The story is clearly told and the
potatoes well and truly clamped.

A New Fire Bomb. Shell Film Unit. Director:
Napier Bell. Producer: Edgar Anstey. Camera:
Stanley Rodwell. 5 minutes. M.O.I.

An explanation of how to deal with the new
fire bomb that contains an explosive charge. This
film does its job very well indeed and leaves no
doubts about the correct method of procedure.

{Cor,

ed on page 130)

!)()( I MINI \RY MVVS I Kl IKK SEPTEMBER 1942

WAR-TIME FILM PLANS IN U.S.

i an American Correspondent

Cince America came into the war a large
'"-'number of changes have been made in the
United States Government and commercial film
set-up. America has been quicker to press
forward with war-time film plans than England
was. The war is, of course, three years older
than it was when the Ministry of Information
set up its Film Department and the war is at
a much more critical stage.

In peace-time a number of American Govern-
ment departments had their own film producing
and distribution departments; for example, the
Department of Agriculture maintained a Pro-
duction Department which turned out a large
number of films dealing with the Government's
policy in agriculture, and also films explaining to
farmers the new techniques of farming as they
were developed in the Government's research
stations.

This department ran a film library and agents
round the country showed the films on 16 mm.
projectors to farmer audiences. A number of
other Government departments such as the
Department of Commerce and the Bureau of
Mines operated on a similar basis. There was,
therefore, in the Government set-up a good
precedent for film production and distribution.

Throughout the country State Universities
and Municipal Authorities supported film libra-
ries. Most of these operated to cover the territory
of a State and the University Extension Depart-
ment was the moving force.

Through these libraries and from the Govern-
ment Central Libraries at Washington some
25,000 16-mm. projectors were served. But the
production was piecemeal, there was little
relation between the activities of one Govern-
ment Department and those of another, and high
standards of production were exceptional.
Sometimes, however, brilliant, if sporadic,
ventures produced outstanding films. We all
remember the period in which Lorentz turned
out such notable films as The Plow That Broke
the Plains and The River.

British versus U.S.

On the whole, however, United Stales docu-
mentary compared unfavourably with British
documentary. The reason for this is easily found.
British documentary films were the first films to
put Britain on the screen. For a long period
commercial British production aped Hollywood
products and there was no recognisable picture
of Britain on British screens. Then came early
documentary films and commanded attention
not only for their high technical standard and
for their interesting experiments but also for the
picture of a real and recognisable Britain which
they put on the screen. In the United Slates this
curious situation did not, of course, obtain
Hollywood, in spue of its many faults and
shortcomings, was always American. If the
picture of America which spread over the screens
of the world was not authentic it was at least
recognisable. Americans learned of themselves
from American lilms. There still remained a need
for films of authentic American life, but the
need was not so apparent there as it was in
England.

There was not, therefore, the demand for
documentary production in America and the
few documentary producers did not gain wide
currency for their pictures in American theatres.
Only a few very outstanding American docu-
mentaries commanded theatrical distribution.

After 1939, and before America came into
the war, the American production programmes,
however, could not neglect the war. While
America was not a belligerent the catastrophe
which spread itself across three continents
began to provide America with its story material
and all America's films had to face up to the war.

The films produced by U.S. Government
Departments began to be coloured by the war.
United States agriculture was no longer a matter
of domestic concern. The United States was
beginning to look to the problem of feeding
a starving Europe and beginning to gear itself to
meet the period of reconstruction. Lease-Lend
meant that the American armament industry
was beginning to operate on a war-time scale
although America herself was not a belligerent.
Films about agriculture became war films before
American was in the war. Films about industry
became war films too.

At this time the film field in America was still
un-coordinated. The existing departments con-
tinued to produce their programmes as in peace-
time, although their subject matter became more
warlike.

The Office of Emergency Management began
to produce films describing America's non-
belligerent participation in the war, but the
film unit operating from this office had no
relations with the existing peace-time Govern-
ment units.

The Office of the Co-ordinator for Inter-
American Affairs, which concerns itself with the
relations between the United States and the
Latin American Republics was pressing ahead
with a programme of cultural films to promote
understanding and sympathy for the United
States in Latin America, and for the South
American Republics in the United States. This
programme involved the production and dis-
tribution of films in both the U.S.A. and South
America.

The State Department (America's Foreign
Office) were anxious to promote the despatch
abroad to Great Britain of any films which
would help people here to understand what
was going on in America. This was more
a gesture of good-will than a piece of actual
co-operation because a regular flow of films
was not yet available.

Here and there independent sponsors made
lilms, sometimes about their organisations and
sometimes about life in America. These were of
varying quality and remained independent pro-
ductions un-coordinated with the Government's
activities. Here and there independent docu-
mentary producers were raking together the
handful of dollars which would enable them to
make a onc-reeler according to their own
preferences.

This was the situation in America until the
summer of this year; a considerable acti\it\.
unrelated, competing and not very productive.

In the summer of this year, by an executive
order of the President, a new Office was created
This was, in fact, America's Ministry of Informa-
tion— the Office of War Information. Radio
Commentator and ex-journalist Elmer Davis
became its chief. He is responsible for all
information services at home and abroad with
the exception of the Office of the Co-ordinator
of Inter-American Affairs which continues its
cultural activities as before. (The work of this
office was fully described in the last issu<
D.N.L.) Under Davis there is a Film Bureau, i
Director of this is Lowell Mellett and the Chief
of Production is Sam Spewack. Mellett has his
representative in Hollywood, Arthur Poynter.
Facing this official department stands the War
Activities Committee representing the Industry.
Mellett, in collaboration with the War Activities
Committee, can arrange for the production and i
for the distribution of information films. This is
done in two ways. At the Hollywood end the \
commercial shorts producers have pledged
themselves to produce at least 26 short films per
year. These will be in place of part of Holly-
wood's normal shorts output and will be distri-
buted through the existing channels for shorts
distribution. The subjects will be proposed to
the War Activities Committee at Hollywood by
Mellett's representative there. They will be
financed by the industry and distributed in the
usual manner. O.W.I, through their own filmu
will produce twenty-six information films, and '
these will be distributed through the War
Activities Committee on a free basis. Fourteen
thousand motion picture houses have pledged
themselves to show these films. This means in
round terms that the O.W.I, will be responsible
for a film each week in the cinemas of America.

History of the War

Outstanding among Mellett's theatrical releases
is The World at War, a seven-reel news reel c
pilation edited by Sam Spewack, who wrote
the narration. This is a history of the war s"
Japan fired the first shots into China. The film
is outstanding for its brilliant editing and clever
cutting. Nearly all the material is, in fact
familiar to regular cinemagoers, but the careful
choice of shots and the brilliant commentary
gives the Sim pace and a new freshness.

Mellett's Film Bureau will be primarily con-
cerned with the production of films for the
United States and their release there. Another
department will be responsible for films about
America going overseas. This Bureau is headed
by playwright Robert Sherwood and his film
officer is Robert Riskin who recently studied
the Ministry of Information's work at London.

In practice, Riskin will work in close collab-
oration with Mellett and it is probable that
most of his films for overseas will be re-edited
versions of the films which Mellett prepares for
the Unites States. There is. however, a growing
realisation that films must be specially produced
for overseas and that in Great Britain, for
example, there is a growing demand for films
which will describe the life and character of the
United States.

Official visitors from Britain's Ministry of
Information have made it clear to the United
States Government that Hollywood has not
given a full enough picture of life in the United
States and that in Lngland there is as much
ignorance of \mcrican life as there is in America
of the life o[' Lngland. That this problem is of

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER SEPTEMBER 1942

first importance is realised on both sides of the
Atlantic, and now with the intermingling of
Americans with the English population a clearer
picture of their background and of their customs
is necessary. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the
Sherwood-Riskin Office will secure the produc-
tion of films specially designed to give the
English people a fundamental understanding of
the American people.

The Office of the Co-ordinator of Inter-
American Affairs continues to work indepen-
dently of the O.W.I. Already a series of films
dealing with South American Republics is being
released non-theatrically in the United States
and films on America are beginning to percolate
into the Latin American Republics. Nelson
Rockefeller is the Co-ordinator of Inter-Ameri-
can Affairs and his film plans are in the hands
of Kenneth MacGowan and Philip Dunn.

The film programmes of the Services remain
independent. As in England a fairly clear distinc-
tion is made between films for the Services and
films for the general public. While O.W.I, chief
Elmer Davis is given the right to control all film
policy, in practice the Services go their own way.

Hollywood names head the Army's film de-
partments. Lt.-Col. Darryl Zanuck is in charge of
all training films and Major Capra looks after
morale films. Major William Wyler is in charge of
U.S. Army Air Corps films.

Out on the wing is the little talked of Office
of Strategic Services which reports and advises
the President on strategy. Commander John
Ford is in charge of films in this section and has
already shot thousands of feet of operational
and strategic material.

Out of Ford's material shot at the Battle of
Midway Island has been made an 18-minute
short which is being released in America through
O.W.I. It has now been received in this country
and will shortly be seen on British screens.

This film is particularly interesting as it is the
product of a little developed technique; 16-mm.
cameras shooting on Kodachrome were used
and Technicolour 35-mm. prints were made by
enlargement. The film was then cut and scored
and issued to the theatres in its 35-mm. form.
This is, of course, a process which cannot be
carried out in England at the moment. English
laboratories are not equipped to enlarge 16-mm
Kodachrome. The results are not only interesting
but quite spectacular as first class photographic
material is achieved by this enlarging process.

New Strategy

Now that the American Government have
introduced the element of order into what was
chaotic the next problem is the working out of
ew strategy of film propaganda. Already,
departments which had been working inde-
pendently, for example, the Office of Civilian
Defence, are being brought into line and made
part of one film effort.

The next problem is to secure international
strategy in film work. In this respect the U.S.
occupies a key position. It is a hemispheric
centre. To the north lies the vigorous National
Film Board of Canada with a domestic and
foreign plan. To the south lie Latin American
I Republics with a rapidly developing organisation
of exchange with the U.S.

New York is the practical headquarters of
the O.W.I.'s Film Bureau, and at New York
also is the British Information Services.

The British Film Service which here operated
an a limited front has now been re-organised.
Mr. George Archibald is to take over the

direction of this important service and will have
under him departments dealing with the the-
atrical distribution of British Government films
in America and with the non-theatrical distri-
bution of the Ministry of Information's films.
A British Film Library, already established at
New York, is in the process of de-centralisation
to Washington, Chicago, San Francisco and
Los Angeles. Various M.O.I, officials have
recently visited the United States and it is
believed that a programme of collaboration
with the United States Government has been
worked out.

Apart from the desirability that authentic
pictures describing life in Great Britain should
be available to a wide American public, either
theatrically or non-theatrically, there is the
constant need to show America that Great
Britain is a worthy ally. Deeper than this lies
the problem of sustaining a sound Anglo-
American relation based on a knowledge that
both democracies are facing the same way and
that both countries have the same standards of
decency and the same objects of endeavour.

Planned Production

That the Anglo-American relation, or more
properly, the United Nations relation, should be
properly sustained it is clear that a more all-
embracing plan of strategy should now operate
in the interests of economy of material, men
time and effort.

Production must be planned.

Canada and the United States will both want
the same kind of material from the war fronts.
London will be the advance post from which
operational units can work and the onus will
be on the M.O.I, to see that operational material
goes to America.

From the United States and from Canada will
come the stories of the United Nations reserves
of food and materials. Only by collaboration
with New York can this material find its way into
the films which Britain will see. At the moment
the affairs of Latin America are tied into the
Inter-American relation. Collaboration at New
York must see that these come into the wider
perspective of the United Nations' front and
that material used to explain the South American
Republics to America is made available to ex-
plain them to the wider world on this side of the
Atlantic.

Collaboration must yield planned production,
and in view of the necessity to conserve film
material, that collaboration must also achieve
planned release. Nations fighting on the battle-
fields for their existence must not fight each
other for screen space.

O.W.I. , through its War Activities Committee,
must be the channel to American screens and
the M.O.I., through its distribution departments,
will be the channel to British screens. The con-
trollers of these channels must collaborate not
only in the interest of economy but in the
interests of a planned and effective United
Nations' information service.

Already Great Britain and Canada are pro-
viding material to the War Film Library in
Hollywood. This is organised and operated
by the Academy of Motion Pictures. Arts and
Sciences in order that Hollywood film producers
and writers can have authentic material at their
disposal for study, for re-enactment and for
incorporation in their films.

It is to be hoped that this joint effort is an
earnest of further close and practical col-
laboration.

ARE REPORTED IN

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DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER SEPTEMBER 1942

FILM OF THE MONTH

The First of the Few

THIRST of the Few begins and ends with
■* superb flying sequences covering the Battle
of Britain. Produced and directed by Leslie
Howard, it is a story with all the elements of
documentary, about the Spitfire and the man who
designed it. The documentary film maker would
have made the Spitfire the centre and hero of
his picture. First of the Few has as its hero R. J.
Mitchell, the aeroplane's designer, and the aero-
plane itself plays a secondary though important
part. The interest and appeal of the picture
mainly rely therefore on the human figure.

Leslie Howard plays the part of Mitchell
and he acts with customary charm and restraint.
The portrayal colours the whole film with this
"charm and restraint" and as a result First of
the Few is much less exciting than it should be
considering the quality and dramatic oppor-
tunities of the story, and considering also the
amount of highly skilled craftsmanship that has
gone into the making. Leslie Howard is a good
and popular actor and his face and acting are
by now well known to British audiences. Perhaps
it is this very familarity that deprives Howard's
Mitchell of real character and power. Perhaps
it is Leslie Howard himself.

If the designer were a genius, Howard's per-
formance shows little sign of the strong and
colourful personality that goes with genius.

The film sets out to tell a real-life story and
it is clear that those who made it carried out the
job with all sincerity. Their sincerity, however,

did not carry them far enough. In the sense that
the film is documentary and propaganda they
have failed on certain important points. They
have failed, for instance, in clarifying then-
attitude to the politics of a time that is in vivid
memory of most. Politics enter into the film
with the refusal of the pre-war government to
sanction more money to carry on research on
the Spitfire, and again they enter with Lady
Houston who appears in a strange interlude
backed by her slogan "Wake Up England".
It was Lady Houston who provided the money,
but the film is content with treating her as fairy
godmother without further examination of her
political activities. The politics of the time cause
Mitchell to expend a great deal of unnecessary
time and energy in combating indifference, but
in spite of the important part this plays in his
life, no clear picture is given of pre-war politics
and no definite line is taken. This is a loss to the
film and one that is not likely to be overlooked
by audiences who are a good deal more politic-
ally conscious than they used to be.

There are other defects which could be over-
looked in a less important and less realistic film.
One is in the emphasis on the Spitfire as the aero-
plane that saved Britain. But surely Hurricanes
shared in the Battle of Britain!

Another defect is in neglecting to give fuller
details of the designing and building of the aero-
plane. The chain that holds the film together is
the building and perfecting of the fighter. The

audience's interest is aroused from the start
by reference to technical details, but for the most
part, the film fails to explain technicalities that
even the layman can now in war-time under-
stand. In addition, the film never clears up the
cause of the myserious crash that occurs during
a trial in America.

The turning points of the film is when Mitchell
visits Germany and discovers how far advanced
the Germans are in aeronautics. This section
of the film is well handled. From conversations
with Germans (who are made to appear rational
human beings) Mitchell is convinced about the
inevitability of the war and sees that his job is to
produce a fighter that can beat all others. Aware
of the extreme urgency. Mitchell overworks c
the Spitfire and manages to complete it before
his death. From the sacrifice of his life for this
purpose the film receives its title.

Despite its shortcomings First of the Few has
many good points. It is also a smooth, highly-
polished job of work with possibly greater
propaganda value abroad than it will have
here.

* For uour information

TN every progressive enterprise there must be leaders
-^-and those who follow behind. As artistic and
technical progress in kinematography quickens to the
tempo and stimulus of war, " KINEMATOGRAPH
WEEKLY " is always to be found " up-with-the-
leaders ", its well-informed pages radiating perception
and far-sighted thinking. Kinematography' s
leaders themselves know this for truth
and turn to " K.W." week by

week for information and
enlightenment

4m*

mtfggjetf

93 LONG ACRE
LONDON W.C.2

RADIO

between Britain and the United States is
certainly bringing some liveliness on to our local
ether. Corwin's series of six programmes under
the title of A Yank in England was fine stuff.
He is a producer from the Columbia Broad-
casting System and came over to do the pro-
grammes on the spot — the job being to interpret
Anglo-U.S. relationships from the angle of the
influx of U.S. troops into this country. Corwin
is a producer who really belongs to radio, and
there must be few others who can use his impu-
dent technique and get away with it — at any rate
without muddling the listener. Although de-
signed for U.S. audiences, the productions were
well worth putting into English programmes.
Corwin was intelligent, by the way, in his choice
of commentator (Ed. Murrow) and composer
(Benjamin Britten). A further series is possibly
being planned.

Meantime, from the other end our ex-com-
patriot Alistair Cooke has been working on
a series called America at War in the B.B.C.
New York Studios. The best so far has been
Indiana Arsenal, the story of a small town of
800 inhabitants which becomes the site for the
biggest dry-powder munitions works in the world.
Population now 20,000. Cooke uses an im-
pressionist technique which isn't always free of
artiness and sentimentality but which maj ha\e
the advantage of giving English listeners a good
sense of atmosphere. The most important thing
about Cooke's work is, however, his ingenuity
in presenting us with a sense of the varied regions
and peoples of the U.S.A. — even the untutored
English ear. for instance, must have noticed
with interest the great variations of dialect in
the boom scenes of Indiana Arsenal.

It is reported from U.S. and Canada that the
B.B.C. has done a marvellous job of capturing
the short wave-lengths. The British programmes,
it is said, are b> far the easiest to get in contrast
to the German and Japanese. A common grouse
however, against the B.B.C. is their persistence
in putting out music when reception conditions
are bad. Most people would prefer a switch to
something spoken under such circumstances —
you can always get something out of the talking
voice even when atmospherics are being ;
nuisance.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER SEPTEMBER 1942

CANADIAN FILM BOARD AT WORK

Standing fairly high up on the banks of the
^Ottawa River and thereby considerably open
to sun, sky, and a pretty good hunk of Quebec
scenery opposite, the National Film Board is
a largeish ugly building. Across the road, with
sublime inappropriateness, lies the best piece of
architecture in Ottawa— the Embassy of Vichy
France. There are a lot of swallows, the tugs
tow the huge lumber-rafts downstream, and the
Film Board building never closes, or at any rate
not till very late at night.

It used to be the old Canadian Government
Picture Bureau, but since those days it has been
enlarged and re-equipped. There are two pro-
jection theatres, one of which is also a recording
and dubbing studio as well as being large enough
for minor sets. The labs have just been over-
hauled and new machinery installed. There is
a big stills department. And rows of cutting
rooms, camera rooms, stock rooms ; and lots of
offices full of people writing scripts and com-
mentaries, wrestling with financial schedules and
location accounts. A busy joint, in fact: for it
houses virtually the whole Canadian production
up, and of the 250 men and women em-
ployed by the Board some 190 work at these
headquarters.

Most of them are Canadians, learning their
job in very much the same tough way as the
British documentary people did in the "thirties.
But amongst them you find, in addition to the
Films Commissioner himself, a few figures

SIGHT

and

SOUND

Autumn Issue

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THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE,

4 GREAT RUSSELL STREET,

LONDON, W.C.I

known well to us in England— Stuart Legg,
Stanley Hawes, Raymond Spottiswood, John
Ferno, Joris Ivens, Irving Jacoby, Norman
Maclaren.

Two theatrical two-reelers every month, two
newsreels trailers a week, cartoon and diagram
films, training and instructional films for the
Services, all sorts of non-theatricals, including
a special series on 16 mm. Kodachrome — the
production schedule is big for a young organisa-
tion and impressive in relation to a country
bigger in area than the United States but with
a population of only 12^ million^ Add to this
the fact that the Board undertakes~the organisa-
tion of its non-theatrical distribution, has a
special department making French versions for
Quebec, and has a number of people keeping
tabs on things right across Canada as well as in
Washington and New York, and it is not sur-
prising that the N.F.B. goes on expanding and is
looking for larger premises.

By its constitution, the Film Board has more
direct power probably than any other film-
propaganda organisation among the United
Nations. It is in effect a Government Department
with statutory powers.

Actual production differs from England in
that the entire set-up is centralised and there are
virtually no outside units working to contract
(Disney's productions for the Board are an
obvious exception). Within the central body,
however, departmentalisation has been carried
out in terms of production units. There are a series
of Directors of Productions, "corresponding to
our producers, each of whom is responsible for
films turned out by the units. Each unit has an
Assistant Director of Production (our Director)
who is responsible for his own films and in
charge of the unit. Into the units are absorbed
the cameramen, editors, writers, research workers,
etc.

The system is organised to give each individual
the maximum amount of responsibility. There is,
too, a good deal of specialisation, the various
units concentrating on their own particular type
of job.

On top of all this there are a number of
Supervisors, each being in charge of a depart-
ment— e.g. Laboratories, Sound, Stills, Non-
theatrical distribution. Projection, and so on.

The whole set-up actually works very well.
Films are turned out to schedule; and the unit
system makes for fluidity, and ability to re-
organise internally with the minimum of dis-
turbance. Continual expansion is also possible
without muddle.

The Board stands in high repute with the
Film Trade and also with other Government
Departments. In other words it gets distribution
and it gets production facilities. Neither of these
would be possible if its production policy and
its box office results did not make the grade.

Quite a high percentage of women are working
on the creative production side and they look
like being a big success. The only person lacking
from this set-up is Evelyn Spice, who has not
yet been tempted back from the wheatlands of
the West by the pungent aroma of Ottawa
celluloid.

faking it by and large, you could say, to those
who remember Blackheath, that the National
Film Board is like Blackheath multiplied by five,
fully equipped, and working one hundred per
cent to schedule on an enormous production
programme. The place feels good. The people are
purposeful and not arty, and they know how to
work. And they are not only making the docu-
mentary idea an integral part of Canadian life
but also helping to push it forward towards new
and lively international perspectives.

Correspondence

TO THE EDITOR,

Sir,

My weekly filmgoing is mainly done at Brom-
ley. We have two supers there, the Gaumont
and the Odeon. Both these large circuit houses,
but particularly the Odeon, have been regular
and staunch supporters of advertising films and
there is very seldom a week when we are not
roused to jeers and boos by these disgusting
shorts. On the other hand, no doubt because
these advertising shorts occupied so much of
their programme, our two houses used, until
a few weeks ago, to show us practically no
Ministry Five-Minuters — I doubt whether they
showed them more often than one week in ten.
Recently, I am happy to say, they have taken to
showing the five-minuters regularly, but they
still support those horrid little advertising films
and this week (August 24-29) this has had a
particularly nasty result. Both the Odeon and
the Gaumont are showing a horror called
A Sweet Story advertising Mars bars and
Maltesers, which has wasted the time of the
technicians at Merton Park Studios and Techni-
color and a lot of valuable film stock and other
materials which we can ill afford to lose. Now
the feature at the Gaumont is Uncensored, in
which the British Film Industry has made a
sincere attempt to give a true and inspiring
picture of the fight of Belgian patriots against
the Nazis. But Uncensored immediately follows
A Sweet Story, and the two actors taking the
parts in the first few minutes of the film, of a
priest being dragged off to gaol by the Nazis
and a newspaper editor heroically refusing to
co-operate with them, are the very men we have
just seen on the screen as a whimsical shop-
keeper and helpful factory manager, trying to
sell us Mars bars. The result of course is fatal to
Uncensored; the audience bursts into comment
and jeers, and the hope of any useful effect from
Uncensored is ruined. This is a pretty comment
on our film business; it shows how they are
perfectly prepared to sabotage such puny war
effort as they are making. If people haven"! the
decency to give up making and showing adver-
tising films of their own accord, they should be
stopped at once, and a man like Anthony
Asquith should have more sense than to ruin
a would-be moving realistic film by the use of
typed and stagey actors.

A Correspondent

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER SEPTEMBER 1942

Film Societies

Manchester and Salford

Together the Manchester and Salford Film
Society and the Manchester and District Film
Institute Society have made arrangements for a
Czech-French film display on October 4th, in
association with the Czechoslovak Centre and
Fighting French movements in Manchester.
They will show Judas Was a Woman (La Bete
Humaine) and Czechoslovak shorts.

Film displays for the autumn session will be
at the Rivoli Cinema on October 18th, Novem-
ber 15th and December 13th.

The Annual General Meeting of the Manches-
ter and Salford Film Society will take place early
in October.

Mr. Maddison, recently honorary secretary of
the Film Institute Society, has left Manchester
on taking up another appointment, and Mr. J. H.
Black has been elected in his place. Mr. E.
Freidlaender is honorary treasurer.

Ayrshire

arrangements are in hand for the eighth
season of the Film Society of Ayrshire and
the same two theatres in use last year have been
re-engaged. Instead of the programme being
shown twice in the same day, the same pro-
gramme will be shown at Ayr and Kilmarnock
on consecutive Sunday evenings. This alteration
has been made to obviate travelling and also to
cater for men and women engaged in the war
effort.

For the opening programme the Council has
selected films to build upon the subject of
"Man the Enigma". Raymond Massey's study
of Abraham Lincoln, The Spirit of the People,
will be shown, supported by Man the Enigma
(Pathe), The \3th Instant (Kinograph) and the
Ministry of Information Blood Transfusion.
The Common Touch or Gaslight, Chico, Western
Isles and Arabian Bazaar will make up the
second programme.

The third programme on the subject
"Cartoon" will include George Pal*s Love on the
Range, How a Cartoon is Made and Transfer of
Power, while the fourth programme will be a
continental double-feature with Fredlos and
Merlusse. The fifth will have The Rich Bride
and supporting travel and scientific films, and
the Christmas programme will consist of Maeter-
linck's Blue Bird, Tales from the Vienna Woods
and Early One Morning.

(New Documentary I'ilms Continued)

We Speak to India. Everyman Films. Director:

Richard Massingham. Associate Producer: Alex
Shaw. Camera: Alex Strasser. Commentator: Z.
Bokhari. M.O.I. 5 minutes.

It is easy to forget with all' the present absorp-
tion in the unplcasantcr aspects of Indian politics
that Indians are giving direct and valuable help
to us here in Britain. The film isolates a few
Indians and shows the work they are doing here
and it pays due to the 40,000 Indian seamen in
the Merchant Service and to the men of the
Indian Army units at present in training in Eng-
land. There is a pleasant sequence in a London
tube shelter in which an Indian girl student works
on her thesis while bombs fall. I lie film is made
with feeling and sympathy, and n should prove
of useful propaganda \alue.

THE UNIT BEHIND THIS SYMBOL

Donald Taylor

PRODUCERS
DIRECTORS

Alexander Shaw

Ralph Bond
John Eldridge
Peter Scott

Charles de Latour
Alan Osbislon

SCRIPT WRITERS

Ivan Moffatt

John Banting

J. Fraser Foulsham

Reg Groves

Dylan Thomas
CAMERA DEPARTMENT

Diana King

Jo Jago
Cyril Arapoff

Charles Marlborough
CUTTING ROOM

J. Burgoyne-Johiison
John Havinden

Alan Osbiston (in chs
Oswald Hafenrichter
Leslie Pohler

rgc) Lyla Cranston
Judith Craig
John Vernon

PRODUCTION MANAGERS

Edith Burbeck

Connie Mason

Mrs. Pugh (Library)

Studio
Hal Wilson

London
Peter Price

PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS

Location
Gus Charpentier

Fred Brown

E. Whitehall

PRESS

Ronald Strode

D. Ryan

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR - MANAGING DIRECTOR
ALEXANDER SHAW - DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION

Offices: 1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l.

Tel.: GERHARD 6304/5.

Studios: NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE.

Tel.: ELSTREE 1644.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER SEPTEMBER 1942

To Instructional Film- Makers

IT is probablv \anity which is responsible lor
the complete failure of many of the instruc-
tional films at present being turned out. Film
technicians are tending to forget one of the
essentials of good craftsmanship and ihai is.
that a job, however technically brilliant, is use-
less unless it achieves its purpose. Mr. William
Wyler, when he makes a film, not only succeeds
in his first purpose, which is to entertain, but also
achieves each of his effects in that film with
deadly accuracy. Every movement, every gesture,
every line of dialogue makes its point clearly,
concisely and dramatically. This certainty of
touch is surely the hallmark of a great director.
The apparent simplicity with which it is done
ma ks immense skill and knowledge. And if
you don't think William Wyler is a great director
substitute anybody, from Pudovkin to Preston
Sturgess, whom you think is first class.

Mr. X, a film technician, finds that his war
job is the making of instructional lilms. The
films he has to work on, either as director or
editor or script writer, or in any other capacity,
may deal with any subject from health problems
to camouflaging lorries in the snow. All the films
will have one thing in common, that they have to
instruct a large number of people in how the
job is done. If they fail to do this, then they are
useless as films and Mr. X is a bad technician
and a man without any integrity. Judging by
many of the instructional films which we have
recently seen Mr. X and his fellow-workers are
very often both these things. In fact Mr. X is
trying to achieve the studio directors' elfects
without stopping to consider how that effect is
achieved.

The films are often well made, they are fre-
quently amusing and entertaining, but far, far
too often they teach absolutely nothing, fre-
quently indeed they make matters worse by

confusing what knowledge the audience may
already possess on that subject.

I here are two reasons for this failure. One
we ha\e mentioned already, the ill-judged vanity
of Mr. X. In this third year of war, far too many
him makers still cling to their old, sentimental
notions about the "Big Time". They still want to
see their names in lights or on the credit titles
accompanied by suitable orchestral chords.
They want their work to send peals of laughter
or wracking sobs through vast audiences. They
tend to despise the film about health or the film
about camouflage. This was not serious in peace
time. There were enough people who thought it
worth while learning how to dramatise social
problems to supply the demand for films abotit
health. But war has hi ought a greatlv increased
demand for instructional films and all kinds of
film makers are now trying to dramatise subjects
in which they are not at all interested. Their.,
minds are still in the Odeons and the Majesties
and the most they can do is to apply the old
methods to these new problems. They find the
new subjects dull so they take them into the
studios and sprinkle a few actors around.
They find them slow so they speed them up into
a series of meaningless flashes by quick cutting.
It would almost appear that there is a modern
Mrs. Beeton around in some film units: "Take
two tanks and smash them, gather a handful of
factory workers and mix in, season with a
brigadier-general (if a Minister is not in season),
put the whole in fifty tins and leave in the cutting
room for two years. Dust before showing."

The second reason for the failure of so many
instructional films is perhaps more irritating.
The heads of all film producing units, whether
under direct government control or not, eventu-
ally have to show their work to Superior Beings,
festooned either with red tabs or with red tape.

These creatures still look upon going to the films
as something one does after dinner but only
occasionally, and even then it's not quite the
thing unless it is a good leg show or "that girl
Myrna Loy". We would suggest that many
shortcomings of" the instructional film are due
to the desperate desire of producers to please
these jolly gentlemen when they visit their
projection rooms. Whether Private Brown or
Mrs. Jones know any better how to cope with
their daily problems after seeing the film is quite
unimportant so long as Authority is amused.
If a trip to the studios for a smell of the grease
paint can be fitted in so much the better. The
studio is a new toy which still dazzles.

Thus we have a situation in which producer
and film maker work together to the same wrong
ends, both forgetting what their war job is.
We think that the only way out of the muddle is
to suggest that everybody engaged on this work
looks upon each film as a test, and an extremely
exacting test too, of his capabilities as a film
maker. Because we believe that instructional films
during this war can be of the greatest import-
ance. Never before has there been a time when
there has been such a great demand lor ac-
curate, intelligible and well presented information
and instruction. Everybody in their daily lives
has been presented with new problems on the
solution of which depends their well-being, their
peace of mind and ultimately their destiny. The
supplying of the answers to these problems is
a job of vital importance and those who do it
well, can feel that they have done something
of extreme value as well as a job which is of as
much service as the work of the best studio
director.

In conclusion we would like to point out
that we are not unaware of the excellent work
done in this held by various units and individuals.
Their work already receives tributes in many
places. But there are still many who cheat and
dilly-dally. To them these remarks are addressed.

FILM/ OF GREAT BRITAIN LIMITED

PARK STUDIO
PUTNEY PARK LANE
SAY. 15. PUTNEY 6274.

Managing Director :
ANDREW BUCHANAN

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER .SEPTEMBER 1942

SHORTS BOOKINGS

September-October

I I he hdlow'mg shorts bookings are selected from
list covering its members supplied by the News
Specialised Theatres Issociation.)

commencing

v. Modern Miracle

The Taller, Manchester

Sept. 27th

Uaska lour

• ■

20th

\t a Country Fair

The News Theatre, Birmingham

Oct. 11th

The News Theatre, Leeds

5 th

Eros Theatre, W.l

Sept. 27th

Dartmouth

The Tatler News Theatre, Liverp

20th

Delhi

The Tatler News Theatre, Liverpool

27th

The Embassy. Notting Hill Gate

27th

The Classic. Hammersmith. W.l.

Oct. 4th

The Classic, Hendon, N.W.4

Desert Ghost

The 1 atler Newsreel Theatre, Ne

wcastle

Sept. 27th

Exploring Space

The World's News Theatre. W.2

Oct. Uth

Flashing Blades

The News Theatre, Bristol

The 1 atler 1 heatre. Manchester

27th

In. in Nuts to Scrap

The News [heatre. Manchester

Oct. 4th

Great American Divide

News Theatre, Bristol

Sept. 20th

Waterloo Station News Theatre.

S.E.I

Oct. 11th

Heroes of the Atlantic

The Tatler Newsree! 1 heatre. Ni

Sept. 20th

Highway of Friendship

The News [heatre

-Tyne

27th

H.M. Motor Launches

The Tatler [heatre. M .1 n .he aei

20th

The News Theatre, Leeds

How Goes Chile

The News Ilieatrc, Newcasile-01

-Tyne

Indian Durbar

The Classic Cinema. Portsmoutl

Oct. 4th

In the Box

The News Theatre. Ncwcastle-01

-Tyne

1 and 01 the lncas

Waterloo Station News iheatrc

S.E.I

Sept. 20th

London Before the Blit^

Fmhassy, Notting Mill Gate

Oct. 11th

Main Street on the march

News 1 heatre, Leeds

Sept. 12th

March 0! Time No. 2 -8th Year

The Classic, S.W.I 7

27th

The Vogue ( menu, S.W.17

27th

The Classic, Hendon, N.W.I 1

27th

The Classic. Southampton

27th

The News I heatre N

Oct. llth

March ..! 1 Tine No T Stli Yea.

The News Theatre, Bristol

4th

The Tatler, Manchester

1 he Filler, Chester

5th

1 eeds

5th

The Tatler News Theatre, 1 ivei|

ool

The News [heatre, Leeds

5th

Micky's Birthday Party

The News Theatre. Bristol

Modern Miracle

IIk 1 atler. Birmingham

Native Artisans

The Tatler, Chester

5th

Nice \\ ,,rh it You ( an do K

The News 1 lie itie! Newcastle on- 1 w

Sept.

27th
27th

Oc

.4th

Points ol View No 7

V, ct.ina Street News 1 heatre, S.W. 1

Sept.

20th

The Classic Iheatrc, S.W. 17

Oct.

1 nil

The (lassie. South Croydon

4th

Points ol View No X

\\ .terloo St. 11 News Iheatrc, ST.

20th

Ni wsreel 1 heatre, Newca

llth

S.W. 17

Oct.

llth

11 Ml Id Kl \l\ M s

Back Street

The Tatler I heatre, Leeds

The latlci, Chester

Major Barbara

The (lassie, Southampton

The I atler, 1 eed.

Nothing Sacred

No. 6

THE CAMEL AND
THE FLY

A FLY, chancing to sit on the back of a
camel who was going along weighed down
with heavy burdens, was quite delighted with
himself, as he appeared to be so much higher.
After they made a long journey, they came
together in the evening to the stable. The fly
immediately exclaimed, skipping lightly to the
ground : " See, I have got down directly, that
I may not weary you longer, so weighted as
you are." The camel replied: "I thank you;
but neither when you were on me did I find
myself oppressed by your weight, nor do I
feel myself at all lightened now you have
dismounted."

MORAL: Wear your hobnailed boots if you
would make your presence felt.

REALIST FILM UNIT

4 7 OXFORD STREET, W.l

Telephone: GERRARD 1958

NEWS LETTER

CONTENTS

I'ROHI I MS OF PROPAGANDA

The M.O.I. Film Catalogue

FILM Ol I hi: month

Iii response t<> many requests, espec-
ially from overseas, we publish in this
issue on up-to-date list of films in the
M.O.I. Jiltii rital "tie. 1 his list has
not appeared elsewhere and we believe
it to be of considerable importance.

VOL 3 NO. 10

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON VV1

PROBLEMS OF PROPAGANDA

The awkward situation into which the pro-
pagandist may find himself flung is only
too clearly exemplified at the moment as re-
gards the relations between Great Britain
and two of her co-partners in the United
Nations battle against the Axis — the U.S.S.R.
and the U.S.A.

Propaganda must always be based on the
actual and factual situation which is in opera-
tion at the moment. Truth in pr >paganda rests
on this physical fact and cannot depend on a
sense of local justice or local Tightness of
opinion in the abstract sense. Recently British
propaganda has had to face this bitter fact.

Take first the Indian situation. As propa-
gandists as well as film makers we must say
emphatically that if the Prime Minister, for
reasons of national policy or otherwise, is
impelled to make to Parliament the speech
which he did make about India in Septem-
ber, the whole propaganda machine should
have been informed of the gist of this speech
at least one week beforehand. Why? Because
whether the Prime Minister. Mr. Amery, Mr.
Cripps, Mr. Attlee and Uncle Tom Conser-
vative Central Office and all are right or
wrong, what the Prime Minister said was in
itself liable to be a disastrous blow to British
| prestige in the United States. In other words,
1 here is a known fact which must be faced —
| the fact that American opinion has. for many
years, been strongly critical of our attitude
towards the Indian problem. We say fact
ad\isedly, because we are not primarily con-
cerned with which side is right or wrong. As
propagandists we are concerned with the
fact. The situation is such that a statement
like the Prime Minister's was bound to add
fuel to the fire of American critical opinion
(already fanned by the re-introduction of the
Whipping Act in India last August). That is
why the propagandists should have had a
week to prepare their American campaign,
on the basis of what the Prime Minister was
going to say.
There was, at the least, a slender case to be

made out, but no propagandist could even
do this without being warned beforehand
that despite the Atlantic Charter and the
Four Freedoms, this country still intended,
through its national spokesman, to stick to
an attitude which many citizens of the United
Nations regard as not merely an example of
Victorian insularity, but also a slap in the
face to themselves.

What is the propagandist to do under
these circumstances? He is, despite any pro-
testations he may make, involved in imme-
diate politics ; and he knows how powerful a
weapon he could wield were the Government
he serves to come into line with the new and
revolutionary attitude of ordinary people
throughout the world. Had, for instance, the
Prime Minister made a speech in which he
appealed to all the United Nations to hold a
conference, of which the British Government
would be a member and at which a joint
guarantee would have been made to India
in regard to immediate and post-war policy,
a direct and sincere propaganda blow would
have been struck before even the propa-
gandists went into action. He would inci-
dentally have removed at one stroke much of
the critical attitude in, say, the U.S.A.. by
involving the critics directly in the problem
itself.

We have no doubt that Mr. Churchill be-
lieves that his Government's attitude to India
is essentially correct. That belief no thinking
person can question. We are certain that his
belief in this makes him feel that any further
propaganda on the matter is unnecessary.
The brute fact, however, is that thinking
people in many countries, including most
notahlv the U.S.A., U.S.S.R., and China, are
likely to disagree with Mr. Churchill's policy.
The propagandists' dilemma therefore is
obvious.

During the past year it has become more
and more clear that the neglect of propa-
ganda as a basic weapon by the British Gov-
ernment has led to a failure on the part of

the Government to understand the immediate
needs of British policy as regards the tactics
and strategy of the winning of the war.

Propaganda cannot he a tassel on the end
oi a Governmental bell-rope. Propaganda is
part and parcel of national policy or it is
nothing.

Russia ?

We may take another example of a more
complicated nature. What propaganda can
Britain do in Russia at this moment when it is
clear that all Russia wants is the opening of a
second front'.' The best propaganda would,
of course, be the opening of the second front.
This, for many reasons, may not be possible.
But. if by the time these words appear, it has
taken place, an immediate basis for topline
propaganda will automatically have been
created. But if not, what next? Perhaps
propaganda explaining why we cannot open
a second front? This immediately is negative
propaganda, and can only be made positive
(other than by action) by building up a pic-
ture of the marvellous preparations that we
are making and the great work we are doing
in other areas of conflict.

The issue here is possibly less acute than that
of India, but it represents the same problem.
It is a problem which the British Government
must face and face soon. They must realise
that propaganda is a basic war weapon. If thej
realise this they will also realise that propa-
ganda does not exist in a vacuum, but, like the
movements of armies, of navies and of air
forces, is part of war strategy, war tactics
and war policy.

All films with propagandist intention are
conceived in the darkness of this national
lack of policy, and brought forth, usuallv b>
Caesarean methods, into a world of icy facts
for which (despite the faint fluff of good in-
tention on their diminutive crania, and their
ability at times to make a considerable noise i
they are only too ill-prepared. This is most
particular!) true of the documentary film,

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1942

which, because it had already explored the
propaganda field in the thirties, was bound
to be largely used, and is today bearing the
greater part of the brunt of the Government's
propablundering.

Documentary workers have had to face up
to the fact that their job is not merely to be
film technicians but also to think hard and
sanely about national policy and the propa-
ganda that must (or should) arise therefrom.
Indeed we believe that they are doing so.
Every day there is evidence of less and less
complacency and more and more discontent
with the present set-up as regards British film
propaganda. This discontent arises very
naturally. The documentary movement is a
young movement. Its workers are for the
time being deferred from military and indus-
trial service. They are bound therefore to
feel very acutely any situation which appears
to them to suggest that their work as film
makers is of only minor value. That this view
is not held by official quarters is small com-
fort to them.

Never lost faith

What they are faced with— from their own
point of view— is a situation in which good
ideas are daily castrated by timidity or even
delay ; in which mediocre ideas have lavished
on them the time and money they could never
deserve; in which positive results in propa-
ganda terms are seldom if ever visible as a re-
sult of the labour and mental energies which
they put into the films which they are em-
ployed by the nation to make on behalf of
the nation— and of the United Nations. That
they have never lost faith in their beliefs
about the vital importance of visual propa-
ganda is a tribute to their own sticking power
rather than to the enlightenment of their
governmental sponsors.

It is perhaps too often forgotten that many
documentary film makers have entered the
field since the war began. These young men
and women were not around during the
formative days of documentary, and they
have seen little documentary work outside
the demands of Governmental sponsorship
under wartime conditions. To them, as they
shuttle from one Government department to
another, and watch the inexorable droppings
of the play-safers petrify their scripts into
stalactic monuments of status-quackery,
there must come moments of violent ques-
tioning. In the maze and delay of wartime
film-making they may begin even to question
the theories to which they arc working.

This questioning can only be answered by
themselves. \s documentarj film makers thej
are propagandists. As propagandists they

must be sure of what they want to say and the
terms in which it can most effectively be said.
And as people sure of their message they must
stick at nothing to put it across.

Vague and cloudy humanism alone they
know not to be enough. Ideological and ab-
stract arguments they reject. They know — or
if they don't they must learn to know — the
basic, active principles which alone truly
activate this people's war, this world
revolution, to interpret which is their duty
and to carry which forward to a successful
conclusion will in part be their especial
privilege.

With them, in all the solemn pomposity of
an editorial "we", we identify ourselves. We
suggest that the whole of documentary must
intensify hard-thinking about the job in hand.
This involves argument as well as action;
planning as well as combat.

The enormous conflict through which we
are living will decide matters for or against
the people in every area of the world. If it is
not a people's war — if it does not become a
people's war — it cannot, in any true sense,
ever be won.

As propagandists, we must use the film
medium not to ti ll people, but to fxpress
them. It is our job to identify ourselves with
the people, and to concentrate their will into a
searchlight across the world — from Pittsburg
to Sydney, from Moscow to Buenos Aires,
from Glasgow to Chungking.

As propagandists we must be pace-makers

in seeking out the true people's leadership
and in detailing crisply and dramatically
every growing-point of democratic initiative
wherever it may be found.

As propagandists we must project the
active revolution of our own people to all
the peoples of the United Nations.

And to do all this, as propagandists, we
must be absolute masters of our medium.

In all this the fight is still against those
who fear the inevitable consequences of true
victory, those who wittingly or unwittingly
build blockhouses of inertia or busy them-
selves with comforting trivialities in order to
forget the realities which press on them from
every side.

So the problems of British propaganda in
India and Russia are as much the business of
the documentary worker as are the problems
of the coalminers. or the under-fives, or the
housewives, or the women's land army.
Every subject is not merely a problem in film
making, but also a problem in active propa-
ganda and active policy. In thinking as well
as decision every documentary worker must
be alert and uncompromising.

If we are making films today for our
National Government it is because we know,
first — that films as propaganda are a vita!
weapon towards a United Nations victory, and
second, that if victory comes it will be through
Government and leadership which is an abso-
lute and courageous expression of the people's
will.

CORRECTION

Documentary reviews in the September
number included a rev ievv of I lis Mujoxtv \
Jollies. Through an error this iiln, was
accredited to the M.O.I. We apologise.
His Majesty's .lollies, produced by Para-
mount News, is not an M.O.I, film. Ed.

* For your information

IN every progressive enterprise there must be leaders
and those who follow behind. As artistic and
technical progress in kinematography quickens to the
tempo ar.d stimulus of war, " KINEMATOGRAPH
WEEKLY" is always to be found " up-with-the-
leaders", its well-informed pages radiating perception
and far-sighted thinking. Kinematography's
leaders themselves know this for t
and turn to " KAY." week by
week for information and
enlightenment. ,,M/flt,

&*?

»«•*!,
W*

93 LONG ACRE
LONDON W.C.2

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1942

THE M.O.I. FILM CATALOGUE

Thoughts arising from the catalogue of films produced and acquired by

the Films Eiv.'sbn from the outbreak of war to June 30ih, 1942, and

published in this issue by courtesy of the M.O.I.

Two hundred and forty films ; two hundred
and nine thousand, one hundred and
eighty-twa feet of cut negative — equivalent to
twenty-two full length features ; one hundred and
thirty-eight films acquired from other sources.

The quantity is impressive. What of propa-
ganda quality? What does it amount to? Will it
improve? In what direction will it develop? In
what direction ought it to develop? These are big
questions, but we can at any rate assess the
present position, and indicate what we believe
to be the line which must be followed in the
future.

In the first six months of 1942 the Films Divi-
sion has been responsible for 82 films. In the
whole of 1941 only 89 were produced. Since
there is no reason to suppose a diminution of
prodaction since June 30th, it looks as if the
film output of 1942 — and certainly the cut-
negative footage — will at least be double that of
1941. No mean quantit itive achievement, con-
sidering that there has been no increase in man-
power over 1941, though a number of war
trainees, including several women directors, are
only now getting into their stride.

So much for quantity — what of propaganda
quality? Take first the 5-minute films. Out of the
first thirty-two (the series started in August, 1940)
most were poor and some were contemptible.
Only twelve — Ashley Green Goes to School,
Britain at Bay, Miss Grant Goes to the Door, The
Front Line, Britain Can Take It, Neighbours under
Fire, We've Got to Get Rid of the Rats, The Dawn
Guard, War and Order, Northern Outpost, The
Heart of Britain, and Dai Jones— deserve any
mention at all. The rest had better be forgotten.
Of the most recent thirty-two, up to September
28th, nineteen* reach a fair propaganda level,
and none, not even the dingy Workp.uiy, falls
to the level of idiocy, evasion and lack of
reality represented by A Call for Arms, Food
for Thought, and Mr. Borland Thinks Again —
to take three of the first thirty-two titles at
random. (We must add, however, that the
most recent thirty-two 5-minute films include
two National Savings Committee films, The
Owner Goes Aloft and Down Our Street, not
produced by the Films Division, but which the
Division is apparently compelled to circulate.
These reach as low a level of propaganda as any
films yet issued).

The non-theatrical output shows a quantita-
tive improvement too, and several films have
recently been delivered which will bring the
1942 total well over the 1943 total of 23 films
(inexplicably the 1941 total amounted only to
7 films). The 1940 films were efficient but un-
ambitious and cheap. The 1942 programme con-
tains more ambitious productions, such as
Speed-up on Stirlings, The Battle of Supplies, the

Balloon Site >M. Tree lunch \a\c, the crude hut dynamic
Five Men of Velish, Fanners in Crime, Yc.v /,»>,„, for Old,
Troopship, Docker,, I <ee H,,me, 2\ Miles, Cliiann Kai Click
in India, A New Fire Bomb, The Nose Has It.

telling A.F.U. production Street Fighting, Spring
i>u the Farm, and Night Shift. In addition a non-
theatrical film magazine, Worker and Wat < front,
designed specially for factory showing, is now
in its third issue.

Instructional and training films are — rightly —
on the increase, and in these the Films Division
has excelled. Almost all are clear, telling and pre-
cise, and by their clarity, carry a propaganda
message of more than local importance. Fire-
guard, a study of fire watching methods, has had
a wide success in Canada and the U.S.A. The
Ministry of Agriculture Dig for Victory films are
a model of this type of production.

Apart from two feature length films by the
Crown Film Unit which, at the time of going to
press, have not been publicly shown; the vivid
interview film, Plastic Surgery, made to accom-
pany Sir Harold Gillies' lectures in the U.S.A.;
and the solid work of the Colonial Film Unit,
which is outside the scope of this article, the only
other M.O.I. 1942 productions which demand
at ention are the '"trailers". These have recently
been reduced from about two minutes to about a
minute and a quarter in length, and are attached
to the newsreels. They are virtually pictorial
slogans linked to propaganda campaigns in other
media. At one time trailers were no one's baby,
trivial, technically poor and lacking in punch or
point. Latterly they have shown improvement.
Films acquired

Finally there are the films acquired by the
Films Division, almost all circulated through the
Central Film Library, and forming one of the
most catholic film collections ever assembled.
Here may be found Men of Africa, a good U.S. A
selection, including The City, Power and the Laud,
and A Child Went Forth, and seven March of
Time issues, a disappointingly short Army Film
Unit list, a number of B.C.G.A. films, including
The Londoners ; the better British Council films ; a
good though not very up-to-date Canadian list ; a
good selection of films from India ; some sensa-
tional blitz records taken by the Fire Brigades ; a
fair selection of films from the U.S.S.R., includ-
ing Soviet Schoolchild; four representative Shell
Film Unit films including Airscrew; and six pro-
ductions of the National Savings Committee —
a majsr blot on the whole collection. (As we go
to press, we learn that the I.C.I, film, The Harvest
Shall Come, has also been added.)

What do these films represent in propaganda
achievement? On the credit side the Films Divi-
sion can claim a high level of technique; an
intimate and warm handling of people as people
unmatched, in the best instances, by any country
in the world ; a high level of informational con-
tent (though there are some remarkable gaps.
particularly a woeful absence of informative
films about the armed forces and the tactical
aspects of the war) ; and an increasing (though
still lagging) sense of urgency.

To the debit side must be placed, besides the
lack of tactical films about the Forces, first,

parochialism ; second, a lack of planned films for
overseas use; and third and most important and
most serious of all, the absence of films which por-
tray for the benefit and inspiration of the peoples
Of the United Nations, the positive forward-
looking fighting spirit of the peoples themselves.

First, parochialism. Too many films assume
that Britain is the centre oil he world and London
the centre of Britain. Too many imply that
civilisation itself resides in our own little blitzed
cabbage patch, that British bravery is, by itself,
an answer to Hitler's geopolitik, and that British
suffering is, by itself, a moral panzer division
capable of overwhelming the enemy's steel and
lire. I his tendency to replace direct action bv
self pity is dangerous to the war effort, and is
maddening to our allies.

The lack of planned films for overseas is re-
flected in the catalogue. Since the beginning of
the war till June 30th, 1942, out of 240 films,
only 27 had been produced ••wholly or mainly
for overseas use" as against 77 5-minute films,
48 non-theatricals, and 34 instructional and
training films. This does not mean, of course,
that only 27 films have been sent overseas — most
of the others have certainly been sent as well:
but it does suggest that overseas planning has,
hitherto, been subordinated to home planning,
though there is now reason to suppose that the
planning of overseas films is being much more
seriously considered.

Parochialism and lack of overseas planning
can be corrected within the Films Division itself;
the lack of films on the social and moral war
purpose of the peoples of the free world, the lack
of films which represent, not the government
speaking to the people, but the people speaking
through the government, reflecting their own
thoughts, picturing their own social organisa-
tions, supporting their own anxieties, organising
their own will to win, goes far deeper than an>
inhibitions from which the Film Division ma>
suffer. It is almost incredible that, out of the whole
list, there appear to be no films on the Trade
Unions (the largest collective body of civilians in
the country), no films on the Works Committees
or Shop Stewards(a fundamentally important and
new factor in industry), and no films on the Co-
operative movement (the largest manufacturing
and retailing movement in the world).

Yet it is clear that such films could contribute
enormously to the war-effort, inspiring and weld-
ing together the people of Britain, and contri-
buting significantly to our reputation overseas.

Citizen Organisations

There is an almost complete absence, in fact,
of films about the great and independent citizen
organisations which are playing such a huge part
in the war, for the films on such "•safe" organisa-
tions as the W.V.S. are no answer. (Incidentally.
Youth Takes a Hand, on the Youth Service-
Corps, priggish and patronising, bears un-
healthy symptoms of the political outlook for
which the recent Conservative report on post-
war education was rightly castigated).

Why*s a film propaganda drive of growirg in-
ten ity castrated by the absence of such films?

( Con tinned on page 139)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1942

CATALOGUE OF FILMS, MADE AND ACQUIRED BY THE

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION, FROM THE OUTBREAK

OF WAR TILL JUNE 30th, 1942.

Published by permission of the Ministry of Information, this catalogue supersedes all prev
NOTES AND ABBREVIATIONS

Film titles in brackets are alternative titles of films listed elsewhere in the catalogue.
Names of producers and directors in brackets do not appear on credit titles.

5-M: Five-minute film. C.F.L.: ListeJ in Central Film Library

T. : Mainly for theatrical release. W : Withinwn.

N.T. : Mainly for non-theatrical release. R : Reviewed in D.N.L.

I. : Instructional

s lists published in "D.N.L".

O: Sent overseas.
OO : M tinly for overseas use.
OOO: Waolly for overseas use.

1. THEATRICAL AND NON-THEATRICAL RELEASES

\.B.C.D.ol Health

All about Carro

All Hands

All Those in Fa

Hal i Site 568

II: Inn Mums (he \\a\

Battle ..I the Books
Behind the Guns

Channel Incident
Christmas Under lire
( iti/en's Achicc Bureau
(< ili/. us' Arm) )

Dai Jones
Dangerous Comment

Dangers in the Dark
Dawn Guard, The

4 tor Victory
t School

I lupin's \n\ Willies

ABBREV

PROD. UNIT

PRODUCER

DIRECTOR

ATlOiNS

CFL I O

Spectator

IM. Haul n ,.

.1. Ellitt

CI 1 5-M

()

Shell

E. Anstev

P. Baylis

OOO

Strand

B. Wright

R. Keene and
R. Bond

CFL NT

J. Carr&S. Box

Muriel Baker

Sec ' Stun

,1 i

n Air Communique-, The"

CFL NT

Crown

(I. Dalrymple)

(H.Watt)

CFL 5-M

O

G.B. Screen Sen.

1 Sc trie

CFL NT

<)

Movietone

G. Sanger

W

CFL 1

Brit. Foun

. Pict

R. Haines

CFL T O

M. Balcon

.1. P. Carstairs

CFL OO

Paul Ruth.

Prod

Paul Rotha

OOO

R. Elton

5-M

Men, ui Far

-

-

CFL 5-M

O

Movietone

CFL 5-M

O

Strand

A. Shaw

J. Eldridge

5-M

Vein-.

.las Lews

(Jay Lewis at
M. Munden)

CFL NT

()

Crown

CFL 5-M

()

Strand

A. Shaw

I. Moffat

CFL NT

Realist

P. Rotha

B. Peake

CFL 5-M

()

Paul Roth.

Prod.

P. Rotha

ill 1

O

Merton Par

k

C. Musk

M.Tully

CFL NT

O

Strand

A. Shaw

R. Bond

CFL NT

(]

Spectator

(M. Hankinson

G. Gunn

CFL OO

Paul Rotha

Prod.

P. Rotha

II. Neiter

CFT

OO

Pathe

_

_

i 1 1

5-M O

Crown

(I. Dalrymple)

P. Jackson

5-M

O

D. &P.

B. D. Hurst

B. D. Hurst

CFL

NT O

Scottish Filn

S. Russell

See "Winged Mess

CI 1

Jay Lewis

(U)<>

Strand

-

A. Keene

5-M

o

D. &P.

A Asquith

5-M

O

Crown

(H.Watt)

(C. Hasse)

( 1 1

5-M O

G.B. Screen

i . \ih.

I .. Searle

See "Home Guard'

Chi

NT O

G.B.I.

B. Wooli'e

F. Searle

. 1 1

NT O

Movietone News

( 1 1

5-M ()

Spectator

I. Scott

( 1 1

NT O

Seven 1 eagui

J. Page

i 1 1

A. &D.

CFL

I O

Realist

(F. Sainsbury)

Thomson
D. Bin

. 1 |

5-M O

Verity

.lav Lewis

i 1 1

T O

M. Balcon

1. P. Carstairs

i 1 1

5-M O

Public Relat

R. Massing!.:.
and i,. Walla(

1 1 I

5-M O

Charter Film

J. Boulting

R. Boulting

( 1 1

1

Verity

S. Box & J. Can

1 ouise Bin

1 1

1 O

Paul Rotha Prod.

P. Rotha

l). Peake

CFL

5-M O

Spectator

(M. Hankinson

—

( 1 1

NT O

Seven Leagu

II. Nieter

( 1 1

1 O

Realist

(F. Sainsbury)

Thomson

1 (

G.P.O.

Sec '

taly Beware"

5-M

i)

Strand

i) rayloi

D. Dickinson

i l l

1 O

i ilm ol i.i

Brit.

A. Buchanan

inn

Universal

i l l

OO

Pathe

ron" ~~~

i i i

1 (.

Crown

1. Dalrymple

P. Jackson

— 3,<42

790 R. Vol

2/42 3,401

10/40 12/40

7 40 —
7 42

— 12/40

R. Vol. II, p. 149

of Target lor Tonight for N.T.

t:

I irst despatched over- g\|

3

II. I ... , .,1a ..■,■■ \! (, \i

With \rthur Mann. R. Vol. Ill, p. 4

I irst despatched overseas h 42

Compiled from Library material. Longer N.T. jn

' ersion tided I ivd the I uin.u is \on-T. dist-"""-

tion 9 4u

Part Newsreel compilation

Assoc. Producer: \. I Hon. Loneer N.T. vet

titled Village School ( 1 .000 ft.) R. Vol. I. x.

789 R. Vol. I

,160 R. Vol. I. >

(1,766 ft.) is

Compiled Irom library material. ( ommentary by

J. B. Priestley. Identical overseas version titled

Britain on Guard

Commentary by Q. Reynolds. \ slightly longer

overseas version titled London Can Take It.

R. Vol. I, m, p. 14

Commentary by C. B. Fry. R. Vol. I, ix, p. 13

Newsreel compilation.

I irst despatched overseas 5 40

Newsreel compilation

Introduced In John Hilton. R. Vol. Ill, p. 54

With Jean Gillie. Rene Rax and others

Assoc. Prod.: Basil Wright.

lied overseas 4 42

"" h Peggy Vh. i<!'.. Gordon Harker & other

R. Vol. II, p. 29

2/41 5/42 2.77')

>c. Prod.: Paul Rotha. R. vol. III. |

id others
ac. Prod.: Edgar Anstey

d Bernard Miles. R. Vol. II,

p. 107

ipiled from How to Dig and C

N.in.ui \ssov. Prod. : r. Anstey

V Prod. I . \nsic-N

Home T. dist. bj News'

With Tommy Trinder, Jean Colin and othe
R. \. I. II. p. 107

Newsreel compilation. I irst despatched overseas

7 41
Newsreel compilation

Home T. dist. bj \.H.i .1). R. Vol. Ill, p. 37

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1942

PROD UNIT

565 Designed by the Isotypc Inst. R. Vol. I

Filling the Gap
Fire Guard
First Days, The
Fitness for Service

Food for Thought

the Seven Seas

Front Line, The

ces of Inilustn
Germany Calling

Goofer Trouble

Herrings

He Went to the Cupboard

H.M. Minelayer

.lot. v

• Done

ki-cpul" Rabbits tin I St

Kill that Rat!
King's Men, The

knights ol St. John
Lady be Kind
Land Girl
Letter hum Home
Listen to Britain
Lhing with Strangers
■>n Autumn. 1941

j of Tomorrow
Merchant Seamen
Middle East. The

CFL

NT O

G.B.I.

5-M

O

Realist

( 1 1

ST OW

Shell

T C

W

G.P.O.

CFL

NT

G.B.L

OOO

Paul Rr

5-M

Ealing

CFL

I O

Strand

CFL

NT W

Morton

i 1 1

5-M O

Sneet.it.

CFL

T O

D. & P.

OOO

G.B.I.

CFL

5-M O

G.P.O.

CFL

T O

Merton

CFL

T O

Spesl.it

CFL 5-M W EalmeSi

CFL NT O G.P.O".

CFL 5-M O Crown

OOO G.B.S.S.

CFL I O Realist

CFL 5-M Butcher-;

O W Service

CFL I Verity

CFL I Films of

CFL 5-M O Verity

CFL OO Movietoi

CFL 5-M O Strand

CFL
CFL 1
CFL I

CFL NT O G.B.L

CFL

NT

O

Verity

CFL

Nl

Shell

O W

CFL

1

Strand

< 1 1

<)

1

Merton Park

CFL

NT

()

Movietone News

CFL

S-M

(>

Strand

5-M

British National

CFL

O

P. Rotha Prod.

OOO

20th Century Fo

CFL

1

)

CFL

Nl

(>

Realist

OOO

Films of G.B.

CFL T O
CFL NT O
CFL T O
CFL 5-M O

G.P.O.

I echniquc

Shell

Marj t ield

S. Russell

E. Anstey
A. Cavalcanti

P. Rotha
J. Croydon

G. Bell

J. Warren
D. Alexander
A. Brunei

\1. Hankinson

J. Eldridge
T.R.Thumwt
R. Carruthers
A. Havelock-

-

L. Schauder
(H. Watt)

C. Musk

(H. VVat7,

M. Elvey
W. Forde
P. Jackson

E. Dane

(F. Sainsbury)

F. Searle
Mare. Thorns
D. Dickinson

S. Box & J. Car

Jay Lewis

A. Buchanan
r H. Cass

1,065 Produe

If. Black I
j'. Taylor

— 671

— 2/42

Miss Grant Goe

CFL 5-M O D. & P.

(B. Wright)

D. de Marney &

E. Cekalski

-

-

(F. Sainsbury)

Marg. Thomson

3/42

I ). Macdonald

8,40

in 40

S. Box&J.Carr

A. Travers

1 42

J. B. Holmes

6 41

9 41

E. Anstey

G. Tharpe

4 42

10/42

B. D. Hurst

B. D. Hurst

8/40

10. '40

e r. dist. by A.B.P.C. R. Vol. I, i. p. 6

eredc.6 41 . First despatch-- i
VI ibel Constanduros, Muriel George and

892 R. Vol. I, >

Vith Leslie Howard. II en. i i
irst despatched o

1,067 Home T. dist

s II 40
ition b> United A

first despatched overseas 9 42
Assoc. Producer: E. Anstey
With Jennifer Gray, Viola Ly

n Sterndale-Benne

4 42 1.685

II.

Newsreel compilatii
With Bernard Mile
lengthened NT ver
(940 It.) R. Vol. II.

Assoc. Prod.: E. Anst
I !.: Edgar A
Newsreel compilation.
! irsi de ,p itshed ",crse is 2 41
Home T dist. by Warners

Newsreel compilation. II >ne I dist. by Anglo-
American. Identical overseas version titled
"Drums of the Desert". R. Vol. I, vii, p. 7

Assoc. Prod.: A. Elton. R. Vol. I, x, p. 8

Assoc. Prod.: Edgar Anstey. R. Vol. Ill, p. <7
Assoc. Prod.: E. Anstey. R. Vol. II, p. 107
Newsreel compilation

With Muriel George. R. Vol. II, p. 147
R. Vol. Ill, p. 21

With C elia lohnson. I ir i despatched overseas
Home r release hv British Lion [6,41

Assoc. Prod.; B. Wright. R. Vol. II. p. 149
Commentary by Sir Gilbert Scott, first de-
spatched overseas 1 1/41

With Bessie Love and Basil Radford. First de-

lovei leas 4 42. R. Vol. Ill, p. 70
Assoc. Prod. : E. Anstey .
Home r dist. by A.B.F.D. R. Vol. I. ix. p. 12

Home T dist. by G.F.D. R. Vol. II. p. 88
Animated maps K i lancis Rodker. R. Vol. Ill,
p. 70

Mr. Borland Thinks Vgain

Mr. Proudfoot Shows a L
Mobile Engineers
More Eggs from Your Hi
Mother and Child

Na\al Operations
Neighbours I ndcr laic
New Bread, The
New Britain, The
Newspaper Train

Oatmeal Porridge
100,000.000 Women
Ordinary People
Our School
Out and About
Paratroops

20th Century Fox (E. B

CFL 5-M O Shell

CFL 5-M O

Strand

R. Bond

CFL 5-M O

Shell

E. Anstey

N. Baxter

CFL I

Merton Park

—

—

CFL NT
O W
CFL 5-M O

Strand

A. Shaw

R. Keene

Realist

L. Lye

5-M O

Strand

A. Shaw

J. Eldridge

CFL NT O

P. Rotha Prod.

P. Rotha

i.i hai • et

CFL 5-M
O W
CFL I O

Strand

D. Taylor

D. Taylor

Scottish Films

S. Russell

CFL T O

Ealing

M. Balcon

J. P. Carstairs

CFL NT O

Pathe

See -'Sea Cadets"

CFL I

Jay Lewis

CFL 5-M O

OOO

Crown

CFL NT O

Realist

P. Rotha

CFL

G.B.I.

CFL OO

Celluloid Despatch

CFL 5-M O

Launder&Gilh

CFL 5-M O

(I. Dalrymple)

J.Lee

CFL NT O

Strand

—

R. Bond

— 10 40

I 42 4 42
7 42 II 42

— 12,40

i Herbert Lomas, Em

With Barb.. _

Wright. R. Vol. I. x. p. 9

Technicolor Abstract. Home T. Dist. by News-

L ibr irv compilation with di.ret.i
Rodker. R. Vol. Ill, p. 6

R. Vol. I. si i, p. 7. Assoc. Producer: Ha il Wnght
With Herbert Lomas & others. R. V ol. II. p. 167
Compiled from lihrarv material. Re-edited and
issued as a Nl trader. 4 42
R. Vol. 1, viii, p. 13. Commentary by Graham

R.'vol. Ill, p. 37
R. Vol. 111. p. 90

600 R. Vol. I.

R. Vol. 11. p. 247
Newsreel compilatio

. Edited by Sylvia Cur

Queen's Messenger:

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1942

PROD. UNIT PRODUCER DIRECTOR RELEASE DATES LENGTH

5-M O Strand

Jay Lewis

R. Vol. I, xii, p. 7

Commentary by Sir Harold Gillies. In Techni-
color. A short addition (330ft.) is titled "Plastic
Surgery." I irst despatched ove

:. Prod.:B. Peake

Salvage with a Smile

Shunter Black's Night Oft
Simple Soups

OOO
CFL
CFL
CI I

Paramount
5-M O Spectator
5-M O 20th Century Fo>
5-M O Ealing

T O

Air Communique, The 5- vl O

5-M O Strand

CFL 5-M O
CFL NT O
CFL 5-M O
CFL 1 O
CFL I
CFL I O
See "Wartime lac
See "Unrecorded \

Brit. Found. Pict.

G. Cummin
(M. Hankin
(I . Black)

S. Box&J. Ca
C. Radley

Tale of Two Cities

Target for Tonight

Team. The

Iclcioutlcrs, The

I'hev Vis:) Serve

They Keep the Wheels Turnii

They Met in London

They Speak for Themselves

(This is England)

Victory over Darkness
(Village School)

CFL NT O
CFL NT
CFL OO

CFL NT O
CFL NT O
CFL I

e Factory
s 30,000

When the I'ie was
White Battlefront
Winged Messengers

Rotha Prod.

Shell
A. &D.
Paranim
G.P.O.

12/41 3 42

I. Dalrymple
L. Schauder
M. M unden

( F. Sainshurv)
(F. Sainsbury)
(H. Watt)
J. Carr & S. Box

H. Watt

A. Buchanan

Marg. Thomson
Marg. Thomson
(R. Elton) I

A. Cavalcanti
I. Dalrymple

CFL NT O Stra

CFL I O

CFL NT O

Rats CFL 5-M

Verity
G.P.O.
D. & P

Strand

OOO

Realist

CFL 1
CFL NT O
5-M O W

Realist
Seven I
G.B.I.

CFL NT O
OOO

Green I

Verity

CFL 5-M

O

CFL 5-M O

CFL NT

O

Crown
Strand

CFL N I i)

-

5-M

Ider CFL 5-M

O W

ill 5-M O
(II NT O

Realist
D. & P

Paul R

1 ilins.

L.Arliss&N.Lee
(J. Carsta.rs)
R.ibvGrierson
F. Searle

J. Carr
G. Bell

H. Jenning

C. Hornby
P. lackson

D. Dickinson
J. Carr

F. Sainsbury

L. Lye

ix & J. Carr Louisf

10/40

3/42

10/40

,138\
785 I

Assoc. Prod. : A. Elton. R. Vol. I, x, p. 8

First despatched overseas 5/40. R. Vol. I, vi, p. 8

Originally titled "Miss Kr.owall"

Home T. dist. by A.B.F.D.

Some overseas versions titled "Nursery of the

R. Vol. II, p. 149 [Navy"

Home T dist. by G.F.D.
R. Vol. II. p. 167
R. Vol. I, x, p. 8

Assoc. Prod.: E. Anstey. R. Vol. Ill, p. 6

Home T dist. by Columbia. R. Vol. I, v, p. 6
Assoc. Prod.: F. \nstev. R. Vol. Ill, p. 100
R. Vol. I. xii, p. 7
Assoc. Prod. : E. Anstey. R. Vol. Ill, p. 71

R. Vol. I, xii, p. 7

Commentary written and spoken by Robert
Speight. First despatched overseas 8 42
Commentary by Colin Wills. Compiled by John
Monek from library material
Home T distribution by A.B.F.D. See also Air
Operations R. Vol. II, p. 147
With George xllison. R. Vol. II. p. 167
With Barbara I \ercM . Muriel George and others
R. V .1. II. p. 47
R. Vol. HI, p. 113

ProJi:eJ in iss uiition with British Param Hint
News. R. Vol. Ill, p. 6

Dialogue direction bv Miles Malleson. R. Vol.
Ill, p. 113

Assoc. Prod. : A. Elton

Assoc. Prod. : A. Elton. R. Vol. I, xi, p. 15

R. Vol. II. p. 168

Home T distribution bv Paramount

Home T distribution bv M.G.M. Identical NT.

version titled Spring Offensive. R. Vol. I, xii, p. 7

R. Vol. II, p. 207

Based on a film of the same name prepared for

St. Dunstan's

Rushes also sent to Canada. R. Vol. II, p. 107
Home T dist. bv \nglo-Anterican. R. Vol. I,
vii, p. 7
NT version: 1,087 ft. R. Vol. II, p. 9

\mmated map, b\ I . Rodker. W nh J. Horrabin

R. Vol. Ill, p. 5

Assoc. Prod.: \. 1 hop.. Original title "Speed I p

and Welfare". R. Vol. I, xi, p. 14

Largely compiled from A.F.U. and newsreel

material. Home 1 release In M.G.M. R. Vol. Ill,

p. 37

Assoc. Prod. 1 dgar v.istev. K. Vol. Ill p. 54

R. Vol. I, xii, p. 14

Assoc. Prod.: A. Elton. With Bill Dalton.
R. Vol. II, p. 9

Assoc. Prod.: II. Wneht. I irst despatched over-
seas 5 41
R. Vol. II, p. 147

Assoc. Prod. . Has, I Wright. R. Vol. I, X, p. 8
Longer NT version titied "Carrier Pigeons"
I I. ops It.) R. Vol. U, p. 128
Assoc. Prod. : 1 dear \ioiev. R. Vol. Ill, p. 90
Newsreel compilation. With W. Winant. Com-
picntiivb Marx Welch. I irst despatched o\er-

Commentarv bv Laurence Olivier. I ibrarv com-
pilation. R. \ il II p 89

\ shenilv s : iter British version omitting scenes
ofMarv Wckh and I adv Readme lias been pre-
pared. R. Vol. III. p. 4

\ magazine compiling items shot by various

566 R. Vol. 11. p. 68

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

Owned and published by FILM CENTRE LTD. 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON

stands for the use of film as a medium of propaganda and
instruction in the interests of the people o\' Great Britain
and the Empire and in the interests of common people all
over the world.

GERRARD 4253

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1942

2. NEWSREEL TRAILERS

Till December, 1941, Trailers were about 200 ft. in length; since that date they have been 125 ft. in length.

TITLE OR THEME

PROD. UNIT

DEPT. CONCERNED

RELEASE DATE

What To Do in an Air Raid

_

Home Security

Universal

Home Security

Movietone

War Office

Pathe

Gas Masks

G.B. News

Home Security

Your Nome as an \n Raid Shelter

Universal

Home Security

Post Early

Pathe

G.P.O.

Anderson Shelter (2)

Universal

Home Security

G.B. News

Movietone

Mines

A. Buchanan

Labour

Stop that Fire

Crown

Home Security

Paper Saving

I lelp lnr III.' Homeless

Shelter at Home

Empty Houses

Address Clearly

I-iii-I iTimmii) (Heating

Post Early

Food Advice CentTe

I ml l-connmy (Cooking)

A.T.S.

Milk

Fuel Economy (Hot Water)

Paper Salvage

G.B. News
I imersal
CIS. News

N.S.S.
Pub. Pics.
Films of G.B.

Home Security
Home Secur
G.P.O.
Mines
G.P.O.

Supply

Supply
Supply

With Cyril Fletche

With Basil Radford

3. COLONIAL FILM UNIT PRODUCTIONS

This list does not include nine films acquired, after the outbreak of war, from the British Council, the I iiperiil Institute ani Messrs. Kolik Ltd.

These films — some of which were re-edited — included not only Empire subjects, but "Killing the Killer" (a fi^ht between a m3ig33se an! a cobra

to symbolise Churchill and Hitler) and a Chaplin film.

DATE OF DESPATCH

LENGTH

OVERSEAS

NOTES

860

3/40

Re-edited from a film in the Imperial Instil

2,200

3/40

Compiled chtellv from horary miteritl bv <5

920

3/40

Re-edited from a film in the Kodak LiPrary

2,062

11/40

2,630

11/40

1.150

11/40

1,040

12/40

1,057

12/40

476

1/41

Re-edited version of "Italy Beware"

1,030

4/41

636

5/41

1,125

7/41

495

11/41

815

11/41

Heritage of Defence
British Army, The
Mr. English at Home
Story of Cotton, The
Ro\ a I \ir force, The
R.A.F. Commentary
Guns in the Desert
Progress in the Colonies
I nglish and African Life
African in London, An
I Ins is a Searchlight
This is a Special Constable
a Barrage Balloon

This is an A.R.P. Warden

Our Indian Soldiers

Sell Help in Food

With our African Troops -Early Training

With our African Troops— on Active Servici

Soldiers' Comforts from Uganda

War Office material
Material from "A Day with tl

Bren Gun Carriers
These are A.T.S. and W.R.N.S.
Barbados Day at Portsmouth
Uganda Police

tinned from page 13S)
We believe there are two reasons : —

First, the Ministry of Information plays safe.
Better no response at all to its propaganda than
a lifted eyebrow from the 1922 Committee, or a
frow n from the T.U.C. Better be bland, equi-
vocal, dignified and insipid. Yet propaganda
which is safe will neve 3 inspire; propaganda
which raises no questions will raise no feelings
either. Bland equivocal dignified propaganda
follows public opinion and neither leads nor even
expresses it. Bland equivocal dignified propa-
ganda is, in the last resource, defeatist propa-
ganda. Propaganda which does not lead, in the
2nd impedes.

The second reason is to be found in the whole
;et-up of the M.O.I, itself in relation to the
government. For the M.O.I, does not initiate
propaganda policy ; it is subordinate to the other
government departments. It is a channel for the

243 (16 it

7/42

dissemination of other people's propaganda
lines. It cannot command ; it can only obey or
obstruct or argue. This battle was fought and
lost many months back, partly in the House of
Commons under the maladroit Duff Cooper,
partly outside the House over the question
whether the M.O.I, should be responsible for the
Service news bulletins, or whether each Service
should compile its own news handouts. The
Services won, with disastrous results for our
propaganda.

Thus it is that the Films Division, instead of
laying down policy on facts supplied to it, is at
the mercy of half the petty officials in Whitehall.
Any film scheme the M.O.I, puts up can be shot
to pieces by any official who prefers the status quo
to action, any official who is trying to get on the
right side of big business after the war, or any
official who looks for personal preferment to the
party bosses of the Conservative or Labour

\ Wat t) lice material

political machines. Small wonder then that every
propaganda theme which hits is suspect, every
theme which has not the support of every small,
unrepresentative and conflicting minority is
impeded, every reference to the new social
organisations derived from the war is smothered,
because their development represents a diminu-
tion of the power of various interests to wage the
war in a way best suited to their own particular
ideas.

In this lies what must be the next struggle of
the Ministry of Information. It must become a
creator of propaganda detached from, and not
subservient to, the local, private and often con-
flicting notions of government departments. The
M.O.I, must initiate and plan policy as a whole.
This means that it must express the will of the
people in war. This issue must be fought and
won. Till it is, the Films Division policy will
remain truncated and one-sided.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1942

4. ACQUIRED FILMS

I . Films are listed under the following headings:
Afri

l.n Unit (A.F.U.)

Australia and New Zealand

British Commercial Gas Association (B.C.G.A.)

British Council

Cadhury Brothers Ltd.

Films from the G.P.O. and the Imperial Institute Library are excluded.

Film lengths are recorded in feet of 35 mm. gauge or in minutes of 16 mm. gauge.

Canada

Central Council for Health Educatii

Imperial Chemical Industries

India

London Fire Brigade

Miscellaneous

National Savings Committee
Poland

Shell Film Unit
U.S.A.

(March of Time)
U.S.S.R.

Road to Victors
Sinews of War

South Africa Marches
War Came to Kenya

CFL C)

noo

CFL O

Govt. ofSth. African Film

Africa Productions

I istcd under Cadbury
Colonial Empire Strand
Marketing Board
Govt. ofSth. African Film

— G. Jol

Home T distribution by Anglo-A

R. Vol. I, vi. p. 7

first despatched overseas 7

"South Africa Marches"

First despatched overseas 7

"South Africa Marches"

Re-edited b\ Sylvia Cummins from

"Sine

,1 War'

(T. d'Eyncourt)

Lion of .ludah
Lofoten
Northern Outpost

Right Man, The
Siege of Tobruk
Special Despatch
Troopship

AUSTRALASIA
Australia Marches with B
(Australia at War)

New Zealand Has Wings
Royal Australian Nav>
Wealth of Australia

B.C.G.A.

Choose Cheese
Fating at Work

Green F for Health

It Comes from Coal
Londoners. The
Plan for Living
What's lor Dinner?

IflvlllSH COUNCIL
Raising \ir lighters
Sailors Without I inform
SOS

CFL 5-M O A.F.U.

Steel Goes t<

CADIil KV

CFL O

CFL 5-M

CFL 5-M O
CFL O

CFL W

Sec "Wealth o.
Govt, of New
Zealand

New Zealand
Nat Film Unit

Cadbury
Cadbury
Cadbury

National Film

Merton Park
Mcrton Park
Merton Park

Rub\ Gru
P. I letche
J. Taylor

.1. Lewis
M. Tully
S. Legg

— 10/40

R. Vol. II. , __

R. Vol. II, P. :oi

R. Vol. II. p. 68

See also "Guards of the North" (Canada),

assembled partly from the same material

and available for N T use. R. Vol. II, p. 47

R. Vol. III. p. 100

Re-edited by _ Sylvia Cummins from
Shepherd from

e' *y Hora

s Built"

Assoc. Prod. : E. Anstev. R. Vol. I, i
R. Vol. II. p. 189

Assoc. Prod. :E. \nslev. R. Vol. I. o
R. Vol. I. si. p. 12
. 16mm.

Assoc. Prod. : E. Anstev. R. Vol. 1. b

1. R. I. Vol sin. p. 12
i. R. Vol. II. p. '

Adapted from "Britannia w

ooo

ooo

Peoples of Canada

Wings of youth

Wood lor War i

( ENTRAL < OUNCIL FOR

in \l i li l Di CATION
Breath of Danger
tarry on. Children

Screen Studios
n Board Audio Pictures I. d'l ynci

it Board Motion Picture I. Davidso

Bureau
n Board Motion P. Bur. I . Badeclcv S. llawc,
airie Gold"

n Board Realist — J. Taylor

n Board Motion P. Bur. J. Beveridge

Nat. 1 ilm Board

\ , ot iated
Screen Studios

S. Legg

Ci. Spasling
G. Spasling

Film Unit

Audiol'ictures
C.A.F.U.

R.Spottiswo.

de R.Barlow

(R. McDougaH) 6 4.

Central Council

G.B.I.

Spectator

(B Woolfi
1. Scotl

S. lr\ing

m. Hankin

I.C.I.

Plant Prot. Ltd.

G.B.I.

Strand

D. Taylor

S. Irving
G. Gibbs

Indian 1 ilm

1

Indian 1 ilm

Unit

\. Shaw

EzraMir&Sher-

roz Farrukhi
l/iaMir&A. —
Bhaskar Rao

5 42

446 I irst despatched overseas

447 first despatched overseas
978 s,c als,. "Northern Outpo

964 R. Vol. I. \i, p. 14

996 R. Vol. I. si. P. 12
2,576
1,938

1,836 Re-edited by H. Shephei

in. R. Vol. Ill

R. Vol. II. p. I2S

Original title "Tools for tl

I irst despatched overseas

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1942

TITLE

ABBREVI-
ATION

product 'n
source unit

(Day in the Life of th
defenders of India,

Handv Man. The
ndia Arms for Vic

India Marches

e Indian Army, A)
The CFL O
CFL O
ory O

CFL 5-M

Slv "India Marches"
Films Ad B .1 ard Bombav 1 all.u
1 ilms Ad. Board Indian 1 ilni 1
1 il ins Advisory Famous Cine
Board Lab. Productio
Government of Bombay

PRODUCER DIRECTOR

CFL 5-M Films Advisor*

Women of India CFL C

LONDON EIRE BRIGADE
City Fire, Dec. 29th, 1940 CFL

CFL
CFL
CFL

. I'MI

Penihroke Dock'.

ey Commercial Docks Fire, CFL
September. 1940
Thameshaven Fire

MISt I 11 VNIOl S
( anient on Wheels

Fire

CFL

CFL

Sec "Arms from India
See "Men of India"

e Security Brigade

Sec "Mohile ( anteen"

ic la. I

Foreword by Gen. Sir Claude Auchin

First despatched overseas 1 42

Re-edited by Crown Film Unit I
"A Day in the Lite ol the Indian \rn
( ommentary by /. A. Bokhari. K. V.

Script bv Minoo Masmi. based on
book -Our ImlUi". I irst defaulted .

Original till
III. p. 70

espatched ove
entarv by Mor

ll.indierall Happiness

heval Village
_s T.
Mobile Canteen

Modern Spirit, The
Quilting

Red Cross in Action

Roots of Victory

Rug Making

Simplified First Aid
Tea is Served

I'nconqucrahlc Minesweepers
/elsh Plant Breeding Stations

NATIONAL SAVINGS

Vlhert's Savings
" ,n Our Street

ler Comes Aboard

Owner fines Aloft

n Pepys Joins the Naw

man I rank Cues to Sea

CFL
CFL
CFL
CFL
CFL
CFL
CFL

CFL O
CFL W
CFL

National Fed. o

G.B.I.

_

Mary Field

Women's Inst.

Ford Motor Co.

Verity

S. Box and
J. Carr

C. Hornby

Admiralty

G. B. News

Thames Bd. Mill

Merlon Park

R. Thumwc

c.w.s.

C.W.S.

G. Wynn

Movietone

Movietone

G.B.E.

G.B.I.

Mary Field

Elec. Dev. Assoc

G.B.I.

Empire Tea

Bureau

G.B.E.

Verity

B. Wright

J. Lewis

G.B.I.

F. Bundy

National Fed. of

G.B.I.

—

Mary Field

Women's

Red Cross and Movietc

St. John

Mm. of Food & Verity

Min. of Agric.

National led. of G.B.I.

mperial kola- G.B.I.

c. Brit. Film Ealing Studios M. Balcon

CFL 5-M W N.S.C.
5-M N.S.C.

CFL 5-M N.S.C.

1. Scott A. Bryce

I. Scott I. Scott

n.dcMarn, •. I i ,■!

With Edward Murrow. Originally made
for dist. in U.S.A. only. A shorter version
has been made for dist. elsewhere. First
despatched overseas 7 41
. 16 mm. Silent version available. R. Vol. I,

. 16 mm. For limited distribution only

. 16 mm.

I irst despatched overseas 4 42

N 1 title "Canteen on Wheels." R. Vol. II.

p. 47

Adapted for wartime purposes by J.
Gardner Lewis from "Spring Vegetables"
. 16 mm. Silent. R. Vol. I, iv, p. 6

First despatched overseas 1 42
. 16 mm. Adapted for Wartime purposes bv
J. Gardner Lewis from "Rose of the
Orient." made by Scottish Joint C.W'.S.
!. 16 mm. Silent. R. Vol. I, iv, p. 7

1 irst despatched overseas 6 40
i. 16 mm. R. Vol. II, p. 68
i. 16 mm.

Adapted for overseas use only. First de-
spatched overseas 3/41. R. Vol. I, xii, p. 9

650 With Charles Doe

734 R. Vol. 11, P. 22'/
657 R. Vol. Ill, p. 21

D.deMarney E. Cekal:

White Eagle, The
SHELL FILM UNIT

U.S.A.
Adventure in the Bro

Bomber

Child Went Forth, .

City, The

Defence lor America
From Ships of the /

CFL
CFL
CFL

Petro. I ms. Bur. Shell

CFL

Tech. Products

Shell

F

CFL

Petrol. Fms. Bur

Shell

A

Elton

CFL O

Petrol. Fms. Bur

Shell

E

Anstey

P. Baylis

CFL

British Library-

Film

-

-

CFL

Nat. Defence

Emerg. Man-
agemt. Fm. U.

-

-

CFL

N.Y. University

-

J.

1

Losey
Ferno

-

CFL

Museum of

Modern Art

Films

van Dyke.
Bretz
L. Roush

CFL

Nat. Defence

Committee

agemt. Film U

CFL

U.S. Marine
Corps

U.S. Marine-
Corps Film U.

~~

~

I. Ill, p. 54

1933 With diagrams by Fran

R. Vol. I. ix. p. 12
mtns. 16 mm. R. Vol. Ill, p. 90
,700 R. Vol. I, ii. p. 12

904 Commentary writtet

and Graham VIcN.tn
1,872

3,017 R. Vol. I, xii, p. 15

t by Carl Sandberg

Minnesota Document
Power and the Land

What So Proudlj We Hail

(MARCH OF TIME)

America Speaks Her Mind
Australia War
Battle Meets of Britain
Britain's R.A.I .

Canada at War

Men ol Norwa>

New I upland's Eight Million

Yankees

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1942

U.S. Dept. of Dept. of Agric.

Nat. Defence I

Committee z

Gen. Motors Ltd.

M.O.T.

M.O.T.

W M.O.T.

M.O.T.
M.O.T.
M.O.T.

DIRECTOR

RELEASE DATES

T NT LENGTH

P. Burnford

-

9/42

2,477

R. Evans

z

9/42
9/42

2,894
843

R. Kisack

-

9/42

50 mins.

~

~

9/42
6/42

3,496
940 C

—

—

9/42

1,662

y by Orson WeUes.

First despatched c

R. Vol. II, p. 16 n

Other R.A.F., The

Soviet Harvest

Soviet Schoolchild
Soviet Women
Strong Point 42

CFL S.W.N.F.A.*

5-M O S.W.N. F.A.

CFL S.W.N. F.A.

CFL S.W.N. F.A.

CFL S.W.N. F.A.

CFL Pathe

CFL S.W.N.F.A.

S.W.N. F.A.
CFL S.W.N.F.A.

CFL S.W.N.F.A.

CFL 5-M O S.W.N.F.A.

Pathe

Central Studio,
Moscow

1,504 Dubbed in English

i. R. Vol. Ill, p. 6

Si. wet War News Film Agency

5. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF FILMS PRODUCED BY THE M.O.I.

General fhcatrical Distribution
General N.T. Distribution
Instructional and 1 raining
Mainlv for Overseas Distributio
Wholl) foi Overseas Distributio:

roTAl

Colonial Film Unit
Productions

\ 35 rr
> 16 n

_

13,791

25,113

14,087

52.991

3,130

13,543

9,228

8,773

34,674

23,545

7,890

19,420

50,855

4,109

10,280

16,634

31,023

13,019

13,019

3,100

11,093

6,702

20,895

—

1,600*

3,000*

1,1 25f

5,725

3,130

59,688

66,604

79,760

->09 18">

—

11,919

7,836

5,535

25,290

5-Minute

General Theatre Dis
General N.T. Distril
Instructional and Fr
" • inly for Ove

Colonial Film Unit Produc

* Average length 200 feet. t Average length 125 feet.

NUMBER OF FILMS

Sept. 3-

Jan. 1-

Dec. 31

June 30

1939

1940

1941

1942

Total

2

20

37
5

20
3

77
22

18

48

±

12

16
9

34
9

z

3
8

10

15

5
9

18

32

2

72

86

80

240

-

8

10

U§

29

2

10

10

22

6.

STATISTICAL

ANALYSIS

OF FILMS

ACQUIRED BY THE M.O.I.

SOURCE

1940*

1941 JAN. 1— JUNE 30, 1942

TOTALS

CFL. 5-M

O.O.O. CFL.

5-M O.O.O. CFL. 5-M O.O.O.

CFL. 5-M

O.O.O.

Africa

2 —

—

1

1 1

i - —

4 1

1

6

Australia & New Zealand

2

2 —

3 2

1 —

1

5 —

1 —

2

3 —

3 It —

( en. ( oumil lor Health Education

— —

—

2

— —

— — —

—

\

India

6

1 —

— 1 1

6 2

1

9

London Fire Brigade

6 — —

Miscellaneous

1

National Savings

2 —

(March of Time)

2 —

3

2 — —

U.S.S.R.

—

—

1 —

4 1 —

9 2

—

1 '

TOTAL

22 2 3

47

10 4 | 39 10 1

108 22

8

138

*No films were acquired

n 1939.

t Produced in Britain by

'.inadian Army Film Unit.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1942

STRAND FILMS

MAKERS OF DOCUMENTARY
FILMS SINCE 1934

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR - MANAGING DIRECTOR
ALEXANDER SHAW - DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION

1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l.

NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE

Film of the Month

In Which We Serve. Production: Two Cities.
Sloi\, Production, Direction and Music: Noel
Coward. Camera: Ronald Neame. Art Direction:
G. I . Calthrop and David Rawnsley.

Phis is ;

British tc
stuff whic

ceptionally sincere and deeply
It is also a final proof thai

ns in British studios can turn out
is good as anything
n achieve. And it is
r made.

their Hollywood colleagues
one of the best war films e

Even alter a second viewing of /// Which We
Serve, these points still operate, and it is all the
more necessary to try and formulate a straight
critical attitude to the mood and purpose of the
film. In doing this, one is paying Coward the
compliment of treating his film seriously, not
merely as an emotional or a patriotic success,
but also as a considered attempt at propaganda.
So here goes.

Firstly, the story in all essentials looks back-
ward from the present. The future, except in
terms of the continuance of the Navy and its
traditions, doesn't get a look-in at all. In fact t he-
whole structure of the film, with its ingenious and
surpris ngly successful flashback continuities,
depends on an attitude which looks no further
than today and accepts no perspectives other than
the strictly parochial. This is a lair criticism, and
one which Coward would probably not only ac-
cept, but would also argue the reasons why he
chose these limitations. Secondly— and this arises
from our firstly— the social structure of the
British community is presented as a fixed and
settled structure ; nowhere is there any suggestion
that the present war represents a revolution not
only in thinking but in class relationships. This
point must not be misunderstood, because
Coward is one of the first people to put across
with truth and realism the character and be-
haviour of three different income groups. The
quarrel between the two women just before the
bomb kills them; the conversation between the
A.B. and his wife on Plymouth Hoe; the Petty
Officer learning of the death of his wife; the
Commander's Christmas dinner party; the
youthful sailor who has been momentarily a
coward — all these scenes are not merely drama-
tically correct but are recognisable as being about
British people. But behind them all is the assump-
tion that the continued existence of the present
set-up is not questioned, and that the different
"classes" (e.g. "upper", "middle" and "lower")
will continue to live together with t'ie acceptance
of mutual barriers crossed only by ties of
patriotism or of that warm human sentiment
which has for years now been the facet of Eng-
lish character least understood abroad, and
which partly explains the snail-like pace (hitherto,
but not from now on) of our social revolution.
Nowhere is this more marked than in one of the
best and most realistic sequences of the film— the
chance meeting in a railway train between Cap-
tain Kinross and his wife, and the A.B. and his
bride. By the use of very perceptive dialogue and
admirable direction Coward here delineates the
inevitable mixture of goodwill and embarrass-
ment, with both sides uneasily trying to do and
say the right thing. It was a hundred to one
chance against this scene being anything other
than offensive, but it comes off triumphantly. In
so doing it clinches the attitude already referred

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1942

to. The old structure of society is not being
affected by the war, and this 'ere progress, if it
goes on at all, only goes on a single track rail
towards a horizon on which the parallel lines
never meet.

It would be easy to go on from here and
develop an argument that In Which We Serve is
consciously or unconsciously fascist in intention,
and one could have a field day on this line by
taking up the whole relationship between the
captain and his crew. It would be easy — but quite
erroneous. For what Coward has done here is to
delineate with considerable accuracy the atmo-
sphere and behaviourism of a disciplined group
of men on a warship; the relationships are,
accordingly, a statement of attitudes and pro-
cedures of the Royal Navy, which happens to be
a major weapon in the fight of the United
Nations against the Axis powers (not that any
reference to the United Nations appears in the
film). No; at the very worst Coward's mistake
was in not having the vision to tell his story
other than in terms of the limitations of democ-
racy, whereas the need today is to tell stories
which indicate the possibilities, the potential
changes and developments, and the new per-
spectives which democracy must now actively
investigate, and mould into a better future.

All of which adds up to the fact that Coward
has produced a superb piece of ad hoc, short-
term propaganda— a film which, because it is
sincere and not mawkish, realistic in effect and
not a producer's dream world (like Mrs.
Miniver), and truthful in its delineation of
ordinary people, is something which will at the
least of reckonings be a positive factor on our
own screens and on many screens abroad.

SIGHT

and

SOUND

Autumn Issue

6d.

THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE,

4 GREAT RUSSELL STREET,

LONDON, W.C.1

No. 7

There were once two Men who travelled together, one of whom was
blind. These two companions being, in the course of their journey,
one time surprised by night upon the road, entered into a meadow,
there to rest themselves till morning; and as soon as day appeared,
they rose, got on horseback, and continued their journey. \hw. the
blind Man, instead of his whip, as ill fate would have it, had picked
up a Serpent that was stiff w itli cold; but having it in his hand, as it
grew a little warm, he felt it somewhat softer than his whip, which
pleased him very much; he thought he had gained by the change, and
therefore never minded the loss. In this manner he travelled some
time; but when the sun began to appear and illuminate the world, his
Companion perceived the Serpent, and with loud cries, "I'riend."
said he, "you have taken up a Serpent instead of your whip; throw it
out of your hand, before yon feel the mortal caresses of the venomous

Bu

t the blind Man. believing that his friend had only jested with
him to get away his whip, "What,"" said he. "do you envy my good
luck? I lost my whip that was worth nothing, and here my kind
fortune has sent me a new one. Fray do not take me for such a simple-
ton but that I can distinguish a Serpent from a whip.''

With that his friend replied. "Companion, I am obliged l>\ the
laws of friendship and humanity to inform you of your danger;
and therefore let me again assure you of your error, and conjure you'
if you love your life, throw awa\ the Serpent."

To which the blind Man. more exasperated than persuaded: "W h\
do you lake- all this |>ain> to cheat me. and press me thus to throw
awa\ a thing which you intend, as soon as I have done so, t,, pick up
yourself?" His Companion, grieved at his obstinacy, entreated him to
he persuaded of the truth, swore he had no such design, and protested

to him that what he held in his hand was a real and pois us Serpent.

Bu1 neither oaths nor protestations would prevail: the blind man
would not alter his resolution. The sun by this time began to grow
high, and his beams having warmed the Serpent hv decree-, he be»an
to crawl up the blind man's arm. which he immediately after bit in
such a Venomous manner, that he gave him his death wound.

Moral: Better be Dead than Done.

REALIST FILM UNIT

4 7 OXFORD STREET, W . 1

Telephone: GERRARD 1958

DOCUMENTARY
NEWSLETTER!

CONTENTS

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

NOTES OF THE MONTH

U.S. DOLLAR AND BRITISH FILM INDUSTRY 148

FILM OF THE MONTH

PLAN FOR POST-WAR DOCUMENTARY

CUMENTARY FILMS

( iiKKI SPONDFNCE

A GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT

VOL 3 NO. 11-12

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON VV1

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

f|N November 26th the first leader in The Times was headed
^"^"Obligations of Victory**. In this leader stress was laid on the
fact that the people of Britain are extremely interested in the social
:ture of the State after the present war and are likely to become
even more interested as the United Nations move more and more
to the offensive and therefore towards victory. Tb quote directly
from The Times, "The keen popular interest, even at a moment of
spectacular military success, in domestic policies confirms the view-
that in the present War social reform stands in a closer and more

-ect relation to the national effort than Government spokesmen
and Government propagandists have sometimes been prepared to
recognise or admit."

The Times, by the way, might have added, but did not, that such
thoughts are in the minds of the common people in every nation
n the world, including those which are temporarily crushed under
the Nazi heel.

There is nothing new in this attitude, which is indeed one which
has been stressed in this journal at regular intervals since September
3rd, 1939. But a new element has entered since the United Nations,
to the gratification of everyone, passed to the offensive. The invasion
of North Africa, carrying with it the prospect of the re-opening of
the Mediterranean to United Nations' shipping, and perhaps the
invasion of Italy, was a tonic to everyone. Unfortunately this tonic
was rendered temporarily inoperative by the Darlan episode. We
lave no wish to recapitulate this unpleasant blot on the War policy
of the United Nations. Its main value was that it proved once and
for all that there can, in this conflict, be no division between military
and political activities. Whatever the military values of the Darlan
;pisode may have been, their political repercussions in occupied
France, to say nothing of the rest of occupied Europe, could never
iave been expected to be other than disastrous.

The peoples of the world, including those under Axis domina-
tion, are not merely fighting this war to beat Germany, Italy and
Japan. They are lighting it because by beating Germany, Italy and
lapan they will at the same time be la>ing the foundations for a
new life for the common people of the world. Even if the worlJ
[to them is limited by their own street or their own town, their
attitude of mind is none the less positive and practical in universal
terms. It is this universal aspect which lies behind The Times'
eadu when it says "Only a courageous and far-reaching policy
Droclaimed in broad outline with the full weight of Government
authority can build up a national conviction that victory will bring
.0 the people of this country a 'freedom from want* and a 'freedom
,'rom fear* (above all from fear of unemployment) not known in

the years before 1939". In this The Times speaks not only for the
people of this country but for the people of the world ; and it is this
universal issue which the propagandists in all media, film, radio
and press, must face with all the vigour at their command.

But this vigour cannot exist in the vacuum of groups of propagan-
dists, however excellent their intentions or forthright their demand
for action, if Government policy fails to follow their lead. "One
of the most serious indictments" says The Times, "which could be
brought against those charged with the direction of national affairs
is lack of preparation to meet foreseeable and foreseen contin-
gencies." What are these contingencies? Contrary to the belief of the
more esoteric of the planners, these contingencies do not relate
to a cloud-cuckoo land of communal perfection to be achieved at
some unspecified date after the cessation of hostilities. These
contingencies are concerned firstly with what is happening now,
and now means the day on which you read this article not less than
it means next week or next month, and also with what will happen
immediately and absolutely on the day in which hostilities, in a
military sense, cease.

Melting Pot

Let us take the two points separately. Firstly, what is happening
today? If you live in Great Britain or in any of the Dominions of the
Commonwealth or in the United States or in China or in the
U.S.S.R., you are today a speck in the melting pot of world destiny.
You are concerned with immediate events, some apparently trivial
and some, even at first glance, world shaking (it depends maybe on
the headlines of your breakfast-time newspaper); and of these
events you are not merely a spectator but an integral part.

If you are a good citizen of any of these nations, you will in-
stinctively be searching for all the growing points of social progress
and active endeavour which are appearing as a direct result of war
conditions, i.e. appearing as an ultimate necessity in the battle to
beat the Axis. What are these ultimate necessities? The Axis has to
be beaten because it represents all the forces of reaction against
social progress and against the idea that every man and woman,
ty right, has a say in his or her own destiny. Nothing can be more
significant in this war than the fact that Governments throughout
the world have lagged behind the wishes of the people they are
supposed to represent in carrying out measures which are not merely
designed to win the war quickly, but also to bring about better
conditions of life amongst the majority rather than the minority of
the people.

Some realisation of this point of view may have been in the min

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

of The Times leader writer when he said "An enormous and reward-
ing task of popularisation awaits the propagandist on the home
front ; well done, it will have a marked effect in renewing confidence
in the determination of the Government to garner the fruits of the
victory at home as well as in the field. But first of all the Govern-
ment's endorsement is required. What is as yet only in the stage of
reports must be turned into a programme"*. The Times did not turn
aside to inquire which Government it refers to, or whether the
'"endorsement** is to be that of a virtually self-elected House of
Commons or that of the people at large ; but in any case it does show
a stage of enlightenment at which the relationship between the
immediate determination to win the war, and the equally immediate
determination to win the war in terms of winning the peace, are
equated.

That is why it is important that propagandists must stress at all
points in their activities those wartime measures which not merely
represent an immediate battle-winning weapon, but also a revolu-
tion in our social structure and our way of life. That is why the
failure of the present Government (presumably under the reaction-
ary influence of the 1922 Committee and of other less obviously
reactionary bodies), to undertake anything other than temporary
measures of the most superficial nature instead of a direct national-
isation of essential public services, has been regarded by ordinary
people as a failure to face up to wartime issues.

A Decent Future

We repeat once again that the feelings or attitudes of the British
people may be also considered to be the feelings of all people in all
countries who believe in a decent future.

The second point at issue is the immediate action to be taken on
cessation of hostilities. It is now becoming almost too much of a
truism that the cessation of hostilities must on no account coincide
with the cessation of effort. People are beginning so completely to
accept this truism that one can see a million feet being placed on a
million desks and a million mouths opening in a gigantic and com-
placent yawn the moment the bogus pens dipped in invisible ink
place the bogus signatures on the ersatz notepaper. It is vitally im-
portant to realise that all the propaganda in the world will not avoid
factual relaxation the moment armistice is signed if the expression
of the people's will through their Governments has not been
strong enough to signal a real faith in the future.

The solution to this problem is not entirely to be found in the
speeches of Ministers or Presidents. It is not entirely to be found in
the reports of Planning Committees. It is only to be found in action.
Not merely action as seen in the sticking of however many gratifying
bayonets into however many unwilling Axis bellies. It is action in the
sphere of the common life of the people, be they soldiers or sailors or
airmen or factory workers or housewives or cadets or schoolchildren
or research workers or even civil servants. It is action which in its
carrying out makes it plain that the terms of the Atlantic Charter and
the Four Freedoms are not merely words spoken or signatures ap-
pended, but ideas translated into fact and action. We ourselves believe
that the war cannot be won in a true sense unless these ideas are trans-
lated into fact and action ; but we are also aware that the war could
be won in a military sense without these ideas being taken into con-
sideration. In other words, it is perfectly possible to beat Hitler and
Mussolini and Hirohito and grind them into the dust, while at the same
time perpetuating all the ideas for which they stand (though of course
a different ideology would be used).

Propaganda is therefore at the cross roads. Both in Great Britain
and the United States it is stultified because the intentions oi
Governmental factions which, despite democratic machinery, cannot
be truthfully said to represent the intentions of the people, are such
that really forthright propaganda is frowned on. This is serious,
because it so happens that the intentions of the Governments of the
U.S.S.R. and China coincide more and more closely with the in-
tentions of the people of those nations, and it must be noted that
todav the United Nations depend in great and increasing measure
on the strength of China and the U.S.S.R.

The Armistice is signed. The military war has been won. What
now? There is an immediate job to be done. The whole of Europe is;
now the responsibility of the United Nations. The peoples of the
occupied countries are very busy killing Germans, Italians and
Japanese, either by direct methods or through torture. Typhus and
bubonic plague are sweeping westwards from the hinterlands of
Asia (you remember how Nansen's organisation only saved us
from these at the last second after the last war). Political in-
stability is becoming an increasing and anarchic danger to the
victorious powers of the West. How are you, how are we, going
to face this problem? We shall not be able to face it if we have
not, in the first place, reorientated our own social life and our
own faith in active democracy, and in the second place planned,
early on, our action as regards immediate post-war policy.

Previous Planning

Today the Western hemisphere is publicly and acutely conscious
of its duty towards the world as regards the supply of food and
medical necessities to Europe and Asia immediately hostilities
cease. But what about an important matter which should not
only go hand in hand with these physical supplies but could
also be a powerful factor in ensuring the best use of them?
There is a vital job for propaganda to do and it cannot be done
without previous planning. The weapons at our command in this
respect are the press, the radio and the film, and all of them must be
brought into line. If we are not experts in press propaganda or
radio propaganda, we know at least as regards radio that we should
have control of the wavelengths of the world, and that they should
be able to reach everyone with a radio set with messages not merely,
God save the mark, of hope, but also of direct moment-to-moment
information and instruction.

As far as film is concerned, in Europe and Eurasia alone we, the
United Nations, should commandeer every cinema and every
projector. With the help of every Disney short to leaven the pro-
grammes, we should project to the people constant and consistent
programmes of information and instruction. These would in the
first place explain in general terms to those millions who have been
cut off from direct information by their temporary Axis masters,
what exactly has happened and is happening; and secondly, would
give them direct instruction and information about the symptoms
of epidemic diseases and how to deal with them, the necessary foods
to counteract those symptoms of starvation and malnutrition which
even as you read this are stunting and deforming the children of
Europe and of Asia. There would also be films which would indicate
the plans of the victorious peoples not for a vague and cloudy
future but for immediate action within the next six months.

Opinion and Action

The answer is a double one. Basically it is the opinion and action
of ordinary people which counts, but the power of propaganda as an
active weapon is not merely to strengthen public opinion, but also
to help to integrate it where it is incoherent, and to confirm it in well
doing.

The publication of the Beveridge Report is a case in point. That
it should appear at all is in itself good propaganda and it is hearten-
ing to know that the B.B.C. foreign broadcasts have been plugging
it very hard. In our own country, despite the thinly disguised
activities oi' anti-Beveridge elements, the Report has meant much
more than a social charter specific enough to be within our imme-
diate powers. It has begun that process of definite (as opposed to
indefinite or woolly) thinking on the part of ordinary people which
is in itself the first weapon of true and active democracy.

To strengthen and confirm this is an immediate job for the
propagandists, and as far as films go not merely the Report itself
but also its many important implications provide a fertile field for
forthright and imaginative work. But there must be no delay, for
nowadays tunc wans for no man, no party, no groups of vested
interests and for no Government which does not in fact, as well as
in protestation, represent the will of the people.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NO V E MB E R -DEC E M BER 1942

NOTES OF THE MONTH

Comic Cuts

why is there never any good working-class dialogue in British
films? Script-writers always seem to know how the middle and
upper classes speak and behave, but they make everybody else
either inarticulate and noble or glib and funny. And this applies to
both studio and documentary films. The dialogue of Mrs. Miniver's
station master was not more untrue to life than the dialogue of
most characters one sees on the screen, in post office, factory or pub.
Maybe all our film-makers are incorrigibly middle-class, or
perhaps the job of film-making confers middle-classdom on its
addicts, or maybe it is that our script-writers really believe that
they are writing good honest dialogue all the time. If somebody
makes a film about Welsh coal miners they usually take the trouble
to keep their ears open roundabout the Rhondda or even if they
don't do this they call in Mr. Jack Jones to help. Yet everybody
thinks that they can write special "true to life" dialogue for,
say, cotton spinners or bus conductors. Of course if the worker
is looked at as something remote and strange, it isn*t easy. If
anybody thinks it is, let him or her sit down and try and write
a few lines of dialogue between a bus conductor and a machine-
tool maker on the subject of (a) food rationing, (/>) Darlan, (c) the
successor to Len Harvey; or if this is too complicated, a peace -
and war-time factory girl's reactions to — (</) news of her fiance's
immediate leave, (b) a gift of two pairs of silk stockings, (c) rumours
of an invasion.

Army Training Films

the problem of training films in the Armed Forces is apparentlj

not yet satisfactorily solved. We say "apparently" because security
reasons make it difficult to gel detailed information. It is said that
army training films have in recent months shown a marked improve-
ment, although reports reaching us from various people in the Armv
seem to indicate that some of the earlier stinkers are still in circula-
tion. In any case the real problem seems to centre in the exhibition
aspect. A training film shown at the wrong time might just as well
not be shown at all. The circumstances of projection naturally rest
with the commanding officers of units, and unless they realise thai
films must be treated seriously, no system of distribution, however
efficient, which the Department of Army (Cinematography can de-
vise will guarantee proper conditions. We hear o\~ film shows to
men who are tired out after a hard day's physical work; of the
wrong films being shown to the wrong trainees; of enormously long
shows being crammed willy-nilly into a spare morning or afternoon.
It is true enough that one always' hears about the bad cases and
seldom about the good ones. But there seem to be good grounds for
believing that many units are not treating training films seriously.
Whether D.A.K. has any power to improve this situation we don't
know, but it is clear that training films, however excellently pro-
duced and efficiently circulated, are quite useless if they are not
shown under reasonable conditions and at reasonable times. The
problem also, on our information, applies to the Navy and the
R.A.F.

Tom Tiddler

those spoiled darlings of to-day, the Public Relations Officers of A Job in China

the various Ministries, seem to be still busy with their game of Tom
Tiddler's Ground — except when they take time off to put their heads
in their pinafores and say that they won't play with anybody, so
there!

When they play Tom Tiddler it's not so bad. All you have to do
is to wait in the long grass and grasp them firmly as they rush past
on their many merry missions. The "I won't play with you" game is
much more difficult. Their favourite victim seems to be the Ministry
of Information Films Division. One moment all is smiles and happy
gambols, garlands are exchanged and "my dear fellow" the accepted
greeting. Then somebody passes the sugar bowl without the tongs
and feelings are very definitely hurt. The doors of the various
offices close with ominous quiet and communications are difficult.
The next stage is open warfare, blood-feud and sabotage. Com-

mnications are now completely broken off, while behind the scenes,
those tough and powerful wires, which only operate behind locked
doors, are quickly tugged. Meanwhile the world war goes on.

The situation is absurd, the reasons for it often obscure and

nearly always completely ridiculous. The job of Public Relations

Officer is officially a new one and is no doubt attended by all the

j difficulties of power which beset any new profession. Spheres have

II to be determined, and the question of how far each individual officer
can go without passing the buck is no doubt only established by
slow methods of trial and error. Able men are often apt to think
that there is nothing they cannot do and many see no reason for
j supposing that films are not one of the things they can not only
' "do", but can do almost while standing on their heads. The
Films Division frequently feels otherwise. A state of deadlock is
I reached and subjects which are of particular interest to any one
| Ministry often languish and die. After a brisk bout of Tom Tiddler
I the stage of "I won't play" is quickly reached.

There would seem to be room for greater co-operation between

the various parties concerned. Who should make the first move is

I obviously a delicate matter. If it proves too difficult we suggest that

| some powerful nanny should knock the little dears' heads together.

china is a long way away and transport is very difficult. Nevertheless
there is great urgency for a long term propaganda campaign on our
part in that country. Recent reports indicate that our representatives
there have behaved with something less than tact, and that our
general record in this war, let alone our specific record as regards
China, has put our prestige very low. Fortunately for the United
Nations, American action and behaviour is somewhat counter-
balancing this state of affairs. Nevertheless we must do all we can to
efface the century-old impression of superior behaviour and com-
mercially-minded political action which is likely to die hard in
Chungking and elsewhere. Much no doubt can be done by radio.
But one big consignment of films specially geared to Chinese needs
could be of enormous value. Some of the films should be made, if
possible, to the specification of Chinese authorities in this country,
and should give information on new techniques in warfare, weapons,
medical and surgical practice, and especially on social organisation
and activity. Others must state and explain our work in the war, our
attitude to the future United Nations set-up, and our determination
— as evinced by the joint cancellation of the concession treaties by
ourselves and the U.S.— to march by China's side on equal terms in
the future. Meantime the very successful release of Inside Fighting
China — a tribute to China by the Canadian Government will
represent not merely a compliment but will also begin the job of
bringing an understanding of China-its people and problems—
to the people of this country. This, too, is a job which must be
carried on, despite the obvious difficulties of distance and transport.

D.N.L. Nov.-Dec.

As time, labour and paper are in increasingly short supply, we
have decided to economise by combining the November and
December issues. This double number has been increased in size
and includes the annual index, but for subscription purposes it will
count only as a normal single issue.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

U.S. Dollar Winning

Battle to Control
British Film Industry

As we forecast in our previous issues, the
-^*Film Industry's clash between the repre-
sentatives of American monopoly capital
and British monopoly capital is rapidly coming
into the open. Yankee dollar imperialism is on
the march and British capital is losing ground
in many of its chief industrial strongholds. The
Film Industry is no Stalingrad, but it does retain
one vital defence against the Americans that
few other industries have. It has direct contact
and source of revenue from the cash customer.
While its production and renting sides would
inevitably be taken over by the Americans, the
exhibiting side, if it maintains its unity, can stil!
hold out for some time against it and still
play otf the competing American interests
against one another. (An instance of this unified
strength was the victory of the exhibitors over
20th. Century Fox in the matter of Sunday
bookings. True this was only a temporary victory
as film shortage will make the seven or four-day
booking a necessity, but nevertheless the spear-
head of the American renters will have been
blunted.)

Let us examine the situation as we thought
it was likely to develop some months ago. We
thought the conflict would arise from American
interests having the films, and British interests
having the cinemas. We thought that unless
there was some form of Government action
and /or protection, the British Film Production
Industry would gradually become a vassal of
American renter interests.

What is the position now? It is generally
known that the fight is on. The 20th. Century Fox
campaign was a feeler. It is known that heads of
American Companies in London have had
discussions to get more money out of the English
market. Their bosses in America have seen
indications in many cinema reports that profits
are climbing rapidly. It has been estimated that
business is up 35 per cent in the cinemas. On a
recent estimate the American Companies
already recovered 27 per cent of their booking
revenue from this country — they reckon this is
their profit. More squeeze on our cinemas means
more gravy all round — in the States. We may
expect to see other squeezes in the near future.
'I here is the possible revival of block booking
already suggested by interested parties in
America as a wartime necessity whereby the
apcray can be unloaded at inflated prices.

Buying Cinemas

The American Companies will undoubtedly
try to buy up cinemas and form new circuits;
Warner Brothers already hold a 50 per cent
interest in the A. B.C. circuit. There are already
a great many rumours about buying cinemas.
The Americans may be a little chary of buying
cinemas alter their experience in the 1929 days
when they were all caught in a theatre operation
and many companies virtually bankrupted.
But the purchase of cinemas is a lactic they will
have to employ. A squeeze they are already

attempting is to take no more flat bookings.
This will tend to put the independent exhibitors
out of business who, by making a shrewd deal
on flat rate, can hope to make a reasonable
profit some weeks, whereas on percentage they
can never hope to do the same.

What is the focus of our opposition to all
this? Rather, it should be who is? Because J.
Arthur Rank is the person controlling the largest
number of cinemas in this country. He controls
both the Odeon and G.B. circuits and so is in
a position at the moment to pick and choose
what films he plays. He is interested in preserving
as big a production industry as he can, because
this will give him greater bargaining power, so
he is deeply committed in Denham Studios,
Shepherds Bush and Islington. He also controls
General Film Distributors, probably the largest
of the English renting concerns. Rank is the
protagonist of the British side.

The Board of Trade

Interestingly enough our Board of Trade
does not seem worried about the decline and
possible capture of our Industry. Its recent
revision of the American Companies' Quota
obligations will not encourage the Industry here.
They have lowered the Americans' obligation
to the requirement that they shall spend £150,000
a year on making British films. Quite obviously
we shall see the Americans investing this in one
picture per annum produced probably on the
lines of A Yank at Oxford. The Board of Trade,
of course, have not buried the exhibitors'
obligation, and by this order they will have even
less choice of films to fulfil their quota.

The feature production in this country
revolves round a very few names now. There are
Two Cities Films, British National Films,
Gaumont British, the Archers — operating from
Denham Studios, National Studios, Shepherd
Bush Studios. Islington Studios, Welwyn Studios,
Ealing Studios, Teddington Studios. Of these
studios, Teddington and Ealing are already
hitched to the Americans. The others represent
a relatively small financial interest and could
presumably be acquired. The Production Indus-
try will survive so long as Rank and the theatre
interests can maintain their bargaining power,
because the cinema interests must maintain
a minimum Film Industry as a bargaining
weapon for itself. The British renting companies
will, of course, go under if the British Pro-
duction Industry is taken over.

Maybe it is a good thing for Anglo-American
relations that our Industry should go under
American control. On the other hand, there are
those who would wish to preserve some machin-
es for presenting British life and ideas. It would
be .in odd, but probably likely outcome of this
war, to find this important reflection of our
national life controlled by American monopoly
capital.

mir in i:\ii in

NEWS LETTER

MONTHLY SIXPENCE

VOL.3 NUMBER 11-12
NOV.-DEC. 1942

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands for the use of film as a
medium of propaganda and in-
struction in the interests of the
people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of
common people all over the
world.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

is produced under the auspices
of Film Centre, London, in asso-
ciation with American FilmCenter,
New York.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey
Alexander Shaw
Donald Taylor
John Taylor
Basil Wright

Outside contributions will be
welcomed but no fees will be
paid.

We are prepared to deliver from
3 — 50 copies in bulk to Schools,
Film Societies and other organi-
sations.

Owned and published by

FILM CENTRE LTD.
34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON

W.l GERRARD 4253

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

War and Peace

The Function of Documentary

At the outbreak of war the film medium was
neglected and the claims of those who
practised it to assist in the anti-fascist fight were
ignored. To-day the documentary film has
become the fashionable toy of every official
interest.

Propaganda films or instructional films?
Endless discussions are everywhere taking
place as to the proper wartime role of the film
of fact. There is agreement on only one point :
that you can't have too many films. The civil
servant who is not convinced that his work
must be recorded on celluloid for the benefit
of posterity is a rarity. There is no question of
whether the subject-matter he brings is suitable
for the medium or whether channels of distri-
bution lie open for the film once it is com-
pleted— to have your work filmed is like appear-
ing in the honours list, it is a sure mark of public
achievement.

The Limitations

The time has come for documentary makers
to examine not only the powers but also the
limitations of the medium they employ. Such
an examination will lead to one single incontro-
vertible conclusion.

The primary function of documentary re-
mains to-day, as always, the furtherance of
public enlightenment. The issue between in-
structional and propaganda films, and the vexed
question as to which should principally occupy
documentary energies in wartime, becomes a
matter of small consequence when each type of
film is seen to have the same basic purpose.
That is to say, the documentary film to-day is
concerned with extending public knowledge of
vital issues and, in order to do so, it may equally
desirably find itself representing the effect of
fascist terror upon French national psychology
on the one hand, or in instructing housewives on
methods of fuel-saving on the other. Those
sponsors or makers of documentary films who
show little respect for the educational or instruc-
tional films as compared with what they feel
to be the more important world of propaganda,
reveal a complete failure to grasp the original
documentary principle. Documentary in its
beginnings, and still to-day, is concerned with
public enlightenment, but with public enlighten-
ment in a broader sense of the phrase than is
accepted in any other field. For the documentary
movement, education has always meant not
simply and solely a classroom activity. It
broadens out from the pedagogic into every
field of civic life. Documentary propaganda has
always been concerned with the citizen in rela-
tion to his social environment. In to-day's war-
I time situation, many people have assumed that
\ the purpose of documentary would be basically
j changed because of the switch-over from peace
to war. Why should this be so? The nature of
wartime educational and propaganda needs
I differs from those of peacetime only in detail,
not in principle. The nation or groups of nations
which will prove victorious is the one which
develops the most intelligent and efficient grasp
of its problems. In war, as in peace, the role
of documentary is to convey to the peoples of
the United Nations the most thorough grasp

FILM OF THE MONTH

"Went the Day Well"

/^avalcanti, producer of the impeccably
^"exciting film about the Foreman who went to
France, has turned director and presents us
with the not at all impeccable but equally
exciting Went the Day Well. The film has all the
appearance of having been made with one eye
on the clock and the other on a copy of the
Boy's Own Paper. Perhaps that is why it is such
a good film in spite of its faults which are many,
frequent and completely unimportant. If you like
a film which lingers over its effects, which makes
significant detail the turning point of emotion
and plot, in fact if you like a film to ponder and
remember, this is not for you. But if you believe
that it takes all kinds of films to make an
evening out and that a rattlin' good yarn
admirably turned into celluloid without any

of the war situation and its basic implications.
The information to be communicated covers
the whole of life. At the one extreme it is a matter
of feeling and mood: at the other- extreme a
matter of physical manipulation. If you like,
call the long-term films "propagandist" and
the short-term films "instructional". Names do
not matter provided you remember that in peace
or in war British documentary is always con-
cerned with creating a body of informed, active
and therefore good, citizens.

There is, however, one important proviso. In
wartime the need is more acute because the
issues are more critical and failure more dis-
astrous. For this reason the process of enlighten-
ment must in wartime be accelerated. All
relevant media, including documentary, need to
show quicker results.

Energy Wasted

If it is accepted that the role of documentary
in wartime is informational in this very broad
sense, then it immediately becomes clear that
a great deal of documentary energy is being
wasted on so-called propaganda films which
have less relation to fact than to artificial and
synthetic feelings calculated to please the super-
ficial observer here or overseas. Under this head
fall all films which are content simply to ascribe
to ourselves or our allies all the most desirable
virtues without providing any factual basis
for such self-righteous assumptions. We must
be judged by deeds, not by words, and if we are
to impress the world with the righteousness of
our cause we will do it best by a factual presenta-
tion of achievements which we believe to be in
the line of good citizenship.

Many minds are occupied with the transition
from war to post-war and its effect upon docu-
mentary objectives. Here again there need be,
indeed there should be, no basic change. The
good citizen in time of war is also the good
citizen in time of peace. Implicit in documentary's
wartime teachings must be its teachings for the
peace to follow, and information, placed in its
true perspectives, is the key. To-day, in wartime,
education in national citizenship is broadening
into education for citizenship in the corporate
United Nations. In peacetime it will broaden
further still into education for world citizenship.
The process is continuous.

frills or decorations is worth going a long way to
see, then here is first class entertainment.

A party of Royal Engineers arrive in a rural
I iiL'lish \illage. They are welcomed by one and
all, shown round the defences by the local Home
Guard and arc made much of by the local
gentry. But very quickly the villagers' sus-
picions are aroused. English soldiers don't
(wist little boys ears (at least, not both at once),
we don't make sevens with a bar across the
upright, our chocolate does not come from
Wien and is not spelt "chokolade". In spite of
the efforts of the local Quisling the not impossible
plot is out. The Engineers are German fore-
runners of a full scale invasion. Their discover)
means that plan XYZ has to be put into action.
This involves shooting the Home Guard and
putting all the villagers into the church where
the vicar is immediately shot for trying to ring
the bells. The film then settles down to tell how
the villagers outwitted the Germans.

Mounting Suspense

To tell any more of the story would spoil
the film for it depends entirely for its effect on
quick action and mounting suspense. It keeps
you sitting on the edge of your seat and the fact
that the whole thing can be torn to pieces doesn't
matter in the least. My particular quibble was
that if the boy who came from another village
to deliver the Sunday papers was as stupid as
all that, he wouldn't have been allowed to
handle even the "Sunday (censored)". But it
didn't spoil my enjoyment of the film-at all.

For some strange reason, and this is surely
a tribute to its makers. Went the Day Well has
provoked more differences of opinion than
many more important films. Sunday's Darling
Goddesses of the film temple have thundered
forth from opposite sides and everybody who
doesn't like it is quite unable to speak for
rage, while those who enjoyed it, and they seem
to be in the majority, spend their time telling
everybody else to go and see it.

Camera and Sound

The actors play their parts for all they art-
worth, I particularly admired Marie Loin's
efficient but fatal handling of the hand grenade
and Elizabeth Allan's look of sick but victorious
horror when she shot her first German. The
camera work was excellent. The sound seemed
a bit astray, the dinner party in particular
sounding as though the whole thing was taking
place in an empty swimming bath, but whether
this was recording or reproduction it is difficult
to say. And here's a final nag. Why do people
have to call films by these literary and impossible-
to-remember titles. "Went the Day Well,"
"This Above All," "All This and I kv
What do these conglomerations of words mean
to anybody who hasn't got a Boots' library
subscription or a Golden Treasury handy?

And jusl in case the final quibble has left
a narking impression let me repeat that this is
a refreshing, an exciting and an excellent film and
will be enjoyed by everybody except the hope-
lessly politically-minded and the most pure of
intellectuals.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

A Plan For Post- War
Documentary

by Hugh E. Hopewell

'T'HE film, thanks to its omnipresent nature and
-*■ concretcness of appeal, is undoubtedly one of
the most influential factors in the formation
of public opinion to-day. It penetrates into every
sphere of social life. To labour the insidious
effect the story-film has in general exercised
is to flog a dead horse. The entertainment film
has its own allotted uses. None would deny this;
few would maintain that it is not in desperate
need of improvement. But documentary, by its
very nature, by its dialectic method, is best
suited to enlighten the masses as to problems
which intimately affect their well-being. The
story-film can, and in a few cases does, bring
home to the common man an awareness of social
injustice of which he was unaware or which he
complacently accepted. But, unlike documentary,
it can seldom deal with all the issues involved'.
It can point the moral but seldom show the
solution to a problem. On the whole it has con-
fined itself to instilling in its devotees a soul and
civilisation destroying ambition to live as life
is portrayed on the screen. It has propagated the
abandonment of all moral principles. Its tendency
has been radically and consistently anti-social.
It could do much to solve social problems, but
rather than act as an educative force it has
preferred to pander to the Lowest Common
Denominator.

All that is obvious. 'Equally obvious is the
potency of documentary as an educative force
and as a means of propaganda. These two aims
are so closely interbound that it is at limes
almost impossible to define where one begins
and the other ends. Mr. Rotha has realised this
to the evident benefit of his productions. The
label "propaganda" is at present sufficient to
damn a film of whatever excellence. The word
has been so misused that its true sense has been
submerged beneath waves of political preaching.
Propaganda should mean not only the dissemina-
tion of principles but also the spreading of

of the most important factors in the social
structure, they should seek to base it on sound
knowledge, not on a foundation of hysterical
threats and impossible promises. Cinema,
documentary cinema, is perhaps the most
successful instrument of propaganda. It must
strive to keep the educational clement well to
the fore.

Prime Producer

To-day, the film has greater potency, than
most other mediums in the formation of public
opinion. Documentary, by its very nature, is
the best suited of all cinematic expressions for
the awakening of popular consciousness. Granted
these premises, the problem al once arises as
to who shall use documentary cinema in its task
of helping to arouse the peoples of the world

to a realisation of their common responsibilities.
It is obvious that under present conditions the
State must be the prime producer. National
and international planning are State functions.
But if all problems are handled by one agency
there recurs the fear of a dictatorship of ideas.
Such questions, bearing as they do on the welfare
of every human being, must be studied from all
angles. They must be subjected to a criticism
both destructive and constructive. The State
must encourage such criticism from its members.
It can do so in a variety of ways. For example,
in addition to productions outlining Government
policies the State should subsidise documentary
producers of proved ability and allow them to
interpret problems in their own way. For, as
Grierson says, "art is wider than political
doctrine and platform solution, for the plain
good reason that art must more deeply and
more lastingly maintain life." Furthermore,
documentary should be used by differing political
and cultural parties who must receive assurance
that their productions shall be given the same
facilities and treatment as Government films.
On a lesser scale than problems of national and
international importance, but equally essential
for efficient citizenship, such controversial
subjects as Industry, Civics, and Religion
should be brought to the attention of the masses
by means of documentary. The field of possi-
bilities is almost inexhaustible. So long as one
human being remains in ignorance of the work
and problems of his brethren there remains
a task for documentary.

Adequate Freedom

The sine qua non of good documentary is
adequate freedom of expression for those in
charge of its production. Documentalists should
receive far more than they do under the present
social system. For, as Mr. Rotha says, though
"the maker of documentary should be politically
and socially conscious in his approach to every
day experience, he has no claim to the label of
politician. His job is not upon a platform to
harangue the mob, but in a pulpit to persuade
the mass to a wider . . . consideration of human
affairs. ... He does not march with the crowd
but goes just ahead, asking contemplation and
discussion before action is taken on those
problems with which he deals. . . . I he im-
mediate task of the documentalist is to find the
means whereby he "can employ a mastery of his
art of" public persuasion to put the people and
their problems, their labour and their service,
before themselves". Under free working con-
ditions documentary will prove Us excellence
and its integral pan in social life. As an efficient
public service it will always receive a
hearing.

Documentary is, naturally enough, at present
Liii'eK a (iovcrnment mouthpiece. If it is to
become something moic, documentalists. trade
journals, film clubs, and all who believe in the
cultural value ol cinema, must fight fot its recog-
nition. Planning foi post-war conditions is

alicady going ahead. \ campaign must begin

now to secure for documentary its just place in
the "new order". Cinema must clearly cease to
be merely an instrument of entertainment. If the
post-war world is to benefit, the actualities of
life must be retained, but ideas which transcend
the commonplace must be recognised. Docu-
mentary cannot fail to realise this. It must take
its facts from one and its appeal from the other.
Idealism and realism must amalgamate, not
remain diametrically opposed. "So compassion,
the great social ferment, will disintegrate the
evil elements of the system; while reason,
cementer of differing temperaments, will bind
the structure of a new. The cinema will not
contribute to the mechanism of the new order;
but, by building emotion on the basis of thought,
it will speed and ease the transition." That is the
work of documentary after the war. It has a great
part to play. It must be tried now and not found
to be wanting.

The Newsreels

it is amazing how the newsreels, all working
with the same material, manage to turn out
different items on the same subject. Any cinema-
goer who may see the same week's issues of two
different companies could be pardoned for
wondering what really happened at that recorded
moment of history. Take the subject "The
Allied landing in North Africa" and the three
newsreels Paramount, Gaumont British and
Pathe. The Paramount reel is completely the
master of its history; every incident is under
control ; each sequence works to its climax
and every now and then a diagram appears to
make all clear. In fact the whole affair might
have been scripted for the benefit of this com-
pany. This is good newsreel making. The
commentary explains clearly and excitingly
everything that happens and even finds time
suggest that Darlan has his drawbacks
an ally.

G.B. news, bringing the Truth to the free
Peoples of the World (which charming phrase
immediately conjures up a vision of an earnest
Girl Guide bringing a piece of boiled fish to
a sick aunt) slams right into the subject, tells
us how extremely clever we are and how very
silly Hitler must be feeling and generally has
a grand time with sound effects and music. The
result is quite stimulating and would have been
a sight better if the commentary had not been
written in quite such a priggish manner. The
obsession with Germany and Hitler rather
detracted from our magnificent achievement.

Pathe have bv far the best trade mark.

Poor Material

The material all the companies had to use
was on the whole poor. Some good convoy and
aircraft carrier material and some excellent
shots of the Casablanca section, including
some very exciting night lighting. Otherwise
the whole thing might have been manoeuvres at
Torquay. As the Algerian landing was al .\n\
rate a peaceful one. the cameramen concerned
might have done a little more than they did. For v
mosl people, though, all the reels will be made
by the shot of the I rench jeering at the Italian ft
Armistice Commission as they arc driven through
the streets. These are very fur.ny and very
good.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Speed-up on Stirlings. Production: Shell Film
Unit. Direction: Graham Tharpe. Camera:
Sidney Beadle. Producer: Edgar Anstey. M.O.I.
20 minutes. Non-T.

Subject: The teamwork by which Stirling bomb-
ers come to being, and the story of how an
increase in production speed was brought about
through the ideas and co-operation of both
workers and management.
Treatment: The film is mostly a straight exposi-
tional job, the commentary being spoken by
works-foremen, engineers, etc. The assemblage
of Stirlings from parts manufactured at sub-
factories is clearly shown and there is one
magnificent and sensational shot of the fuselage.
like some inflated insect out of The Food of the
Gods, being towed, towering, through a narrow
village street. The least successful sequences are
the office dialogues, in which the natural actors
are not sufficiently natural or sure of themselves.
The film also lets you down with a bump by fail-
ing to put the completed Stirling in the air; this
is a pure psychological error from the point of
view of any audience.

Propaganda Value: Should be of interest to most
audiences and especially to factory workers en-
gaged in manufacturing parts the final use of
which they never see. The factual material is
■engrossing and the scale of operations impressiv e.

Trailers. Production: Not stated. M.O.I. I \
minutes. Theatrical.

The recent trailers put out by the M.O.I, have
shown notable progress. They are designed for
attaching to the newsreels, and none of the recent
issues deserve the drawing of the tabs across them
which has from time to time been complained of.
The job of these trailers is to put across imme-
diate ad hoc messages (e.g. rubber salvage, pig
food, return of toothpaste tubes, etc.). They use
all sorts of techniques, including cartoon. The
essential for trailers is not only clarity and force
in a brief space, but also an unerring sense of
timing; and the latest series have been very suc-
cessful in these respects. If the standard goes on
improving audiences will start to be disappointed
if the newsreel ends without one.

Motor Cycle Training. Production: Canadian
Army Film Unit. M.O.I. 7 minutes.
Subject: The training of Canadian Army motor
cycle despatch riders.

Treatment: Here's a good subject thrown away
by careless and shoddy work. The commentary is
badly written, the cutting perfunctory, and car-
-dinal errors are made, such as the introduction
of a test hill, already seen ad nauseam, in a final
sequence which tries very unsuccessfully to depict
a rider doing an urgent job under fire.
Propaganda Value: In so far as the subject is
li interesting some audiences may take something
laway after seeing it. But on the whole this film is
an unworthy job for a Dominion which has done
I pioneer work in propaganda films.

I Spring on the Farm. Production: Greenpark Prc-
Iductions. Director: Ralph Keene. Camera:

•Charles Marlborough. Music: William Alwyn.
l/ls.wa'ate Producer: Edgar Anstey. M.O.I. 15
Iminutes. Non-T. Subject: Fanners' and farm-
workers'jobs in springtime; also the part played

by the scientist and research worker in modern
agriculture.

Treatment: This film is more succinct and inter-
esting than Winter on the Farm, to which it is a
sequel. Keene has retained his marvellous pic-
torial sense, but has avoided lingering over the
beauties of the English landscape per se, with the
result that much more information is given and a
greater sense of the interdependence of the
nation, the scientist and agriculture is achieved.
The sequences dealing with dairy farmers' prob-
lems are especially interesting. The subject also
gains a great deal by the constant comparison of
the work of big and small farmers.
Propaganda Value: Excellent for town audiences
and factory workers. Should also be valuable in
schools.

We Sail at Midnight. Production: Crown
Film Unit. Producer. Ian Dalrymple. Director:
Julian Spiro. Camera: Chick Fowle. Music:
Richard Addinsell. M.O.I. 27 minutes.
Subject: The operation of the Lease-Lend ar-
rangement in terms of the supply of essential
tools to a British tank factory.
Treatment: This very well made film labours un-
der two difficulties. In the first place its story re-
lates to the period before the U.S. came into the
war. In the second place its story is too slender
for its length. A new tank has been passed, but
cannot go into production until new gear-cutting
machinery is obtained from the U.S.A. Priority
for this is arranged by the Lease-Lend authorities
in Washington. The machines are rushed to the
New York docks in lorries, cross the Atlantic in
convoy, and arrive safely. It is doubtful whether,
today, this tale, among all the other urgencies, is
worth more than at most ten minutes. The film is
exceedingly pleasant on the eye — the shooting of
New York being quite sensational. The dialogue
scenes are well directed, notably the War Trans-
port conference and a marvellous sequence of an
American works-manager, who deserves a Holly-
wood contract. A very original musical score by
Addinsell gives many of the sequences a lot of
value. One wonders, however, whether the sub-
ject was worth the expense of sending a unit
across the Atlantic instead of having the neces-
sary scenes shot by a U.S. film unit.
Propaganda Value; No doubt the film was de-
signed as a compliment to the United States in the
pure Lease-Lend period. Today, now that
America is in the war, its message is a little-
faded

A House in London. Production: British Para-
mount News. M.O.I. 8 minutes
Subject: The unveiling of a commemorative.tab-
let on the wall of the London house where Lenin
lived from 1902-03.

Treatment: Straightforward newsreel technique
is used — not unimaginatively. The procession to
the house, the unveiling, and Maisky's speech
form the material. Quite apart from its intrinsic-
interest, this film will undoubtedly remind many
people how far-reaching have been the political
changes of recent years.

Propaganda Value: This film was made for show-
ing in the U.S.S.R.— the present version being of
secondary importance. For Soviet audiences it is
obviously admirable — especially as Goering very
kindly blitzed Lenin's house, thus giving an extra

twist to the story. The English version is useful as
giving audiences an opportunity to take part in a
tribute to one of the world's greatest men. It is
also valuable in that it will be gall and wormwood
to some of our bigwigs and blimps.
Street lighting. Production: Army Film Unit, for
M.O.I. 13 minutes. Non-T.
Subject: The principles of street fighting as prac-
tised by the British Army.

Treatment: To illustrate modern Army proce-
dure, an example is chosen in which a platoon
is detailed to dislodge a nest of Nazis from a
baker's shop in a city street. The story is well
told, and the movements of the various sections
are clearly detailed — on several occasions by
means of a simple and very helpful map.
Throughout the film, considerable realism has
been aimed at, and this, in general, is achieved.
The music, unfortunately, is ill-selected, and is
almost an obtrusive parody on the worst type of
newsreel background. The camerawork is effec-
tive, and many of the angles add to the exposi-
tional value of the film.

Propaganda Value: This is not an Army training
film, but a piece of information to the public at
large. As such it has high interest value, as well as
a certain amount of excitement. It is also of
morale value, since it shows well-trained men
carrying out a difficult job with speed, courage
and efficiency. If similar films are made in the
future, it might be worth the trouble of" altering
street-signs and posters to an European language
such as German, French, or Norwegian. This
{Continued overleaf )

SIGHT

and

SOUND

WINTER ISSUE OUT

Suttif f out rihu tors :
ELSPETH GRANT
FORSYTH HARDY
PATRICK MEREDITH

6d.

Published by: The British Film Institute,

4 Ureal Kus>ell Street. London. \\ .( .1.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS continued

would add an extra element of aggression.

Wales. Production: Strand Films. Producer:
Donald Taylor. Direction: John Eldridge.
Camera: Jo Jago. Commentary: Dylan Thomas.
Music: William Alwyn. M.O.I. 12 minutes.
Non-T. (available in Welsh and English).
Subject: Wales in wartime, and the influence of
the Welsh spirit and traditions on life in Wales
today.

Treatment: This film presumably complements
those already made on Scotland and Northern
Ireland; it certainly follows the same technique.
The cataloguing of information is avoided, and
the main points are made by an imaginative use
of music and commentary — the latter an im-
pressive effort by Dylan Thomas, with its simple
verses about the slump and its aftermath.
Propaganda Value: The film should please the
Welsh and interest the English and Scots. It
leaves no special impression behind, except that
Wales is in part a beautiful country and in part an
industrial area which had a raw deal in the Twen-
ties and Thirties. But these impressions, if not
backed by the memory of detailed information,
a e probably useful for leavening a non-theatrical
show.

The Nose Has It. Production: Gainsborough
Pictures. Direction: Val Guest. Cast: Arthur
Askey. M.O.I. 8 minutes. Theatrical.
Subject: Sneeze into your handkerchief.
Treatment: The film is an exceedingly funny lec-
ture on sneezing by Arthur Askey, with the main

message punched home by an excellent suspense
gag at the end.

Propaganda Value: If any film can make the
citizenry sneeze into its handkerchiefs this one
will. The gags and laughs are very well-devised
for putting across the required message.

Young Farmers. Production: Strand Films.
Direction: John Eldridge. Camera: Jo Jago.
Associate Producer: Edgar Anstey. M.O.I. 15
minutes. Non-T.

Subject: Young Farmers' Clubs, with special
reference to their value in education.
Treatment: Shot in the North of England, this
film turns a fresh and engaging eye on a town
school which has run its own agricultural activi-
ties for a year and which is invited to pay a state
visit to a countryside Young Farmers' Club.
There is plenty of direct dialogue and some
pleasant natural acting from children and grown
ups alike. Eldridge's almost lyrical approach to
children (exemplified in his early film Village
School) is here seen at its best, for it never drifts
off into "artiness." In fact, the story the film sets
out to tell comes across very strongly.
Propaganda Value: This is an excellent picture
for home non-theatrical, and should also be use-
ful, with local re-editing, in overseas countries
(especially English-speaking). It is not only good
propaganda for Young Farmers' Clubs as attrac-
tive and useful organisations ; it also gives some
sense of that re-discovery of the land which must
be a cardinal point in our educational system
from now on.

* For nour information

IN every progressive enterprise there
ai

ust be leaders
1-and those who follow behind. As artistic and
technical progress in kinematography quickens to the
tempo and stimulus of war, " KINEMATOGRAPH
WEEKLY" is always to be found " up-with-the-
leaders ", its well-informed pages radiating perception
and far-sighted thinking. Kinematography's
leaders themselves know this for truth
and turn to " K.W." week by
week for information and
enlightenment.

aim mill iu rv. vv . vvcv^is. uy ///'/%'

week for information and , gff'f^' ' » '

enlightenment. iflCP^^/l

^ ^ LONE

93 LONG ACRE
LONDON W.C.2

Coastal Command. Production: Crown Film
Unit. Producer: Ian Dalrymple. Direction: Jack
Holmes. Second Unit Directors: Ralph Elton,
Jack Lee and R. Q. McNaughton.
Story: The work of the Coastal Command.
Treatment: Many cameras have looked at aero-
planes before but never yet has aerial photog-
raphy, such as we see in this film, been equalled or
surpassed. Such a roaring, a taking off and a
flying has not been seen before on the screen.
One breath-taking impossible angle close-up is
followed by another even more incredible. No
film star has ever received the careful attention
lavished upon her as have Sunderland and
Catalina in their comings and goings. Leaving
the water at dawn, coming in over the roof-tops
at sunset, scaring the white swans into a move-
ment of mimicry, making the tough Icelandic
ponies shy and caper, the aeroplanes dominate
the film. If that had been all, how good the
film would have been! But of course there was
a story to tell and, when the film leaves the
machines to tell of the men who fly them, it
falters and stumbles.

Using the aggressively penny plain approach
the film shows us the work of the men of the
Coastal Command in the air and in the control
rooms. In a determined attempt to present the
truth and nothing but the truth everything is
underplayed and everybody is desperately
casual. Now this is no doubt true and accurate
and exactly how things do happen. But just to
take reality and place it, torn from its surround-
ing life, on to the screen is surely not enough.
The audience must be given that extra lift which
comes from being on the spot and to do this
requires a very great deal of cunning and skill.
Life must be falsified to appear true, tempos must
be changed and incidents magnified or diminish-
ed. Hansard is an excellent work if you want the
facts, but a good newspaper report will give you
a better idea of what goes on. The routine of a
control room may give the impression of a very
well run, but oft repeated church service ; a man
being overcome by fumes while trying to mend
one of the petrol tanks, may be only doing his
normal work. But it is surely the job of a film to
shake the audience up and say to them "these
are the sort of things your fellow-countrymen are
doing every day. Sit up and take notice".
Camera's Part

Fortunately the work the different people
are doing is made very clear and the work of the
Coastal Command, as a whole, both as a defen-
sive and an offensive unit, clearly shown. And,
from beginning to end, the camera plays a noble
and a saving part.

Vaughan \\ illiams has done a magnificent
score, but it sutlers from the tact that while it
tries to overplay the action, the director is en-
deavouring to underplaj it.
Propaganda: In so far as the film gives an excel-
lent picture o\' what Coastal Command is and
what it does, it brings our daily news to life and
provides background knowledge of great im-
portance. It won't lift people out oftheii seats.
but it vvill interest and instruct. We can only
hope that the treatment of the human beings
vvill not give the audience an impression that
everything in Coastal Command happens more
bj luck than good judgment

(Continued on page 156)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

Correspondence

Dear Sir,

Although it may be late in the day, I make bold
to send you herewith a copy of the statement
issued by me as Chairman of the Film Advisory
Board to the Government of India in the matter
of the serious allegations made against the
activities of the Board by Mr. Alexander Shaw,
producer to the Government of India 1940^41.
(Vide his article in the Cine Technician, March-
April, 1942.) The statement has already been
published in several papers in India.

Of course, I do not presume to pass any judg-
ment on the desirability of the publication of
this statement in your valuable paper at the time
of your receiving it. For all I know, the subject
may have already become stale or the reckless
Mr. Shaw may be still indulging in the unhealthy
activity of maligning those of us who have closed
their ranks and are prepared to fight the menace
of Fascism to a finish with the Democratic
peoples of the world and their resolute Govern-
ments. Anyway, if you think that by publishing
this statement you would be helping the great
cause we all are serving, you may do so.

As can be made out from the contents of my
statement I have attempted to place the ugly
and untimely controversy in its proper perspec-
tive raising it out of the mire of antiquated
nationalistic jargon (which is but one step away
from nation's degeneration into Fascism) and
viewing it, as it were, in the light of its re-
actionary effect on more vital issues of the day.
Yours
For Democracy,

J. B. H. WADIA

Mr. J. B. H. Wadia, Chairman of the Film
Advisory Board to the Government of India, has
issued the following statement with regard to the
remarks made by Mr. Alexander Shaw, Producer
of films to the Government of India for 1 940—4 1 :

At a time when the very existence of our
Democratic civilisation is being threatened by
the forces of Totalitarian re-action we have,
surely, more serious things to attend to than the
irresponsible invectives of an erstwhile co-
worker.

But there is one statement of Mr. Shaw which
I, as Chairman of the Film Advisory Board,
cannot allow to go unchallenged. To say that
the Board was determined that Mr. Shaw's unit
should fail is to indulge in reckless thinking,
to say the least — more so because he has made
this unwarranted and baseless allegation just
when India and Great Britain can ill afford to
misunderstand each other. Indeed, "this was the
most unkindest cut of all." And all that I need
say here is this: that the Board, as a self-
respecting body of honorary workers, is perfectly
capable of dealing with all such misrepresenta-
tions; and it will use whatever legitimate means
it may choose to see that this gross libel does
not go unanswered.

For one thing, the men who formed Mr.
Shaw's unit are also working under Mr. Shan-
taram, our present Producer-in-Charge ; and
Mr. Shantaram's films to date alone are a suf-
ficient and withering answer to Mr. Shaw's
allegations referred to above.

No one should deny Mr. Shaw the right of
free speech. After all, it is one of the funda-
mentals of a political system, which notwith-

standing its imperfections in practice, yet remains
to be the most ideal for human welfare and for
the preservation of which we are all pledged to
fight. But it was certainly uncalled-for and, if
I may say so, positively un-British on Mr.
Shaw's part to have attacked the Board and the
Indian film industry after having run five
thousand miles away from the scene of battle.

If Mr. Shaw has lost the esteem of his friends
in India, he has only to thank himself for it.
He may, however, rest assured that the Board
is not going to be baulked in the pursuit of its
urgent task, no matter from which directions the
invectives are hurled, no matter for what ulterior
motives its sincere War efforts are impeded.

As for the agitation carried on against Mr.
Shaw in certain sections of the Indian Press,
I wish the arguments were not presented in the
rusted formula of black and white. Those of
us all over the world who have long since closed
our ranks and resolved to march on to a glorious
end hand in hand with the progressive peoples
and the Governments of the United Nations
can ill afford to dabble into politics based on
pigmentation. Let us not forget that the inexor-
able logic of this perspective is applicable as
much to the darker-skinned races of the world
as to the white-skinned.
13/// August, 1942.

Dear Sir,

Oh, the pity of it all. Since arriving in this
country from India last December I have
read one paper and written three articles about
the Indian Film Trade. The paper, to the East
Indian Association, was a review of film-making
in India and while it was not particularly flatter-
ing to all sections of the Indian film business, it
said nothing that could not have been said about
British films up to about 1930. Of the three
articles, one, written for the Film Trade Press,
expressed a belief in the future of the Indian
film industry, another, for the A.C.T. journal,
took a crack at the Indian film bosses for misuse
of medium and personnel ; and the third article,
for this paper, gave a fairly detailed account of
some of the pleasures and difficulties of docu-
mentary film-making in India. I do not really
consider that any of them could be said to be
"unhealthily maligning" nor indeed am I a
particularly "reckless" person. But I also do not
believe that Mr. Wadia thinks any of these
things either. Quite apart from the fact that he
is a very charming man and was a good personal
friend of mine, I am sure that he has the future
of the Indian film trade too much at heart not
to agree with many of my criticisms.

As to whether the F.A.B. were or were not
determined that I should fail — well, that is ano-
ther matter. Full co-operation is an intangible
quantity and cannot be weighed in paper scales.

To understand his letter and even, indeed, to
sympathise with Mr. Wadia, it is necessary to
understand the background. The background,
not of historical facts, but of seething political
unrest, of liking and hatred combined, of the
personalities- and of the dramatic feuds and
squabbles which make up the word India to-day.
The fact that a European had been called out to
assist with film propaganda started the pot
simmering. If \ had been the only available

expert on any subject in the world (say bridges
or social services) and they had had urgent need
of me they would still have fought bitterly and
to the end on the racial question alone. I have
every sympathy with this attitude, battered and
bruised though I may have been because of it.
Finally, in reply to Mr. Wadia, I can only say
that I believe that one day the film in India will
be of the greatest importance, but that will not
happen until those in the film business in India
who possess vision, have used it to look ahead
beyond the squabbles of to-day, to the very
different world of tomorrow.

VL1WNDER SHAW

Dear Sir,

the work of people whose wartime job it is to
give information or to do propaganda is often
criticised. The work of the Army Bureau of
Current Affairs, for instance, is sometimes con-
demned by people who say that a soldier is a
soldier and as long as he knows how to deal
with the stops on his Lewis Gun or how to repair
the inter-com of his tank or whatever else his
immediate job may be, that is all that is required
of him. It is, therefore, interesting to note that
in his recent book, The Russian Peasant and
Other Studies, Sir John Maynard, K.C.I.E.,
C.S.I., has, in his notes on the formation of the
Red Army, this sentence "Whatever the value
of blind discipline may be — and in more modern
armies it does not seem to be worth much —
instructed and intelligent discipline is better".
At a time when every person of any use is en-
gaged in some aspect of the nation's war effort,
these words are worth remembering. For al-
though the author is writing of soldiers his
words to-day apply to everybody. Discipline of
one sort or another is part of everybody's life.

One of the reasons for the fall of France was
that obviously nobody knew what anything was
about. The triumph of Russia may well be partly
due to the fact that everybody has a very good
idea of what everything is about. The people of
this country have a right to know and this is the
propagandist's job.

BELL AND HOWELL JOINER

London Scientific Film Society

the first performance was held on Saturday,
January 9th, at the Imperial Institute. The theme
of the programme was "Civil Defence". For
details of the Society apply to the Secretary, 73
High Holborn, W.C.I.

Central Film Library 1943
the M.O.I, has issued- free— a catalogue of all
films available, without rental, to approved
borrowers. The Films arc grouped under three
heads : United Kingdom, British Commonwealth.
and United Nations. Each film is described
briefly, and there is a classified subject index.

The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers an-
nounces that their library of amateur, prize-
winning and other films offers a wide selection to
their U.K. members in 16 mm., 9.5 mm. and
8 mm.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DEC EMBER 1 <M2

No. 8

THE IGNORANT PHYSICIAN

There was once, in a remote part of the East, a man who v. as alto-
gether void of knowledge, yet presumed to call himself a Physician.
He was so ignorant that he knew not the colic from the dropsy, nor
could he distinguish rhubarb from bezoar. He never visited a patient
twice; for his firsl coming always killed him. On the other hand, there
was in the same pro\ince another Physician, of such art that he cured
the most desperate diseases by the virtue of the several herbs of
the country, of which he had a perfect knowledge. Now this learned
man became blind, and not being able to visit his patients, at length
retired into a desert, there to live at his ease. The ignorant Physician
in. sooner understood that the only man he looked upon with an
em ions eye was retired out of the way, but he began boldly to display
his ignorance under the opinion of manifesting his knowledge. One
day the King's daughter fell sick, upon which the wise Physician was
sent for; because, that besides he had already served the court, people
knew thai he was much more able than his pompous successor.
The wise Physician being in the Princess's chamber, and under-
standing the nature of her disease, ordered her to take a certain pill
composed of such ingredients as he prescribed. Presently th«\ asked
him where the drugs were to be had.

"Formerly," answered the Physician. "I have seen them in such-
and-such boxes in the King's cabinet; but what confusion there
may have been since among those boxes I know not." I pen t lii-
the ignorant Physician pretended that he knew the drugs verj
well, and that he also knew where to find and how to make use of
them. "Go then." said the King, "to my cabinet, and take what is
requisite." Away went the ignorant Physician, and fell to searching
for the box; but as many of the boxes were alike, and because he
kin-w not tin- dni-> whrn he saw them, he was not able to find the
right one-. He rather chose, in the puzzle of his judgment, to take
a box at a venture than to acknowledge his ignorance. Hut lie never
considered that the) who meddle with what the} understand not are
likely to repent it: for in the box which he had picked .ml there was
a most deadly poison. Of this he made up the pills, which he caused
the Princess to take, who .lied immediately alter: on which the
King commanded the foolish Physician to be apprehended and
condemned to death.

RE \LIST FILM UNIT

4 7 OXFORD STE I. IT. W . I

Telephone: <, IK HARD 1958

A Gentlemen's Agreement

The agreement between the producers of adver-
tising films and the Board of Trade has just
been announced. It places both producers and
exhibitors on their honour. The producers on
their honour not to produce advertising films if
it entails the use of technicians who might
otherwise be engaged on Government propa-
ganda films. It places the exhibitors on their
honour not to show advertising films if that
showing prevents any Government film from
being shown. It is in fact that threadbare com-
promise: "a gentlemen's agreement". Honour
and gentlemen's agreements have never been
conspicuously to the fore in business previously,
where any question of profit arises. When
producers of advertising films can make so
much more profit from the production of ad-
vertising films, is it unlikely that they will accept
commercial contracts? While it would be ex-
tremely difficult for even another producer to
decide that a unit was insufficiently employed
on Government work and able to produce an
advertising film, how much more difficult it
will be for the Board of Trade to make such a
decision. Is it likely that the cinemas will turn
down £5 to £20 a week revenue from advertising
films in order to show Government films that
even now many of them openly denounce as
ineffectual. How is the Board of Trade going to
check up on any breach of this agreement?
It would need an army of inspectors, and even
so, the exhibitor with his ready facility for ex-
cuses could easily build up stories to show that
the Government film was either too short or too
long to fit his programme, whereas there was
just room for the advertising film.

This "gentlemen's agreement" simply will not
do. It is well known in the trade that numbers of
advertising films are being made by technicians
who are vitally needed for Government and
Service work. It is well known in the trade that
advertising films have prevented the showing of
Government films in the theatres. And now, what
is the situation? Both parties— producers and
exhibitors— both interested solely in profit, have
promised to be good boys! It is said even that
advertising films are on the increase. There are
many firms that would sooner make films than
pay E.P.T. — this is actually used by many
advertising film companies in their sales talk.
The \lninm Picture Herald, the American trade
paper, contains a report sent from the London
office of an international firm of advertising
agents slating that since the war they have in-
creased the staff of their film section from six
to thirty-three. In America advertising films
have been banned and all the competent com-
panies put on Service training work. After three
and a half years we lag behind America. It is
understood that A.C.T. will watch the position
through its members and will draw the attention
of the Board of Trade to any infringement. No
doubt the M.O.I, will keep a watchful eve on the
distribution of its own films. Hut the practice o\
advertising films continues, and technicians and
film suvk, studio space and materials are diverted
from the war effort to make profits for in-
di\ idu. ils.

D.N.L. will be glad to receive any substan-
tiated story from a technician or an exhibitor
of am activitv that misuses film technicians or
prevents the use of screen time for the Govern-
ment.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETT] R NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

Correspondence (continued)

Dear Sir,

I note from the current issue of documentary
sews letter that you are still pursuing your
Campaign of persecution and possible libel in
regard to me personally, if not to the National
Savings Movement.
When, in November, 1941, you published
very peevish covert attack upon me in the
words "the befuddled mind of old advertising
narks", 1 wrote you a letter in response, which
expected to be published. You called me up
and asked me to lunch with you. In the course
r talk you tricked me into consenting to
your not publishing my letter, the bait being
ihat you would give me space for 1,000 words to
:alk about our films generally; to set us in the
:lear with your readers in regard to our
activities.

You had persistently before this dealt very
wickedly with me in regard to correspondence
in your organ about Tom Harrisson*s theories
Mass Observation and Mr. Ewart Hodgson's
reply. You did the unthinkable journalistic
thing of submitting my letter in that corre-
spondence to Mr. Harrisson, so that in the same
in which my letter appeared, Mr. Harris-
son's commentary in terms of studied insult was
printed.

You have acted disgustingly throughout in
egard to the film products which the National
Savings Committee has fostered. You have con-
istently belittled and degraded the work of such
producers as Merton Park Studios, Spectator
Films, and others who are not in your coterie. By
hat I mean the editorial board of documentary
sews letter who are film directors as well,
ind who have never been given production work
jy the National Savings Movement. Your
.vholesale condemnation of our productions,
though they may have been the work of
quite eminent Companies and directors, proves
o me that you are actuated by spite, spleen
ind possibly malice.

1 don't forget that in the early stages of the
>Var Savings Campaign we were to have some
|iocumentary films made by your then directors,
Mr. Elton and Mr. Rotha. Circumstances
raused us to withdraw these proposed contracts
md it would appear, on the face of it, that you
lave ever since been smarting under that
lisappointment.

In your current issue you have gone further
han ever before in your selective condemnation
it the National Savings films. Since I have been
charge of the film production in this organisa-
ion since the beginning of the War Savings
Campaign I feel that this is a very serious and
bly actionable personal attack ; I am con-
ulting my solicitors to see if a way can be found
if putting a stop to your wanton and damaging
ttacks upon work for which I am responsible.
I am going through your back numbers in
irder to collect all references you have made to
National Savings films. If I can find a good one
shall include it with the others. I have a verj
efinite view as to your reasons for these attacks,
>ut it will keep for another occasion. I am also
rawing the attention of the directors and pro-
ucers of our films to your commentaries. I am
ure they will be interested in defending them-
:Ives against your gross and almost indecent
referential treatment of the work of your own
roducers and directors.

Yours faithfully,

W. BUCHANAN-TAYLOR

[In December, 1940, D.N.L. published a double
page article by Mr. Buchanan Taylor, based on a
speech by him, and drew attention to it in favour-
able terms in a Note of the Month. In November
1941, a Note of the Month criticised current
poster designs, and included National Savings
posters in the criticism It is not our fault if the
phrase about "befuddled minds of old adver-
tising narks" was taken by Mr. Taylor as a per-
sonal insult; we admire his abilities too much
ever to have had any such intention. Mr. Taylor
accuses us of an "unthinkable journalistic thing"
in publishing one of his letters and a reply to it
by Tom Harrisson in the same issue. Reference
to back files shows that Mr. Taylor's letter ap-
peared in the issue dated February, 1941, and
that Mr. Harrisson's reply appeared in the issue
dated March, 1941. The sentences in our last
issue to which Mr. Taylor objects are probably
those which appear in an article on M.O.I, films
and run as follows : — ( 1 ) "We must add, how-
ever, that the most recent thirty-two 5-minute
films include two National Savings Committee
films . . . These reach as low a level of propaganda
as any films yet issued". (2) ". . . Six productions
of the National Savings Committee — a major
blot on the whole collection." We may add that
in January, 1942, we published a complete article
on "National Savings Publicity" by Mr. Taylor
in which we gladly allowed him the freedom of
our columns to say exactly what he thought about
the "old Documentary Narks".

Editorial Board D.N.L.]

\„

extract from
'Daily Worke

» article
' lu, Rotnt

"We have seen splendid pictures
made by gallant English cameramen
filming battles in the arid Libyan desert
and on the Atlantic Ocean, we have
seen newsreels about brave R.A.F.
men making death-dealing raids deep
behind the enemy's lines. We applauded
the work of the heroic cameraman
Tom Tanner who filmed the Malta
convoy. A while ago we saw a new
newsreel about Malta and admired the
skill and courage of the cameramen
filming the plucky fight of the island's
residents, A. A. men, R.A.F. men, and
sailors.

"I should verv much like to meet
you, my friends, cameramen of Great
Britain, meet you working and fighting
hand in hand with us when the Second
Front will at last be opened.

"Then, firmly gripping each other in
a handshake, in close creative co-opera-
tion, we shall film the final shots and
make the great historic film of the
decisive battle and victory oi freedom-
loving progressive mankind."

Among documentary films produced in
America dur'ng 1942 were Robert Flaherty's
The Lad produced for the Departmeut of
Agriculture and Irving Jacnry's High Over th ■
Borders, a twe-reel film about the flight of
birds, prepared jointly for the New York Zoo-
log cal Soc'ety and the National Film Board
of Canada.

Film Societies

The Edinburgh Film Guild which opened its new
season in October has arranged to show through-
out the season a selection of films which in-
cludes: Pudovkin's General Swi orov ; A Musical
Sii>r\; l.'i.sclaw Blanche and Ramuntcho. In
addition there will be a number of lilms which
have just become available through the National
Film Library and also Cavalcanti's Film and
Reality. Documentaries to he shown will include
The Harvest Shall Come, This is Colour and
some of John Grierson's lilms made in Canada.
In addition to the Sunday performances which
will be both afternoon and evening, there will be
week-night programmes on 16 mm. illustrating
such themes as the Russian Silent Epics, the
Film and Science and the Film in the Social
scene.

The Manchester and Salford Film Society ar-
ranged to show on December 13th La Femme
tin Bon/anger, the film directed by Marcel
Pagnol.

The Film Society of Ayrshire will show at its
fourth performance of the season Unfinished
Symphony, the film supervised by Anthony
Asquith and directed by Willy Forst. There will
also be shown Jeepers Creepers, the Warner
Brothers cartoon film, and Fredlos. At the fifth
performance there will be The Rich Bride directed
by Pyriev.

The Belfast Film Institute Society arranged
to show We From Kronstadt at their second
repertory show on December 16th. This Society
issues a bulletin "The Belfast Film Review"
which serves as a guide to the current pictures
running at local cinemas. The films selected and
described in the Bulletin are those likely to prove
of interest to members of the Society.

British-Soviet Week, Leicester

Sponsored by the City of I

Mm

Libraries, four film progra
ing this week. The films
from the Central Film L
War Film Agency coven
jects : Russia

:ipal

were shown dur-
i were obtained
and the Soviet
following sub-
Education and

Industry. There were speakers at each of the pro-
grammes. In connection with this week a film
show was arranged for medical and scientific-
workers and also the city's cinemas showed films
relating to the Soviet Union, among them
Soviet School Child, Strong Point 42. and
November Celebrations, 1941.

B.F.I. Pamphlet
in response to enquiries on the subject of Film
Appreciation, the British Film Institute has
published a pamphlet for the use of Discussion
Groups and Schools.

The pamphlet suggests that the three main
approaches to a critical standpoint are: (1) The
History of the Cinema: (2) How a Film is made
in the Studio; (3) The Internal Structure of a
Film. The main sub-divisions of the last-named
are The Use of the Camera. Film Editing, The
I se of Sound, The Narrative Structure and
Ancillary Arts and Crafts.

Ction of the pamphlet contains a short
bibliography from which the information which
has been given can be amplified.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

New Documentary Films — continued
Control Room. Shell Film Unit. Director:
Geoffrey Bell. Assistant: Lionel Cole. Camera:
Sidney Beadle. Diagrams: Francis Rodker.
Producer: Edgar Anstey. M.O.I. 22 m nutes.
Subject: The organisation of A.R.P. in a big city
during a raid.

Treatment: During an actual raid it is difficult to
realise that an entire organisation has gone into
action on the ground. At most the onlooker sees
isolated sections of a work which appears quite
unrelated to anything but the job in hand. But
of course each rescue squad, fire engine or war-
den is only part of a gigantic system which is run-
ning smoothly and efficiently. Shell's special flair
for clear and dramatic exposition is brilliantly
shown in this film of behind the scenes of the
Bristol A.R.P. during an intensive raid. A bomb
falls, a fire is started, the detailed message goes
to the control room and action is taken. But
bombs are falling all over the place and obviously
all these counter actions must be co-ordinated.
So we follow the messages on to the central con-
trol and see the way in which whole squads of
people and machines are moved about the city as
danger threatens first one district and then an-
other. Eventually the central control is put out of
action but its work is immediately taken up by
an emergency group who have been standing by.
At one point extra help is sent for from another
city. The story is told excitingly and well, but
suffers a little from too great a determination to
make all understandable and clear. This deter-
mination is grimly held to by the commentator
who is inclined to plod along rather relentlessly.
It is perhaps almost impossible for an untrained
commentator to carry two reels unless there is
some special, attention-holding reason for his
doing so.

Propaganda value: This can scarcely be called a
topical film, yet there is every reason to sup-
pose that coming events may be waiting for it,
and then its value will be very great indeed. If
everybody can be shown that during a raid they
are not really alone and that there is a powerful
and efficient machine ready to come to their
rescue, then a very great morale job will have
been accomplished.

Battle of Supplies. The Strand Film Co. Pro-
ducer: Basil Wright. Supervising Editor: Alan
Osbiston. Editor: H. A. Oswald. Diagrams: J. F.
Horrabin. Musical Direction: Muir Mathieson.
Music: V. Hely Hutchinson. M.O.I. 20 minutes.
Treatment: Constantly racing against time and
history the makers of these films on strategic
subjects fight a losing battle. The way in which
these films have to be produced makes it almost
certain that they will be out-of-date before they
are even half finished. Compilations of library
material, present problems compared with
which a straight shooting job is mere child's
play. It is therefore all the more creditable that
liattle of Supplies should he so up-to-date. The
material is well chosen and extremely well put
together. The films tells of the extreme im-
portance of lines of supply, explains that the
United Nations lines are more difficult than the
Axis ones to keep tip and by means of diagrams
(very good ones) explains the whole problem
clearly and concisely. An excellent job; the only
criticism of which is that occasionally the visuals
stray rather far from the commentary.
Propaganda value: The wider problems of war
strategy arc not always easy to disentangle from
the news. This film sets one problem clearly and
dramatically before the audience.

THE FIRST OF A SERIES

OF

S TRUST"

THREE-REELERS
WILL SHORTLY
BE SHOWN TO
THE TRADE AND
PRESS.

NUMBER TWO OF
THE SERIES HAS
ALSO BEEN COM-
PLETED.

NUMBS R THREE
IS SHORTLY
GOING INTO
PRODUCTION.

DONALD TAYLOR -
ALEXANDER SHAW -

MANAGING DIRECTOR
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTIONS

1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l.
NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

D.N.L. VOL. III. INDICES

(1) ARTICLES

Actum Please. 17

Umv Films (R. S. Miles). 64

is Trust on Propaganda, The. 1

B.F.I. Pamphlet. 15s

Brains Trust on Propag

British Soviet Wed,, Leicester,

Canada's Camera on the War Clouds (Theodore Strauss),

Canadian Experiment. \ (l>on.il,l \\ . Buchanan), 87

Canadian Film Board at Work. 129

Cimiplaccnc\ Two Varieties. 8 1

Correspondence. 2'), 4 l, SO. 41. 1(15. 119, 129, 153, 155

War of Nerves? 65

War-Time Him Plans in U.S., 126

Washington Plans Wider 1 ol Film. 20

We Ha\e Our Troubles Too (Mary I. oscy). 60

(2) ADVERTISERS

Film and Reality, 54

Films of Great Britain, 4, 47, 68, 106, 131

kiiicinatngraph Weekly.

28, 38, 60. 79, 89, 104, II'

Drop of Milk. A. 2
Earth, 7
Elephant Boy, 27

Expansion of Germany, The, 64
Eyes of the Navy, 60

Him : Reality (Basil Wright), 40

Film lor Educational Purposes alter War l.lohn Stuart I. I I'

I .l.i. I il.iar.es. 15. 32,48.96, 108

Film ol the Month. 7. 24. 58, 64. 104. 112. 128, 143, 149

Film S. mils; lacoby), 102

Film Shows in Factories. 3 1

Film Societies, 12. 22. 43. 61. 78.43, 101. 130, 155

Films and Science II ■. I . Bell and Mars < .regory), 88

_ '" is in Armv I dm at i l.'l.n M.iddison), 36

Films in U.S.S.R.. 63

Five-Minute Films (List of), 26. 116, 158

Gentlemen's \grcemcnt, A, 154

Getting them Shown, 2

' it Shinnies Down the Beanstalk. The ( 1

P., 1. 1.< Relationship Hlms. 40

Realist lil. n 1 ml. (.. 44, 7o. 42. 1(15, 114. I 32

Selwyn Film Services, 58, 62

Seven I I'acni' Productions, 36

Sight and Sound. 15. 20. 42 73, 44, 105, I ;o.

Spectator Short Fill

Strand Him Company . 12. 4,46.64.80,95, 107, 118,

143, 156
Studio Film Laboratories, 57

erisk indicates a film

■e Strauss),

o Engine, 41, 56, 57

Agric

rad. 7, f
ulture, 4

i Rush Again. The (Robert Waithman), 71

vest Shall Come, The. 68 All India ( attic Show. 4

Hollywood in Arms, 106 All Those m Favour .4 4

Argentine Question, The, 54*

istrial Training Films in U.S.A., 7 Armoured Cars, 4 „,.,.,,

_„„a-A Second Chance, 51 Ashley Green Goes to s. I lis

Indian I Urns, 9 Assassination ol the Duke ol Gu.se, The, 40, 41

, Atlantic Patrol, 39

Job to be Done, A (Bosley Crovvther), 39 Atomic Strm Me and Ohm's Law, 8

Atonement «l Costa Berltng. I lie, 122

Land. The (Richard Griffith), 27 A wakening, The, 9
Letter to India (Alexander Shaw), 24 ..,„,.„,„,

Balloon Site 568. 100* I 35

Make Up Your Mind, Mr. Dalton. 109 Battle for Oil The. 2, 53, 72 73

Ministry ol Information Films ( \ idor Sclig. nan ). 4.5 Battle of Supplies, I he, 135 156*

MO I Film ( alalogiic. The, 135 Battleship I'oteinkm. See I olemkm

M.O.I. What Plans Have You? 123 Berlin, 40

rale Front, 97 Bete lliiimiine, I a, I

,. s, l,„ol I ,1ms (Oliver Bell), 52 Big Blockade, The, 67

Birth o) a \alion, I he, 40

ioual Savings Publicity (W. Buchanan-Taylor), 15 Bl"c Angel, The. 122

v Documentary Films. 4. 21, 37. 54. 70. 90. 10(1, 113. Border W cave, 21 *

->s | 5) Britain at Bay. 1 35

News and Specialised rhcatre Bookings, 28, 42. 63, 78. 44. Britain ( an Fake It. 135

107, |20, I <2 British A. A. (.tinners, 121

Nevvsreels, The. 150 Builders. 50. 53*. 135

Newsreels Lack Flavour of War. 117 Burma I

Notes of the Month. 2. is. M. 50, 66, 82, 98, I 10. 122, 147 Caltgan, 64
Notes on Vaagso (Harry Watt), 23

"Our Film" (Ralph Bond), 63 Canadian landscape. S7

Captain of the Clouds, 18
Plan lor Post-Wai Documentary (1 . Hopewell), 150 Careless talk, 9

Plus < a Change, 55 Case of Charlie Gordon. The. 30

Post-W ar Culture, 91 Cavalry of the Clouds, 9

Priority, 1 C.E.M.A., 125*

Problems of Propaganda. 133 ' ensus, 9

Propaganda or vcstlictn s 1 1 rnest Findgren), 56 Chang, 40

Poipaeauda Principles ( s. ar. ', I, iv ski), 106 Chapayev, 7

Propaganda Value ol Vchievement, I he ( I dnl. Mumclli, 79 ( luang Isai < lick in India. 125*. 135

Children at Sch '"• 7

Radio, 1 1 7, 1 28 Child Went Forth, A, 1 35

Roster of M.O.I. Films, 74 Churchill's Island, 34, 53, 73

City, The. 135
Scientific Film Societies. 1 I. 26, 46,61, 76,153 Clamping Potatoes, 125*

Scientific Films n. Britain ("I our-Way"), 1 15 Coastal Command, 152*

Scottish < cntral I .In. library, 9 Comrades in Arms, 9

Second Front lor Propaganda, 111 Comrade X, 43

Signs of the Times, 145 Contact, 41

Spiritual Offensive, 124 Control Room, 156*

Summons to Artists, 45 Convoy from India, 9

Counterplan, 69
I iliinioloi hv a New Process, 14 - Countrywomen, The, 53*

Today Not Tomorrow. 121 Covered Wagon, The, 41

To Instructional Film-Makers, 131

Dai Jones, 1 35
I nited Propaganda, 19 Dawn Guard. The, 135

U.S.A. Film Needs (Bosle\ ( roother), 53 Day in the Life of a District Officer, A, 9

U.S. Dollar Winning Baltic lot ontrol British Film Indus., Dav Hill Dam,, A, 67, 80

148 he Germans before Moscow, The, 45

Defence Forces. 9
Vale \tque Ave, 35 Defenders of India. 9

Victory in the West, 27 Deserter, I lie 6 I

Diarv of a Polish Airman, 53 *, 135
War (Donald Slesingcr), 20. Dictator, The. 115

Wai and Peace, 149 Distillation. 64

War— A People's Revolution. The (Henry \. Wallace). 77 Dockers, 100*, 124, 135

War of Ideas, 99 Don't Talk, 53

., s oj It null. The, 21, 27, 29, 6.
I lam Robbery, The. 40, 64

Here Comes the Letter. 9
His Majesty's Jollies, 125'

//. M. I'ulhunt

H.M S King George V. 125*
House in London. A. 151 *
Housing Problems. 40, 57. 58. 84
Hon Crccn Has My I alley, 29*
How To Thatch, 5*

Indians in \ction, 1 19

lii/oimcr. The, 58

Inside Fighting China, 147

/// the Rear ol the I iicniy, 70*

Italian I'm somas luang I milled at Bombay. 4

Ivan, 1. 69

Ivan the Terrible, 63

Jazz Comedy, 69

Kameradschaft,4\. 56

Keep -In, !

Keeping Rabbits tin I \tra Meat, 37*

,_, ). 27*. 60
Land Girl. 21*. 54. 135
I and Without Bread. 40
Last Laugh, The. 64

Man II ho hne» loo \fuih. The, (4
Man Mho I'laved (iod, I he. 122
Marcus 1 y „s. ,,|

Men and Jobs, 69

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

Men ill Africa. 135
Merchant Seamen. <4. 64, (>8
Metal Working lathe. The. 7

More less Iron. Your Hen

Neighbours under
New Fire Bomb, t

Ncws^apcr'Train.
New Spirit. The. I

Ninotchka, 43
Northern Outpost. I <5
North Sea. 41. 64, 68
Nose Has It. I he. I 15. I
November < elehrations. I

ition Film. The. 57

Our Navy, 9

Our Russian Allies. 43

Our Russian Front. 60

Out ol the Night, 29

Owd Boh, 64

Owner Goes Aloft, The. 15.

Peoples of Canada. 87
Pilot is Safe. The. 64
••Pimpernel Smith". Sec Mr.

Plo» That Broke The Plains. The. 27. 126
Poland's New Front. 119
Potemkin,*' "

Railwa\ Workshops. 9
Red Wnn.The, 3
'•R.-hahilhiation". See: They Livi
KUh liiide. The, 69
Rien que Les Hemes, 40
Right Man. The, 100*.

Safeguarding Military Secrets, f

Sain l*ep\s .loins the Navy. 15

Savings Song. The, 15

Seaman Frank Goes Back to Se

Seamen ol India, 9

Self-Defence by Plants, 64

Set eanl York, 67

Seven Brave, The, 69

Ships » til, H'ings, 67

Shipyard, 41

Shors. 7*, 69

Shouldei Arms. 115

■Sinews of War, 43

Song of Ceylon, 64

Song of the Clyde. 21 *

Spanish _

Speed-up on Stirlings. 1 <5.

Spring on the Farm. 135. I

Storing Vegetables Outdoors. 71 -
Strategv of Metals, The. 2, 72

Street lighting. 135, 151*
Stioug I'.unt 42, 155

-, The, 27, 64, 1 26

Sweet Story, A, 129

Tale of Two Cities, A, 135

Target foi Tonight. 2. IS. 2V U. 36, •

57. 60, 68, 98
Teeth ol Steel, 54*

Thief ul Bagdad, The. 36

e World. 119, 12-

This

They Also Ser

, 47

III. a hrip the W heels Turning. 113*

They Live Again, 125

They Met in London. 5*

lliev Speak lor Themselves, 113*

Three In a Shell Hole. ;'. 2') ! !, 44

Thunder over Mexico 64

Tools lor the Job. See: The Handyman

i of the Tide, The, 64

ir I louds in the Pacific. 73, 85
ir in the Last, 5*, 17, 18
!s Hell. 56

Wartime Factory, 9

FIVE-MINUTE FILMS

For AUGUST-NOVEMBER, 1942

Production Unit

Release
Date

ESSENTIAL JOBS

FREE HOUSE
EMPIRE AID

TWENTY-ONE MILES

*THE DAY THAT SAYED THE
WORLD

fCHIANG KAI SHEK IN INDIA

A NEW FIRE BOMB

THE NOSE HAS IT

ASK C.A.B.
jDUSTBIN PARADE

MOTOR CYCLE TRAINING

*VIA PERSIA

AMERICA MOVES HER
JAPS

THE GREAT HARVEST

Stick to your job even if it seems
unimportant

Appeal for Lord Mayor's Em-
pire Distress Fund

Dover front line re-visited

The Battle of Britain

China and the United Nations

Paul Rotha Prods.

Henry Cass Verity

Movietone

(Harry Watt). A.F.U.
Crown

Instructions for fighting explo- j Napier Bell
sive incendiaries

Don't sneeze

Use your Citizens' Advice Burea:

Salvage

Canadian Army gets ready

Route to Russia

Japanese relocation

Agriculture in 1942

Val Guest
Henry Cass
Halas-Batchelor
(Lt. McDougall)

Indian Film Unit
Shell Film Unit

Gainsborough

Verity

Realist

Canadian A.F.U.

A.F.U.

Office of War Information
(U.S.A.)

Paul Rotha Prods.

3/8

10/8
17/8

24/8
31/8

7/9
14/9

21/9

28/9
5/10
12/10
19/10
26/10

2/11

* Library compilation by Jack Chambers. t Original title: Our Gallant Neighbour. Recommentated. % Cartoon.

DOCUiMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

Wavell's 30,000, 34, 37*
Was to Plough, A, 54*
We Live in Two Worlds. 41
Went the Day Well' 14V*
We Sail at Midnight, hi'
We Speak to India, 130*
Western Isles, 37*

We've Got to Get Rid of the I
When Air Raids Strike. 53
When The Pie Was Opened. <

White Hell,, I I'll: l\il„. I he.
Wings of a Continent. N7
Winter on the Farm, 90*. 151

n Defence, fill

Women in the A

Work Parlv. '>s • | : t I
World at War, The, 126

i

(let iu,h,m
N nung Farmers, 1 s;*
Youth lakes a Hand. 1 <s

(4) NAMES OF PEOPLE

Signed articles, t

\ddmsell. Richard, 71.' 100, 151
Alexander, Donald. 4, 21
Alexander, King, 40

Amery, 25, 133

Anstev . I dgar. 5. 21. 37

125", 151. 152, 15h
Antoinette, Marie. 11)4
Archibald. George, 122.
Arliss, Leslie, 58
Arnell, Richard, 27
Arthur. Jean, 122
Aske>. \iihur, 152
4squith. \nihon\, 2d. 4
Astor, Lady, 97
Attlee, Clem, 133

Baddeley, V. C. C,

Balcon, M., 58

Barr. Robert, 117
Barne. J. M., 117
Beadle, Sidney. 21,90, 151, 156

■
Beaumont, C, 37
Beaverbrook, Lord, 43, 55
Beddington, J. L., 84, 85
Beethoven, 7

Begg, John, 119

Black, 55
Black, J. H., 130
Blease, W. L., 101

Blewitt, W„ 58

Boulting, Roy, 23
Box, Sidney, 54
Bover. C harles, 61, 122
Bowen. Elizabeth, 117
Bracken, Brendan, 99, 124, 125

Bridson, D. 1. . 1 17
Bnllia.ii. I icd,, 21
Britten. Benjamin, 128
Bromlic.nl. Col., 66
Brown, Maurice, 117
Browne. Bernard, 71
Buchanan, Andrew, 100, 116
Buchanan, Donald W., 87*
Buchanan-Taylor, W., 15*, 155*

Canti, Dr., 56

Carr, James. 30*. 54
Carruthers, R., 116

Cass, Hcniv. 158
Catling, Darrel, 92*

Chirkov, Boris, 69
Christiansen, 37
Churchill. Winston,

Connor. W., 50
( ooke. \hstair, 128
( ooper. Budge, 100
Cooper, Duff, 135
Cooper. Gary, 67
(ooper. Wilkie, 58
Cordvvell, R„ 44*
Corwin, 128
Coster, Ian, 125
Coward. Noel, 143, 144
C rawle\. Budge. 20
Cnpps.'Sir S„ 19, 34. 51, 133
t nsp, Donald, 29
C 'roshs . Byng, 122

Cummins, G. T., 125
Cummins. Svlvia, 113
Curthoys, J. L., 21

Dalton, Dr., 109

Dalrvmple. 1„ 37. 151. 152
Darlan, Admiral, 145, 147
Harrow, Wayne, 10
Davidson, J. D„ 20
Davis. Bette, 122
Davis, timer. 126. 127
Defoe, Daniel. 50, 117
de Gaulle, Gen., 36

de Marnev, Terence, 15, 21
de M.llc. I ccl B. 7
de Mille. W„ 41
Dennmgton, M., 21
Dickenson. Desmond 55, 12'
Dieterle, W„ 41
Dietrich. M.irlene. 122
Dinsd.ile. \. T., 113
Disnev, Walt, 7, 13, 15, 55

Dovzenko, A., 7, 69, 121

nidi. I Than, 98
Dunlop, Dr., 1 1
Dunn, Philip, 127
Durst. John, 54
Dvall, Valentine, 71
Dzigan, 69

Eden, Anthony, 5

Eisenstein. S., 41, 56, 63, 69, 115, 121

Ekelchik, Y., 7

! Idndee, John, 55,90, 116, 152

l-llut. Jack. 6. 71

Ellon, \nhui. S4, 101, 115, 155

1 Iton, Ralph, 152

Elton. Ravmond, 125

Ermler, F.. 69

I sd.ile. Brian. 37

Evans. Clifford, 58

Factor. Max, 71

i aithtul. Geoffrey, 4

Farjeon. Herbert, 104, 105

Featn, K., 63

Ferno, John, 103, 129

I icld. Mary, 56. 95

1 ielding, Marjorie, 71

I iclds. W < ., 7

"I ilmgoer", 80*

FlahertN, Robert. 2, 10. 22, 27, 40, 60, 68,

83, 103
Ford, John, 29, 39, 69, 127
Ford. Maurice, 82

Cckalski. I ., 21. 70
Chaplm. I lurhe, 13. . .
Chiang Kai Click, 125

Chaplin. Charlie, 13,36,71, 122

lorde. Walter. 7. 116

Fox, Charles, 104
Fowle, H. E.. 37, 151

Gabin, Jean, 122
Gable, Clark, 122
Garbo, Greta, 122

Genock, 1 17

Gibbon, 104 Leigh, Walter, 98, 105

Gide, Andre, 40 Lejeune, C. A.. 98

Gilliam. Lawrence. 117 Lenin. V. I., 99, 106, 151

(oil, at. Svdnc . 116 Leonov, Leonid, 5

Cullies. Sir II lis Lermontov, 45

Gladstone. 15 Lerner, 103

Gleason. James, 58 Leslie, S. C, 15

Goebbels, Dr., Ill, 124 Lewis, Jay, 26

Goering, M., 151 Lincoln. Abraham, 130

Gohehilv. J., 34 Lindgren. I rncst. 50, 56-, s7

Gordon, Michael, 71 Lindsay. Sir II., 18

Goya, 27 Lippman, Walter, 39

Greenwood, J., 37 Litvinov, 17

Gregory, Mary, 89* Lohr, Marie, 149
Gnerson. John. 2. 2d. 22, 34, 18. V), 4n Lonsdale, Lord, 55

41, 43, 50, 56. 57. 58. 6(1, 68. 72. 7!, 82. Lord, Russell, 10, 27

83*. 102. 103, 114, 155 Lorentz, Pare. 10, 13, 27. 126

Griffith, D. W„ 40 Losey, Mary, 60*

Griffith, Richard, 27* Love, Bessie, 70

Grisewood, F.. 5, 54 Lovell, Raymond, 104

Groves. Ree 71 Low, 1 17

Gunn, G., 26

Halas-Batchelor, 1
Hale, Georgia, 71
Harding, J., 5
Hardy, Forsyth, 4J

Hav.es, S.. 20. 129
"Haw-haw", 110
Haw lee. Adelaide, 60
Hav, Roc, 6, 71
Hay, Will, 70
Hennessc. Peter, 100
Henry MIL 104
Hepburn, katherine, 60
Hess, R., 84
Hickey, W., 18
Hillier, E., 90
Hilton. John, 54
Huvc Gerhard, 21

135, 146, 150
Hodgson. Ewart, 155
Holmes. Jack. 152

Horrabin. J. F„ 156
Horton, R., 34

Houston. Lady, 128
Howard. Leslie. 128
Hutchinson, Helv. 156
Huxley, Aldoi ""

i, Joris, 78, 103, 129

.. E., 37.68,71,95, 100

Kabalevsky, A., 7
Kanin, 8, 103

Kemsley, Lord, 43

kiat/ovv. Dr., 101
Kozintsev, 43, 69
Kuleshov, L., 63

Lash, 83

Laskier. Frank, 15, 21
Launder, Frank, 116

22, 131

06, 115
Ludendorf, 39
Luff, A. H., 70

Lye, Len, 20, 26, 37, 43, 78, 95, 116
Lynn, Vera, 117

Met. ullogh. D., 11
MacDonald, Malcolm, 84
McDougal. Capt., 158
McDougal, J. E. R., 37
MacGowan, Kenneth, 127
Macharet, 69
Mackenzie, Scobie, 98
McLaren, Norman, 20, 43, 129
Mel e.m. Ross, 83
MacLeod, J., 37, 71
McViughton, R. Q., 37, 152
MacNeice, Louis, 117
MacPhail, Angus, 58, 70

Mandcr. kay.90, 125

h ?/., 5. 37, 55, 125, 15t.
Marshall. F.. 26
Marshall. 11. P. J., 93
Marx Bros., 13. 61
Masam, Minoo, 25
Massev. Ravmond, 130

vluir, 156
Ma , m, R.,43, 61, 130

11,39,53,11

4, 126

Mevcr. 1 rnst, 37. 55,95

\1,, 1

Miles, R. S., 64*

Millar, ( atharme, 21. 113

Mir. Ezra, 25. 70, 116, 12 =

Mitchell. Leslie. 7H

Mitchell. R. J.. 128

Morrison, Herbert, 50
Mueller, Merril, 37
Munden, Max, 54
Murrow, Ed., 113, 128
Musk. Cecil, 113
Mussolini, B., 77, 146
Mutanov, E., 26

Nansen, 146
Napoleon, 104
Nay lor, R. H.. 2

Nelson, A. J., 44*

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1942

Oliver. Prof. R.

Parker. Jack, 6,95
I'arnur. Pratap, 25, 70
Pearle. Uert. "5
Pearson, George. 61. ') i
reiiniimti.ii-Kiili.irds. M
Perkilis". Milo, 10
Pickles. W.. 37
Piyy i ommdr., 26

Posford, G.. 15

Potiet, Stephen, 117
Powell. Michael. 43, 67
Powell, William. 122
Poynter, A., 126

1,22,43,56,63,69, 121, 131,155

Reed. Carol, 25, 104
RecNes. J.. 61.93
Renoir. J., 13, 22, 69
"Kcwmder", 120*
Kcvnolds. Dr. R., 56
Ridlev. George, 61
Rignold, H., 23

Riskin. R., 126

Rockefeller. Nelson. 127
Rodakiewicz, 103
Rodker, I rancis, 5, 70, 156
Rodwell, S., 113

Roosevelt. President, 19, 39, 99, 114

Rose, 1 1 7

Ross, Harry, 21

Kotha, Paul. 5, 13, 22, 41, 43, 55, 83, 1

113, 150, 155
Rowson, S., 66
Ruttnian. Walter, 40

Schachl, Or., 71
Schneider, F., 70
Scott, 40, 55
Scott, Joan, 15, 116
Scott, Peter, 125
Searle, 1 -.. 26, 111
Sc.delnian. Joe, 110

Shanl, nam. I ss

Shaw, Alexander, 2, 22, 24*. 36, 55, 70,

82,90, 100, 125, 130, 153*
Sheridan. 104
Sherwood. R., 126
Singh, G.an, 25
Sitwell, Edith, 27

Slater. John" 68
Slesinger. Donald, 20*

Spottiswoode, R., 20. 129
Stalin, 19, 35, 69, 106
Stanwvck. Babara, 122
Sterner. R , 103
Stiller, M., 41
Stodter, Major, 8
Storm. Leslie, 18
Strasser, Alex., 130
Strauss. Theodore, 10*, 38*

Str.oi

I., 27

Struther, Jan, I
Stuait, John, Use
Sturtics. Preston, 106, 131
Sullavan, Margaret, 122
Swift, 50

Tallents, Sir S., 86

Talleyrand, 104

Tanner. Tom, 155

Tasto. Charles, 37, 104, 113

Tata, Sir Jamsitjee, 2s

Tavlor. Donald, 71, 152

Ta\lor. John, 100

Tharp. Gr.ihame. 5. 26, 71, 116. 151

Thomas. Dvlan. 70, 90, 100, 125, 152

Thomson. Charles A
Thurtle, E., 99
Tolstoy, Alexei, 63
Trauberg. 43, 69

Van Dongen, Helen, 10, 27
Van Dyke, Willard, 20,43, 103

lling, R., 21
ner, Rex, 113
hington, Geo

Walt, Harrv, 21*. 43, 56, 73, 158

Wavell, Gen., 19, 37

Wavrin, 40

Wellington Koo, Dr., 5

Wells, H. G., 5

Welsh, Mary. 4

WesseK, Paula, 13

Wiehtm.m. R . 90

W ilherh iree. 104

Wrieht. Basil. 13, 40* 43, 50, 56, 57*,

68, 70, 71,93, 156
Wrielit. Irene, 119
Wrmht, S. J., 54
WMer, William, 112, 127, 131

Zanuck. Daryl, 8, 29, 127
Zecca. F., 41
Zinnemann, F„ 43

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DOCUMENTARY

NEWS LETTER

CONTENTS

[ WON I BE DONE BY KINDNESS

THE NEW DEMOCRACY

NOTES OF THE MONTH

LETTER FROM NEW ZEALAND

NEW DOCUMENTARY H

STORY TtLl.jyf<?TAWONG FILM WORKERS

SOMJET SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL FILMS 169, 170

ORRESPONDENCE

FILMS AND PEOPLE (U.S.A.)

VOL 4 NO. 1

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON Wl

IT WON'T BE DONE BY KINDNESS

The key weakness in most British and American propaganda
is that we treat democracy as if it were some kind of an
almshouse. There is an assumption that after the war we
shall be due for a period of convalescence, with administrators
adjusting pale pink cushions of new legislation around the
sorer quarters of our battered national anatomy. This is to be
the reward of victory

The time has surely come to root out such vague distortions
of the thing we are fighting for. The war is moving into its
final and most difficult phase. Political problems are beginning
to march step by step with military problems. Some people
see suspicion growing between the Allied nations, others see
lithe spectre of compromise with fascism becoming clearer and
(■harder in outline. It is no time for sentimentality.
I What is the reason for the comfortably impotent conception
I lof democracy with which we are so often fobbed off? It has not
|: happened by accident. Propaganda is seldom accidental.
■Surely we must face the fact that our picture of democracy is
Isoft and insidious because it is a picture which is intended to
■deceive. It pretends to delineate a new way of life but in fact
j Idoes nothing of the kind. It succeeds only in glossing over the
■deep divisions between social groups within the United
■Nations, groups which soon will be moving into the open,
■ready for a battle for which the war against the Axis is only
la preliminary skirmish. So it is that Mrs. Miniver, This Above
14//, The War Against Mrs. Hadley, are manifestations of the
(■spirit which can talk of democracy and treat with Darlan,
■which can render lip-service to Beveridge and seek feverishly
■for loopholes through which the financial prestidigitators
lean find a way out to safety. On the face of it, to suggest a
(■relationship between these slim screen novelettes and the final
ifconvulsions of monopoly-capitalism may seem fantastic. Yet
:the relationship is real. Such films represent a picture of
ildemocracy intended to satisfy a public appetite for progress
■without raising the revolutionary manifestations of progress.
(■Such films seek to persuade us that simply by beating the
IKxis we shall attain a comfortable, kindly world which will
! I make no more demands upon us than can be satisfied by regu-
lar attendance at church, the occasional persual of a book of
l batriotic quotations and a belief in Father Christmas. The
lippeal is away from reason towards tradition, blind faith and

mysticism, "Don't think any more," says the parson in
This Above All, "Follow your faith, not your mind."

Now, as never before in the history of this war, we need to
follow our minds. Now is the time really to begin fighting for
the things for which we so glibly argue that the war is being
fought ; and that means that hand in hand with hard fighting
must go hard thinking. Now is the time to remember the
miseries, frustrations and inept leadership of the pre-war
years (if our Government were honest in its protestations that
it seeks a new order, it would be making films to remind us
that the horrors of peace can equal and even exceed in their
apparent hopelessness the horrors of war). Yet unless we
act with courage and speed we shall find that the carrot of
a world revolution which has been dangled in front of our
noses during the critical military phase of the war will begin
to recede into the distance.

The greatest task of film propagandists lies ahead of them
and not behind. We must counter the picture of a soft, passive,
non-purposive democracy with a picture of democracy as
a militant and exacting way of life, a hard road of human
progress and not a drawing-room for the airing of good
intentions. Grierson has made a beginning in the two first
releases in his Front of Action series. In Inside Fighting China
we are told that the Chinese are not asking for "peace in their
time but for an opportunity to share in the growth of their
country". In Inside Fighting Russia we see that the U.S.S.R.
is strong because it is possessed by the rational conviction
that it can one day achieve Lenin's ideal of "from each
according to his ability, to each according to his need".

To the production of similarly inspiring films there is bound
to be increasing opposition. Even such diffident British films
of social struggle as the Films Division of M.O.I, has managed
to produce will be increasingly obstructed. We shall
be asked to float away from such vulgar brass tacks into the
cloud-cuckoo-land of pious social aspiration.

A people is as healthy as the goal to which it is consciously
moving. We must present a clear goal for the British people.
That is our first duty as propagandists. Our second duty is to
describe the path to that distant goal in hard realistic terms
and to prevent the grim obstacles ahead from being obscured
in a sentimental mist of good intentions.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1943

THE NEW DEMOCRACY

The year 1943, whether or not it justifies the self-satisfied
cries of some of our permanent optimists, is certainly going
to be a year in which clashes of ideas and of policy among the
Allies will become more intensified. As the prospect of final
military victory becomes less and less remote, so the reaction-
aries will creep out of their hidey-holes or throw off their
hastily-assumed masks. It is of urgent importance, therefore,
to formulate propaganda policies without delay. This must
be done not only by each of the United Nations separately, but
also by the United Nations as a body. The events in North
Africa alone have proved how necessary is the latter condition.
Never before has there been such an opportunity for the
propagandist. The Axis has been and is being increasingly
thrown on the defensive in the ideological as well as the mili-
tary sense. Less is heard of the New Order. And many of
Goebbels' more successful lies have now boomeranged back.
This does not necessarily mean that German morale is weaken-
ing. But it does mean that the whole propaganda front is now
ready for a frontal assault by the United Nations — an assault
which will be impossible as long as divided counsels prevail.
Yet although there may be signs of disagreement between one
Government and another, it is unlikely that any disagreement
will be found between the peoples they represent, who one
and all look to the establishment of at the least a more equitable
form of society as a result of the present conflict. Too few of
the democratic leaders have so far had the courage, the
imagination, and possibly even the goodwill to formulate this
strong new movement of common people all over the world
into a declared and vigorous policy.

Voice from the U.S.

Highly significant therefore are the utterances of Henry
Wallace, Vice-President of the United States. Often he seems
like a voice crying in the wilderness. But what he says shows a
breadth of vision which is most urgently needed today.

In an article printed by the Evening Standard on January 1st,
1943, Wallace challenged the Geopoliticians of the Axis with
the vision of a new Heartland. Not Eastern Europe and
Western Asia as a centre of world control, but a Heartland
"extending from Buenos Aires at the south, on and up through
the United States, Canada, Alaska, Siberia, Russia and
Western Europe, and including China and India". This, says
Wallace, is the heartland of a New Democracy, and he adds:
"By the New Democracy I do not mean Anglo-American
domination of the world."

This new conception of the Heartland would be an idle fancy
(less easily realised than the Haushofer theory of Geopolitik
which under Hitler came, in 1941, within measurable distance
of success) were it not for the fact that the course of world
events has brought it into being. It is not a visionary's dream ;
it is a thesis based on fact.

Month by month the development of air power illustrates
the possibilities. To thousands of pilots the map of the world
they live in centres round the North Pole. The Arctic air routes
are likely to become a dominating factor in the future of world
civilisation. You only have to get a map of suitable projection
and sec where the direct flying routes of the world now lie.
It may not be going too far to say that in the present develop-
ment of air power lies the key either to the destruction of
modern civilisation or to its re-birth. It is at least one of the
powerful tools with which the people can carry out their will;
and there is little doubt that Wallace's Heartland, dominated
by the air-power of the New Democracy, is a nearer picture of a
warless world than the marble tombs at Geneva. It is significant

that Wallace examines and, by implication, rejects another
aspect of Air Power — one which may be found cogently
argued in Seversky's book on the subject in which he visualises
world domination by an air force based in the Western
Hemisphere and having a striking range of at least 6,000 miles.
"In the Air Power world," says Wallace, "America is just as
much the heartland of the world as is Eastern Europe." . . .
But he adds "We in the United States, while having full
respect for geography, can't help wondering if ideas and
organisation do not play an even more important part in
world destiny."

Wallace's thesis is something which the propagandists
should use. It has that appeal of combined fact and imagina-
tion which was so clearly seen in the effect of the publication
of the Beveridge Report on the people of Britain. It is some-
thing not merely said, but meant.

Until the propagandists of the United Nations, severally
and in concert, can base their efforts on conceptions as wide
and as compelling as these, the final outcome of World War II
will remain basically suspect in the minds of the people. And
until the Governments of the United Nations act on policies
which express the people's determination, the propagandists
will be hampered in their work. Every day it becomes clearer
that the world of tomorrow is the war-weapon of today, and
that, like other weapons, it must be tangible, and not a promis-
sory note. We are more likely to suffer in the long run from
lack of social constructiveness than from lack of dive-bombers.
In other words, it is vital that the gigantic military onslaught
which we are now about to launch on Italy, Germany and
Japan shall be backed by a faith which is not blind nor passive,
but far-seeing, active, and based on reason. Such a faith is,
surely, the secret of Russia's military successes; the lack of it,
surely, was the secret of Allied failures in 1940 and 1941.

The geopolitik of Mackinder and Haushofer was nothing
until, as Wallace says. Hitler put flesh on its dry bones. Soon
its bones will be dry again, for it has proved a false faith.
Hitler clothed it with an outworn conception of the State as a
mystical body to which the citizen must be subservient. The
faith of the New Democracy conceives of the State as the
collective and active organisation of the people. It is for that
faith that the people are fighting, and it is that faith which the
quislings and crypto-quislings of every country will destroy at
any cost — even that of self-betrayal.

So there is, even in the present turmoil, when the motives
of governments are becoming more and more schizophrenic,
when increasing military efficiency and success are matched by
increasingly suspicious and reactionary activities in the
political field, much that the propagandists can do.

In all their work they can, and must, express an active faith.
In each country the conception is of a community totally
mobilised for a positive purpose. Problems are positive, not
negative. Situations are facts to be dealt with, not mere
opportunities for discussion.

Object Lesson

To film makers, a Soviet film like The New Teacher is an
obvious object lesson on these lines. Here is a picture which re-
veals the individual, with all his foibles and humanities, in
relation to the community. It is a scenario based correctly on
the assumption that the individual and the community go
together.

1 asj for the Russians to express this— they have built a

state on this very conception. Not so easy for the British or the

(Continued on next page)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1943

NOTES OF THE MONTH

A Bit of Nonsense

we are indebted to the New York correspondent of the
Daily Telegraph for the following account of a Hollywood
wriggling display: —

Mr. Walter Wanger, president of the Motion Picture
Academy of Arts and Sciences, informed me to-day that it
was an "outrageous libel" to suggest that the leaders of the
American film industry were trying to prevent Noel Coward's
film //; Which We Serve being considered for the Academy's
awards for 1942.

Earlier in the day officials of the United Artists Company,
which is distributing the picture in the United States, asserted
that an effort was being made to "freeze it out".

They explained that the lists were usually closed about
January 15th, but this year the date was being changed to
December 31st. Since the Coward picture would not open on
the West Coast until after January 1st this would have the
effect of putting it out of court.

( Continued from p. 1 62)

Americans, who still live under conditions where rugged
individualism — be it one man or an imposing corporation en-
shrined in Victorian Gothic or neo-Georgian concrete — is still
no more than slightly cracked in the foundations. True enough,
but no excuse. From every side in wartime Britain come evi-
dences of the wider conceptions, from the man who dies in the
blitz for the honour of Paradise Street, E.C., to the hundred
and one unspectacular evidences of community endeavour in
village, city, field and factory, each one of which is, to a greater
or lesser degree, a microcosm of the whole idea of an active
community.

Today it is the task of the propagandist — and not least of
the film propagandist — to gear his work to these very simple
conceptions. It is not only a question of smashing the fist into
the face of reaction or treachery to the people wherever it is
found, but also of presenting every story in the active, positive
sense of a community on the march.

It is too late merely to pose, say, the problem of bad factory
conditions or Army pay as something to be beefed about first,
and then discussed as a problem with various possible solu-
tions. It is not so much the problem which must be posed :
it is, rather, the sense of an active-community organising itself
to meet and solve any and every problem which impedes its
progress. All this may, for the time being, be regarded only
as an attitude, as a different approach. But that difference of
approach is the fresh blood our propaganda needs.

So there are a few New Year resolutions which we must
make, and which we must keep : —

1. To express in positive terms the activity of the community.

2. To express the will of the community in terms of a faith
based on known facts as well as on a realisation of essential
decencies.

3. To seek out not merely the problems, but also the growing
points of community activity which in any degree arise from
them.

4. To present the International World in terms not of power
politics but of the power of the people, whether we call it the
New Democracy, New Heartland, or just the United Nations.

5. To fight all attempts to gloss over or explain away episodes
or facts which are basically against the interests of the people's
war.

6. To remember that our work deals with human beings, not
blueprints ; and that each human being must become a member
of an active community, or perish.

Mr. Wanger said: *'I would certainly like to see //; Which
We Serve among the pictures of the year considered by the
Academy for awards. I saw it in New York and 1 think it is
a great picture and one that is eligible for all the awards we
have.

"But it is not our fault if it is not shown here in time to be
included among the pictures of 1942.

"It is true that in the past we have sometimes included
films shown as late as January 15th, but it is not true that the
proposal to make December 31st the dead line was made with
a view to excluding this particular picture. It has merely been
decided that the end of the year is the most logical date on
which to terminate the year."

"To this United Artists replied that they were not informed
until Friday night that pictures not shown before December
31st would not be accepted . . . ."

Housing Problems

a striking demonstration of the wide current interest in
social questions is provided by the distribution figures of the
British Commercial Gas Association film library. Like other
non-theatrical libraries, the collection of Gas Industry films
(which includes several documentaries on sociological subjects)
has since the outbreak of war experienced an increased demand
which now exceeds the available supply of copies. During this
period the order of popularity of the films has changed and it
is somewhat surprising to find that the film most sought after
today is Housing Problems. This film record of slum life in the
East End of London and about the steps which must be taken
to deal with the social evil was made as long ago as 1935 in
the first year of major Gas Industry production and has
since been shown all over the world. The situation it deals
with has now changed, but the fact that schools, colleges, civil
defence, adult educational and Service groups are anxious
to see a film of this description is heartening evidence of the
widespread desire to ensure that the post-war world will not
see a repetition of pre-war miseries.

Eric Knight

the late Eric Knight's many friends in the Documentary
Movement will wish to join us in recording our sharp sense
of the loss of a staunch ally and in expressing our deep sym-
pathy to his widow. We quote from The Times obituary :

"Major Eric Knight was killed on January 15th, when a
transport aeroplane in which he was travelling crashed off
the coast of Dutch Guiana. Born in Yorkshire in 1897, Eric
Knight spent most of his life in the United States. But until
he wrote his best-selling work. This Above All (which was
later made into a film), it was for books about Yorkshire that
he was chiefly famous on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly
Song On Your Bugles and The Flying Yorkshireman. Eric-
Knight served in the last war with the Canadian Army, and
in the years that followed gained an unrivalled reputation in
America as film critic on the Philadelphia Public Ledger, for
which he worked between 1925 and 1935. In this war he had
for the nine months preceding his death been working in the
Film Unit of the United States Army. His death has deprived
both the United States and Britain of a tireless worker for
good relations between the two countries. He wrote the
booklet which is given to members of the American Forces
who come to Britain, and when he was over in this country
last year he wrote at the request of the Ministry of Information
the story for a film stressing the need for the international
planning of food resource: "

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JAM \RY 1*>43

LETTER FROM NEW ZEALAND

A new growing point for Documentary

by E. S. Andrews, Producer for the
National Film Unit of Neiv Zealand

Surveying his countrymen from the dis-
passionate heights of a Carnegie grant, a New
Zealander once said that we were a nation of
inspired amateurs, that we were so universally
capable of building fowl-houses and improvising
machinery that we looked on experts with an
unwise contempt. Rapid wartime expansion of
industry has wiped out any trace of contempt for
expert craftsmen, and at the same time has given
play to the fresh mindedness and adaptability of
the amateur. Witness the New Zealand National
Film Unit.

The Government Tourist Department's film
staff used to make the prettiest scenics imagin-
able. But war cut the overseas tourist trade to
the bone, and the Government Film Studios
staff was whittled down to an unarticulated
skeleton. By August 1942, necessity, economy
and some persistent argument had re-created
the Studios into the likeness of the National
Film Unit, set up specially to discover New
Zealand to New Zealanders, and to inform them
about their own war effort

From national habit, administrative machinery
was improvised. The Studios and remaining
technical staff belonged to the Tourist Depart-
ment, so new staff became a charge on that
Department, which pays the bills in the first
instance and attends to administrative details.
Direction of effort must come from the Cabinet,
so the Director of Publicity in the Prime Minis-
ter's Department is ultimately responsible for
the general line of war publicity followed by the
Unit. Creative initiative must come from within,
so the Unit hatches its own plots with a minimum
of outside direction.
War Expenses

Since the cost, including new equipment, is
booked out to Hitler and Tojo via the War
Expenses account and the Tourist Department
finds itself with a tidy asset in full running order;
since the Prime Minister's Department gets the
kind of output it needs from a thoroughly
efficient outfit ; and since the Unit staff have
a measure of professional freedom unusual in
a Government Department, the National Film
Unit works in a pretty happy atmosphere.

We have a producer, a studio manager, a pro-
duction supervisor, a chief cameraman, a sound-
man, two complete three-man units, of director,
assistant and cameraman, and a small laboratory
staff. We arc also lucky enough to have on call
a carpenter, a model maker and three artists,
with a woodwork shop that in ils lime
built the Government Court at the Centennial
Exhibition. There is a "still" processing depart-
ment which handles all the processing of official
war photographs, and lends us a hand when
needed. Two of us were journalists, one was a
programme man from radio, one a clerk in the
public service, one a commercial artist. There
were, and still arc. abysmal gaps in our equip-
ment, some of which is first class, and some of

which we had to improvise. But we started out
on the assumption that, knowing what we
wanted to say, we could find a wa> to sav it.
We did find a way, though not without sweat
and headaches.
Transition Difficulties

The task the Government set was to produce
a weekly four-minute potted newsreel, and a
monthly one-reeler which would give room for
more considered statement. We slapped right
into the job when we were so rawly new that for
weeks we would notice faces round the place
that we didn't recognise. We did not fully under-
stand, thank goodness, what a handicap it was
to be without an optical printer, without a
re-recording outfit, without even a moviola.
We just literally cut our way through transition
difficulties and last week put "60th Week" on
our newsreel titles. The one-reelers now add
up to eighteen.

For having done the job it set out to do, the
National Film Unit is reasonably satisfied with
its activities, and audiences like the films. But
every time we look at a newly finished print we
feel that the next one is going to have just that
extra something. It usually has, though we never
find ourselves satisfied.

We are compelled to be brief in the weeklies,
and commonsense and settled policy have made
us omit any direct appeals to audiences. Our
job is to give information pithily and interest-
ingly, in the belief that an ounce of information
is worth a ton of disembodied exhortation.
Wartime industrial changes have given us a limit-
less field of interest. Workshops and workmen
all over the country have proved limes out of
number that the impossible could be done.
Unusual patterns of industry have developed,
notably the co-ordination of scattered metal,
lathes and drills, in garages and blacksmiths"
shops from top to bottom of the Islands, as
feeders for a central depot assembling armoured
fighting vehicles. Our country in fact, is the
review editor's heaven, vvilh a novelty of social
or industrial importance in every street.

John Grierson said three years ago that no-
body had ever seen the New Zealander's face
on the screen. Now we have all had a good look
at ourselves, and we like it well enough to have
started a mounting flow of film to Britain.
Australia, America and the Middle East. Not
the least of the Unit's contributions to inter -
national goodwill is its frequent visual presenta-
tion of the fact that men and women in machine-
shops, farms and offices look the same in New
Zealand as the} do in Great Britain, in Russia,
in America, and in every other countrv that has
put the face of its people on the screen. We have
in some measure romanticised ourselves. This
is a beautiful countrv and we have shown it so.
lo the New Zealander, the brush, the scrub,
the lakes and mountains are the outward symbol
o\' freedom. They are flavoured with holiday

memories, of warm summer days fishing, love-
making and lazing, of doing what he damn well
pleases in his Christmas leave. In Grierson's
phrase we are Polynesian romantics, and we like
it so much that way that we would fight off
the whole world to keep it.

That is why the National Film Unit has
missed no opportunity of making the visual
contrast between these and quieter times. The
holiday resorts are training grounds for soldiers;
there are munition factories where the snow
meets the tussock ; timber itself is a defence
industry. All that, along with the men and
women in uniform and in factory overalls and
farming dungarees, is up there on the screen
to see.

The National Film Unit did this simply.
sometimes almost naively in the first twelve
months while it was learning to be national,
learning about film and learning to be a unit.
Of necessity the films have had a parochial
tinge. We had no library material from other
parts of the world : our only overseas camera
unit was fixed with the N.Z.E.F. in the Middle
East; we had, above all, to convince local
audiences that they and their affairs were fit
subjects for filming. Now, with the self-conscious
stages in ourselves and our audiences quickly
receding, we aim to fit New Zealand into the
pattern of World War II and the more hopeful
pattern that will grow out of it.
For Home Use

In the main, our product will continue to be
for home consumption, but we are sending an
increasing number of films to other Dominions
and especially to Great Britain ; partly as Empire
stock-shot material and partly for use in complete
form.

An important subsidiary to the production
side is the embryo National Film Library,
mainly 16 mm., which was set in motion in
August this year. Housed in the Government
Film Studios, operating as a free library, and
co-ordinating the film activies of the Education
Department and the Office of the United King-
dom High Commissioner, the new organisation
already has met with a demand which fai exceeds
supply. Ministry of Information films from
(neat Britain, a tew from Canada, some from
the Indian Film Unit, 16 mm. copies of local
productions, and some educational films re-
served it'i school use constitute most of the
stock. We have discovered in the vaults a few
New Zealand primitives. Grierson's Drifters,
I lahenv's Moana, and a hotch-potch collection
o\ last-war negative.

As this is written, the major problem is to find
enough prints of anything to satisfy what
appears to be a national craving for 16 mm. film,
but as stocks creep up to full level, more con-
sideration will be given to programme prepara-
tion and to instruction in the use of films for
various purposes.

All told, we feel that after a slow but very
earlj start, New Zealand has settled down to
a thorough appreciation of the value of films
to the community.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1$43

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

lift Your Head, Comrade. Director: Michael
Hankinson. Producer: Basil Wright. Script:
Arthur Koestler. Production: Spectator Short
Minis. M.O.I. 13 minutes.
Subject: German and Austrian anti-fascists who
now working in the Pioneer Corps.
at mem: Koestler wrote it— therefore one
takes it for granted thai the subject is treated as a
refugee would wish. Hankinson directed and he
presumably saw to it that he got the people he
wanted to play the British parts. Wright pro-
duced and he is no "Let's crack it out by the
end of the week boys'' producer; neither is he
noted for insensitivity. Why then does this film
which could have moved audiences throughout
the country— which does indeed move them
intensely in parts — look as though it were made
by Fitzpatrick after a brief tour of Dachau'.'

The treatment of the subject is simple enough.
We are taken to the Headquarters of a Pioneer
Unit as the men are parading. A British sergeant-
najor starts to call the roll but is unable to pro-
uuince the difficult names because they are
foreign. He calls to an N.C.O. to come and read
"This bloody list". (Bloody indeed it is. for it
contains the names of many Germans and
Uistrians — men who have been through Dachau
—men who ha\ e escaped from the terror of being
i Jew or a Trade Unionist in a Fascist land, to
come and fight for the cause of freedom.) This
gets a quick laugh but it is a laugh with a sting
"n it because the sergeant-major is like all the old
jokes you ever heard about nasty sergeant-
majors.

Now the Major appears and takes up the
story. No doubt the particular Major chosen is
good to little children, fond of animals and
altogether extremely kind, wise and progressive.
Unfortunately the camera has come between us
ind this ideal personality and turned him into
something very different. His behaviour is be-
tween that of a circus ring-master and the
Victorian head of a reformatory. He takes us
round the camp and introduces us to the work
the men are doing and gets them to tell us some-
thing of their past history. Their stories, so
tragically common to the past twelve years of
Nazi history, still have the power of stirring one
to primitive anger and hatred. And the fact that
these men are still able to continue their long
struggle renews one's faith in humanity. We see
iOme of the work they do — building camps, eon-
[ structing coastal defences and manning the guns
I while they make read) for the Artillery to take
| over. In a moving sequence we see reconstructed

I the great moment when these men, aliens in a
strange land, were first given arms. As long as the
film sticks to the men it is good propaganda,
good movie making and lull of that courage and
inspiration without which the best propaganda is
dead.
; The men look after their side of the film so I
think we must blame the choice of the British
personnel for making nonsense of their message.
Nobody, least of all the men themselves, would
: expect to be wrapped in cottonwool, but ii can
! surely not have been necessary to produce carica-
j lures of British soldiers as their officers. Fortun-
1 alelv they are unbelievable caricatures so we can
i assume that one of those special distorting lenses

was used: you know, the kind thai can make a
Na/i Youth parade look like a message of hope
for the future, or a service in a bombed country
church like a bad farce.

Propaganda Wiliic I his is difficult to assess. On
the whole ii will probabl) be good. Some people
will not notice the strange twist given by the
handling of the officers and will only see a good
and encouraging message for the future ol world
co-operation. Those who do notice it will prob-
ably be able to discount it. One good thing is
that the film is bound to raise a lot of points
which will be discussed, such as anli-Semiiism.
treatment of the enemy after the war and the
shape of the peace to come. In all the thousands
of feet of celluloid which arc so happily forgotten
as soon as one steps from the cinema into the
black-out, this is one reel which will have made-
its mark and be remembered.

Kiil or Be Killed. Realist Films. Producer: John
Taylor. Direction: Len Lye. Camera: F. Jeakins.

2 reels.

Subject: Stalking a sniper.

Treatment: A partv of British soldiers are laying
mines in the open Hidden in a tree some wav
away is a German sniper who is picking them off
one by one. A sergeant sets out to find the sniper
and k'ill him. The" film is the story of his hunt, a
hunt to the death, and it is without doubt one
of the most exciting films ever made. In these
two reels there is more suspense than we have
seen on the screen for years. First sergeant hunts
German, then the roles are reversed and German
hunts sergeant, then hunter again becomes
hunted. Across fields, by hedges and into a wood.
every move made by either side becoming a
matter of life or death for the audience. One
wants to cheer when the German gives his first
position away by a careless use of his field
glasses and one's eyes, becoming the sergeant's
eyes, ache from peering into the chequered
shadows of the wood. When the German treads
on a twig the resulting crack is as great a shock
as though a bomb had fallen from an empty sky.
There is no commentary, but the thoughts of both
hunter and hunted are spoken, one by a Scots
voice, the other in English with a German
intonation, and this device adds enormously lo
the tension. Here warfare is reduced to a primi-
tive, man to man, contest, in which the colour
of a leaf, the sudden movement of a horse, the
keenness of one's eyes or ears, may mean life or
death. Your life or his.

The sergeant eventually kills the German and
then, using the dead body as a grotesque decoy.
picks off the members of a scouting partv as they
come up to investigate.

The film has the very magic of cinema in it.
every legitimate device has been used with an
integrity which is rare in film making. The
film is for theatrical release in America, but
unfortunately, only for non-theatrical cir-
culation in this country. It is well worth your
while to hunt it out that is if you don't mind
being shaken up. frightened and fascinated.
Propaganda Value. I veellent. One of the best
shorts turned out by the Ministry of Information.

Worker and War Front. Number Three.
M.O I Non-theatrical.

Subject: A fortnightly magazine of various
items relating to the war effort.
Treatment. It is sometimes a little difficult to
understand exactly what these magazines tire-
getting at. They are not particularly entertaining
nor are they very instructive. Neither are they
particularly boring being mostly well shot and
edited. They have rather the same effect as
those routine items in the daily press which
one usually only reads on a long train
journey like "More Carrots Being Eaten",
"Mother of Twelve Works Night Shift" or
"Carraway Seed Collectors Go To It". In
this issue we are told, among other things,
that the dockers are doing a damn good job,
that the railings are being taken down round
the squares, but that unless we behave
ourselves they will be put hack after the war,
and finally Ben Lyon, Bebe Daniels and Vic-
Oliver appear in a rather inept tail piece. It
would possibly be a help if the commentary was
dramatised to make up for the lack of news
value. Or again it might be possible to find slight-
ly more unusual subjects to film.
Propaganda Value. Difficult to assess but lo
see one of these films during a showing in a
factory might quite easily prove all the above
remarks to be entirely wrong.

Tank Battle. Production Arm) film Unit.
Commentator: Raymond Glendinning. Running
Time: 12 minutes. M.O.I. Home Theatrical.
Subject: This film is apparently designed to
show what happens on the battlefield in a clash
between two opposing tank forces.
Treatment: The film postulates a situation
arising during manoeuvres. British d
forces become aware that a German Pan-
zer force will attempt to break through their
lines and capture a strategic point. We see
councils of war take place on both sides and we
see the Nazi force decide upon a particular
stratagem whilst the British CO. deploys his
defending units to meet till likely contingencies.
Out in the field we see the tanks lumbering about
and then a surprise German move reported in
the nick of time by a British reconnaissance partv .
with the result that the quick-witted ( om-
mander at headquarters correctly interprets the
stratagem and proceeds to forestall it. He sends
two converging columns of British tanks to
intercept the Na/i force and defeat it.

It is conceivable that the tactics employed in
these exercises are militarily sound, but the
general effect remains dismall) unconvincing.
In some directions meticulous care has' been
taken to ensure accuracy but for the most part
the troops behave as if it were a spare-time
frolii No attention is paid to the almost certain
intervention o( forces other than tank forces.
Propaganda Valu Very low. From the line of
ihe film it is impossible to guess for what type
of audience it was designed and one is left with
the depressing conclusion that it was designed
for no audience-type whatsoever.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JAMJAR1* 1943

New Documentary FUmsZicontinued)

B.B.C. Brains Trust. Production: Strand Film
Co. Producers: Donald Taylor and Howard
Thomas. Camera: Jo Jago, Charles Marlborough,
Hal Young, Moray Grant. Editor: Alan Osbiston.
Subject: A film version of the broadcast feature.
Treatment: With great commercial nous, Strand
films has set up four cameras in front
of the Brains Trust table and persuaded
Question-master McC'ullough, Joad, Huxley,
Jenny Lee, Elliott and Campbell to go through
their B.B.C. studio motions as unselfconscious-
ly as if there were not a single prying eye to
watch their frowning, pouting and malicious out-
bursts of glee. All these speakers are in charac-
teristic form and the fact that they are somewhat
more fluent than usual and that we have to
Miller fewer stupidities than find their way over
the air, probably is because advantage has been
taken of the opportunity to edit the material.
The answers are, however, spontaneous and
unprepared and audiences will be fascinated
by the whole lively business. There is no doubt
that the Brains Trust is more entertaining if it
is seen as well as heard — particularly when the
visible reactions of members are as eloquent
as in this first release. A critic in the Sunday
Press has suggested that in this automatic
objective reporting style we have the lowest form
of film making. It appears that the writer would
have preferred the director to interpret the
answers with his camera and to have inter-
vened with his own personal reactions to what
is said. Surely most people will prefer to find no
anonymous personality coming between them
and the members of the Trust. Moreover, any
film-maker with experience in handling this kind
of shooting will understand that to get rid com-
plete^ of all camera-consciousness, even in the
case of such distinguished non-professionals
as the members of the Brains Trust, is in itself
a considerable feat of film-making.
Propaganda Value: This series obviously will
provide an important forum for the discussion
of topical problems. In the first release there is
a tendency to pull punches and in a discussion
about Left and Right in politics there is an at-
tempt to preserve an artificial balance between
the two sides. Unless this tendency is quickly
scotched the value of the whole series will be
seriously weakened. The discussions become
meaningless unless every point of view can be
put fearlessly without afterthoughts about its
effect in interested quarters.

Worker and Warfront, No. 4: One reel. M.O.I.
Subject: Magazine film for factories.
Treatment: This series has taken on a new lease
of life. Where before it was ineffectual and irri-
tating it is now lively and entertaining. This issue
deals with building an aerodrome, making cam-
ouflage nets, testing recipes for the Food Facts
advertisements, and the delights of an evening at
the All-Services Clubs. The aerodrome sequence
is very tough and exciting, the camouflage se-
quence, although more conventional, carries
its weight, the Food Fact was interesting (even
if the thing which they made and ate with such
relish sounded pretty dreary) and the soldiers'
night out was novel and gay. Colin Wills doesn't
' ecm to be the ideal commentator, anybody from
another country is almost bound to give the
impression that he is visiting a well-run zoo, but
he carries the thing along well enough.
Propaganda value: Good entertaining stuff with
war interest value.

FILMS OF GREAT BRITAIN LIMITED

FOR

I • $. S. R«

6 Milk and Science'

FOR

CANADA

"Medical Aid for
Britain"

FOR

THE EAST

"Motive Power"
"Movement"
"Flight"
"Water Travel"

FOR

BRITAIN

'Cereal Seed Disinfection"
'Welding Agricultural Machinery'
k Techn ical Educa tion"
'Flight in the Future"

PARK STUDIO
PUTNEY PARK LANE
S.W.15. PUTNEY 6274.

Managing Diret tor;
ANDREW BUCHANAN

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1943

FILM BOARD OF CANADA

Programme of production and
distribution rapidly expands

(from Business Screen Oct. 1942)

IN a war which is total or nothing the Canadian
Government, through its National Film Board
is producing documentary war films whose hard-
hitting realism has broken with the accepted
motion picture formula as completely as the
Nazis broke with the Maginot mind.

Contrasted with the traditional caution of
governmental enterprises, and their instinct for
dealing gingerly with major issues. Government
Film Commissioner John Grierson and Director
Stuart Legg are turning out a brand of fighting
front films which leave no doubt whatsoever
that their objective is to jolt Canadian motion
picture audiences next to the grim realities of
war. In few other countries has any department
of government permitted itself to view facts
so realistically or to hammer them home so hard.
That the method has succeeded is proved by the
fact that National Film Board pictures now
enjoy international circulation and have been
ranked among the best war-reporting jobs so
far produced by any of the United Nations.

The war series, Canada Carries On and Tin-
World in Action, circulate theatrically on an
ordinary commercial basis. Speaking of the
Canada Carries On series before the National
Board of Review in New York on November
13th, 1941. Grierson remarked, "We said from
the first that we were not giving it away. We were
selling it commercially because if it was good, it
was good enough to sell commercially, and if it
wasn't good enough to sell commercially, we
weren't any more interested in it than the
industry. In other words we decided to put our
work on a normal basis and use that as a yard-
stick of our success in public information."

In Canada the Canada Carries On series, made
in co-operation with the Public Information
Division of the Department of National War
Services (now being replaced by the Wartime
Inl'oi niation Board), plays ''00 or ninety per cent
of Canadian theatres, seventy of them French.
Regular French versions are made of each
monthly release.

John Grierson was convinced from the
outbreak of war that the United Nations
must tell their story with all the dynamics of
public information geared to total war and that
the process must be international or not at all.

How far this purpose has been achieved by the
Canadian documentary film can be judged by
the fact that the World in Action series is dis-
tributed throughout the United States, Great
Britain, Australia, New Zealand, India, South
Africa and the Latin Americas, where sound
tracks are translated into Spanish and Portuguese
Since April, 1940, the National Film Board has
been producing one theatrical two-reel war film
a month, and since April, 1942, it has produced
two. Theatre releases also include weekly news-
clips, novelty trailers on government campaigns
and a French language news-reel entitled Les
A ctualites Olympiques.

Through long experience in the fields of
education and propaganda, Grierson has never
fallen into the error of underrating these weapons

in the hands of the enemy nor the consummate
skill with which the Nazis have learned to use
them. He has consistently held that the only
defence lies in attack and that to achieve victory
the United Nations must state their faith in
stronger terms than the enemy. It is this actuality
approach to film-making, coupled with a long-
range view of the film as an instrument of public
education, that has endowed Canadian docu-
mentaries with their tough core of realism, their
blunt refusal to treat with any emotion less
comforting than the truth.

In Canada, government film production and
distribution is centralised under authority of
the National Film Board which in turn looks
after the film interests of all government depart-
ments. The Board includes two government
ministers, three senior civil servants and
three members of the public chosen for their
interest in and knowledge of the films as an
instrument of public policy.

Although less widely known than Canada
Carries On and The World in Action war films,
the National Film Board's 16 millimetre pro-
duction plan has been expanding steadily over
the past two years. In addition to films on school
subjects and adult education this now includes
wartime economies and special films made for
key government departments such as Munitions
and Supply, Wartime Prices and Trade Board,
General Post Office, Labour, the Civilian Direc-
tor of Recruiting, the Director General of
Aircraft, the Army, Navy and R.C.A.F. and
the Department of National Defence.

Non-theatrical distribution in Canada is
carried out mainly through twenty regional
libraries set up throughout the nine provinces.
In the more thickly populated regions of Ontario
and Quebec there are as many as four film libra-
ries. Through these libraries both war and
educational films are available on a loan or
purchase basis. At the end of six months of
theatre showing, films in the Canada Carries On
series are reduced to 16 millimetre and become
available for schools, camps, clubs, churches,
or any other community organisation that
wishes to put on a programme.

As a teaching medium the film in Canada is
proving an instrument of flexibility and range.
It can and does instruct the army in tactics and
arms, demonstrates the use of preventive medi-
cine, first aid and A.R.P., teaches the use of
precision tools and is introducing new ap-
proaches to history, social studies and art.
Planned for future production are films dealing
with agriculture, housing, health, medicine,
nutrition, social welfare and other branches of
public service.

As interpreter of Canada to Canadians them-
selves the documentary film is showing how much
in the past they have looked at, yet never truly
seen. Northwest the colour camera has explored
the rich Peace River district of British Columbia ;
in Great Lakes brought back a record of
Canada's inland water-ways and the powerful
flow of their lake-borne traffic. It has followed

the Indian trapper into the Northland and caught
the habitant farmer of Quebec as, with horse
and sleigh, he starts out through the woods to
tap the sugar bush.

Settlement in Canada is widely scattered, with
many communities living far outside theatre
range. To include such isolated communities the
National Film Board, in co-operation with the
Director of Public Information and the Canadian
Council for Education in Citizenship, established
in January 1942 a project for thirty 16-millimetre
travelling theatres. The object of these rural
circuits was two-fold. First to bring people in
remote settlements into visual contact with war
and secondly to stimulate greater knowledge of
and interest in current events among foreign
language groups.

By June, 1942, the original thirty travelling
theatres had increased to forty-seven with a
monthly audience of more than 280,000; an
audience scattered all the way from Vancouver
Island, British Columbia, to the fishing villages
of Nova Scotia.

Non-theatrical distribution of National Film
Board pictures abroad is carried out by means
of film libraries established in the offices of
Canadian representatives. Considerable circula-
tion of Canadian films is also secured through
the British Ministry of Information's film library.
In the United States, 16 millimetre distribution
is handled in part through prints deposited with
the Canadian Government Trade Commissioner
in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, and by
more than one hundred film libraries.

A number of films have been placed in the
United States with libraries on an extended loan
basis similar to that employed by the Office of
War Information.

SIGHT

and

SOUND

WINTER ISSUE OUT

Soiih' 0 ttii/ribiifors :
ELSPETH GRANT
FORSYTH HARDY
PATRICK MEREDITH

6d.

Published by: The British Film Institute,
4 Great Russell Street, London, W.C.I.

:><)( i:\iENTARV NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1943

STORY TELLING AMONG FILM WORKERS

An art thai has become

a tradition in the

industry.

ry[Ht film business is a young and rowdy affair
-* something like a newly discovered goldfield.
There are still no brick or stone-built houses
there is no sanitation -the only bathroom is in
the brothe! there are no schools, and vigilantes
are still a necessity. Slowly though, this fifty year
old Klondyke is maturing — making its own
taboos and customs and traditions and among
the more pleasant is a tradition of story telling.
It is not a conscious art a cameraman may ha\e
been away somewhere and when he gets back to
his local pub or camera-room he tells of the
things he has seen and heard. If the story goes
down well he tells it again to other people and
more or less unconsciously works it up, en-
larges the best sections and gets the timing
straight until it is light and pat.

Cameramen for some reason are among the
best story tellers; one thing common to quite a
lot of them is the use of action to put a story
over. At 7 o'clock in any pub close to a camera-
man's headquarters, you are almost bound to
see three or four men standing round while
another ducks, pulls faces and waves his hands
as he tells his story.

Oneof the best story tellers is Robert Flaherty.
He needed quiet and a certain amount of drink
and a few short stories to start him off, and draw-
ing forward —he liked leaning on the table with
both arms with his feet tucked back, toes point-
ing down, on either side of the chair— he would
go off on a long detailed story of a man he met
in an igloo on Cape Wolstenholme, or the Chin-
ese cook or the Captain and four mounted police-
men on a derelict schooner. One stor> he had in
1938 was of an Englishman named R. Q. Nelson,
and it started early one morning on a tennis court
in Hollywood. Ben Hecht, Charlie MacArthur
and his wife Helen Hayes were down to have a
game before going to the studios. Their fourth
failed to turn up and after waiting around for a
while they saw a young chap sitting on one of the
benches. He was neatly dressed, but looked as if
he had spent the night in the park, and at last
they went up and asked him if he played tennis,
and it he did, could he spare the time to have a
game. He was a quiet young chap. English, his
name was R. Q. Nelson, and he did play and he
would be very pleased to make tip a four if they
had a spare racquet. After the game. Nelson was
invited back t > breakfast and he told them Ins
story, lie was a clerk and had been working in an
oil company office further down the coast until
the Mexicans had taken over the oilfields or
something like that and since then he had been
unemployed. Hecht and MacArthur thought
that it shouldn't he loo difficult to gel him a job
at the studio. What did he think he could do?
Nelson didn't think he could do anything very
much connected with films. He hadn't even seen
many. The one job he really knew was book-
keeping. It was promptly decided that if he
really didn't know anything about films at all
and had seen very few, the best and onlj job for
him was writing.

Later that morning Hecht passing a studio
executive said: "Morning, Sol — d'you hear
R. Q. Nelson's in town?" to which Sol, not being
a full-blown executive by any means and only a
fifth cousin of the boss, replied carefully:

"Oh, is he, what's he going to do?"

"Nothing particular," said Hecht. "He's out
to have a holiday and see some of his friends."

And careful Sol said: "One minute. Ren, it's
slipped my memory for a moment, what does
Nelson do?"

An J cunning, horrified Ben replied: "Do!"
Do you mean to say you've forgotten his London
productions."

"Of course not. I remember now," Sol said.
" I remember some of his stuff was on when I was
over there last year, but I never got time to see
them."

And as Hecht passed on he dropped the first
seed. "You know a man like Nelson might come
in very useful to the studio— a writer like him
who's had nothing to do with films might get
some fresh angles."

Later that day Hecht told the same story this
time to a bigger shot than careful Sol, but with
very much the same results except Hal's first
reaction was :

"Who the hell is R. Q. Nelson?"

But on thinking he too remembered the well-
known English writer. So the story went the
rounds. Hecht and MacArthur gave it plenty of
time and it finally ended at the producers' weekly
conference. Sol had not been much in favour re-
cently— at any other time he would not have
bothered much, hut the financial people had
their representatives in the studio trying to cut
down overheads and quite a few of his relatives
had had to find other offices to sleep in and some
of them, especially the ones who hadn't bothered
to learn English, were finding it very difficult.
Sol suggested that it might be a good idea if they
could get R. Q. Nelson to co-operate on the next
epic — that is if he could be persuaded, but to

the usual question— "Who is ?" came a

chorus of the usual answer, and the big man side-
stepping said.

"Of course. Yes. it's not a bad idea at all."

Next day Mr. Nelson was requested to lunch
in the big man's private room. Hecht and
MacArthur coached him that night. Their in-
structions were very simple.

"Just don't say anything but 'Yes' or 'No'."

Hecht took Nelson in to the big man hoping
ih, it he might get an invitation too, and be able
to give a hand in any difficulties, but ii was
obvious that Mr. Nelson was an important per-
son ami studio writers were not admitted.

Well, everything went quite well. Nelson didn't
say, anything more than "Yes" oi "No", rhe bis
man was delighted with him An^l even look him
on a personally conducted lour o! the studio and
later suggested politely that "everyone would be
extremely obliged il Mr. Nelson could lake say
six months oil from his own extremely important
work to give them his advice on a lew stories".
I Ik n and then only did everything nearly break
down. Nelson thought that the joke had gone
i.ii enough, but he couldn't just call it off and
possibly get his new friends into a nun. When
the big man ended up with

"We could pay yon a salary ol say 450 doll 11 I
a week," Nelson really decided il was time he

was moving. Desperate he had a bright idea

"I'd like to very much. I've always wanted to
woik in films, but I have definite commitmer
and I must be back in London before the end of
next month."

But the big man wasn't to be denied. The ofii i
rose to 550 then 650 and then 750, and Nelson
was so dazed that before he knew what had hap-
pened, he was out of the office and on the way
home with Hecht. and the contract was following
in the next day's post.

Briefed before starting work by his three
friends, the adv ice was exactly the same as before

nothing but "Yes"or"No"or"Nice weather",
and above all "Don't put anything down on
paper."

During the next few months Hecht and
MacArthur had another of their battles with the
studio and finally ended up in New York and
that was the last they heard of R. Q. Nelson for
a long time. They had been extremely careful nol
lo tell even their best friends the story and they
themselves had more or less forgotten it wher
one day about two years later a friend named
Peter Freuchen, an explorer and author, arrived
He was just back from a visit to Hudson's Bay
for one of the major studios and it came out ir
the course of the evening that he had been sent
up to help an Englishman named R. Q. Nelson.

So for two years Nelson had managed to keep
quiet and every week 750 golden dollars
been placed respectfully on his desk, far n
amazing still was that when Freuchen had i
gested flying from Hollywood to Hudson's 1
the studio had stopped it and said that they cr
not take the risk with a man like Mr. Nelson and
they had solemnly gone by train. Hecht asked
him how he had got on with Nelson, and
Fieuchen said he found him a pleasant enough
young chap rather quiet, but good enough
company once they had got friendly.

Time passed again and iust over a year latci
Freuchen arrived in New York again and din mg
the talk he said he had. just come through Holly-
wood, and among others he had seen Nelson,
who seemed to be getting on all right, and had
asked him to read quite a good story he had
written but Freuchen did not think it was the
kind of story, thai would appeal to the studios
and he had advised Nelson that the best place
for it would be a good magazine.

Well time went on. another year and a hall
and Heclit and MacArthur had produced Crina
without I'ussion. and were back again in Holly-
wood Soon after they arrived they decided to
look up their brain child, but when thej rang the
studios they were told that Mr. Nelson wasn't
there any more. Looking through the telephone
book they found him at a number well outs dc
Hollywood and finally they all met and the end
of the story was cleared. Foi lour yens Nelson
\,.\<A staved at the Studio and the only work he
had done was the story that I reuchen had seen.
I le had kept it in his drawer until he could stand
ii no longei and had sent it in to the big man . . .
there was no reply, but they had not renewed
ins option at the end of the year. But in a lot ol
ways he was glad I le had saved most o\~ his 750
a week and with it had got his wife and children
out from England and had bought a very nice
; .ne h about mi miLs from Hollywood it which
they would all always be welcome.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1943

SOVIET SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL
INSTRUCTIONAL FILMS

one important point in the background of
Soviet Scientific and Technical films should
be noted by the Western reader. There are of
course no distribution dilliculties. There is
no question of making a film for a given
audience, and then not getting access to it;
if for the public, because no renter will han-
dle it, or theatres won't show it: if for an
educational purpose, because the lecture
theatres or factories, etc., lack projection ap-
paratus. The Soviet picture made would be
part of a planned output and get its chance.
No one would make films to teach, say,
engineering, without an adequate screen net-
work to reach engineers (or secondary school
pupils, or whatever) being simultaneously
planned. That is why the authors of the
sketch printed here have treated the question
as simply a production problem, a theme
problem.

The present is not an original article, nor an
exact translation, but the digest of a chapter
with the above title written by S. Beskov, I.
Vasilyev and L. Ryahinin ami included in " Twenty
Years ol Soviet Cinematography", published bv
uhe Stole Publishing House, I S.S.R., 1940.
Three notes have been added In Ivor Montagu.

II Very soon after the nationalisation of the film
industry in 1920, Lenin urged that film propa-
ganda should be used to help the organisation
of production. On the instruction of Lenin, and
■ under the supervision of an Engineer named

I Klasson, two films were made on the hydraulic
method of obtaining peat — one portraying

I familiar methods of peat work and the other

jthe use of a peat pump. These were the first
technical-instructional films made in the Soviet

I Union.

By 1925 already a number of popular-
scientilic and technical-instructional films had

I been produced. A list of some titles will indicate

I the types of subjects.

Medical-Biological: Fatigue and the Struggle
Against It, The Problem of Nutrition, Abortion,
The Media ism oj the Brain, The Truth about
Lile, Tuberculosis, Labour and Health, Alcohol,

I First Aid in Accidents.

I Other Spheres of Knowledge: Forth and (loud.
Souni/, Chemical Weapons, In Europe, Pages

\from the History oj "Pravda".

i At this time there was no very clear idea of

lithe nature of the scientific film. Too often story
elements would be introduced to hold the
audience's attention, and the teaching content
would be thrust into the background or the
theme vulgarised. Only the externals of a given
process wo li Id be shown. There was not pro-
found enough depiction, in films of mechanisms,

i of the interdependence of their parts, the
rationalisation of technical processes and

I production associated with them. The main

I weakness, however, was that they were not
planned for a definite auditorium, there was no
differentiation of groups of spectators. Films
were not, for example, produced specially for

workers in a given speciality, or fo
school pupils, or higher technical
university students.

Three films from this period have been in

England. Neurasthenia, a film of the type

criticised above for being based on story

elements, was brought over for a Medical

Congress, but, owing to various dilliculties.

not exhibited. Mechanism of the Brain.

directed by Pudovkin, a beautiful and lyrical

introduction to the subject, designed for

serious audiences of non-specialists, was

shown at the Film Society: and Snuggle f'oi

Life, a popular audience nature picture

illustrative of its title, was generally exhibited.)

With the opening of the first Stalin Five- Year

Plan there was a great increase in the attention

to such films. A special department for their

production was set up in one of the feature

film studios. But this was soon found insulficient.

A special technical production base became

essential.

In 1932-33 three Scientific and Technical
Film Studios were started — in Moscow, Lening-
grad and Novosibirsk respectively — exclusively
for the production of scientific and technical
instructional films. This for the first time gave
the possibility of adequately perfecting the
complex and peculiar technique appropriate to
such films, e.g. animation of diagrams, speeding-
up and slowing-down movement micro- and
macro-photography. It also enabled the working
out of a methodology suited to filming in
workshops, on rail transport, on collective
farms, etc.

Following the historic decisions of the Com-
munist Party of the Soviet Union on schools,
dated 5th September, 1931, and 25th August.
1932. the way was cleared for the development
of special films for teaching in schools. Both
technical and teaching staffs engaged on pro-
duction of such films were increased, with
excellent results.

4,000 Cultural Films

Among a whole series of films produced
especially for secondary schools during this
time were: Salt, Lightning, Rain, Treasures oj the
Forests, Irrigation. In similar fashion many
films were produced for raising the general
level of labour skill, for attainment of a mini-
mum technical knowledge in each field, for
technical schools and for universities.

In all, during the period of production of
scientific and technical and instructional films,
over 4.000 items have been produced. These
constitute of course a rich storehouse of Socialist
culture.

A great drawback from which such films
suffered, however, was the casual and insuf-
ficiently co-ordinated choice of themes. Govern-
ment decrees dated 23rd March and 27th
November, 1938. prescribing a basic reorganisa-
tion of scientific film production, initiated
systematic selection of subjects. The balance

of the output of subjects was placed under the
Film Affairs Committee- the Government organ
charged with supervision of the whole Soviet
cinema. More attention to the literary qualities
of scenarios, improved conditions of work, new
methods of rewarding work -all these led to
great improvements which have been very
marked in the course of the last two years. It
will be well here to list examples of the product
resulting:

Prof. V. N. Lebedev and his group, who
specialised in micro- and macro-photography,
have made: Bacteria, Green Algae, Pathogenic
Prolo: a, the Structure ol Vegetable Cells, Wosst
Ferns, Infusoria, The Development of the Embryo,
and other subjects not only of teaching value
but some constituting valuable research. They
have made many others for the general public,
the most popular of these being: The Develop-
ment of the Frog (Dolin).

Darwinism

A series deals with various mammals, birds.
insects and other animals: tmmophila, The
Ant-Amazon, Spidei v I \ mnitskv i : Winged Visi-
tors (Zguride), The Island oj White Birds
(Svetozarov), Instinctive Behaviour in Animals
(Pavlov). An underlying theme of the scripts
in all these is illustration of the basic principles
of Darwinism. Among the films of this class.
the biological films, a high place must be given
to: In the Dept's oj the Sea (Zguride, scientific
supervision by Prof. Lebedev).

Anatomical-Physiological films constitute
another series: Organs of Vision (Shubin),
Experiments on the Circulation of the Blood
(Karin); Breathing, the Digestive Organs, and
a special series of film lectures on the Nervous
System (Galkin) are all devoted to portrayal of
the complex processes that take place in living
organisms.

Especial mention should be made of:
The Physiology and Pathology ol the Higher
Nervous System (Gall), which acquaints the
spectator with the classic experiments of Pav lo\ ;
and also of: Interruption oj the Heart Rhythm
(Bazykin), scientific supervision by Prof. Zelenin)
which latter successful!) employs combination
of image and sound.

Surgical pictures occupy the leading place
among medical-instructional films. We shall
here mention only two : The Principles ol Simple
Surgery (Galkin. scientific supervision by Prof.
Girgolau) and Total Plaslic Surgery of the
Thorax. A series of films on Seuro-Surgery has
been produced under the scientific supervision
of Academician Burdenko. Of films dealing
with education in Hygiene more than 25 subjects
have been produced.

Another series of films deals with technical
processes. Stakhanovite methods of work, new
scientific discoveries and inventions. There are
some on Black Metallurgy (blast furnace
methods, steel production, foundry methods):
on Coloured Metallurgy (the obtaining of
aluminium, copper, gold); on Machine-building
(various types of lathes, the Eraser, turning.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1943

Soviet Films

(Continued)

drilling); on fuels (oil, coal, peat); on the
production of Textiles, Food, Wood, Glass, on
Woodworking, on Constructional and Instru-
mental work, on Electrotechnics.

Films have been made for instructional
training on Rail and Water Transport. Special
mention is deserved by a Course on the Motor
Tractor, produced under the scientific super-
vision of Academician Y. A. Chudakov, a
Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences.
In 1939 was issued a film entitled Mult Ha the
Work (Antonov), designed to popularise the
new methods of work of the Stakhanovites in
Heavy Industry.

Among scientific teaching films, subjects
dealing with socialised agriculture occupy an
important place. Twenty-two films were made
on material connected with the All-Russian
Agricultural Exhibition. Some dealt with the
discoveries of Academicians Lysenko, Tsitsin
and other scientists ; others with the Stakhanovite
methods of Maria Demchenko, the beet grower,
Yefremov, Pasha Angelina the tractor driver
and other village Stakhanovites. A great popular
success has been attained by The Transformer of
Nature (Svetozarov), a film on the work of the
famous plant-breeder Michurin.

Of Geographical films, both for school and
wider audiences, should be noted pictures on
the life and mode of living of the peoples of
the North and those dwelling beside the Amur,
the Yenisei, the Northern Dvina and the Volga.
Special pictures have been devoted to the various
constituent Union Republics, such as the
Byelorussians, the Ukrainian, the Turkmenian,
the Uzbek, the Kazakh.

Another special field is historical films, such
as: Relics of Borodino (Dubinsky), Lord Great
Novgorod (Rubinstein), etc. Under the super-
vision of Academician Grekov and Prof.
Picheta, film reconstructions from the past of
the Russian people have been made using
paintings and historical relics.

The Architecture of Leningrad, The Tretyakov
Gallery (Nikolai); The Hermitage (Presnyakov),
Pushkin's Handwriting (Vladimirsky) and many
other subjects have been made to popularise
cultural treasures or enlist interest in questions
concerning them.

Big future tasks face the Scientific and Tech-
nical-instructional film in the Soviet Union —
particularly, the raising of the technical quality
of the pictures, improvement in the sound and
more exact methods of shooting. But now, in
1940, we have a definite schedule of subjects
worked out and an experienced skilled staff.
We therefore hope to be able to fulfil the expecta-
tions entertained of us by the Party and the
Government.

(NOTE 2.

Films that have arrived in England since
June 22nd, 1941, show two developments
since the above chapter was written. First,
a number of films in the last category —
popularising cultural treasures — seem to be
included in a Soviet Art series, issued by the
Central Newsreel Studio. This may represent
an organisational branching-off. Second,
four numbers have come to England of a film-
magazine, entitled Science and Technique,
prepared under the scientific supervision of

Prof. Chudakov, issued monthly. Each is one
reel and contains three subjects, popularising
for general instruction well known scientific
facts (the relation between breathing and
blood), industrial processes (metallisation, the
making of artificial precious stones, the
building of the Palace of Soviets) new inven-
tions or discoveries (a water-screen to protect
furnace-workers, melon-pumpkin grafts, the
twin-boat sea glider. Academician Kapitsa's
miniature turbine for liquefying air, Academ-
ician Lena Stern's method of treatment of
shock). One issue is specially designed for
young children. The Kapitsa and Stern items
have been prepared in English under the title
Two Discoveries, the remainder as Glimpses <>/
Soviet Science — the latter is to be publicly
distributed by the Anglo-American Film
Corporation. A remarkable two-reel film en-
titled Experiments in the Revival of Organisms,
illustrating the work of Prof. Bryukhonenko
on artificial circulations and made under his
supervision, introduced in English by Pro-
fessor J. B. S. Haldane, F.R.S., is issued by
the Soviet Film Agency. All three of these
films are obtainable on substandard from the
Society for Cultural Relations.)

New Documentary Films

(«.

ued)

In the Nov. -Dec. issue of D.N.L. appeared
a review of Spring in the Farm, a film of the
Greenpark Unit. The cameraman responsi-
ble was Erwin Hillier, not Charles Marl-
borough, as we stated in the review.

Malta G.C. Production; Army Film Unit.
R.A.F. Film Unit and Crown Film Unit.
Commentator: Lt. Lawrence Olivier, R.N.V.R.
Music: Sir Arnold Bax, played by R.A.F.
Orchestra. Running Time: 15 minutes. M.O.I.
Subject: The story of Malta under fire.
Method of Treatment: This account is composed
from official and newsreel material and deals
with complete thoroughness — as far as visuals
are concerned — with the price Malta has paid
for remaining a firm bastion of our waning and
waxing Mediterranean power. We see the o
voys come in, the enemy planes swooping down,
the bombs dropping and many scenes of damage,
all too familiar in every theatre of war. The
scenes in Malta differ from those in other
countries only in the massive sun-drenched
texture of the white stone debris.

There has clearly been little time or oppor-
tunity to make much of a job of the clearing up,
and measures of relief have not been easy to •
extemporise. The extent of the damage is
appalling and the fortitude of the inhabitants
unquestionable. So much is well presented but
scarcely new. The film in fact adds little to news-
reel excitements already experienced other than
a religious over-tone introduced no doubt with
an eye to its effect in certain overseas countries.
Propaganda Value: Malta obviously deserved
a "we can take it" film if ever a place did. It i;
probably nobody's fault if this kind of tribute
seems nowadays to be a bit dated.

* For uour information

TN every progressive enterprise there must be leaders
-Land those who follow behind. As artistic and
technical progress in kinematography quickens to the
tempo and stimulus of war, " KINEMATOGRAPH
WEEKLY" is always to be found " up-with-the-
leaders ", its well-informed pages radiating perception
and far-sighted thinking. Kinematography's
leaders themselves know this for truth
andturn«o«K.W week by f|||

week for information and
enlightenment.

iflp*r

t&^&g&i

93 LONG ACRE
LONDON W.C.2

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1943

STRAND FILMS

MAKERS OF DOCUMENTARY
FILMS SINCE 1934

THE STRAND FUJI COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR
ALEXANDER SHAW -

MANAGING DIRECTOR
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTIONS

1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l.

NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE.

Correspondence

TO THE EDITOR,

Dear Sir,

I am not a documentary film maker or an
editor of D.N.L. or even a Mass Observer, so
perhaps I can support your attitude towards the
National Savings films without being accused
of spite, spleen and possible malice. Documen-
tary has the important job of informing the
public and of influencing their feelings about the
war. The only justification of official films is that
the audience leaves the cinema or the canteen
with useful knowledge, or with an improved
attitude towards the war. Personally I found
the majority of Five Minute films were successful
enough to be conversation-worthy afterwards. 1
had been impressed by the modern army build-
ing railways in Persia, or by an Indian factory,
or by the drama of the great harvest. Most of
these films stood thinking about afterwards, but
I found the Savings films failed, the arguments
put forward and the information given seemed
trite, the message may have been good but the
reasoning was not convincing. The blame, 1
imagine, lies deep, since most of the press
appeals to save seem childish and unconvincing.
It is hard to believe that every five thousand
pounds invested in certificates means that
one more fighter will be built that would not be
built otherwise, or that the drive for savings is
just a huge scramble among a lot of kids for
good marks; while a large housewife labelled
"Guerilla Fighter" makes me writhe with shame
and take a sniff of fresh air. The films did not fail
because of Merton Park Studios or Spectator
Films, it was not because they were badly made;

I can still remember vividly the chalked pave-
ment and the tinkling barrel organ of "Down
Our Street" and there were some undeniably
lovely shots of aircraft flying in "Wings for
Victory". But they did nothing to convince me
of the importance or urgency of Savings Groups
nor was the enthusiasm they aroused relevant.
And if documentaries are produced at the
expense of the nation and fail to do their job,
however pleasantly they may pass the time, then
surely it is the duty of D.N.L. to attack
them. Otherwise the public and the ministries
can use them to attack the Films Division and the
documentary workers as a whole.

Yours faithfully,

R. H. B. MASON

I I Highfield Road.
Edgbaston, Birmingham

Documentary
News Letter

stands for the use of film as a medium of
propaganda and instruction in the interests
of the people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of common
people all over the world.

Owned and published by

FILM CENTRE LTD.

34 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON W.l

GERRARD 4253

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY 1943

FILMS AND PEOPLE

(U.S.A.)

(from Motion Picture Almanac)

during the past year, the outstanding
documentary film of feature length appeared to
be Robert Flaherty's The Land, produced for
the Department of Agriculture.

Our Russian Front, a feature compilation of
Russian newsreel and other clips, was an under-
taking of editing and scoring in which Joris
Ivens, Marcel Craven, Albert Naplas, and Elliott
Paul participated.

Victor Stoloff's two-reel Better Dresses —
Fifth Floor was acquired for Latin-American
distribution by the Office of Inter-American
Affairs, but not distributed.

Irving Jacoby finished the two-reel High Over
The Borders, depicting the flight of birds across
international boundaries in the Western Hemi-
sphere, and hinting its symbolism for unity.
This was prepared jointly for the inter-American
department, the New York Zoological Society,
and the National Film Board of Canada.

Documentary Film Productions completed
Here Is Tomorrow for the Co-operative League
of the U.S.A. in three reels. Principals in its
manufacture were Willard Van Dyke and Herbert
Kerkow, Roger Barlow and Irving Lerner.

In May, Frontier Films released its three-
year-in-the-making feature, Native Land, on
civil liberties and their absence, in this country.
Paul Strand and Leo Hurwitz directed. National
distribution was sought, after a New York
premiere.

Robert Kissack, head of the Visual Education
Department of the University of Minnesota,
presented his feature-length documentary Minne-
sota Document.

Willard Van Dyke left New York for South
America in late December, for a six-month tour
sponsored by the Foreign Policy Association,
the purpose of which was to gather material for
a 30-minute film showing the economic basis
for inter-continental trade.

Ben Kernerand Julian Roffman did a four-reel
film Around the World with Ocean Cargo, for
the Insurance Companies of North America.

William Wells Productions finished Report to
the People for the National Association of In-
fantile Paralysis.

Julian Bryan continued his series of films,
Americans All, for the Office of Inter-American
Affairs.

Leo Seltzer and Elain Basil worked on
Public Health Service for Eastman Kodak
Company in April, 1942. Mr. Seltzer had com-
pleted films on war in the Atlantic, and on avia-
tion maintenance — for the Canadian Film Board.

Irving Hartley, in April, 1942, was editing the
feature made for Patino Mines in South America,
into a two-reel subject for the Inter-American
Office. He also was doing a film for the American
Film Center, on housing management.

Bob Churchill's Spare Time in the Army,
made foi the U.S. Army Signal Corps, received
a Broadway showing at the Criterion and dis-
bution by Columbia.

Formed at the College of the City of New
York during the winter of 1942^43 was the
Institute of Film Techniques, with initial enrol-
ment of 185. Among lecturers were Alice
Keliher, Robert Flaherty, Stuart Legg, Joris
Kens, Irving Lerner, Richard ford, Norbert
Lusk, John lerno, Hans Riehter.

No. 9

THE MERCHANT
AND HIS FRIEND

"A certain Merchant had once a great desire to make a long journey.
Now in regard that he was not very wealthy, 'It is requisite,' said he
to himself, 'that before my departure I should leave some part of my
estate in the city, to the end that if I meet with ill luck in my travels,
I may have wherewithal to keep me at my return.' To this purpose he
delivered a great number of bars of iron, which were a principal part
of his wealth, in trust to one of his friend.-, desiring him to keep them
during his absence; and then, taking his leave, away he went. Some
time after, having had but ill luck in his travels, he returned home;
and the first thing he did was to go to his Friend, and demand his iron:
but his Friend, who owed several sums of money, having sold the
iron to pay his own debts, made him this answer: 'Truly, friend,' said
he, 'I put your iron into a room that was close locked, imagining it
would have been there as secure as my own gold; but an accident has
happened which nobody could have suspected, for there was a rat in
the room which ate it all up.'

"The Merchant, pretending ignorance, replied, 'It is a terrible mis-
fortune to me indeed; but I know of old that rats love iron extremely;
I have suffered by them many times before in the same manner, and
therefore can the better bear my present affliction.' This answer ex-
tremely pleased the Friend, who was glad to hear the Merchant so
well inclined to believe that a rat had eaten his iron; and to remove all
suspicions, desired him to dine with him the next day. The Merchant
promised he would, but in the meantime he met in the middle of the
city one of his Friends children: the child he carried home, and locked
up in a room. The next day he went to his Friend, who seemed to be
in great affliction, which he asked him the cause of, as if he had been
perfectly ignorant of what had happened.

'"0, my dear friend,' answered the other, 'I beg you to excuse me,
if you do not see me so cheerful as otherwise I would be; I have lost
one of my children; I have had him cried by sound of trumpet, but I
know not what is become of him.'

"'0' replied the Merchant, 'I am grieved to hear this; for yesterday
in the evening, as I parted from hence, I saw an owl in the air with a
child in his claws; but whether it were yours I cannot tell.'

'"Why, you most foolish and absurd creature!' replied the Friend,
'are you not ashamed to tell such an egregious lie? An owl, that
weighs at most not above two or three pounds, can he carry a boy that
weighs above fifty?'

'"Why," replied the Merchant, 'do you make such a wonder at that?
As if in a country where one rat can eat a hundred tons' weight of iron,
it were such a wonder for an owl to carry a child that weighs not over
fifty pounds in all!" The Friend, upon this, found that the Merchant
was no such fool as he took him to be, begged his pardon for the cheat
which he designed to have put upon him, restored him the value of his
iron, and so had his son again."

REALIST FILM UNIT

47 OXFORD STREET, W . 1

Telephone: GERRARD 1958

O N T E N I S

MRU \l\\ I II M KOI I IN AMI Kl< \

I III SI \KI I III Ml N, BY D-l I \

NEWS LEnER

. I 1)1 < \ 1 [ON

FORMATION

I II. M ()l I III MON I II

I MINI VKV I 1L.MS

III WORK] I(S

ORRESltoKDINj I. k A Q\ti

VOL 4 NO. 2

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE J^QNDON i tyj ;%J VI SIXPENCE

t

Britain's Film Role inAmerica

Based on material supplied by several correspondents in the United States.

"VTom British visitors to the U.S.A. today find there a surprising
-"■"enthusiasm for British films. This enthusiasm is in many ways
misleading, and tends to obscure the real facts about the distribution
and reception of British films in the U.S. during the past 3^ years.

True, the intelligent movie-goer raves over Target for Tonight ;
Hollywood technicians point to the influence of British docu-
mentaries on feature production ; Washington executives praise
British methods of giving information or raising morale by means
of film.

But a colder appraisal, in terms of audience coverage, if not of
audience reaction, would tell a different story. The distribution
record is not so rosy. The American success of Target for Tonight
and 49//? Parallel (known there as The Invaders) is now well known.
The former still illustrates the daily news bulletins; the latter had
in any case enough star names to sell it. Of shorts, London Can Take
It made screen history — and illustrated real history. The film,
including Quentin Reynolds, was easily understood by the New
World citizenry.

Moderately successful were Christmas Under Fire, Heart of
Britain, Men of the Lightship, Squadron 992 and Letter from Home.
Recently the Office of War Information has accepted 21 Miles and
Might Shift for re-editing and subsequent release to the 1 1 ,000 theatres
which have agreed to run O.W.I, official shorts. And arrangements
have been concluded with major distributors for the release of Next
of Kin, Coastal Command (re -edited), Merchant Seamen (re-edited)
and We Sail at Midnight. Listen to Britain has been refused by all
theatrical distributors, but is to obtain 16 mm. distribution through
O.W.I.

This theatrical distribution may seem somewhat meagre when
it is considered that some 250 films have actually been made
available and that from the propaganda point of view circulation
in the theatres (however excellent the non-theatrical set-up may be)
is of vital importance in the U.S.A.

There have been, and still are, a number of adverse factors which
have to be faced in selling British official shorts for U.S. circulation.
For instance, the shorts market is almost permanently at saturation
point ; it is exceedingly difficult to judge from time to time what is
the most saleable length — one or two reels; there has been, and
still is, sales resistance to British product based very often not on
previous experience but on prejudice or on anti-British feeling.

With these and other factors to contend with, anyone trying to get
a contract with a major U.S. distributor for British shorts needs to
have on hand product which is not merely box-office qua subject
matter but also meets American needs as regards treatment, accent
and tempo.

The trouble at the British end is twofold. Firstly, there is the old
lack of policy, or guidance on policy, which has made so much of
the M.O.I.'s work ineffective. Secondly, there are the faults of the
Films Division itself. From the point of view of U.S. distribution,
the Films Division tends to send out films which have not been
made with a real understanding of what is wanted by the U.S.
market. Policy, if any, tries to suit current events and
occasions. The time-lag of production, accentuated as it always is
by delays (many of them avoidable), tends to make the finished
film out of date.

In addition to this, our method of presentation is usually wrong.
Much of our vernacular is unintelligible to U.S. audiences; some of
our accents sound sissy and irritating to them. Our tempo is too
slow for what they believe to be their hustling way of life. As a
result our films lack speed, punch, attack and news value —all of
which are marketable commodities in the U.S.A.

It has been said — by persons who should know better -that the
Americans must learn to like our stuff, that we must stick to our
own style, because it is so especially British. The answer is that
in the stress of war we cannot, like the solitary donkey, let our
message soak slowly through the sales resistance it undoubtedly
meets. We must be British all right, but in terms immediately
acceptable to the market.

One sometimes wonders whether the members of the Films
Division ever take any notice of, or even read, the reports on the
American problem which they must receive regularly, not merely
from their U.S. representatives but also from others in a position
to know. The lai.ssez (aire, negative, nineteen-twentyish, and almost
feminine mystique of the Division suggests that they do not.

It would appear that there are certain policy lines which would
help to solve our film propaganda problems in the U.S. We should,
for instance, realise much more vividly the usefulness of immediate
front-line news. The M.O.I, might well try for a much closer collab-
oration with Service and Newsreel units, in order to get a constant
flow of spot news material across to the U.S. in the minimum time.
(continued on page 184)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1943

THESE ARE THE MEN by Dylan Thomas

lis is the commentary of "'These Are The Men", a Strand film, largely compiled {'rem the
German "Triumph Des Willens" — 'a record of the 1934 Reich Partj Congress (at Nuremberg)
produced by order of the F'uhrer, created by Leni Rielenstahl.' "These Are The Men" has been
produced for the M.O.I, for theatrical distribution and the commentary, reprinted here with
official permission, is Crown Copyright.

<rTVu mood of the opening sequence of the film is quiet and slow.
A From a height we look down on to men baking bread, men going
about their work quietly and efficiently, men of no particular nation-
ality, just working men. We see them in the bakery, in the fields at
harvest time, on the dock side, on a trawler, in an iron foundry.)

"Who are we? We are the makers the workers the bakers

Making and baking bread all over the earth in every town and

village.
In country quiet, in the ruins and the wounds of a bombed street
With the wounded crying outside for the mercy of death in the city.
Through war and pestilence and earthquake
Baking the bread to feed the hunger of history.

"We are the makers, the workers, the farmers, the sailors.
The tailors, the carpenters, the colliers, the fishermen.
We dig the soil and the rock, we plough the land and the sea.
So that all men may eat and be warm under the common sun."

(Now we see behind the workers, behind the work they are doing,
the shadow of war. The men are still doing their jobs, jobs that are
done all over the world, pottery, carpentry, sleeper-laying, steel-
making. This is their peace-time work, but we see too what they or
their brothers all over the world are doing now — fighting on every

"We are the makers, the workers, the wounded, the dying, the dead,

The blind, the frostbitten, the burned, the legless, the mad

Sons of the earth who are fighting and hating and killing now

In snow and sand and heat and mud;

In the streets of never-lost Stalingrad,

In the spine-freezing cold of the Caucasus,

In the jungles of Papua,

In the tank-churned black slime of Tunisia.

"We are the makers, the workers, the starving, the slaves
In Greece and China and Poland, digging our own graves.

"Who sent us to kill, to be killed, to lose what we love?

Widowed ouv women, unfathered our sons, broke the hearts of our

homes?
Who dragged us out, out of our beds and houses and workshops
Into a battle-yard of spilt blood and split bones?"

(We are back in the bakery again— the camera tracks forward as
one of the bakers opens the fire door— the camera still moves for-
ward until the flames of the fire fill the screen.)

"'Who set us at the throats of our comrades?

Who is to blame?

What men set man against man?

Shout, shout, shout out their name!"

(The flames dissolve into hands raised in the Na/i salute — the
sound dissolves into the frenzied "sieg heil" of masses of men and
women who crane their necks and push their fellows.

From a great height we look down on to the mighty crowd in the
Nuremberg Festival. The people stand motionless now. in two vast
phalanxes, their hands raised in the Nazi salute. Between the massed
robot crowds, four tiny figures walk towards the rostrum at the end
of the stadium. They are Hitler, Hess. Goring. Gocbbels.)

The voice says. "These are the men— these are to blame."

Hitler begins to speak, to shout in German. Over the German

an English voice, a would-be translator, says :

"1 was born of poor parents.

I grew into a discontented and neurotic child.

My lungs were bad, my mother spoilt me and secured m\ exemp-
tion from military service. Consider my triumphant path to power :
( The crowd roars.)

I took up art.

I gave up art because I was incompetent.

I became a bricklayer's labourer.

A housepainter,

A paperhanger,

A peddler of pictures,

A lance-corporal,

A spy on socialists and communists.

A hater of Jews and Trade Unions.

A political prisoner.

But my worth was known.

Patriotic industrial magnates financed me.

Rohm and others supported me.

Later I betrayed and murdered Rohm and the others.

They had fulfilled their purpose. ( The crowd roars.)

1 am a normal man.

I do not like meat, drink, or women.

Heil,

Heil.

Neurosis, charlatanism, bombast, anti-socialism.

Hate of the Jews, treachery, murder, race-insanit>.

I am the Leader of the German People."
(The crowd stamp and cheer with joy.)

Goebbels speaks :
"My father was the son of a peasant, my mother a blacksmith's

daughter.
But I was cleverer.
After Heidelberg University. I became a writer of plays, a poet, a

journalist. None of my work was accepted. And this was because

the editors and publishers were Jews.
Unemployed. Jew-hating, crippled, frustrated and bitter. 1 joined

the Nazi Party.
Streicher and I founded a newspaper to propagate obscene lies

against Jews and Socialists, and said that the Liberty of the Press

was one of the greatest abuses of Democracy.
Consequently I was appointed Propaganda leader to the whole oB

Germany.

(The Crowd cheers.)

Goring speaks :
"I began well.

I was the son of a Colonial Governor.
I was rich.

I became an officer and the air-ace of Germany.
After the war I took to drugs

And twice was confined in a lunatic asylum as a drug-addict.
Then I joined the Nazi movement,
Helped to organise the Storm-troops, the Gestapo, and the Secret

Police,
And established contact between
The Nazi Party and Mussolini's 1 ascists.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1943

I am a normal man :
Twice married, twice mad.

Gangsterism, brute force, wealth for the few, cocaine and murder."
{The crowd roars)

Streicher speaks :
"I am Streicher, a lover of birds and animals, a torturer and mur-
derer of Jews."

{They dicer.)

Hess speaks :
"I was one of the first members of the Nazi Party : a reactionary,

anti-Jewish, ex-officer, restless, discontented, a believer in Blood

and Iron. As early as 1920 1 knew that Hitler was the Saviour.

Heil Hitler! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!
I became the Deputy Fuhrer of Germany.
In 1941 I flew to England, hoping to arrange a dishonourable peace

between Germany and the pro-German elements I imagined I

would find in England.

Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!
I was wrong. I am a prisoner.

(We then see the massed Gestapo marching, led by Himmler, and
the crowd of youths who watch the ghastly parade.) The voice says :

"And these are the men, the young men, the callow boys
Who have been taught the knuckle-duster and the rubber hose.
You are young only once : you could have learned to love :
You have learned to maim the weak and to spit on the Jews.

You have been taught to betray your country and your people,

Your own flesh and blood, your comrades all over the earth ;

Young men like you have hacked and blasted

The land and the homes of strangers who did you no harm,

Burned men and women alive

And left a slug-trail behind you of terror and death.

You obeyed your leader's word.
You must suffer his reward."

(From the marching Gestapo we go to German prisoners being
marched in Africa and Russia.)

"And the betrayers are betrayed, and the promises of victory
Turn stale and sour under African sun and Russian snow."

(Dead Germans — Frozen corpses in the snow.)

"Where is your triumph now in the purgatories of Stalingrad?
How many of you will never return to the towns and villages you
know?"

(We fade out on masses of crosses over the graves of German sol-
diers. Back in Germany — close shots of youths and young boys.)

"Some of the young men, not utterly scarred and poisoned,
Who have grown into manhood out of a school of horror,
May yet be our comrades and brothers, workers and makers.
After the agony of the world at war is over."

(The leaders who have betrayed them, who have poisoned their
minds, and who want to spread their filthy doctrine all over the
world, stand together on a raised platform.)

"But for those who taught them the business of death,
jWho crippled their hearts with cruelty, never, never, never
i Shall there be pardon or pity : no hope of a new birth.
They shall be put down: Forever."

I Hitler screams: "We are the men— Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg
Heil!"

NOTES OF THE MONTH

The Films Division

there are some indications that higher quarters have begun to
realise that all is not well in the Films Division of the M.O.I.
The Division has so far enjoyed a good reputation, chiefly because
it has publicised the Ministry and has been able to show concrete
results denied to other Divisions. The trouble with the Division
is not in its individual personnel but in their relation to the whole.
The individual, however effective in himself, becomes quickly
vitiated by the careless, laissez-faire atmosphere of the Division.

However efficient the machinery may be, the quality of the
product leaves much to be desired. It is for M.O.I, officials,
as well as film makers, to remember that the machine will only
turn out a good product if good raw materials are supplied in the
first place.

A.C.T.

one welcome result of the war-time rationalisation of film produc-
tion is the increasing power and influence of the Association of
Cine-Technicians. The Association has recently concluded with
the Association of Short Film producers, representing the employers,
an agreement which regularises wages and working conditions. In
some units, employees are meeting regularly to consider production
problems and to advise the management. All this is good, and neither
employer nor employee must be impatient if such developing rela-
tionships result in occasional growing pains. In those Short Film
companies which specialise in documentary production these
recent events do not represent a great change from the old methods
of working. In most of the Documentary Units the distinction
between employer and employee has always been vague. The prin-
ciple has been that the demands of the job itself — the purpose and
quality of the product — must take precedence over the personal
interests of the film-maker, be he managing director or office-boy,
and that what goes on the screen is more important than the
luxuriousness or otherwise of the conditions under which it is made.
Since A.C.T. believes that the production of propaganda and
instructional films as a part of the war effort is a vital job to be done
in defence of democracy, we have no doubt that the Association will
continue to put the job first. The newly-won powers of A.C.T.
can become a factor of great importance in stimulating a spirit of
enthusiasm and in discouraging self-seeking amongst film-makers.

William Hunter

we report with regret the sudden death, after an operation, of
William Hunter, director of the Dartington Hall film Unit, while
serving in the photographic section of the R.A.F. Hunter had in-
stituted a number of experiments in educational films, of which the
most noteworthy was one on the Galapagos islands. His place at
Dartington will be hard to fill.

Canadian Good Sense

the appointment of John Grierson as general manager of all
Canadian propaganda services is a logical as well as a sensible step.
Grierson's able and imaginative energies have long ranged outside
the parochial confines of the film world — in which his sense of prop-
aganda only served to emphasise the need for him sooner or later to
enter wider fields. His new post is the Canadian equiv alent of Direc-
tor General of the M.O.I., and he is answerable only to his Minister.
Many people here will envy the propagandists of Canada their
new boss, and will, somewhat ruefully, attempt to calculate the
magnitude of the loss which our own propaganda services may be
found to have suffered through lack of a leader with a similar
creative imagination and will to action. As it is. the vast mausoleum
in Malet Street remains a monument to the continued neglect by
the Government of the powerful weapon of propaganda,.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1943

THE FILM IN EDUCATION

This discussion of post-war needs i

the views of D.N.L. However, a

subject, we should he glad to

Education hy R. S. Miles does not represent
we are deeply interested in this important
nvite correspondence from readers. Ed.

IN the hopeful schemes for the post-war struc-
ture of education it has been gratifying to note
that the authorities are prepared to grant some
measure of recognition to the film not only as
an aid to teaching but also as an art. The British
Film Institute has seized upon this attitude of
mind and has, by its recently concluded cam-
paign done a vast amount of preliminary propa-
ganda among L.E.A.'s and teachers. For the
time when conditions permit, the Institute has
already prepared a scheme for the establishment
of regional film libraries which should put films
within the reach of all schools suitably equipped.
Many schools should be quickly provided with
projectors after the war, if the fact is recognised
early enough that there are large numbers of
projectors now in use with the forces which will
become redundant in the peace. Schools should
have the first chance of securing them. The
primary need of the school cinema is obviously
a sufficient number of projectors, and if steps are
taken now to earmark those in use by the Ser-
vices one very big problem will have been solved.
The complementary need is for a plentiful
supply of adequate films — adequate in the sense
of being suitable for as many schools as possible.
Urban, rural, junior, and senior schools must be
considered, as must secondary, technical and
similar schools along with Adult Education
classes. This is a tall order, but one which needs
a root and branch consideration now. Person-
ally I am convinced that the greatest handicap
to the use of films in schools is not the scarcity
or cost of projectors but the lack of suitable films
to justify the expenditure upon film apparatus.
This problem has been ventilated many times in
your columns and my object in re-opening it is to
urge the need for the immediate establishment of
committees to review the whole business of
films in education and to plan educational film
production.

Reports on Films

In the first instance these will consist of
practical teachers who will say what films they
want, what points they would like emphasised
and what merely sketched in. The reports
emanating from this primary working com-
mittee would be collated by a Central Com-
mittee of which the British Film Institute should
be the core.

This Central Committee would comprise
representatives of film users (teachers), film
makers (directors, etc.) and the British Film
Institute. The necessity for such co-operation
is emphasised every month by the Film Institute's
Viewing Panels' reports on the "educational"
films. A more damning denunciation of the
quality of so-called educational films could not
be imagined than many of the reports printed in
the Monthly Film Bulletin. There is hardly one
to reach the standard set by the various viewing
panels. This then would seem to prove the asser-
tion that the supply of films is the root of the
whole question. Let this demand be met and the
use of the whole film medium as an aid to educa-

The problems facing a Committee planning
the supply of school films would include these :
(1) to decide what subjects in the curriculum
could be most usefully illustrated by means of
films: (2) a "priority" list compiled from them
for those subjects whose demands are most urgent
or extensive; (3) a "titles" list in each subject,
covering the aspects of that subject best lending
themselves to filmic presentation; (4) the con-
tents of each of these films and as a subsidiary
question whether they are to be as sound and /or
silent films: (5) the costs of each film, its length,
the number of copies of each film to be printed :
(6) the possibilities of making "master" films
to act as a reservoir from which other ones could
be made for varying ages and intelligences: (7)
the producers of the various films; (8) the ques-
tion of granting "suitability certificates" by the
Committees after films have been seen by them:
(9) the supply of films for teaching film appreci-
ation; (10) the extent of the co-operation between
buyers, i.e. teachers and L.E.A.'s and makers:
the whole lot leading to the last one, the question
of organised distribution through local film
libraries.

This list of duties is a heavy one and perhaps
not comprehensive, but it is sufficient to point the
argument for the necessity of planning produc-
tion.

It is obvious that every school subject has some
possibilities for illustration by films. Even Mathe-
matics, as Messrs. Dance and Kauffman have
shown, can in part be so illustrated. Languages
too can find films to be of great help but the value
here is confined to modern languages where
pictures of foreign life can be made more alive
by the spoken language of that country. Apart
perhaps from Roman and Greek History it
would be difficult to envisage the film as an aid
to the teaching of the classics. Most school
subjects can, however, undoubtedly use films to
their great value. Geography obviously. History
also, "Science" in many of its branches. Mary
Field has explored the field of biology. Petroleum
Films Bureau have shown the way for films of
chemistry, physics, and mechanics. The film has
an excellent opportunity here to show the com-
mercial application of laboratory experiments
and formulae. Physical training, as has been
done by a physical training instructress in
Birmingham: nature study— some art perhaps,
and more of the crafts are all further subjects
in which the cinema can be used. For my own
part I can see little if any use for the film in
English teaching where so much depends upon
individual inspiration and imagination.

Abstracted from this list of subjects would be
a further one showing the precise possibilities
that each had for films, indicated by those as-
pects of each subject the teaching of which would
be definitely improved with the aid of films.
Following from all this would be the important
part of the whole scheme— a statement of titles
of the films to serve this purpose. Great care
would be needed here to prevent overlapping.

and the aspects listed under numbers (4) and (6)
above would need to be incorporated in this
consideration. It would perhaps be more econom-
ical and useful to make what I call "master"
films covering as wide a sweep of the subject as
possible and from these library films to construct
others with specific age or intelligence groups in
view. It seems as obvious and necessary as the
different treatment required, for instance, in
teaching juniors and University students about
Alfred the Great. In the former case stress would
be laid upon Alfred as a cook and a harpist. In
the latter the significance of Alfred's statesman-
ship would form the theme for study. It is neces-
sary and should be possible to treat subjects in a
similar way filmically. Some ages are better taught
by means of silent films and a teacher's own com-
mentary. Some subjects may be better taught so
to all ages but in many cases sound is not only
desirable but an advantage. It is for the Com-
mittee to decide what versions shall be made.

Production Planning

When the subjects and contents of the films
to be made have been decided, priorities for pro-
duction must be assigned, annual production
planned, the number of copies of each film de-
cided and the firms to whom the making must be
entrusted. This is very important because some
firms have specialised in special types of films
and consequently have accumulated special
apparatus and experience with a staff who have
gained specialist knowledge of their individual
jobs. The production of diagrammatic films and
biological films has been the speciality of G.B.
Instructional under the genius of Mary Field,
companies working for the British Commercial
Gas Association have distinguished themselves
by brilliant sociological and documentary films
while the Shell Film Unit has made a name fi
the clear exposition of applied science. There a
others but these will suffice to illustrate my point.
To ask such firms to undertake mixed work
would be both inefficient and uneconomic.

When the films have been made there should
be a viewing panel of teachers to give the films
the educational counterparts of "U" and "A"
certificates, to criticise if necessary, and to pre-
pare synopses and notes for potential users. For
the better working of film production it would be
advisable to have a standing committee of repre-
sentatives of teachers, L.E.A.'s, the B.F.I, and
film makers to deal with current matters of pro-
duction and to act as a liaison branch between
planning and production.

Finally the marketing of the finished product.
Here again all interests must be represented and
a vast amount must be devolved upon local com-
mittees, e.g. Teachers Associations. In this as in
every one of these branches of the work the
Film Institute has a paramount part to play.
It should be the nerve centre of the whole system,
and I would suggest that it is necessary immedi-
ately to set to work to plan film production after
the war. The foregoing is an effort to indicate
some of the problems to be solved and out of
these I have omitted the supply and types of
films required for the teaching of film apprecia-
tion. It is an urgent question of wide dimensions
demanding an article to itself.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1943

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION

United Kingdom Non-Theatrical Distribution 1941-1942
Report on Second Year's Work

i mi roTAL audience for the Ministry's Non-
Theatrical film shows in the United Kingdom
during the second year of working (September
1941 to August 1942) was 12 million. The weekly
audience at the beginning of the third year of
working is now 350,000. This audience is reached
in the following three ways: —

(1) Mobile Film Units. — During the year
1941-42 the mobile film units ga\e 38,000 shows
to an audience of six and three-quarter millions.
There are now 130 units on the road, and they
are giving 1,200 film shows a week. One hundred
and twenty-four of the units are 16 mm. and
thirty-seven of these are equipped with petrol
generators to provide electricity where there is
no mains supply. Six of them are 35 mm. units.

(2) Shows in Public Cinemas. — In the year
1941-42, 1,300 shows were given in cinemas out
of ordinary cinema hours to a total audience of
900,000. Now fifty a week are being given,
including a large number of training shows for
Civil Defence and National Fire Service per-
sonnel.

(3) Central Film Library, loan to borrowers. —
The Central Film Library with Us sub-libraries
in Scotland and the South West Civil Defence
Region in 1941-42 made 48.000 bookings of
Ministry of Information films to 3,500 separate
organisations with their own projectors. The
audience reached b) the loan of films was four
and a half million. The library is now booking
1,500 Ministry of Information films a week to
these borrowers.

The Central Film Library. London, also
incorporates the pre-war Libraries of films about
the Overseas Empire and the United Kingdom,
including the G.P.O. films. A further 40,000
bookings of these films were made in 1941^2,
and 1,000 a week arc now being made.

The Film Officers at the Ministry's Regional
Offices are responsible for the shows given on
I the mobile units and in cinemas out of ordinary
cinema hours. The facts and figures given in this
report arc a record of their work. They were
set the target of ten shows a week on each unit
in operation. 38,000 shows were given, which
represents 92 per cent achievement of a possible
maximum of 42,000 shows.

The number of mobile unit shows cancelled
during the year 1941^2 because of break-downs
in equipment or the vans, was less than half
percent of the shows given. It is the responsibility
of the projectionists, in the first instance, to keep
their projectors and vans in efficient condition.
In each Region there is also an engineer who
keeps all equipment under constant supervision,
and arranges for repairs that can be carried out
without an elaborate workshop. In London the
Ministry has expanded its maintenance depart-
ment to carry out major repairs for all the
Regions, and to arrange for stocking and des-
patching spare parts and reserve equipment.
The maintenance department also trains new
dri\er-projectionisls. Women projectionists arc
now being trained, and several are already in
charge of mobile units. This maintenance depart-
ment also looks after all cars and equipment
used b> the Ministry lor public address purposes.

Audiences and Programmes

During the week ending November 7th, 1942,

1,224 shows were given to audiences as follows:

Factories and construction sites 408

General shows . . . . . . 230

Civil Defence, National Fire

Service and Home Guards . . 226
For other Government Depts.
(Agriculture, Food, Health,

Labour, Fuel) 78

Women's organisations 114

Schools 84

Youth organisations 46

Services and U.S. Army . . 22

Miscellaneous . . . . . . 16

1,224

(The Ministry does not, except in special
circumstances, give film shows to Service
Units, as all the Services have their own organ-
isations and equipment for showing films.
Shows are only given to Senior schools by
special request.)

About one third of the shows given each week
are in factories, the majority of which have
a show once a month. Another third are shows
to village audiences, women's organisations and
groups in small country towns. The aim is to
give village shows regularly every two months.
Shows for other Government departments of
a more specialised kind, including training film
shows to Civil Defence and National Fire
Service personnel represent roughly another
third. A large number of these shows are given
in cities and urban districts. They are not
organised on the same regular monthly and two-
monthly circuits as factory and village shows.

Shows in factories are usually given during
the midday and midnight breaks, and cannot
therefore contain more than two or three films,
lasting in all about 25 minutes. For factory
shows films are specially produced, and aim at
relating the work done in factories to the
achievements and problems of the fighting
fronts. 35 mm. mobile units are now in use for
the large factories so that as many as 3,000
workers can see the show at one time.

General shows in villages usually consist of
five or six films, lasting in all about 80 minutes.
The series of programmes are devised to give
varied and coherent pictures of the war, both
at home and on the fighting fronts and in terms
of this country, the Overseas Empire and the
United Nations. Specialised films made for
other Government departments arc also included
in these general programmes where they arc
needed to direct attention to special local
problems.

Instructional films for special audiences are
made and distributed by the Ministry on behalf
Of other Government departments. During
1 94 1 -42 these films have included films for
farmers on silage, ploughing, hedging, ditching,
etc.: films for allotment holders and films about
food: films on blood transfusion, diphtheria
immunisation and accident prevention: training
films for Civil Defence personnel, both part

time and full time. Specialised films of this
kind are usually shown together with other more
general Ministry of Information films to make
up a programme of about 80 minutes in length.
Some of the films made on behalf of other
Government departments are of such wide
application that they are included in every
possible programme. In this way, for example,
the film Fire Guard was shown to more than two
million people in six months.

In 1941-42, 49 films were produced and issued
by the Ministry for non-theatrical showing only.
A further 81 films were also used, some widely
and some on occasions only; of these, 34 were
films produced by the Ministry for cinema and
overseas distribution; 16 were produced by
Dominions Governments and the Government
of India; 15 were produced by the American,
Soviet and Polish Governments; and 16 films
were acquired from commercial film companies
and industrial concerns.

There are 332 films listed in the Ministry ol
Information catalogue issued by the Central
Film Library. This represents all the films pro-
duced since September 1940, which are now
available. They are classified under the following
heads : —

Agriculture; Air Forces: Aircraft Recognition :
Armies: Civil Defence, Education and Youth;
Food, Diet and Cooking: Gardening: Govern-
ment and Citizenship; Health, Hygiene and
Medicine: Labour, Industry and Munitions;
Navies; Salvage; Strategy, Campaign and
Tactics; Women in the Services; Women in
Industry and Civil Life: British Commonwealth
of Nations: U.S.A., U.S.S.R., Poland and other
Allies.

DETAILED FIGURES SEPTEMBER 1941
TO AUGUST 1942

1. 16 mm. .Mobile Units

In September 1941, there were 72 16-mm.
units working. Additional units were put out as
equipment came through and by August 1942,
107 16-mm. units were working. Figures for the
year were as follows:

Percentage

1941-42 1940 41 over
1940 41
Units working 107 "2 50%

Operational

weeks 4.2 IN 2,599 62",,

Shows given .. 37,940 2(1.668 83%
Total Audience 6,688,742 3,130,374 113%
Average

audience 175 151 16%

These figures show that the increase in the
number of shows given ami total audience was
much greater proportionately than the increase
in the number o\' units and the number of
operational weeks.

2. 35 mm. Mobile I nits

The first two 35-mm. Mobile units were put

out towards the end of the year. These units

ga\c 112 shows to a total audience of 61,054

(average audience 545). Two 35-mm. daylight

{continued on pace 178)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1943

M.O.L Report cont.

projection units were also used from time to
time lor scries of shows in certain dockyards
where 16-mm. units would not be efficient. The
daylight vans can be stationed in the sheds
where as many as 600 men may sec the films
during the midday break.

3. 35 mm. Shows in Cinemas

One thousand three hundred and two shows
were given in public cinemas out of ordinary
cinema hours to a total audience of 879,842
(average audience 677). This is three times the
number of such shows given in 1940-41. About
one-third of these shows were training shows
arranged for Civil Defence personnel and Fire
Guards, for the Ministry of Home Security;
the shows were organised with the Civil Defence
Controllers and cinemas were often loaned
free. Many of the other shows were arranged to
tic up with campaigns organised by Ministries
of Labour, Health, Agriculture, Food.

4. Projectors on Loan

The scheme for lending projectors to public
libraries, etc., which showed a programme of
films every day in every other week was aban-
doned in December 1941, and all but three of
the projectors were withdrawn and converted
into mobile units. During three months 1,461
shows were given to a total audience of 151,767,
an average audience of 104 at each show as
against 82 for the previous year.

5. Total Non-Theatrical Audience 1941-42

The total audience reached by all the non-
theatrical showings was more than 12 million
made up as follows:—

16-mm. units 6,688,742

35-mm. units 61,054

35-mm. daylight units
Shows in cinemas
Loaned projectors
Central Film Library

879,842

151,767

4,500,000

12,362,276

It must be stressed that this figure is the total
audience, not a total number of individuals, since
many audiences have several shows during the
year. On the other hand it should be noted that
every person in this total audience at each show
has not seen a single film but a programme of
films lasting 30 to 80 minutes.

6. Central Film Library

The Central Film Library, London (with the
Scottish Central Film Library and the Film
Library of the South-West) lent Ministry of
Information films to 3,476 separate organisa-
tions and individuals with their own projectors
To these borrowers the Library made a total
of 48,599 bookings as compared with 16,295 for
1 940-41 . an increase of 200 per cent. Of this total
the Scottish Central Film Library made 3,498
bookings and the Film Library of the South
West made 3,924 bookings. These bookings
represent 147,680 showings of the films lent,
since a large part of the films are booked for
showing on several consecutive days to different
audiences before being returned. Borrowers
borrow one to five or six films for showing at
a time. If an average programme is taken as
being three films it may be said that 147,680
showings represent 45,000 showings of a three-
film programme. The average audience at these
showings is 100. The total audience for Ministry
of Information films reached by the loan of films
from the Library was four and a half million. . .

^r For your inforiuution

TN every progressive enterprise there must be leaders
-^and those who follow behind. As artistic and
technical progress in kinematography quickens to the
tempo a d stimulus of war, " KINEMATOGRAPH
WEEKLY " is always to be found " up-with-the-
leaders ", its well-informed pages radiating perception
and far-sighted thinking. Kinematography' s
leaders themselves know this for truth
and turn to " K.W." week by _..,„m"iliHA

week for information and
enlightenment.

The Central Film Library incorporates the
pre-war Empire and G.P.O. Film Libraries
which lend out educational films about the Over-
seas Empire and the United Kingdom. The book-
ings of all films from the Central Film Library
(but excluding the sub-libraries) were as follows:
1941^12 1940-41
Ministry of Information 41,177 15,525

G.P.O 6,393 4,705

Etr.pire 34,048 26,856

81,618 47,086

The Central Film Library also supplies and
services films issued to the Ministry of Informa-
tion Regional Officers for use on the mobile
units and at shows in public cinemas. Including
these despatches the Library made 88,273
despatches during 1941-42 as against 52,986 in
the previous year.

The four catalogues issued by the Central
Film Library list 750 films as follows: —
Ministry of Information : sound films
(films produced September 1940-

November 1942) 332

Ministry of Information : Silent Films 25
Overseas Empire (films made before

1940) 245

United Kingdom (films made before

1940, excluding G.P.O. films) . . 147

749

(Films shown on the Ministry's mobile units
and in public cinema shows arranged by the
Ministry are drawn only from the Ministry of
Information catalogue).

7. The total number of borrowers of Ministry
of Information and Empire films from the Cen-
tral Film Library, and of borrowers of Ministry
of Information films only from two sub-libraries
was 4,509. The 3,476 borrowers of Ministry of
Information films have been divided into
categories as follows: —

93 LONG ACRE
LONDON W.C.2

16

16 35

Adult organisations. .

Local Authorities

Factories & Business
houses

Churches

Youth Organisations

Allotment Societies,
etc.

Hospitals

Prisons

Women's Institutes &
other women's org-
anisations

Individuals showing to
all kinds of organ-
isations

Army Units

Home Guard Units..

R.A.F. Stations

Royal Observer Corps

Naval Units..

Schools (Secondary &
public)

Schools I seiner and

368 95 76 539
351 56 73 480

294 65 28 387

590 552 3,476

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1943

FILM OF THE MONTH— "NINE MEN"

Nine Men. Production: Ealing Studios and
Michael Balcon. Direction: Harry Watt. Length:
_6,I00f .

_One of the best remarks about Nine Men was
made by C. A. Lejeune and it was a great
compliment both to Harry Watt and John
Grierson. She said "Harry Watt was trained by
John Grierson and when Grierson trains anyone
they stay trained". It is a compliment to Watt
because Nine Men is the purest of the pure
imaginative documentaries. It is a compliment
to Grierson because about twenty years ago he
conceived the idea and found the basis for work-
ing it out not only for himself, but for a lot of
other people as well. Compliments are, of
course, als) due to Michael Balcon, and to
Cavalcanti in particular.

Watt started in the film business nearly ten
years ago. Before that he had been an assistant
in the stock room in a threepenny and sixpenny
store. Before that he had done a voyage to
Newfoundland on a sailing ship and, as neither
the mate nor the captain had the slightest idea
of navigation, he had a good idea what Govern-
ment film sponsorship was like long before he
had anything to do with it. /Before the sailing
ship he had a rubber ball factory^His father
had left him some money and Watt thought
that the best thing he could do would be to
'nvest it in some commercial affair, make some
money quickly and then stand for Parliament,
preferably for a country constituency. All went
well — he found an inventor, and with Watt
supplying the money and his chum the brains.
they started to make large rubber balls out of
old motorcar tyres. Finally came the day when
they had a factory full of balls and no more
money. So putting down all the money that had
been spent on one side, and the number of rubber
balls they had made on the other, they divided
the money by the balls and arrive J at a figure to
sell the balls at. Simple but primitive. The answer
was about ten bob each. As similar balls were
(already selling for sixpence. Watt decided it
ight be better to try the hard way of making
money and that's how he came to be on a sailing
ihip some weeks later.

Film Career

But to get back to films. Watt joined the
:.M.B. in 1932. After a year and a half as an
issistant he made Radio Interference which was
simple and successful instructional. Then
Droitnic/i, 6.30 Collection, Night Mail, The
Saving of Bill Blewett, a number of English items
For March of Time — and after that North Sea. He
iroduced some of the G.P.O. films; worked on
The First Days, directed Squadron 992, London
Take It, Christinas I nder Fire, and his last
Ministry film. Target for Tonight. After a brief
nterlude with the War Office he moved on to
baling and at Ealing made a film that he could
lever have made for a government department.

Nine Men is an honest film- and that's a thing
<ou can say about very few. Perhaps it is this
lonesty which has made some of the critics

bit worried about it. Nine Men doesn't ha\e
iny truck with story formula- or love interest.
ind its characters not only behave like human
)eings, but behave also with that casualness
md natural savoir-faire which in any film actor
s conspicuous only by its absence.

Ifyou doubt the honesty tfNine Mi yt i can

easily find it confirmed by the two points where
it is not honest. Firstly, in Watt's failure to
avoid the cliche of returning to his opening
sequence in order to frame the "flash-back"
which is the bulk of the film; this merely makes
the end of the story redundant, and one feels
it in the direction. Secondly, there is one brief
shot in the middle of the film when the wounded
man — delirious — sees another's head framed
in his steel helmet like a halo and shouts "Are
there Saints in Hell?" or words to that effect.
Maybe that has actually happened in real life —
there may be lots of evidence for it — but the fact
remains that it bursts into the truthful atmo-
sphere of the film like a road house in paradise
and gives the impression of having been popped
in by some little Pinewood highbrow or other.
Other people have described the film as naive

—a word often used by those who find that
things true to life are not palatable. It is naive
if naivete includes entire absence ol coni
to the alleged charms of the box office, resulting
in a box office pull caused by the public recog-
nising itself and its friends and relations taking
part in the war with an active and understanding
courage.

Nine Men only tells one story and says only
one thing. This it does with modesty as well as
skill. Twenty films of a similar scale and with
a similarly sensible approach— and dealing with
subjects less immediately spectacular — would
put the M.O.I, out of business in a few weeks.
But there, the Studios haven't any more sense
than the M.O.I. , and not many more Watts or
potential Watts, so things will no doubt go on
the same way.

Casting "Nine Men''

by Harry Watt

Lots of people have been asking me about the
casting of the nine principals in Nine Men.
This is very complimentary because it means that
people have found them real and have wondered
where such types of actors or whatever you like to
call them are to be found for British films. I
should say that there are plenty around, but
you've got to look hard for them and know what
you want.

One great advantage in casting a film like Nine
Men is to have worked very closely on the script
and dialogue. During all of this you are creating
the characters and the personalities, and by the
time you have finished you have a perfect mind
picture of exactly what your character is like.
You then go ahead and find the nearest human
approximation to your imaginary figure. Ifyou
can get one that fits almost exactly, then you've
won half the battle of getting the character on the
screen. Your mind-man has walked, talked and
reacted to situations while you've been creating
him. Just get your real character to behave in
almost the same way and you've got your script
coming to life.

With regard to Nine Men. From the beginning
there was no intention of using non-actors. It
was never an official film. Although the War
Office approved the script, the film was a Michael
Balcon, Ealing Studios venture. We could not
therefore expect any more facilities than those
granted in the ordinary way to a commercial
undertaking. Releases from the Army to act are
only granted to men who were actors in Civvj
Street. So if we wanted Army men. they had to
be actors. In general, I didn't go for actors, so
outside the Army we looked for people to fit the
characters, with or without acting experience.

The sergeant was the central figure. We de-
cided to go after him first. We tested a couple of
actors who have played many "tough guy" parts
in British films. But to me they were disastrous.
They turned the sergeant into a kind of Gestapo
man with a phoney cockney accent. The sergeant,
by the way, was originally written as a cockney.
We then tried a ph\sica! training instructor who

had been a music-hall turn. But he showed up
the limitations of the amateur. We tried a ser-
geant-major newly back from Libya. He not
only couldn't act, but he told us all the time how
rotten our script was! We tried two more actors.
One was too R.A.D.A. for words, and the other
looked as though he'd expect his uniform to be
made by Norman Hartnell. We decided to leave
the sergeant for a bit and try the other characters.
The second most important character was Jock
Scott, an ex-Glasgow policeman. And here I was
on happier ground. Eleven years ago J saw a
magnificent performance of Barrie's "The Old
Lady Shows her Medals." by the Ardrossan and
Saltcoats Players. All the time Fd been writing
of Jock Scott I'd been thinking of Private
Dowie. So obviously the man who created that
character so vividly for me was the man to find.
By incredible roundabout routes too long to de-
scribe, we found him as a Major in the Royal
Scots Fusiliers, ensconced in a tent in the Gram-
pians! He was Jack Lambert. After his amateur
success he became a professional actor and made
quite a career on the stage. But for some crazy
reason film people hardly used him. I believe it
was because of his Scots accent! He'd got more
virility, dignity and appearance than ten of the
average British film men, but he didn't try to kid
the public by his accent that he'd been to Oxford.
So he couldn't be used!

Anyway, to get back to casting. We asked
Lambert to come down for a test for the Jock
Scott character.

He grabbed 48 hours and came down. He was
so perfect as Jock Scott that we immediately
tested him as the sergeant. With a couple of
chairs and a hat-stand as background he
immediately created the atmosphere of our army
hut. Our first big headache was over. We'd found
the sergeant. It only meant transposing the dia-
logue a bit to Scots. The rest of the parts re-
mained. Jock Scott came first. I remembered a
big tough Edinburgh man who played the
preacher in The Edge of the World. I'd seen a
glimpse of him in Michael Powell films since. So
we started our Sherlock Holmes act again and
found him as a captain instructor at a battle
{continued on page 180)

DOCUMENTARY ,\t\\S LETTER IEBRLARV 1943

Casting "Nine Men" cont.

school in Sussex. When he turned up for testing
we found to our delight that the Army had made
him even tougher and bigger than he'd been
before. Stripped to the waist, he looked terrific.
So we played him that way throughout the film.
It's a good thing he was tough or he'd have died
of cold on our "desert" location!

The other parts were easier to fill.. An ex-
sergeant of the Durham Light Infantry came
along to see me one day with his escape story
from Germany. The idea was that it might make
a film. We didn't use his story, but we east him
as the lorry driver. His Army experience was in-
valuable because he took the non-army members
of the cast in an hour's arms drill every day to
make them soldierly. He'd never acted before
and never will again, because he's now joined our
production side as an assistant director.

Gordon Jackson, who had been lucky enough
to have his first film part under Cavalcanti and
Charles Frend, in The Foreman Went to Fiance,
was an obvious choice for the young soldier. His
character as written was tougher than the way it
was played. He was originally planned as a
corner-boy type, but I soon found that it was
Jackson's puppy-like quality on the screen that
was his biggest appeal, so let him play it as him-
self. The old sweat was just as obviously Bill
Blewett, that postmaster of Mousehole who is
one of Britain's greatest character actors. Why
he has never been exploited more I cannot
imagine. Accent again perhaps. But I remember
Cavalcanti saying after we had finished Bill's
first film, The Saving of Bill Blewett. "If we had
the influence and the money we could make that
man the English Wallace Beery." And that was

SIGHT

and

SOUND

SPRING ISSUE

MOVIES IN MALTA

NEWS FROM BELGIUM

THE FILM STRIP

6d,

Published by

THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE,

4 GREAT RUSSELL STREET,

LONDON, W.C.I

eight years ago. Since then Bill has stolen about
four documentary films and then gone on post-
mastering.

The cockney part of Banger Hill was the only
other one that caused any trouble. 1 tested an
amateur from the N.F.S. but by this time was
beginning to realise that, for a feature, technical
acting skill was an asset and a help. So we got
Fred Piper, another of the many really excellent
small part actors who have never had a real
break. The ease with which he played his part
was a revelation, and an immense help to the less
experienced members of the cast. The middle-
class boy wasCav's idea. I have such an antipathy
to the so-called conventional good-class accent
as used almost exclusively on the West End stage,
that I ignored the fact that the middle-class are
lighting this war as well. It was a bad mistake, and
the inclusion of Eric Micklewood as "The
Booky" gave the film greater width and appeal.

Successful Experiment

Summing up, the casting of M/ie Men was, for
me. an experiment, which consensus of opinion
seems to think came off. To carry parts in a story
film of an hour or more needs experience. Either
that, or the immense natural acting abilities of a
Bill Blewett. which arc so rare that it can be dis-
counted. Professional actors are therefore neces-
sary. The job is to find those that are human
beings and have not lost contact with life because
of the necessarily artificial life they lead. That
such actors do exist is proved by the existence of
Jack Lambert and Fred Piper. But in British
films, in direct opposition to French films, they
have been largely ignored. It is here that, I think.
we can begin establishing a real British film
movement. Let us ignore our established British
stage stars and create new film ones. Actors and
actresses that are real people and that can create
real people. Actors and actresses that speak de-
cent basic English and are not ashamed of the
county of their origin. Actors and actresses to
project to the world true portrayals of life in
Britain. If the documentary movement is going to
influence the British film industry permanently, it
mus: have documentary actors. The glamour of
seeing the real people doing the real job has be-
come outworn. This problem was solved in
French films, so there", no icason why it shouldn't
be done here.

The Ego of the Actor

It's nof easy, of C
profession. Aldou

e. Aci

Hux

sums it up in
/hen he says . . .
ting is one of the most dangerous ol trades
the rarest thing to find a player who has not
his character affected for the worse by the
:tice of his profession. Nobody can make a
it of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his
.onality for the sake of exercising a kind of
notic power over others, and remain un-

:hed by the process Acting inflames the

in a wav which lew other pi oles, ions do. For

The solution for this is not to allow our actors
to segregate themselves I hey musf be made to
mix with the people. I hev must be sent to live
amongst miners if th< film is abouf mines I hev
must know how to handle and lire a rifle if
they are soldiers. I heir performances must
come out ot lite and not he superimposed upon it.

DOCUMENTARY

mi LETTER

MONTHLY SIXPENCE

VOL.3 NUMBER 11-12
NOV.-DEC. 1942

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands for the use of film as a
medium of propaganda and in-
struction in the interests of the
people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of
common people all over the
world.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

is produced under the auspices
of Film Centre, London, in asso-
ciation with American Film Center,
New York.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey
Alexander Shaw
Donald Taylor
John Taylor
Basil Wright

Outside contributions \

vill be

welcomed but no fees

will be

paid.

We are prepared to deliver from
3 — 50 copies in bulk to Schools,
Film Societies and other organi-
sations.

Owned mid published by

FILM CENTRE LTD.
34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON
W.l GERRARD 4253

DOCUMENTARY MAYS ! ITTER FEBRUARY 1943

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Common Cause. Production: Verily Films Ltd.
ducers: Max Munden and Derek de Marney.
Director: Henry (ass. Camera: Eric Cross.
kditor: Peter ranner. 8 minutes. M.O.I.

Non-T.

Subject: The not-so-obvious links between citi-
zens of the United Nations.
Treatment: This film brings together in for-
tuitous pairs the men of different races who
are fighting fascism on widely dispersed fronts.
In China an airman of the Republic talks with an
American transport flyer; in a North Russian
port the pilot talks with the skipper of the British
cargo-boat he has just brought safely into har-
bour. The script is ingenious and the acting ade-
quate. The protagonists find that in spite of the
superficial differences in day to day habit, they
share fundamental decencies, the defence of
which has brought them together.
Propaganda Value: This is a worth-while film.
{A difficult subject has been tackled bravely and
if it has not completely come off the reason
appears to lie in the occasional!) naive (or
timid) avoidance of the real differences between
Russians, Americans, Englishmen and Chinese.
These we surely ignore at our ultimate peril,
however convenient it ma> be to do so at the
moment.

Inside Fighting Russia. National Film Board of
Canada. Running Time: 20 minutes.
Subject: A resume of recent Russian history
•anging from Czarist times up to the present,
ihowing how in this country a new spirit has
rown up which can be found nowhere else in
he world. The film seeks to demonstrate why
his has happened. Inside Fighting Russia
Delongs to the first batch of releases in Britain
of the front of Action series which is produced
by the National Film Board of Canada and has
been in distribution for many months in Canada
ind the United States.

Treatment: The style employed borrows gen-
irously from the March of Time but the effect
ichieved is infinitely more powerful than
March of Time has managed in recent years.
There is the short vigorous cutting and the
minously authoritative transatlantic voice with
vhich we have long been familiar, but the voice
las something to say which few other films from
he democracies are daring to put into words
ind the visuals have a cutting edge which
March of Time lost long ago.

Few of the shots are new hut they are skilfully
irranged to reveal just why Hitler (and many
iemocrats too) were so fantastically wrong in
heir guesses about Soviet military power.
Nc first see Russia from the outside— from the
>oint of view of the foreign military or lay
ibserver, and we see how this edifice of political
heory (as it seemed to many people) does not
:ollapse at the first puff from the big bad wolf.
Then — to explain the mystery — we go inside
ind see what Russia has been doing for these
ast twenty years, not primarily in the military
ield, but in the field of developing human

llignity. From this point we are carried on to
he inevitable conclusion that Russia's military
trength is a by-product of her progress in her

locial services, her culture, her economics and

her communal joie de vine. "Russia is strong"
says the commentator finally, "because Russia
has a faith."

Propaganda I alue: fhts is the kind of film needed
not in occasional single releases hut in a Hood
Such films not only will enable "people to speak
unto people", but will point the way to the
development of the only sure war-winning
weapon — a developing philosophy which is
strong enough to face the post-war future.

Save Your Own Seeds. Realist film Unit.
Direction: Margaret Thompson. Camera: A. E.
Jeakins. Commentator: Roy Hay. A M.O.I, film
for gardeners, 17 mins. Non.-T.
Subject: Make this year's vegetable plot give
you the seeds for next year's sowing.
Treatment: In the hurly-burly of film production
the purely instructional type of film is often
overlooked. It is possible, though, that it is the
most important work being done in the short
film field at the moment. Save Your Own Seeds
is a straightforward account of how the ordinary
gardener can provide seeds for the following
year. It's easy and it's sensible. Miss Thompson
has a masterly touch. Fvery point is made
clearly and concisely and is so well put across
that it will stick in the mind. And this is done by
purely cinematic means. Jeakins' camera work
illuminates the processes.

Instructional Value: Excellent. This is a model
instructional film.

Clean Milk. Realist Film Unit. Direction: Mar-
garet Thompson. Camera: A. E. Jeakins. Com-
mentator: Roy Hay. A M.O.I, film for farmers.
15 mins. Non-T.

Subject: Encouraging farmers to provide clean
milk for the good of the nation, as well as for
their own profit.

Treatment: To the non-farmer this film can only
be rather a dull screen excursion into the cow-
byre. The film is made with the lucidity and
technical mastery which characterises Miss
Thompson's work but, when all is shown, it is
mainly a matter of cleaning — udders, buckets,
suction cups, tubes, and all the other para-
phernalia of milking.

Instructional I alue: That depends on the farmers.
Incidentally, the film is enough to put you off
milk for a long time.

Invincible? Production: U.S. Army Signal Corps
with the M.O.I, and British Movietone News.
M.O.I. 15 mins.

Subject: A captured enemy newsreel, issued b\
the Germans in French, for circulation in North
Africa, turned into a propaganda film for
Britain.

Treatment: 1 he newsreel has been taken as n
stands — French titles and commentary included.
Over the French voice is superimposed the fami-
liar voice of Leslie Mitchell translating the Ger-
man propaganda into English. At the end of
each German claim the English commentator
answers it. and his answer is illustrated with shots
from our newsreels. Stalingrad is falling, says the
French voice. The Russians are sweeping for-
ward from Stalingrad, says the English. Indi '
will rise against Britain. India is in the war with
us says Mr. Mitchell. Rommel is about to sweep

.'■in. I :'\pi ,n hI mm up with the German armies
.■.In i.i i c i,.ionouslv moving down from Russia:
the answer to this one was almost too easy.

1 he shrinking, sensitive ones will hate this film.
It is vulgar and not-quite-the-sort-of-thing, old
man; but thank the Lord for a bit of punch at
last and if people will wear their belts round their
necks they mustn't mind being fouled. Bui if the
Ministry are going at last to start hitting hard
they must be more careful. The whole Indian
sequence was, as usual, bungled. The German
voice implied that India was prepared to rise
against us and form the third part of the pincer
movement. This threw our commentator into a
panic and he became entirely unconvincing.
Surely the thing to have done would have been
cither to emphasise Wavell and the British Indian
Army or to say that Japan helped to solve the
problem for us by splitting Indian opinion.

And why call the film "Invincible?" However
often you cross oui a word on the screen its effect
remains in the mind. Toendon "Invincible" writ-
ten in large letters was surely a major blunder.
Somewhere, at the back of the mind, the two
words Germany and Invincible are now securely
wedded.

Propaganda Value: Excellent except for the two
points mentioned Maybe everyone knew it all
before, but repetition is a basic part of propa-
ganda, and the film is lively, novel and stimu-

The Freedom of Aberfeldy. Production: Alan
Harper. Made in co-operation with Service men
from the Dominions and the people of Aber-
feldy. Camera: Henry Cooper. M.O.I. 10 mins.
Subject: The villagers of Aberfeldy decide to
throw their houses open to men in the Forces
from overseas.

Treatment: This is a pleasant, naive little film
with a delightful feeling about it. It is pleasantly
shot and beautifully commentated as though by
the three men whose visit to Aberfeldy is the sub-
ject of the film. They are an Australian soldier, a
New Zealand pilot and a Canadian sailor, who
find in Aberfeldy and in the hearts of its people
an echo of their own homes.
Propaganda value: Good, because it's human.

Garden Friends and Foes. Production: G.B.
Instructional. Director: D. Catling. Commen-
tator: E. V. H. Emmett. A M.O.I, film for
gardeners. 10 mins. Non-T.
Subject: The pests that can attack the vegetable
crop of the average gardener and Iidw to dea'
with them.

Treatment: Couldn't be better. The film packs
information and belly laughs without losing any
of its points. Non-gardeners will enjoy it, gar-
deners will learn from it. Emmett has seldom
been in better form and the film is a triumph for
all concerned.
Instructional Value: First rate.

London 1942. Green Park Productions for the
British Council. Production: Ralph Keene.
Direction: Ken Annakin.
Subject: London in the year of war 1942.
Treatment: The face of London has changed
without our noticing it very much. Even the bomb-
( continued on page 182)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1943

New Documentary Films coiit.

damage has fallen into its place and no longer
shocks. To a returning visitor it must look a new
city. This feeling of surprise, of making the things
we lake for granted stand out, has been cleverly
caught by this film.

Allotments in Park Lane, coupons for clothes,
music in picture galleries, serving yourself at
lunch, miniature lakes at street corners and pigs
in a turning oil' Oxford Street, this is the London
we have come to accept as normal.

The director has caught it all very nicely and
turned it into a useful record. As a point for
particular congratulation we would mention the
superb shot of Americans marching through the
ruined city.

This is Annakin's first picture and few direc-
tors can have made a more auspicious start.
Piopiuam/a Value: The film will be of interest
to home audiences, but oveiseas its use will be
of great importance. Everyone abroad wants to
know what London looks like during the war.
The slightly nostalgic feeling should go down
well in the outposts.

Mr. and Mrs. America. March o( Time, Volume
8. No. 8.

Subject: America's Home Front.
Treatment: The main part of this film is in the
form of a letter from an American father to his
son in the Forces and tells the son of what
America is doing to win the war. It was a nice
idea, but Dad, unfortunately, is no Madame de
Sevigne. Humdrum is the word for Dad and the
picture is pretty humdrum too. Maybe this is
because it looks like one of our own early
propaganda films. The anti-Roosevelt smear is
cleverly done but seems rather silly. Probably
Dad is a subtle Republican as well as a bit of a
bore.

Summer on the Farm. Production: Verity Films.
Green Park Unit. Direction: Ralph Keene.
Associate Producer: Edgar Anstey. Camera:
Raymond Elton. Editor: Julian Wintle. Music:
William Alvvyn. M.O.I. Length: 1,105 ft.
Subject: Farm work in summer and how a big
town gets its vegetables.

Treatment: Ralph Keene started his agricultural
year with a brilliant winter and followed it with
an excellent spring. But now, his boots clogged
with mud, he has fallen into the summer manure
heap. The hard work and sparseness of winter
gave his early film a tautness and toughness; the
promise of spring sent him merrily on his way,
but summer's fulfilment seems to have clogged
and nauseated his spirits. Clone is everything ex-
cept competence, and she is a sad companion for
a film maker. All the usual things are there and
the sequences showing how the town is supplied
should have been interesting but they turn out to
be merely informative. However, summer will
pass and with the autumn we wish Mr. Keene a
return to his former brilliance.
Propaganda value: Routine informational stuff.
[Note. We hope all farmers are taking
courses in film making they had better have a
second string ready for the day when docu-
mentary moves in on them entirely and. in Soho
Square, a farm Centre appears.]

[Yailers

Rubber Salvage: Films of Great Britain Ltd.

Sorting Salvage. Spectator.

Salvage of Tin Tubes: Realist.

Save vow Bacon McDougalland MacKcndrick.

Chicken Teed: Spectator.

Diphtheria \: Roiha Films.

Diphtheria 2: Rotha Films.

Women's Industrial Recruiting: films of Great

Britain Ltd.
The Way to His Heart: Strand.
Five-inch Bather: Public Relationship Films.
Blackout Sense: Rotha Films.
Planned Cropping: Realist.

If there were any (lowers about we would make
up a bouquet for the Ministry lacking gardenias
we can only raise our rather old hats. Reason for
this celebration? Ministry of Information trailers,
of course. John Baines, in charge of this section,
is building a fantastic world of talking chickens,
men with Plimsoll lines on their legs, dissolving
toothpaste tubes, old-time movies and strange
gardens where Father Time lays lilies on dead
gardeners. In this world Dali and Ripley walk
hand in hand in the cause of propaganda. Each
trailer is about one and a quarter minutes and
goes on at the end of the newsreel in every
cinema. Its job is to put one brief message across
with a punch.

Basil Radford is seen pinching old tyres and
rubber soles — Save Your Rubber — a Japanese
skull gloats over the capture of the Malayan tin
mines — Save Your Toothpaste Tubes — a child is
killed in an air raid — Immunise Your Children
Against Diphtheria, and so on. Every sort of
technique is used, cartoon, model and mystery as
well as human beings. On the whole the humans
are the less successful. Who wants to listen to a
housewife when you can hear a talking hen'.' In
these brief nightmares there can be no false notes,
no hesitation, no slipshoddery, every frame must
count. The trick stuff packs more punch, gets a
clearer message across and is more entertaining.
This group of trailers is a good job, imagina-
tively and excitingly done.

When We Build Again. Production: Strand for
Cadbury Bros. Direction: Ralph Bond. Photo-
graphy: Charles Marlborough. Based on the
Bournville Housing Trust Survey. Theatrical
and non-theatrical. 25 minutes.
Subject: Rehousing.

Treatment: The great merit of this film is its
honesty. Rehousing is an appallingly complicated
business, and Ralph Bond has firmly resisted
the temptation to whittle it all down to some
comfortingly simple, facile solution.

Within the framework of three soldiers on
leave boarding a train to travel to their three
different homes, the film shows the three main
types of life that have grown up in the cities :
the slum back streets round the city centre, the
dreary terraced rows further out in the suburbs
and the dispersed estate houses on the city
outskirts. By means o\' interviews with different
people the film shows the advantages and dis-
advantages of each type — the dirt and incon-
venience of the slum, the suburban terrace
making the worst of both worlds, with its damp,
its high rentsand its lack of back-street 'maliness'
and the hygienic sleiilised estate houses where
it's over a mile's wall to get a drink and it takes
more than an hour a day and 6.v. a week travelling
to and from work. I hen an architect steps for-
ward and shows how he would redesign an
already built-up area, and how he would plan
a new town. I inally the film reviews various
housing experiments ihat have tried to overcome
some of the difficulties, and ends with the plea
that the people deserve nothing but the best
and should get it.

Technically, the film is nicely shot and its
straightforwardness and lack of pretensions are
a pleasure in these latter days of crawling to
authority and would-be artin;ss. Not enough
trouble, however, has been taken to work the
material into film shape. Granted the
subject is a difficult one, but if no better picture
can be found to accompany long stretches of
commentary than a pan over parkland or the
pages of a book turning, it would be better
to leave them out altogether, or somehow fight
it round into film terms. Also much of the music
is not at all suitable and the opening sequence
is an example of something one had hoped had
been buried for good and all long ago — an
impressionist sequence of people in cities accom-
panied by a hectoring would-be poetic com-
mentary.

But the honesty of the film — its sticking to
hard facts — easily makes up for its faults and its
rather unwieldy shape. For years we've had to
listen to the middle-class technocrats, the
Corbusiers, Gropiuses, Mendelsohns and Lloyd
Wrights of this world, telling us what they were
going to give us to live in, and that we should be
duly thankful. In a large number of cases their
plans were based on nothing much more than
some personal weakness or middle-class preju-
dice, the classic example being H. G. Wells,
because he himself suffers from colds, planning
for us all to live in air-conditioned towns
under fhe ground. Well, this film will have none
of that nonsense: it goes firmly straight to the
people who would have to live in those abortions
and tries to find out what they think they want.
There's a stout old dame who doesn't want to
leave the friendly warmth of her slum street,
and a magnificent Mr. Dugmore who would
like to meet the archie-tect who designed the
block of flats he has to live in. where a penny
dropped in one room reverberates like the noise
of a shipyard through the whole block. As the
film points out, and as anyone knows who has
taken the trouble to find out, flats are not popu-
lar; 90 per cent of the tenants would prefer
estate houses. The film is careful to show,
however, that much of the unpopularity of flats
is due to bad design and shoddy workmanship,
and this can largely be overcome by such schemes
as the fine Quarry Hill Estate at Leeds, where
there are lifts and an astonishing system of
central plughole rubbish collection. Incidentally
the Labour Council of Leeds was sabotaged
right and left over the building of these flats
by the Tories, and even to-day (because of the
war) they are still unfinished.

Are estate houses the solution then? In spite
of the man who complains of the time and
expense of getting to work and of the lack of
a pub, the film seems in the end to suggest that
they are, though it is careful not to say so direct.
And yet in peace time there was always a far
greater waiting list for the little two-storey
terrace houses of Poplar and Stepney ("the
slums") than for the bright clean houses of the
L.C.C. Becontree estate. And the reason for
this is something that the film does not touch on,
something that cannot be found by the too-
simple short cut of asking people individually
whal they think they want— the answers never
really add up. What decides how people want
to live and in what sort of houses is all bound
up with that much-flogged word, "community,"
which in the old days meant the life of the street,
and still does in the slums. Until people
have made up their minds what new sort
[continued on page 184)

D O C I M E N T A R Y N E W S L I •: T T ERF E BRUARV 1943

No. 10

THE CRANE AND
THE CRAW-FISH

A Crane had once settled her habitation by the side of a broad and
deep lake, and lived upon such fish as she could catch in it; these
she got in plenty enough for many years: but at length ha\ ing become
old and feeble, she could fish no longer. In this afflicting ( ■iivum-! am .-
she began to reflect, with sorrow, on the carelessness of her past year-:
"'I did ill." said she to herself, "in not making in my youth necessary
provision to support me in my old age: but. a^ it i>. I must now make
the best of a bad market, and use cunning to gel a li\t lihood as 1
can." With this resolution she placed herself bv the water-side and
began to sigh and look mighty melancholy. \ Craw-lish. perceiving
her at a distance, accosted her. and asked her why she appeared mi :«ad'.'
"Alas." said she. "how can I otherwise choose but grieve, seeing rm
daily nourishment is like to be taken from me? for I just now heard
this talk between two fishermen passing this way: said one to the ot her.
"Here is great store of fish, what think you of clearing this pond?' to
whom his companion answered, 'No; there is more in such a lake: let
us go thither first, and then come hither the day afterwards.' This they
will certainly perform: and then." added the Crane. T must soon pre-
pare for death."

The Craw-fish, on this, went to the fish, and told them what lie had
heard: upon which the poor fish, in great perplexity, swam immediate-
ly to the Crane, and addressing themselves to her, told her what they
had heard, and added, "We are now in so great a consternation that
we are come to desire your advice." To which the Crane replied, "That
which you acquaint me with, I heard myself from the mouths of
fishermen; we have no power sufficient to withstand them: nor do 1
know any other way to secure you but this: it will be many months
before they can clear the other pond; and. in the meantime. I can at
times, and as my strength will permit me. remove you one after
another into a little pond here hard by, where there is very good water,
and where the fishermen can never catch you. byr reason of the extra-
ordinary depth." The fish approved this counsel, and desired tin-
Crane to carry them one by one into this pond. Nor did she fail to
fish up three or four every morning, but she carried them no farther
than to the top of a small hill, where she ate them: and thus she
feasted herself for a while.

But one day, the Craw-fish, having a desire to see thi> delicate pond,
made known his curiosity to the Crane, who, bethinking herself that
the Craw-fish was her most mortal enemy, resolved to get rid of him
at once, and murder him as she had done the rest: with this design
she flung the Craw-fish upon her neck, and flew towards the hill. But
when they came near the place, the Craw-fish, spving at a distance
the small bones of bis slaughtered companions, mistrusted the Crane's
intention, and laying hold of a fair opportunity, got her neck in In-
claw, and grasped it so hard, that he fairly saved himself, and stran-
gled the Crane.

REALIST FILM UNIT

4 7 OXFORD STREET, W.l

Telephone: GERRARD 1958

The Workers9
Film Association

The Workers' Film Association claims that it is
the outcome of the foresight and planning of
the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party
five years ago. It is the realisation of their belief
thattheir ideals could best be communicated to the
public by means of film. In the first year a small
library was installed, nine films made, and a
number of sound projectors sold. In the next
year, however, progress was retarded by the
war, conditions making it difficult to arrange
film shows. It was decided to carry on with
a nucleus stall.

Next year however, when Soviet Russia
came into the war, a large number of Soviet
sub-standard sound films, edited for distribution
in Britain, were handled by the Workers film
Association. Necessary reorganisation was com-
pleted and the Association registered as a Co-
operative Society. After a full year's work, in
spite of the fact that some of the services provided
were offered at half the trade price, the annual
balance sheet showed a surplus of £1,000.

In addition to Soviet films, Czechoslovak,
Chinese, Polish and Norwegian films were
distributed. Our Film, a contribution to the war
effort and an appreciation of the heroic struggle
of the Soviet people, made by the film workers
at Denham Studios, was also exclusively dis-
tributed by the Association. The library was
increased by films produced by the Film Depart-
ment of the London Co-operative Society,
the five London Co-operative Societies, the
Woodcraft Folk, the Co-operative Wholesale
Society Ltd. and Paole Zion.

During the year film schools, conferences and
special film exhibitions were arranged for film
students. Mobile units gave nearly 550 shows at
workers' organisations which included a series
of conferences arranged by the Trades Union
Congress, and a series of one week's showings
by Co-operative Societies. Altogether 13,672
reels were distributed during the year.

A series of full length feature films was added
to the Library and now it lists over 600 films.
Agents were appointed all over the country
and a branch library established in Scotland
under the auspices of the Scottish Co-operative
Wholesale Society Ltd.

Negotiations instituted to incorporate the
Co-operative Union Ltd. in the Association,
had to be withdrawn owing to wartime con-
ditions, but the National Association of Co-
operative Education Committees Ltd. and the
Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society Ltd.
applied for and received full membership.

An advisory committee was appointed to
assist the management committee in making
known the Workers' Film Association's services.
The Workers' Travel Association Ltd. and the
Holiday Fellowship Ltd. joined the advisory
committee, and as a result the Association was
invited to provide weekly programmes of films
at their hostels on behalf of the Ministry of
Supply.

Sound projectors were provided for the
General and Municipal Workers Union and the
Slough Co-operative Society while other societies
have placed deposits with the Association for
projectors as soon as they become available.

A series of short films have been ordered by
several Co-operative Societies.

J. Reeves

DOCUMENTARY NKWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1943

British Film Role in America, cont.

Another important role we should be playing
is in the detailing of our own war experiences to
the people of America who are now begin-
ning to go through very similar experiences.
Rationing, in many aspects, now looms large
there. As far as we know, no films have been sent
across detailing to U.S. families the way in
which British families have adjusted their lives:
to all sorts of restrictions on food, fuel, etc. Yet
such films would surely find a market in the
States and would be welcomed as contributions
to local morale as well as being good British
propaganda.

Furthermore, we should always remember that
material (uncut) is saleable as well as completed
films (many of which, as we have seen, are not).
The present U.S. film representative, George
Archibald, is believed to realise this point, which
incidentally involves quite drastic considerations.
For instance, if a prestige documentary six reels
in length won't sell quickly, it should be regarded
as a collection of material, and placed all across
the U.S. market via the newsreels, the various
shorts series, and so on. British material is better
on the screen than in the can.

There are, to be fair to the MO. I., some
achievements in regard to the U.S. problem.
Highly specialised films, which concentrate on
information and carry their propaganda message
by implication, have for some time been encour-
aged. Some of these, rightly, are for highly speci-
alised audiences, others for wider use.

In general, however, the situation is still very
unsatisfactory and is to be solved only by whole-
time concentration by active and positive-minded
people who are not afraid of making drastic
decisions and insisting on their being carried out.

Correspondence

DEAR SIR,

In the review of the New Documentary Films
in the January number of the Documentary News
Letter, it is stated that '-Kill or be Killed" is
"'unfortunately only for non-theatrical circula-
tion in this country".

This is not correct, as it is being shown by
members of this Association from March 1st,
onwards.

Bookings received so far are as follows:

Week commencing :

1st March, 1943 News Theatre, Leeds.

5th April, 1943 Topical News Theatre, Aber-
deen.

3rd May, 1943 Tatler Theatre, Manchester.

31st May, 1943 Tatler Theatre, Chester.

5th July, 1943 News Theatre. Newcastle-on-
Tyne.

Other non-theatrical films being shown by
members are as follows:

■t Fighting, Life Begins Again,

,,! A',.,

1). M.

General Secretary

New Documentary Films, cont.

of community they intend to make of
themselves, what they're going to do about the
family for instance, or about economic equality,
most architectural planning is a waste of time.
Propaganda Value: Good. It slates problems
clearly and without patronage, and even if it
offers no lead or solution, it will help people
to think about the issues involved.

STRAND FILMS

MAKERS OF DOCUMENTARY
FILMS SINCE 1934

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR - MANAGING DIRECTOR
ALEXANDER SHAW - DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTIONS

1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l.

NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE.

DOCUMENTARY
NEWSLETTER!

CONTENTS

NOTES OF THE MONTH

(RACKED VOICE OF Pt(

TWO III MS

oi mi munih l--.y AftTj 189

FIRST DOCUMENT \I IS I

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

:>.!. CATALOGUE OF FILMS

VOL 4 NO. 3

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON Wl

KICKING AGAINST THE PRICKS

"TJocumentary has been a plant plagued, and a prey to

disease, from the day the sun first shone on it; money
troubles, distribution troubles and a hundred other pests
have done their best to blacken the blossom in spring-time
and curl the leaves in summer. But Documentary has kept
going and its influence has kept spreading. Since the
war we have collected several new pests and one of the worst
is the Public Relation Officer.

There are over two hundred of them in the various civil
ministries, in the Admiralty, the War Office and the Air
Ministry. Their work as far as films are concerned is to
promote ideas, to see that their department gets its fair share
of films, to make sure that the department is properly repre-
sented in those films, and to provide the film makers with
facilities. That is the basis of their work. Of course it can be
widened out almost indefinitely, as in the case of the Ministry
of Agriculture, whose P.R. department has initiated an
enormous number of films, and spent a great deal of time and
trouble on helping them to be made. But this is exceptional.
Here are two examples, not exceptional, of how P.R.O.s
work. Everyone making films for the Government has had
similar experiences.

For a Ministry of Information script an interview was
needed with a seaman from a motor torpedo boat. No filming
or anvthine complicated like that — just a talk, to get informa-
tion. The M.O.I, gave the producers a contact with a member
of the Admiralty Public Relations Department. Over the
telephone he answered that he couldn't do anything with-
out a letter. It was pointed out to him that he already had a
letter from the M.O.I. ; but apparently this wasn't full enough,
he needed more details. As soon as the telephone call was
finished a letter was despatched by hand. Next day he was
rung again; yes, he'd got the letter, but it was not detailed
enough: "VVhich sailor do you want to see?"

"How do you mean which sailor do we want to see?"

"Well, I can't fix you up with any sailor. I must have the
name of the man you want to see."

"But look, we are a film company. We don't know any
sailois on M.T.B.s".

"I'm sorry, but we must have that information before we
can proceed".

The production company replied politely that they would

try, and sent someone to go through the back numbers of
a newspaper. By this means they finally got the name of a
sailor who had been decorated.

So the Admiralty were rung again and given the sailor's
name. It sounds crazy but it's true. The P.R.O. replied that
it would be very difficult to trace the man, could he be given
three or four days. The producers said "Sure, and thanks very
much". Four days later the Admiralty were rung again:
"No, we're sorry, we haven't traced him yet. But ring us next
week."

Five long weeks went by, with two or three calls a week.
Then at the beginning of the sixth week the Admiralty rang
and said "Can you send someone down to such and such a
place on Saturday?" With a sigh of relief the company said
"Yes".

On Thursday a jam occurred. The man who was supposed
to go had to rush to Liverpool to see another sailor who was
sailing on Saturday. Another call was put through to the
Admiralty. The gentleman there was told politely what had
happened and asked if it was possible to put off the appoint-
ment until Sunday.

At which he became exceedingly belligerent and said, "If
you don't go on Saturday you can't go at all."

It was pointed out to him that the company had waited
over six weeks for the job ; and that the least he might do was
to move it by one day. He replied that he was not going to
ring up the dockyard again. After a short argument the
producers said that they were sorry but they couldn't manage
Saturday. The man in the P.R. office replied, "All right then,
I'll cancel the whole affair!"

About ten minutes later the M.O.I, rang the producers,
saying : "What's going on? X of the Admiralty has been on
and said that you have let him down. And he says he'll see to
it that your company doesn't get any more facilities from the
Admiralty."

Well, that's how someone at the Admiralty is helping.
First he was unable to get the name of a sailor. Second, six
weeks delay on a simple job. Third, deliberate attempt to stop
Government work (then and in the future) through personal
pique.

The second story concerns someone at the Ministry of Home
(continued on next page)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1943

Security. The film concerned was a fifteen hundred footer to be
offered for distribution to the M.O.I. The last sequence of
the film was to be the story of firemen doing industrial work
in their spare time. It was a simple enough story. After the
blitz had died down the firemen got tired of sitting around.
With the demand for increased production in the factories
they thought it would be a good idea for each station to
organise itself to do whatever work it could — such as making
ammunition boxes and food boxes for the Middle East forces.
There was a certain amount of opposition from the Ministry
of Home Security ; but in the end the scheme became quite
successful, and the Ministry took it over officially. The story
seemed to be simple, innocuous and quite good propaganda.

The film idea was put up to the Public Relations Department
of the Ministry of Home Security. The reply was that they
would like a few alterations. The script was re-written and sub-
mitted and again they asked for alterations and suggested a
different approach. Again the script was re-written and again it
was submitted; this time it was announced that the Ministry
did not approve of the sequence in any form whatsoever and
would not provide the facilities without which it could not be
shot. And that was that. // had only taken seven weeks.

It is a strange position. The P.R.O.s, if they were good —
as they used to be — could move the mountains that would
make film production possible. But instead, for three years, it
has been a continual battle. One almost feels that any film that
reaches the screen has been made despite these men and their
organisations. And in the last six months there has been an
even greater growth of this bureaucracy. The first stages of
the war are over. Russia is more and more on the offensive ;
the Eighth Army has been victorious in North Africa ; and, as
always in such circumstances, the office wallahs and executives
are gaining ascendancy over the people who actually have
done the work. It is visible everywhere, in the services, in in-
dustry, in all sorts of odd places, and in films. Week by week
the number of films cancelled or postponed grows in number.
Five months' work on one film and it is indefinitely held up be-
cause of lack of co-operation from the Admiralty. Three
months' work on another, and it is cancelled because agreement
cannot be reached with the Ministry of Health. On most films
there are weeks of delay involving long and pointless argu-
ments— re-writing of scripts — endless conferences — committee
meetings.

A lot of the blame must go to the Ministry of Information.
They seldom make vigorous enough attempts to get over the
difficulties. They are far too inclined to take the P.R.O's
answers as final. A real Ministry of Information should, of
course, have absolute control over all propaganda, with only
a security control by other departments; but it is doubtful
if we shall ever get as far as this — particularly since the M.O.I.
does not seem too keen to take the responsibility even for its
own small field.

Bureaucracy, and its attendant evils, has reduced the effect
of film propaganda by half or maybe more; and there the
matter stands. We have managed to muddle along for three
and a half years, mainly because the film makers have had
sufficient faith in films to go on making them despite all the
obstructions. To-day obstruction has reached a new high
level. It almost looks like a deliberate campaign to stop films
being effective. Enquiries among producers seem to indicate
that for every film finished there is another cancelled ; and it is
mostly the good films that are cancelled — or canned.

But as documentary has managed to survive other posts ii
will most likely survive this one. People like Watt and Caval-
canti are pushing out strong branches outside of bureaucrat ie
control. Grierson has a paid circulation of 4,000 cinemas in
North America and an organisation of 350 people in Canada
making new and li\ely films.
1 For the people left inside the old units like Strand, Shell,

Rotha, Realist, and Crown, the main task seems to be to get on
with the battle against bureaucracy. Contest every issue. If one
script is cancelled get another written. Make as many films as
possible that do not need Government facilities. Make as many
films as possible outside of Government control. Bureaucracy
hates us and our films. It hates the Watts, and the Cavalcantis,
and their films. It hates especially the Griersons and their
practical successes. But it has only laziness, inefficiency, lack
of imagination and lack of courage to hate with ; and as they
say nowadays : "There's no future in it."

NOTES OF THE MONTH

Dull Films and Good Women

it seems to us sometimes that Hollywood, the boisterous old hag, is
getting a little tired. The wrinkles take a little longer to smooth out
in the mornings and the arches are beginning to fall. It takes more
effort now to do the old act and even when it's done it hasn't got the
same sparkle. She still has her moments of course, perhaps when
those two nice young men William Wyler and Orson Welles take her
for a ride or when Ida Lupino and Bette Davies drop in for a
demi-tasse, but things aren't what they were. It's the bright lights and
gay music she misses. They give her ginger ale when she asks for
champagne and a boiling fowl when she wants grouse. She's got the
old ideas about what she wants, but the boys just can't give it any
more. Her brightest comedies are beginning to remind her, and
everyone else, of Auntie Elstree's musicals, circa 1936. She's having
trouble with some of her girls too. Those promising sex queens are
all turning into nice healthy American girls and she has to use those
wicked continental women for her bedroom scenes. . . . What with
the girls getting good and the films getting dull, its hard to keep
the party going, and it's kind of morbid having to rely on Greer
Garson all the time. After all Bob Hope and Fred Astaire can't
keep the fun going for ever. So maybe she had better look around
for some new and slightly gayer people or she will have to stop Miss
Rogers doing a Duse all over the place and get her back into the
party. She knows that people want to laugh, but its difficult to know
what they want to laugh at. Sometimes, after one of those M.G.M.
script conferences, she might even think they are laughing at her.

D.A.K.

we continue to hear from all sources (some of them most unex-
pected) an endless series of highly entertaining anecdotes about life
in the Department of Army Kinematography. The jokes are always
good but we cannot help sometimes feeling that the production
and distribution of instructional films for the army should not be
an entirely farcical matter. However, the recent widely circulated
account of what qualifications are most likely to yield a com-
mission in D.A.K. and the story about the showing of a highly
secret film which was by accident thrown open to a goggle-eyed
crowd of unauthorised persons, both are up to the best Wardour
Street standards. Let us laugh while we may. It is a hard unfanciful
world and the time cannot be far distant when sanity will prevail
and a reconstituted D.A.K. will have nothing to do but really at
long last to get down to its job.

Soviet Films

we have been very pleased to receive an excellently produced
catalogue of the Soviet films available in Britain. It comes from the
Soviet Film Agency at the Soviet Embassy and not only lists and
briefly describes the films but also provides complete information
on how they may be obtained. The sources range from the M.O.I.
to the R.S.P.C.A. and include several commercial distributors. The
films are listed in seven categories. There are feature films, short war
films, music and art films, garden films, news-reels from the front,
general news films and a miscellaneous list which contains such
varied titles as The Five Men oj Velish, Glimpses of Soviet Science
and Bund Bakery and Confectionery. Many o\ the films may be
(continued on page 194)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1943

The Cracked Voice of Propaganda

During the last two years the M.O.I, has built up what is perhaps
the largest and best organised non-theatrical distribution scheme
in the world. The total audience during 1942 was twelve million, and
it is expected to reach eighteen million during 1943. Over half of the
1942 audience, 6| million people, went to shows given by mobile
projection units — 137 units give 1,300 shows a week. So far so good.
But over the past two or three months reports have been coming in
to show that although the M.O.I, scheme gives an enormous number
of shows to large numbers of people, the shows themselves are not all
that they might be. The following is a description of a fairly typical
show to a rural audience : —

"Lights please!" shouted a voice over the babble and laughter of
children's voices.

"Listen, children," said the man operating the movie projector,
"for the second time I must remind you that this is a free show given
by the Ministry of Information. If you can't keep quiet, you will
have to leave. All right, everybody. Lights out!"

In the comparative silence which followed this announcement,
the Voice of Propaganda crackled . . and buzzed . . . and crackled . . .
and blurred. With considerable concentration we could catch a few
words in every sentence. The hall was ice cold, the chairs were hard.
The projector squeaked and rattled. Finally we resigned ourselves
to piecing together some kind of story out of the visuals. After all,
you could hardly blame the children.

And so for two hours a rural audience in a village hall somewhere
in Britain got its bi-monthly dose of propaganda : Worker and War-
front (Rotha Productions); Battle of Supplies (Strand); The Battle
for Oil (National Film Board of Canada) ; The Harvest Shall Come
(Realist for LCI.). The first three of these films were straight com-
mentary, but were still extremely difficult and sometimes impossible
to follow. The last was a story film told in dialect and was com-
pletely unintelligible.

The 1,300 shows are shared by factory audiences and villages.
Although of course there are no children at the factory shows, the
sound is often just as bad. There seem to be two main problems :

(1) The shows are not presented as well as they could be.

(2) The quality of the sound is so bad that it is often completely
unintelli^ijle.

Showmanship

Number (1) is not a difficult problem to solve. Children go to the
shows with their parents and, as children have always done at the
"pictures", they enjoy them in their own way with a lot of shouts and
screams. Of course if the sound were better the children would most
likely follow the films more closely ; but anyway it seems fairly easy
to split the shows and have special shows for children.

Then there is the question of how the films are shown. The pro-
jectionists are extremely competent and most of them add their own
little personal touches to the presentation of each show; but they are
not given much help. In most cases they have to start their shows off
with no preliminary build-up. Lights are turned off abruptly and on
goes the first film. Quite a number of projectionists, on their own
initiative, make a short speech at the beginning of each programme.
This helps to quieten the audience down and get them settled and
ready to see films. This also seems a fairly simple problem to solve.
The Ministry could easily put out a good standard introduction and
end for each new programme, with even a musical run-up of a
couple of hundred feet, some good exciting newsreel shots and a
distinctive title.

Lastly there is the local advertising. At the moment small posters
about 15 inches by 25 are used. There is a white space shaped like a
screen in which the projectionist writes the details of the show.
There are no special notices for the front of the hall. If the non-
theatrical shows are to be successful there must be a certain amount
of showmanship to put them over and to convince people that they
are not going to see a charity performance but as sensible and
entertaining a film show as they might get in their local cinema.

The projectionists and organisers are good, competent and enthu-
siastic, but few of them have any experience of the presentation side
of the entertainment business. What might solve the trouble would
be for the Ministry to employ a good showman from an exhibiting
company to go round and draw up a list of ideas for advertising and
presenting the shows.

Sound

The quality of the sound at the shows is a far more complicated
problem. To start with there are conditions caused by the war which
cannot be corrected. There is a shortage of trained projectionists.
It is difficult to get replacements of projector parts. No new pro-
jectors of the best type have been received for over two years.
Laboratory work is not all that it should be, due to inexperienced
personnel, faulty film stock, and shortage of chemicals. But if we are
going to have non-theatrical shows of sound films they must be
heard. If not, there is no point in having sound and we might just
as well go back to silent films with titles.

Botn the Ministry of Information and the produceis could have
done a lot towards getting better sound. The Ministry seems to have
been so pleased with the figures that they haven't bothered to do any-
thing about the sound. The producers see a 35 mm. show copy run
with ideal projection conditions in a comfortable theatre and have
not bothered to enquire any further. The Ministry invited them to
meet the regional organisers of the non-theatrical scheme but only
two producers turned up and no results were achieved.

Tricks to Improve

It would be fairly easy to get a first-class sound engineer and to
send him out to do a thorough investigation of the original recording,
the development of the original negative, the condition and quality
of recording prints, the quality of re-recording, the loss through re-
duction printing, and finally of the projection, and to issue as soon as
possiole a lull list of recommendations to production companies,
sound recordists, laboratories and projectionists. There are so many
simple little tricks that can improve 16 mm. projection that are not
known by the technicians involved. No re-recording of any film that
is to be optically reduced, no background music or effects, as little
dialogue as possible, no commentators with deep bass voices, simple
damping of tinny halls. Some sound systems seem much better for
optical reduction than others; for instance, Movietone system is
usually very good.

Labour Wasted

About nine million people are going to sit in village halls and fac-
tories during 1943 and see these non-theatrical shows. It is abso-
lutely essential for something to be done quickly. The Ministry of
Information has been approached with the suggestion that a sound
engineer should be appointed to conduct an investigation but that
was over a month ago and nothing has happened yet. Good audi-
ences, good films, and a lot of valuable labour and materials are
being wasted. It is about time that the M.O.I, realised it is more
important for people to see films and to hear them than it is to
have a good report at the end of the year with a lot of fancy figures.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1943

THEY LAUGH AT REALISM

It is just part of the debt truth must sometimes
' pay to art. It is only reasonable. If you spend
thousands of hours of a man's leisure time train-
ing him to expect human action to be dressed up
and made all of a climax so that he shall live in
a progressive state of pleasing tension, that is
what will happen. They will laugh at the real
thing. They will grow tense and hushed only
at the artificial. That is, at the pictures.

This is a danger for the documentary directors
who are now gradually, and deservedly, cutting
into feature direction. Their work is a ray of cool
light on a screen which has been too long Hushed
pink during the credits of the customary pieces
of romantic artifice. But the cool light is proving
a little too much for many of the cinema-goers
who have not seen enough of this new idiom to
distinguish it from the ingrained conventions of
melodrama.

The conventions of melodrama have predis-
posed our twenty-five million cinema addicts to
anticipate well-groomed artificial faces, dramatic-
ally timed gesture and action, the finesse of the
well-paid artist. After the slick and polished
winner, the real people who play unpaid parts
in the newsreels look garish and awkward, like
persons who bat and shy before a press photo-
grapher at some local function, or stare hollowly
out of the pages of the illustrated society weeklies.
Even the toughs like Spencer Tracy, Will Fyffe
and Wallace Beery are well-paid and therefore
polished toughs, full of disciplined and timely
vigour.

A new idiom

The documentary directors started out the
other end of the scale. The only artists were
behind the camera : the only timely gesture from
the real unpaid raw material of humanity in
front of the lens was the gesture of their particu-
lar craft or skill. The pits and hollows of their
unsmooth faces, accentuated by lighting and
camera angle, were a new pictorial idiom,
a new translation of what was too familiar in
daily experience to seem right on a screen so
long devoted to the strange glamour of the stars.
And so these faces from the street and factory,
enlarged in close-up, smiling, self-conscious,
real, were a shock to the people themselves,
and caused the same laughter as the curate
gets when he appears in a farce at some parish
theatricals.

People who see themselves in a documentary
nearly always laugh their heads off. The film has
to be shown again and again before the sight of
themselves enlarged on a screen, performing
some familiar action, becomes an object of
critical interest. This laughter is partly inborn
shyness mixed with vanity. They never knew
they looked like that. Doesn't Mrs. Brown act
funny. Look at him going on so. There's old
George. It is rather terrifying to see yourself
where you are used to seeing Ginger Rogers.
At the same time simple personal vanity is
tickled and the laughter is combined with
happy shyness. The cinema records an act of
permanence: it is amusing to feel that you will
do it again every time the film is projected: it
is a pcepshow immortality. But above all the
laughter is due to the sense of artificiality which

By Roger Manvell

the screen brings to the familiar; the body in
which you live and move sits watching the same
body busy and moving independently. And it is
darn funny.

Violence on the screen quite often provokes
laughter. Pleasure-excitement in real life is
usually a laughing-matter; that is just human.
While the ghosts quiver on the dark lit screen
many people who are enjoying themselves laugh
with excitement. So do children during a chase.
Laughter is part of the relief from the sup-
pressed energy called tension. But what is more
interesting and more curious is the laughter
produced by shock.

Taboo words

The language used by the men on the raft
whilst the Jerries of In Which We Serve shoot
them up is mild compared with what a voluble
man would use in the actual circumstances.
Yet an unsophisticated audience knowing full
well the peril and stress of the situation will
laugh at words like "bastard" and "bloody".
Why? Because they come from an artificial
medium, a screen, a speaker, and they are
magnified, are heard in a packed hall. Such words
heard by anyone with two ears alert, in any
place where people congregate, are none the
less secret words, taboo words for half-private
use only. They are like taking your uglier under-
clothes off in front of a comparatively well-
dressed assembly. Result, laughter due to mild
shock. Severer shock, such as the actual experi-
ence itself, would lead either to hysteria or great-
er self-control according to temperament.

Psychologists, social workers, artists un-
fettered by minor conventions, and documentary
directors do not laugh at swearing. But the public
does; swearing is a continuous mild joke, like
sex is a strong one. It is irritating to hear the
laughter, but it is ten to one that the average
provincial British audience will produce it.

An excellent recent documentary of Army
experience is Kill or be Killed.The evident inten-
tion of this film is to be realistic within the
frame-work of an uncensorable treatment. The
language is strong, but less strong than the
situation would actually warrant ; the subject is
as grim as anything in war can be: two soldiers,
one British, one German, man-hunt each other.
Barring details produced by captious criticism,
there is nothing in the film which could not
happen. And yet when the British sergeant,
having but barely escaped with his life from the
marksmanship of the German sniper, says
"I'll get that Jerry bastard before he gets me"
(a perfectly reasonable remark) the audience
shouts with laughter, or gives a mild titter if it
is drawn from the more county set-up. Thirty
seconds is then required to restore the atmos-
phere intended by the situation as a whole.

In the fine Soviet documentary-newsrccl One
Day of War there is a most moving shot towards
the end of an old Russian woman beating a
German prisoner after the reoccupation of her
village by the Russians. The significance of this
unposed shot entirely escaped the audience,
which laughed at the crude, unco-ordinated
movements of the woman's pent-up indignation.

Reconstructed, acted, carefully shot, edited,
that is dressed up in screen terms, this simple
incident of personal retribution could have
reduced this same audience to any emotional
state required by the conscious intentions of the
director.

The bayoneting at the end of Nine Men,
violently and primitively reconstructed with the
steel thrust down beside instead of into the bodies
of the Italian soldiers will probably cause this
same laughter in the provincial and suburban
houses. It is a pity. More dramatically, more
horrifically or more artificially shot there would
be no laughs. But Harry Watt is a documentary
director, brought up to use actuality in the
documentary tradition of truth first and drama
second. But the simple violence of the bayonet-
ing is the climax of a very good film, with
documentary turned feature. It is to be hoped
audiences will take it in the strong stride of the
film, forgetting their normal reaction to violence
presented without the trickeries of atmospheric
melodrama.

It is of great importance at this stage of the
development of commercial cinema that the more
intelligent producers and directors watch these
quirks of audience psychology. It is important
that The Grapes of Wrath and Citizen Kane
should not have their serious theme and beauty
of treatment marred by the titters of ill-informed
audiences. The war has brought a period of
maturity to the commercial screen. The financial
bosses have let up and allowed thought and
actuality to fill the bill on occasion, especially
in this country. Exhibitors go on clamouring
for the escape-from-the-war pictures, full of the
glamour-beauty which has paid so well in the
past, and will always pay whilst there is nothing
else to see. Audiences, shocked into seriousness
by the Nazi threat to their strength and civil
liberties, by their broken homes and severed
affections, are no longer sure that glamour-
beauty supplies their need. They require to
share the emotions of the war itself, and to
a generation not fully literate in good writing,
the screen alone can provide serious partici-
pation in the dominant emotion of this changing
world. This explains the success of those films
which have combined a good story with actual-
istic treatment— 77ie Foreman went to France,
49th Parallel, One of our Aircraft is Missing,
Next of Kin and Nine Men.

Power of realism

This new school of realism requires the
assistance of the documentary directors who
know the people who are fighting the war. It
requires their sympathetic understanding in the
direction of that people when they are needed
in front of the camera. But these directors must
watch what is for them a new audience-
psychology, the psychology of the direction of
the feature film. Truth must be presented, but
in such a way that its inescapable emotional
appeal is felt through the peculiar channels of
screen idiom along which the public has learnt
to receive its emotional impulses. They must
not laugh at realism; they must feel its power
and understand its implications.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1943

DOCOIEKTARY
NEWS LETTER

MONTHLY SIXPENCE

VOL.3 NUMBER 11-12
NOV.-DEC. 1942

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands 'for the use of film as a
medium of propaganda and in-
struction in the interests of the
people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of
common people all over the
world.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

is produced under the auspices
of Film Centre, London, in asso-
ciation with American Film Center,
New York.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey
Alexander Shaw
Donald Taylor
John Taylor
Basil Wright

Outside contributions will be
welcomed but no fees will be
paid.

We are prepared to deliver from
3—50 copies in bulk to Schools,
Film Societies and other organi-
sations.

Owned and published by

FILM CENTRE LTD.
34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON

W.l GERRARD 4253

TWO FILMS OF THE MONTH

'The Magnificent Ambersons9: 'Desert Victory9

The Magnificent Ambersons

A Mercury Production. Script and Direc-
tion: Orson Welles,
(from a novel by Booth Tarkington).

|~|rson welles is frightened of nothing —
'-'except his subject matter. He undertakes
every possible risk in shooting and in direction ;
proves himself right by breaking all the rules;
shows an almost childish disrespect for his
audiences' eyes, and at the same time compli-
ments them by assuming that they have adult
and quick-moving minds; but in this film, as in
Citizen Kane, the skeleton still rattles in the
cupboard, and the unspeakable fear is spoken —
"Let not my characters be true."

Welles should worry. He's got a long way to
go before he learns to bring people alive. His
people, and what happens to them, are part of
a very stimulating exercise in which he persuades
us to take part. They go through their motions,
and their emotions, in fine style. They excite our
interest, our admiration and a part of our critical
faculties. But they cannot move us, because
Welles has put them there as a barrier between
himself and reality— and also perhaps, as a
barrier between himself and the general citizenry.

The Magnificent Ambersons is about a fantas-
tically wealthy and wildly perverted family in
a small American town at the beginning of the
century — the story of an aristocracy whose
corruption comes from money and not from in-
breeding. The family destroys itself, as it is fated
to do, and all its material possessions (collected,
displayed, polished, arranged, presented, and
carefully catalogued by Welles in scene after
scene) crumble away and vanish. There is
nothing left except a horrid young man who has
killed his mother out of jealousy and a horrid
young lady who is much, much too fond of her
father.

The Old Myth.

The Ambersons' story is really the old myth
which runs through Greek tragedy and has been
pushed around not unsuccessfully by O'Neill in
Mounting Becomes Electra. It is a story which
must either be told in the grand manner of
great tragedy, with all the Aristotelian canons
duly observed; or as a psychological study of
great and unpleasant intimacy. Welles gets
nearer to the latter than the former — but in
general all he gives us is a puppet show, put on
regardless of expense, with the figures stuffed
with the very finest sawdust.

The extraordinary thing is that it is so well
done that the film commands your closest atten-
tion all the time. In order presumably to avoid
any formalisation which might verge on the
tragic, he plays each scene with a casualness of
dialogue which could only result from a miracu-
lous technique, endless and painstaking rehearsal,
and a wonderful sense of timing. Over and over
again he plays scenes in the most unexpected

way with insolent ease. The kitchen scene — about
800 feet of single set-up and dialogue, with move-
ments across the picture and into the background
by three different people, with a lavish loading
of inanimate detail which recalls Feyder's
Therese Raquin — is persuasive and engrossing.
The old man thinking about death with a flicker
of firelight on his face. The "horseless-carriage"
party in the early twentieth century snow — an
animation of everybody's old snapshot albums.
Aunt Fanny's scene of super hysterics, played
with an almost embarrassing accuracy. The
long and elaborate truck shots along streets and
sidewalks. The unexpected camera angles and
camera movements. All these things are remark-
able, and are completely unlike any work being
done by any other film director to-day.

There is little doubt as to the great influence
Orson Welles will have on the technique of
movie. He is elaborating new and revolutionary
methods in continuity, in camera fluidity, and
in the use of dialogue. But his own stature will
never increase until he has the courage to face
up to real people, and to put them, in the round,
on the screen. Till then his appeal will be limited
to film society and specialised audiences — not
because he is "above the heads" of ordinary
folk, but because ordinary folk have enough good
sense not to bother themselves about matters
which are purely cerebral and have in them
nothing creative, nothing of the real warmth of
humanity.

Desert Victory

Army and R.A.F. Film Units. M.O.I.

This is a splendid job. It doesn't try to do
more than it sets out to do. It eschews tricks and
frills. It rests solidly on the material shot — and
very finely shot indeed — by all the many anony-
mous technicians attached to the forces in
Libya. The only additions which have been made
are a number of simple animated diagrams,
which explain the tactical aspects very clearly;
and a staged sequence depicting the Eighth
Army's night attack at El Alamein. The cutting
is first class, throughout.

The mood of the film is one of sober enthusi-
asm which fits the moment and which is very well
backed by J. L. Hodson's commentary. There
is no gloating (not even over the newsreel shots
of Rommel at his most pompous), and no over-
playing of events whose greatness lies in their
achievement, which has been duly and accurately
recorded for us by the movie camera and which
can only be sullied by exaggeration and over-
emphasis. In fact all the newsreel boys ought to
be made to see Desert Victory through over and
over again. They might learn quite a lot that way.

The film is, of course, a sure-fire winner in this
country. No doubt it will be even more effective
in Russia, the U.S.A., and the other Allied
countries. And it has, one hopes, finally proved
to the authorities that it is sensible to give front
line priorities to the film people.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1943

The First Documentalist

by Sgt. James Dugan

OF THE U.S. EIGHTH AIR FORCE NEWSREEL UNIT

Among the things I forgot to pack when I
■'••r.nmp nvpr«pa« vjcre my notes on Francis

Doublier, so the following sketch will be irritat-
ingly vague and possibly inaccurate as to exact
dates and circumstances. However, the redoubt-
able pioneer who is my subject will undoubtedly
survive the war. I shouldn't be surprised if he
one day goes back to his native Lyons, where the
programme of his homecoming banquet will
furnish more accurate data than this.

His old employers, the Lumiere brothers, will
not be there. One is dead and the other is con-
spicuous on the rolls of quislings compiled by
Fighting France.

In the eighties and nineties Lumiere Freres of
Lyons were the best known manufacturers of
photographic supplies. They had a large factory,
a sound name, and a consuming itch to sell their
supplies in other countries. In 1 892 their excellent
laboratories began work on an advertising de-
vice of such ingenuity that Auguste and Louis
Lumiere foresaw the film market of the world
falling into their lap. This was the first practicable
motion picture camera.

Frieze-Green in England, the Edison inventors
in America, and many others, were working
along parallel lines on gadgets with which to turn
the enigma of persistence of vision into the first
fumbling cinema. Whatever motives the others
entertained the Lumieres perfected their remark-
able camera for the sole purpose of boosting
sales of film and photographic supplies.

Francis Doublier, a bright, black-eyed country
boy of 16, was an apprentice in the Lyons fac-
tory, when he was designated as one of the agents
assigned to take to the field with the new device
in 1894. The camera itself was small and versa-
tile. It weighed about 8 lbs. and was about the
size of a G.P.O telephone coin box. It loaded
50 feet of 35 mm. film at a shutter speed of 24
frames a second. It was, and is, a well-made
machine. I have seen excellent pictures Francis
Doublier made with it in 1941.

In addition to being a camera, it was also a
projector when augmented by carbon arc lamps.
Doublier's travelling kit was portable. He de-
pended on a mail schedule of raw stock and
chemicals at various points in his travels, and,
of course, processed his own film, wherever he
happened to be. The skilful Doublier developed
and printed his stuff in baths, bidets, basins, or
whatever the hotel accommodation offered.

The camera itself was not for sale; in fact the
Lumieres took the piquant attitude that the de-
vice was a deep trade secret, which they would
have been horrified to consider manufacturing
for sale. Doublier and his fellow agents were
sworn to guard it like a glamorous bombsight.
They slept with it.

Doublier's method of selling the photographic
supplies of the Lyons factory was to go to a key
town and set himself up in the market place at
high noon with as much commotion as possible.
He would then expose fifty or a hundred feet of
film on the crowded street, taking care to catch
as many people as possible and to apprise each
and every one of them that they had been filmed.
Posters would then surreptitiously appear, ad-
vertising a showing that night in any available
hall or storeroom. As he grew practised at the

game, the programme was no doubt padded out
with topical subjects such as the market place of
the previous city on his travel.

The cameraman-promoter had gorgeous fun
on his trips and his selling of the name of Lumiere
was notable enough to keep him travelling for the
better part of three years. The films he made, not
only of the market place, but the parade, the local
shrine and monument, the scenic beauty of a
city, dribbled back to Lyons. He sent them as
much to get rid of them as with any view of
reporting on his travels, much less as a conscious
documentalist.

He travelled through France and Germany (a
steamer on the Rhine), Spain (a bullfight), Italy (a
holy day), and as far East as Samara, now known
as Kuibishev, in Russia. He filmed the coronation
of Tsar Alexander II in St. Petersburg in 1896,
and secured shots of the disaster a few days
afterward on the plain outside Petrograd, at, I
think, Tsarskoye Seloye, where thousands of
people were killed in a mad rush to see the new
Tsar and Tsarina, and to get one of the corona-
tion souvenirs — a ceramic cup and a silk scarf
bearing the likenesses of the Royal pair.

Doublier filmed from a platform over the
crowd. The pressure of the crowd crushed his
platform and he made his way for a hundred
feet walking on the heads of dead and dying
people. He was seized as he left the scene by the
police, who peremptorily destroyed his film. He
barely saved his camera.

In 1895 there took place in Paris what was un-
deniably the first theatrical showing of motion
pictures. So much acrimony has grown up over
who actually showed the first "movies", to a
paying audience, that I must apologise specific-
ally for not having the date at hand. However,
Edison's premiere at Koster and Bial's Music
Hall in New York in 1896, which is officially
recognised by the Hays Office and Macy's De-
partment Store, as the natal date, came months
after the Paris exhibition. From Lumiere's to
that first cinema audience, which included Maxim
Gorki, came the first documentaries. Gorki was
profoundly disturbed by the experience. He saw
a woman of the Lumiere household in a hand-
some striped silk dress, playing with her baby. He
saw the famous "Workmen Razing a Wall", the
first proletarian subject, and he saw another
sequence of the Lumiere employees leaving the
factory. The shirt-waisted girls are stepping
smartly out of the gate. "Look sharp, now," says
Doublier, when he shows it to you, "Here I
come." The young Francis comes out on a
bicycle, scattering the girls and looking very
jaunty in a straw boater.

Further Doublier sales tours took him to the
Orient, to Madagascar, and back through North
Africa. Early in the twentieth century he was sent
to America to found a New England factory for
Lumiere Freres. The pressure of Eastman and
to some extent, Edison, aborted the plan. Doub-
lier became a producer. The movies had ad-
vanced in ten years from an advertising device to
a theatrico-industrial undertaking. Doublier de-
signed and built the first studios at Fort Lee, New
Jersey, which were an advance over Edison's
Black Maria, the box on the turn-table that fol-
lowed the sun. Doublier's studios were designed

for artificially lighted sets, which George Melies
had been using.

Doublier produced comedies and serials and
became quite rich and Americanised. He lived in
an enormous frame house in Fort Lee with a
staggering wine cellar, a charming wife and a
growing family of boys, one of whom grew up to
become a saxophone player. He allowed himself
the gesture of retiring at 45.

In 1929 Doublier ceased being rich. He was
able to keep the house; that was all. He went
back to work at the age of 51 as a laborarory
worker — where he had started at 16. He is a very
good colour processer and still is at the age of 65.

Doublier has kept up the liveliest interest in
films. His own precious French material he has
augmented through swapping with other old
timers for Edison, Melies, and early English and
American film.

One of the awesome bits in his archives is a
few feet of the first sound film, patented in Eng-
land in 1905 by Eugene Lauste, a French inven-
tor. Lauste held the basic patent for sound-on-
film by the variable density sound track, which,
despite the absence of electrical amplification, he
successfully demonstrated in 1907-9.

Doublier's historical collection is embodied in
a fascinating film he has been making and re-
making for twenty years. To my knowledge the
only people who have seen Doublier's astonish-
ing film are a few friends of Merritt Crawford,
and the Boy Scouts and Chamber of Commerce
of Fort Lee, New Jersey. Doublier has a high
local reputation as an entertainer at neighbour-
hood festivities with his picture. He titles, dubs,
processes, edits, and exhibits his own picture,
and he is never satisfied with it. After a screening
for an old crony like Merritt Crawford, a neg-
lected American film historian, in which the two
friends will dispute hotly over the remains of the
wine cellar, Doublier is likely to spend his even-
ings for the next two weeks, re-editing the film.

SIGHT
and
SOUND

SUMMER ISSUE

FILMS IN SWEDEN

A PLEA for D. W. GRIFFITH

CHILDREN'S CINEMA

EHtE

6d.

Published by: The British Film Institute,
4 Great Russell Street, London, W.C.I.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1943

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Subject for Discussion. Seven League Produc-
tions. Direction: Hans Nieter. Camera: W.
Suschitzky. Associa.e Producer: Basil Wright.
M.O.I. 15 mins.
Subject: Venereal disease.

Treatment: A child loses its sight because his
parents are unknowing syphilitics. The doctor
attending the case goes to an A.R.P. post and is
told that he is to lead the next discussion group
at the post. When asked what subject he would
choose he suggests that they should discuss
venereal disease. The post warden, representing,
probably accurately, the feelings of most middle-
aged men, says that as they have men and women
at their meetings the subject is unsuitable, un-
savoury and unnecessary. A girl comes in and
says that such an attitude is ridiculous and ap-
peals to the other people for support. The doctor
tells them about the child and also certain im-
portant points about V.D. and its treatment. His
talk is reasonable and eminently sensible and the
film ends with the post warden pinning up a
notice saying that next week's "Subject for
Discussion" will be Venereal Disease.

Faced with a subject about which everybody
has probably some sort of mental inhibition, the
producers have turned out a first-class job. The
film avoids the sensational and the coy and is
sane, sensible and interesting. The important
medical points, symptoms, treatment and conse-
quences are made clearly and could give offence
only to the most prurient minded. It also care-
fully avoids the ethical question, so stupidly

plugged in the Government press advertisements.
An excellent job.

Propaganda Value: The fact that audiences are
going to be shown that, when necessary, syphilis
and gonnorrhoea can be discussed between people
as casually as meningitis or small pox, is the main
propaganda value of the film. But its more con-
crete statements should also have an excellent
effect by placing venereal disease among the ail-
ments which one automatically goes to the
doctor about.

China. Paul Rotha Productions. Production:
Donald Alexander. Compiled by Budge Cooper.
M.O.I. 15 mins.
Subject: The rebirth of China.
Treatment: For the most part this film covers
familiar ground, but it does it in such a way
that one might be seeing it all for the first time.
It tells of China relying on her past and torn by
internal struggles. It shows Japan apeing the
West, building up her industries and her war
machine and finally seizing Manchuria in order
to get vital raw materials. Then, alarmed at the
signs of national unity growing up in China, she
struck with her highly trained, highly mechan-
ised army at what she thought would be an easy
victim. The rest of the story we know. The
material to illustrate the theme is extremely well
chosen and the commentary is sensibly incisive.
The film was only marred by an occasional in-
decisiveness in the effects track which sometimes

* For your information

IN every progressive enterprise there must be leaders
and those who follow behind. As artistic and
technical progress in kinematography quickens to the
tempo and stimulus of war, " KINEMATOGRAPH
WEEKLY" is always to be found " up-with-the-
leaders ", its well-informed pages radiating perception
and far-sighted thinking. Kinematography's
leaders themselves know this for truth
and turn to " K.W." week by
week for information and

enlightenment. ,,^1/,

93 LONG ACRE
LONDON W.C.2

followed the visuals closely but gave up every
now and then for no good reason.
Propaganda value: hxcellent. One of the best
straight informational films we have seen.

OperationalHeights.R.A.F.FilmUnit. M.O.I.

32 mins.

Subject: Barrage balloons guard vital stretches of
the sea approaches to these islands. This is the
story of the crew of one of the balloon ships and
the work they do.

Treatment: A marriage has been arranged be-
tween the Montagus and Capulets. Documentary
Romeo has made successful eyes at story-film
Juliet, but what with one thing and another the
consummation of the wedding looks like being a
little more difficult than everybody thought. If
the studios make a film about a man who mixes
cocktails instead of a man who drinks them they
call it documentary. If documentary gives a few
gags and a bit of love interest to an engine driver
they too often think that they are automatically
going to enthral an eager public. But the public
on the whole likes its entertainment straight. It
either wants fact or fiction and if fact is going to
adopt the trappings of fiction for the better seduc-
tion of the audience it has got to learn its job all
over again. People go to the movies to see stars
but they stay there because of the careful, cun-
ning, clever and hard slaving that goes into the
film behind the stars. In a feature film the throw-
away lines, the human touches, the ease and
naturalness are the result of infinite experience
and endless care. And the easier it looks on the
screen the more difficult it is to do in the studio.

Thus we have Operational Heights. It is a nice
film. It's got a good feeling about it, the men
are well chosen, the job they do is pleasantly
portrayed, the camerawork is superb, the editing
excellent. Yet all the time the film wobbles be-
tween telling us what the job means and trying to
interest us in the crew as individuals in a purely
artificial way. There are little incidents scattered
through the film, talk of a girl friend, the baking
of a cake, those little touches which can mean so
much. But to ask ordinary, pleasant men on a
balloon ship to handle the necessary dialogue, to
point the laughs — in fact to do anything other
than their job — is surely to throw too much
weight on their shoulders. This is not to suggest
that ordinary people cannot handle an odd line
or two in front of the camera, but the interplay
of dialogue, building up incident and sequence,
is a job for professionals.

Apart from this basic weakness the film is
pleasant enough.

la Value: Good informational stuff.

Worker and Warfront No. 5. M.O.I. Non-T.

5 mins.

Subject: A magazine of various items relating to

the war effort.

Treatment: This issue is a very great advance on

all the previous ones. The subject matter has

something more urgent to it and the treatment

has plenty of bite as a result. The two highspots

are the speed up of coal production via Joint

Committees, etc., and an admirable item, edited

from North African material, of an aerial sortie

from a palm-fringed aerodrome.

Propaganda value: Good. It is to be hoped that

the series will keep up to this level.

192

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1943

CATALOGUE OF FILMS, MADE AND

ACQUIRED BY THE

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION,

FROM

JULY 1st TILL

DECEMBER 31st, 1942.

Published by permission

of the Ministry of Information

:

NOTES AND ABBREVIATIONS

"Alert in the East", "

Keeping Rabbits for Extra Meat" and "Welfare of the Workers", listed in the catalogue published in D.N.L., October,

'-■

1942, have been withdrawn.

Film titles in bracket

> are alternative titles of films listed elsewhere in the catalogue.

■

Names of producers z

nd directors in

brackets do not appear on credit titles.

■

Lengths are recorded

in feet of 35 mm. gauge, or in

minutes of 16 mm. gauge.

5-M : Five-minute film.

I : Instructional. N T.

R

Reviewed in D.N.L.

'■

T: Mainh for theatrical release. C.F.L. : Listed

n Central Film Library.

O

Sent overseas.

N.T. : Mainly for non-theatrical release.

W: Withdrawn.

OO:

Mainly for overseas use.

■

OOO:

Wholly for overseas use.

H

1. THEATRICAL AND NON-THEATRICAL RELEASES

RELEASE DATES

TITLE

ABBREVI-

PROD. UNIT

PRODUCER

DIRECTOR

T

NT LENGTH

ATIONS

Ask C.A.B.

CFL 5-M O

Verity. .

S. Box \

M. Mundenj

H. Cass

9/42

1/43

803

Battle for Freedom, The

CFL NT O

Strand

B. Wright

9/42

1,342

Library compilation

lt:illle lor Supplies, Tile

CFL OO

Strand

B. Wright

11/42

1,658

1 ihr.irv compilation. R. Vol. Ill, p. 156

C.E.M.A.

CFL NT O

Strand

A. Shaw

C. de Latour, J
Banting & other

—

11/42

1,567

R. Vol. Ill, p. 125

Cine Sports Magazine No. 1

OOO

G.B.I.

_

_

_

939

Despatched 11/42

Cine Spurts Magazine No. 2

OOO

G.B.I.

930

Despatched 12/42

Civil Defence Ambulance

CFL I O

G.B.S.S.

F. Searle

1/43

1,863

< lamping Potatoes

CFL I O

Realist

(F. Sainsbury)

(Margaret
Thompson)
J. Holmes

—

11/42

693

R. Vol. HI, p. 125

Coastal Command

T O

Crown

I. Dairy mple

11/42

-

6,593

Home T. distribution by Paramount. R. Vol. IU,
p. 152

Common Cause

CFL NT

Verity

Max Munden\

H. Cass

_

1/43

1,007

D. de MarneyJ

( oiitrol Room

CFL NT O

Shell

E. Anstey

G. Bell

1/43

2,076

R. Vol.m, p. 156

Day That Saved the World, The

5-M O

Crown

(I. Dalrymple)

8/42

846

1 ihr.irv compilation

Dockers

5-M O

Realist

J. Taylor

F. Sainsbury

7/42

670

R. Vol. Ill, p. 100

Dustbin Parade

CFL 5-M O

Realist Halas

Bachelor

Paramount

(J. Taylor)

—

10/42

2/43

493

Assoc. Producer: E. Anstey (Cartoon)

1 mpnss Stadium

OOO

_

_

_

_

1,250

Ed. by Spectator for U.S.S.R. only. Despd. 10/42

j

Essential Jobs

CFL 5-M O

Paul Rotha Prods

. D. Alexander

J. Page

8/42

12/42

550

R. Vol. Ill, p. 113

Feeding Your Hens in Wartime

CFL I O

Films of G.B.

A.Buchanan

1/43

978

Assoc. Producer: E. Anstey

First Aid Post

CFL I O

G.B.S.S.

F. Searle

1/43

1,232

Free House

5-M W

Verity

S. Box \
M. Mundenj

H. Cass

8/42

633

Freedom of Aberfeldy

OO

A. Harper

925

Despatched 2/43

Garden Tools

CFL I

Realist

(F. Sainsbury)

Margaret
Thompson
J. Chambers

—

1/43

1,209

Assoc. Producer: E. Anstey

< .ic :ii Harvest, The

CFL 5-M O

Paul Rotha Prods

P. Rotha

11/42

2/43

650

Assoc. Producer: E. Anstey

II. M.S. King George V

CFL NT O

(Rayd. Elton)

10/42

1,392

K \.d III. p. 125

lions, in London, A

CFL OO

Paramount

1/43

781

Despatched 8 42. R. Vol. in. p. 125

Indians in Action

OOO

' . Ilii- -ilI Despatch

861

Ncwsreel compilation. Despatched >' 42

:

Killed or he Killed

CFL NT O

Realist

(J. Taylor)

1/43

1,644

R. Vol. IV, p. 165

•

Letter from Ulster, A

T O

Crown

(I. Dalrymple)

B. Hurst

2/43

—

2,910

Made with co-operation of U.S. Forces in
Britain. Home T. distribution by M.G.M.

■

1 iK llegins Again

CFL NT O

Paul Rotha Prods.

(P. Rotha)

D. Alexander

10/42

1,799

1 ill Your Head Comrade

CFL O

Spectator

B. Wright

M. Hankinson

12/42

3/43

1,316

"Into Battle, No. 1." R. Vol. IV, p. 165

:

Malta Convoy

CFL OO

Movietone

1/43

1,180

Newsreel compilation

Malta G.C.

T O

Crown & Army
Film Unit

-

-

1/43

1,821

Compilation. Home T. distribution by Warners.
Music h\ Sir Arnold Bav. Commentary spoken by

Model Procedure for Water

Laurence Olivier. R. Vol. IV, p 170

-

Relaying

CFL I O

Shell

E. Anstey

Kay Mander

10/42

2.039

National lire Service Mobilising

CFL I O

Shell

E. Anstey

Kay Mander

10/42

2.030

R Vol. III. p. 125

Despatched 8/42

Ncwloiindlandcrs at War

OOO

Pathe

894

Ne» Bomb, A

CFL 5-M O

Shell

E. Anstey

N. Bell

9/42

11/42

684

R Vol 111, p. 125

Nose Has It, The

CFL 5-M O

Gainsborough

(E. Black)

V. Guest

9/42

1/43

725

R. Vol. III. p. 152

One Company

Gaumont British

(E. Black)

J. Harlow

1/43

3,844

Recruiting film, N.F. distriburion

Order of Lenin

OO

Spectator

M. Hankinson

G. Gunn

975

Despatched 1 43

Raid on France

OOO

Ealing

M. Balcon

T. Dickinson

—

—

1,916

Adaptation oflast 2 reels of Next ol Kin. U.S.S.R.

only. Despatched 12 42

Newsreel compln. U.S.S.R. only. Despatched 9/42

Report from Britain

OOO

Movietone

(G. Sanger)

_

_

_

3,242

Russian Lesson

OOO

/"Strand
V Movietone

A. Shaw

I. Moffat

= }

1,162

Edited by Spectator. U.S.S.R. only. Despatched

(.reelings to Soviet SchoolcbUd

9/42

Shock Troops

OOO

Spectator

959

Newsreel compilation. Despatched 11/42

Sky Ciant

CFL NT O

Movietone

1/43

926

Newsreel compilation.

Speed up on Stirlings

CFL NT O

Shell

E. Anstey

G Tharpe

1/43

1,708

R. Vol III, p. 151

Spring on the Farm

CFL NT O

R Keene

1/43

1,338

Assoc. Prodr. : E Anstey. R. Vol. Ill, p. 151

Twelve Davs

CFL NT O

Menon Park

C. Musk

9/42

1,084

R. Vol. Ill, p. 113

1 mod Nations, The

OOO

Crown

fl. Dalrymple)

954

Technicolor. Despatched 8/42. R. Vol. Ill, p. 113

Wales

CFL NT

Strand

D. Taylor

J. Eldridge

—

1/43

1,051

Adapted from a British Council him of the same

name. R. Vol. III. p. 152

Home T. Distributed by Pathe. R. Vol. Ill, p. 151 1

We Sail at Midnight

T O

Crown

I. Dalrymple

J. Spiro

2/43

_

2,409

We Speak to India

OOO

Pub. Rel.

—

R. Massingham

—

—

980

Assoc. Producer: A Shaw. Despatched 9 42.
R. Vol. Ill, p. 130

Women away from Home

CFL NT O

Spectator

(M. Hankinson) G. Gunn

_

9/42

943

Worker and Warfront No. 2~\
Worker and Warfront No. 3 \
Worker and Warfront No. 4 J

f 7/42
< H/42
I 1/43

880

Items produced by various units. Edited hy Paul

CFL NT O

1,000 ■> Rotha Productions. R. Vol. III. p. 125 (No. 2);

998

L\ol l\. p. lo5 <3); Vol. IV, p. 166(4)

Young Farmers

CFL NT O

Strand

D. Taylor

J. Eldridge

1/43

1,282

Assoc. Prodr: E. Anstey. R. Vol. UI, p. 152

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1943

2. NEWSREEL TRAILERS

(Average Length 125ft.)

TITLE OR T UK MI-

PRODUCTION UNIT

GOV. DEPT. CONCERNED RELEASE DATE

I Diphtheria II

Collapsible Mi'l

Be Prepared

Railingsf

Chicken Feed

Service Women

The Five Inch Bather

The Postman Always Rings at Christmas

The Magician

Sensible Buying

Water Pipes

Eyes on the Target

The Way to his Heart (with The Aspidist

Little Annie's Rag-Book (Puppet film)
Is Your Journev Really Necessary?
Hogsnorton (with Gillie Potter)

Paul Rotha Productions

J. Chambers)

Health

Spectator

J. Ellitt)

War Transport

Spectator

Supply

Pathe

L. Behr)

G.P.O.

Paul Rotha Productions

J. Chambers)

Health

Realist

L. Lye)

Supply

Film Traders

(, Hollering)

Health

Paul Rotha Productions

S. Eisler)

Labour

Paul Rotha Productions

P. Pickering)

NKn.Higal & McKendrick

MsDoug.il \ McKendrick) 1 ,.,,d

Spectator

G.Gunn)

War Transport

PuliliLiiv Pictures

A. Hopkins)

B. Luff)

PuMiuu IVlurcs

A. Hopkins)

M.O.I.

Public Relationship

R. Massingh.ini)

Nettlefolds

G. Shurley)

G.P.O.

PaulRotha Productions

B. Cooper)

Fuel and Power

Paul Rotha Productions

P. Hennessev )

Film Traders

G. Hollering)

Health

Film Traders

G. Hollering)

Strand

D. Taylor)

Verity

K. Annakin)

M.O.I.

Paul Rotha Productions

1 Br.idsh.iw)

Supply

Spectator

G.Gunn)

War Transport

Strand

D.Taylor)

Fuel and Power

21 <) 42

S 10 42

22 10 42

/10/42

21/12 42
24/12/42
30 12 42
31/12/42

3. COLONIAL FILM UNIT PRODUCTIONS

Feeding the Army (Silent)
R.A.F. Rescue Boats (Silent)
These are Mobile Canteens i Silent)
Return of the Emperor (Silent)
Take Cover (Silent)

4. ACQUIRED FILMS

ARMY FILM UNIT

(Front Line Camera)

See "Twenty-One Miles"

Street Fighting

CFL O

A.F.U.

A.F.U.

(H. Stewart)

Tank Battle

T O

A.F.U.

A.F.U.

—

—

12/42

Troopship

CFL 5-M O

A.F.U.

A.F.U.

_

7/42

Twenty One Miles

CFL 5-M O

A.F.U.

A.F.U.

-

(H. Watt)

8/42

Via Persia

CFL 5-M O

A.F.U.

A.F.U.

10/42

CANADA

Motor Cycle Training

5-M O

Canadian Army
Film Unit

C.A.F.U.

-

(J. McDougal)

10/42

Battle for Oil

C.F.L.

Nat. Film Board

N.F.B.

Strategy of Metals

C.F.L.

Nat. Film Board

N.F.B.

BRITISH COUNCIL

Fishermen of England

OOO

British Council

Spectator

(I. Scott)

I. Scott

—

Good Value

OOO

British Council

Realist

—

H. Nieter

-

I.C.I.

Growing Good Potatoes

CFL

Plant Protection

Strand

D. Taylor

R. Bond

Harvest Shall Come, The

CFL

I.C.I.

B. Wright

M. Anderson

INDIA

Chiang Kai Shek in India

5-M O

Films Advisory
Board

Indian Film
Unit

-

-

9/42

MISCELLANEOUS

According to Plan

CFL O

Movietone

Children's Story

CFL

Films of Scot.
Committee

Strand

S. Legg

A. Shaw

_

Empire Aid

5-M O

Movietone

8/42

Face of Scotland

CFL

Films of Scot.
M°oTiTt'onee

Realist

—

B. Wright

Proof Positive

CFL O

Movietone

(G. Sanger)

_

_

They Made the Land

CFL

Films of Scot.
G?re G. eC

G.B.I.

—

Mary Field

—

This is Our Heritage

CFL

R. Calvert

_

Wealth of a Nation

CFL

Films of Scot.

Scottish Films

S. Legg

D. Alexander

—

POLAND

Poland's New Front

R.A.F.
Id the Drink

CFL

Polish Governt.

Polish F.U.

—

—

—

CFL

Air Ministry

Nettlefolds

(E. Roy)

(H. Hughes)

_

Operational Height
America Moves her Japs

T

R.A.F.F.U.

R.A.F. F.U.

—

3/43

5-M O W

U.S. Governm't

Office of War

_

_

10/42

] Henry Browne Farmer

CFL

U.S. Governm't

Dept. of Agnc

R. Barlow

Home on the Range

CFL

T. Hogan

On the Farm

CFL

Harmon Found.

Har. Foundn.

—

—

—

1,205 R. Vol. Ill, p. 151

1,524 Home I\ distribution In Anglo-American
R. Vol. IV, p. 166

686 R. Vol. Ill, p. 100

720 A longer version (1.025 ft.) for distribu-
tion overseas. R. Vol. Ill, p. 113, under
the title: "Front Line Camera"

742 Compilation

693 Produced in Britain. R. Vol. Ill, p. 151

Re-edited for U.S.S.R. by Spectator.
Despatched 9 42

— 395

1/43 1,000

1 ,43 1 ,000

143 20 mm. Silent

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1943

5. ANALYSIS OF FILMS PRODUCED BY THE M.O.I.

General Theatrical Distribution
General N.T. Distribution
Instructional and Training
Ma.nh Overseas
Wholly Overseas
Trailers

Colonial Film Unit\ 35 mm.
Productions / 16 mm.

Acquired 5-Minute Films

• Average length = 200 feet.

FOOTAGE Ol 1 11. MS

25,113

9,228
7,890
10,280

59,045
1,316

48,407
72,892
44,911
16.383

-

3,100
1,600*

11,093

3,000*

22,944
4,250

37,137
8,850

3,130

59,688

66,604

159,519

288,941

Z

11,919

7,836

11,287

944

»%}

-

1,135

6,657

11,353

19,145

t Average length = 125 feet.

General N.T. Distribution
Instructional and Training
Mainly overseas
Wholly Overseas

Total
Colonial Film Unit Produc
Acquired 5-Minute Films
* Includes four 16 mm. ]

NUMBER OF FILMS

2

72

86

160

320

-

8

10

16*

34

-

2

10

17

29

6. ANALYSIS OF FILMS

ACQUIRED

BY THE M.O.I.

SOURCE

1940* 1941

1942 TOTALS FOR 1940, 1941 COMB,
and 1942 TOTAL

C.F.L. 5-M O.O.O. C.F.L. 5-M

O.O.O. C.F.L. 5-M T. O.O.O. C.F.L. 5-M T. O.O.O.

Africa

2 — —

1 1

1

1

_ _ _

4 1—1

6

A.F.U.

2 3

3

6 — —

5 9 — —

Australia and New Zealand

2 2

1

3 2 — —

5

B.C.G.A.

6 — —

7 — — —

4 —

— — 2

5 — — 3

8

Cadbury

2 —

3 — — —

3

2 —

5

2t

11 2 — 2

15

Cen. Council for Health Educatio

I.C.I.

India

n —

2 —

—

—

2 — — —

_ _ _

6 1

2.

2 _ 1

6 3 — 1

10

London Fire Brigade

6

6 — — —

6

4 — 1

14 1

2

12

30 2 — 3

35

National Sayings

— 2 —

3 — —

6

Poland
R.A.F.

z z z

2

- "7

4 1 — —
1 — 1 —

5
2

Shell

U.S.A.

2 — —

1 z

~

15

-

15 1 — —

4

16

(March of Time)

2 — —

3 —

2

7

U.S.S.R.

_ _ _

5 1

-

4

1 — — 9 2

11

NOTES OF THE MONTH (Cont.)

obtained free of charge and many are available in the 16 mm. size.
The total number of films listed is 117.

Trailers

as soon as stock rationing began to be discussed, it occurred to
many people that one obvious and easy way of saving celluloid
would be to abolish the screen trailer, that advertising snippet
which extols in hysterical language and feverish pictures the merits
of next week's film. There was one body, however, which although
perhaps finding the method obvious, found it far from easy. National
Screen Service makes trailers for all 28 film producing companies
operating in this country and distributes between 5,500 and 6,000
trailers each week to nearly 4,000 cinemas. National Screen Service
appears to feel considerable anxiety in the matter of stock saving
and communicated the foregoing statistics to Mr. Paul Trench, film
critic of the Evening Standard, together with much other information
apparently designed to prove that trailer making was an important
national industry with which we would dispense at our peril. After
pointing out that it has been suggested that a single slide could be
substituted for the trailer, Mr. Trench says : "The issue, however, is
not quite so simple as that. National Screen Service, the firm which
makes feature film trailers, is also producing and distributing
Government-sponsored trailers. It is employed by the Ministry of
Information, Ministry of Food, National Savings Committee, Red
Cross, and so on. If National Screen Service ceased to issue trailers,
the Government would lose a valued source of propaganda, That
is one argument for retaining trailers."

\

The reason why the production of feature film trailers must r& m
main inseparable from such Government work as is undertaken bj M
National Screen Service is not made clear, but we are left to assume k
that the reason is a good one and Mr. Trench continues: — "The p
Managing Director of National Screen Service is Mr. Paul Kimber k
ley. Mr. Kimberley is also Director of Army Kinematography h
which means that he is in charge of production of all Army training s :
films. Mr. Kimberley may find himself forced to use less celluloic r
for Service films, although his private film business may not be J?"
affected."

Further light is thrown on the situation by the following extrac L
from the Kinematograph Weekly's report of the Cinematograph b
Exhibitors' Association's recent General Council meeting:

F. A. Prior drew attention to the proposed cutting out o P
advertisement films. He realised that in war time all went by th< p
board, but he was concerned at dismissing without considera J
tion the suggestion that trailers should be discontinued alto F
gether. It was an easy thing to say that they could be doni .
without, but it should not be forgotten that if this were don< I?
someone would have to go right out of business. As an import L
ant industry the trade should make a large sacrifice as i h,
contribution to keep in business those who had the Trade': h
support before the war.

The General Secretary pointed out that economies in th« hi
direction of advertisement films and trailers would be far to< *-
insignificant to take into account and there was no intention o
cutting these out.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1943

New Documentary Films cont.

These Are the Men.. Into Battle No. 4. Strand.
Production: Donald Taylor. Devised and compiled
by Alan Osbiston and Dylan Thomas. Com-
mentators: J. McKechnie and Brian Herbert.
M.O.I. 12 mins.
I Subject: These Are the Men takes an abbreviated
) version of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will
and superimposes upon the Nuremberg speeches
of the Nazi leaders a set of orations in English in
which Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, Streicher and
Hess report their sins and mistakes as frankly as
if they were victims of one of those notorious

fession drugs".
Treatment: The commentary and speeches are in
verse by Dylan Thomas (published in the last
issue of D.N.L.) The film opens with scenes of
ordinary decent men going about their day-to-
day work. These are "the makers, the workers,
the bakers". In a superimposition sequence we
see these peaceful men plunged into the horrors
of war. A voice cries out to know who was
responsible for this crime.

The scene changes to the long Niiremburg
vista of brown-shirts and banners. Three tiny
figures approach the rostrum. The shot is held so
that the suspense becomes almost intolerable.
Then they move up to the microphones and
r begins the speeches. "We are the men,"
he shouts.

He describes his early frustrated life, his hatred
of Jews and socialists, his belief in the power of
blood. The other leaders follow, each to profess
his sadistic faith. The speeches are punctuated
by the regimented cries of the crowd and
rhythmical screams of "Sieg Heil!" The mass
shouting and the picture is untouched and re-
mains exactly as it was in the original film ; only
the superimposed English voices have been
brought up to date and now carry the fully
matured horror of the pre-war Nazi festival.
Now we know for certain where it was all leading.
At the end of the film, the narrator says that
many of the eager young Germans whom we see
rc worshipping their Fiihrer may in time be purged
b) and cured and become capable of serving man-
ia kind. But their leaders, the narrator shouts,
"Can never, never be forgiven."
Alan Osbiston's editing is brilliant. He has
pty used suspense in a masterly way and has brought
in the animal Nazi war cries at just those
moments when they will give a sharp point of
horror, irony, even of bitter comedy to the
whole fantastic pageant. Dylan Thomas's verse
frequently cuts like a knife into the pompously
U bestial affectations of this race of supermen. The
rap verse which accompanies the ordinary peaceful
citizens of the world is, however, less effective,
perhaps because the poet has too often found
himself obliged to fall back upon an over-
conventional democratic line. His democrats are
over-passive in spirit to the point of becoming
'" puny in moral stature.
Propaganda value: Excellent. Less sophisticated
audiences will, however, need to have their wits
pflj about them. They have to cope simultaneously
with sensational pictures, English voices speaking
verse, and faint German voices emanating from
speakers whose neuroticisms frequently distract
, J all attention from the sound. Yet audiences will
make the effort and find it repaid. In its insistence
on the essential anti-semitic and anti-socialist
character of German leadership, the film strikes
blow for clear thinking about the true nature of
(continued on page 196)

STRAND FILMS

MAKERS OF DOCUMENTARY
FILMS SINCE 1934

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR - MANAGING DIRECTOR
ALEXANDER SHAW - DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTIONS

1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l.

NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1943

These Are the Men (cont.)

the war — and strikes a blow, therefore, for clear
thinking about what must be the nature of our
war aims, if the sacrifice of blood is to be worth
while. The high level of intense feeling is main-
tained until almost the very end, but the last few
feet fall a little flat. The shouting voice affirming
that the Nazi leaders can never be forgiven
(shouting with a suspicion of hysteria rather
than with confident determination) fails to strike
the right finishing note. Most ordinary people
have no intention of forgiving Hitler, Goebbels,
Goering, Streicher or Hess, and they will be
somewhat bewildered to find the Government
regarding it as a matter worth announcing so
excitedly.

Correspondence

TO THE EDITOR,

Dear Sir,

I see in the Documentary News Letter of
November/December, 1942, there is an article
entitled "U.S. Dollar Winning Battle to Control
British Film Industry", in which it is mentioned
that Ealing Studios are "already hitched to the
Americans".

I am asked to tell you that your contributor is
completely misinformed in this particular; this
Company is absolutely independent and has
never used any funds for production other than
their own resources. In this instance, and perhaps
in this rare instance, it may be said that the
Americans concerned have been our servants
and not we theirs. The United Artists franchise
agreement is such that United Artists is employed
by the producers for the purpose of international
distribution and United Artists never, under any
circumstances, participate in production finance.
In any case our arrangements with them are
ending and we are reverting to the use of a
Company which we own and control, for the
distribution of our films.

As we take a pride in our independent position
at Ealing, I would be thankful if you would
publish tins correction.

Yours faithfully,

CAVALCANTI

P.S. — Whilst on the subject of accuracy, may
I make another point on behalf of Michael
Balcon? You have named him as the producer
of a food short made in these studios. Mr.
Balcon did not produce this film, but loaned
Studio space here for it to be produced, after
protesting in vain that it should not be made.

A REPLY

We are glad to hear from Cavalcanti that
Ealing Studios are not tied to the American
financiers. For some years past, as they must
admit, all their films have been released through
United Artists, a wholly American company.
Knowing the control that distributors normally
exercise over producers, it was only fair to
assume, at the date of writing, that the films
being made at Ealing Studios were at the dicta-
tion of United Artists. However, we are happy to
learn that Ealing Studios in common with the
pnly other independent producers in this country,
have once more returned to their own distribu-
tion agency.

EDITORIAL BOARD

No. 11

THE ASS AND
THE LAP-DOG

There was an Ass and a Lap-dog that belonged to the
same master. The Ass was tied up in the stable, and
had plenty of corn and hay to eat, and was as well off
as an Ass could be. The little dog was always sporting
and gambolling about, caressing and fawning upon his
master in a thousand amusing ways, so that he became
a great favourite, and was permitted to He in his master's
lap. The Ass, indeed, had enough to do; he was drawing
wood all day, and had to take his turn at the mill at
night. But while he grieved over his own lot, it galled
him more to see the Lap-dog living in such ease and
luxury; so thinking that if he acted a like part to his
master, he should fare the same, he broke one day from
his halter, and rushing into the hall began to kick and
prance about in the strangest fashion; then swishing
his tail and mimicking the frolics of the favourite,
he upset the table where his master was at dinner,
breaking it in two and smashing all the crockery; nor
would he leave off till he jumped upon his master, and
pawed him with his rough-shod feet. The servants,
seeing their master in no little danger, thought it was
now high time to interfere, and having released him from
the Ass's caresses, they so belaboured the silly creature
with sticks and staves, that he never got up again; and
breathed his last.

REALIST FILM UNIT

47 OXFORD STREET, W. 1

Telephone: GERRARD 1958

DOCUMENTARY

CONTENTS

FILMS FOR RE-OCTUPIED EUROPE
NOTES OF THE MONTH

FILM OF THE MON

VOL 4 NO. 4

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON Wl

AS OTHERS SEE US

"■^W"7"hat sort of people do they think we are," Mr. Churchill once

W asked. He was talking about our enemies but it is a question
we might well ask ourselves about our friends. We know what sort
of people we are but if people in other countries have different
ideas we have only ourselves to blame. And if, as is even more
probable, they haven't the faintest idea what we are like, so much
the worse for us in the long run.

For many years now the British Council has been one of the chief
organisations entrusted with the job of selling Britain abroad.
To further this end they have a department which supervises the
making of films to draw attention to British ideals and achievements
as well as to British products. Their films are shown all over the
Empire and also in neutral countries. Direct war propaganda is
not their job but propaganda for the indestructible qualities of
Britain is presumably their aim. This means that they must evoke
interest in the British way of life and present a background picture
which will arouse a sympathetic and fellow-feeling for us in foreign
minds.

Now this is an important job because it builds for the future.
After a war, good feelings between nations are seldom very evident
and yet there is never a time when good feelings are more needed.
Therefore any work which helps create international understanding
is of vital importance.

Recently the British Council showed a programme of films.
Since they showed them to the Press one supposes that these films
were their latest and best. This programme was part of their picture
of Britain and a picture presumably intended to make people
labroad have good instead of bad thoughts about us. There were five
films and their titles were The Royal Mile, St. Pauls, London 1942,
Little Ships, Power on the Land. Now let us look at this picture of
us and our country which is being built up with great care and
expense to show to our potential friends in the Argentine, Sweden,
Spain and other countries.

The Royal Mile is a film about Edinburgh, or rather about that
part of it which lies between Holyrood Palace and Edinburgh Castle.
This film tells nobody anything except that there are quite a lot of
Allied soldiers in that city. There are to be sure, many references
to Mary, Queen of Scots, but the historical side of the film is so
garbled that it is practically impossible to know or care what it is
all about. Part of the commentary is spoken as if by a guide, and
tnybody who has memories of visiting any monument with one of
these masters of monotonous patter will know exactly how packed
with irrelevancies the whole film is.

The next film brings us to London, to another monument, and
really the journey wasn't necessary. For we arrive at St. Paul's

and although this is admittedly a noble edifice, it is difficult to see
just what emotion it is intended to evoke in the foreign mind.
Once again we are treated to some potted history, are shown a few
tombs and have a quick look round the interior. Then comes the
great fire raid and we see St. Paul's amidst the flaming city. The
film whisks us to Fleet Street on the morning after the raid to see
the papers pouring out of the presses and we are told, complacently,
that a sigh of relief ran round the world when the people read the
news that St. Paul's was saved. We are sure that everyone was
very glad that St. Paul's was not destroyed but the world had
other things to think about at that time.

London 1942, the next film, came nearest to presenting any sort
of picture that we should ever want to look at. It has already been
reviewed in this paper and although it didn't say anything very
much, it did show a picture of which one could say that this is what
London looked like in 1942.

Little Ships started off with a lot of nonsense about the sun rising
and looking at the same scene that it had for the last three hundred
years.

It was all about those old craftsmen who build wooden boats.
Admittedly the film ended with the rescue of a British airman by
one of the launches they build? but there was a strong feeling of
nostalgia for the Armada all the way through.

Power on the Land was a surprise ending to a regrettably unsur-
prising programme. It consisted of a series of Technicolor shots of
modern agricultural machines and it did succeed in suggesting
some of the progress which is taking place in British agriculture.

Although they were all competently shot, only one of the films
can be said to have been made with any feeling that people were
going to sit and look and listen. They lacked all sense of persuasion
and had the same impact as if bundles of picture postcards had been
flung at our heads. Their total message seemed to be that we have
some historic buildings, that things look pretty much as they have
done for several hundred years and that everybody ought to be jolly
well interested because this is Britain. And yet one could make films
which would show the very real importance of St. Pauls as a symbol,
the emotional significance of Edinburgh and the importance of a
tradition of craftsmanship to any country which makes anything
at all. In fact one could make films about Britain.

Thoughts of St. Peter's, Rome, do not make us feel any better
about Italy to-day neither does the fact that the Germans are brilliant
makers of children's toys cause us to shed a sympathetic tear. People
are a country's real ambassadors, people and ideas. We submit this
thought to the British Council, whose films the other day showed
neither.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 4 1943

FILMS FOR RE-OCCUPIED EUROPE

When the day comes for the victorious Allies to march into
Europe they will uncover as they go many new problems of
propaganda and civic instruction. It has long been obvious that the
film will have a special and a vital part to play in bringing back
political sanity and economic stability to the freed lands. It can
help in the problem of physical reconstruction, the task of feeding,
clothing and rehousing millions of people; but even more important,
if men are to go forward with hope in their hearts, is the need to
show that a new spirit has come to Europe. The contribution of
the film, therefore, can be two-fold, covering both physical and
spiritual needs. In the first category will come films indicating the
techniques of agriculture, food distribution, public hygiene, housing,
etc., which are most appropriate to each re-occupied country. In
the second category will come films to show what form of govern-
ment it is proposed immediately to set up, what are the ideals of
this government and what future is visualised for the country
concerned, for the continent of Europe and for the world as a whole.

Some of the films in the first, the instructional, category are
already in existence in this country and all that is needed is the
preparation of foreign language versions. This is especially true of
agricultural films. Some of those recently made in this country for
the instruction of farm workers may show methods unsuitable for
use overseas, but there are many suitable for export. A specially
prepared series of agricultural films will, however, be needed to
show how food shortages may be reduced by growing new crops
appropriate to special local problems of nutrition. We have a few
films on public health of which useful foreign versions could be
made and circulated, but the number is woefully small. It is not too
early to be making a series of films which will show how best to
tackle coming continental problems of malnutrition and actual
starvation. There must be films to show the medical profession and
the general public how to face the increasing incidence of deficiency
and nervous diseases; how to restore water supply and sanitation
in devastated areas ; how to carry out temporary housing schemes
in devastated areas, employing whatever labour and materials may
be available ; how to compensate with temporary first-aid measures
for an insufficient supply of doctors in areas where casualties are
high or disease rife.

There are many more subjects for instructional films but those
listed above indicate basic needs. Depending on circumstances and
the country concerned there will be many special needs to be met at
short notice. Film production machinery must therefore be flexible
and speedy so that it can adjust itself to whatever conditions may be
found. It must make use, wherever possible, of local technicians
and equipment.

Assess Public Mood

This instructional side of the film's job is much more simple and
straightforward than the propaganda side. In propaganda we are
concerned not only with what films should be shown but how to
show them. It would, for example, be unwise to flood the cinemas
of a re-occupied country with direct propaganda films as soon as
the Allied armies take over. It will be necessary carefully to assess
public mood and not to assume that cinematic demonstrations of
allied power or prescience will necessarily be popular. It is almost
certain that the first instinct of a free people will be to relax. What-
ever their political views they will be little interested in whether or
not the Allies are brave, wise or human. They will in fact be most
likely to believe in our good will if we come bearing lighter and
more frivolous gifts. A wise policy would be to bring back to the
screens of re-occupied and ex-enemy countries those Hollywood
stars whom they will not have seen for so long. Bing Crosby and
Gary Cooper are likely to provide a warmer and more welcome
approach to sanity than a documentary dissertation on the Atlantic

Charter. With feature films (not necessarily new ones) the backbone
of the new democratic programmes can be built. During this phase
we shall be trying to create basic goodwill. And let us not assume
that we shall everywhere find goodwill without working for it. It
would be fatal to forget that not all the peoples we are to free from
bondage will immediately prove anti-fascist — in the enemy countries
we should be prepared to find ourselves faced, even after the war is
won, by a pro-fascist majority. Such an anticipation may happily
prove unjustified but it will be short-sighted not to prepare to meet
it. Even the anti-fascists coming under our Allied control will not
necessarily be pro-British or pro-American. They may be one or
the other or neither. To our own eyes the crusading sword we bear
may be a glittering weapon of pure virtue, but there will be many
potential allies who will not have forgotten that Britain and the
United States have in the past been associated with selfish imperialistic
policies and who will remember the Anglo-Saxon political morality
of pre-war years. We must never forget that behind us lies the
policy of non-intervention in Spain, the Munich betrayal of Czecho-
slovakia and the earlier abandonments of Abyssinia and China,
Moreover, some of the statesmen responsible for these policies still
hold high office under the British Government and may even
continue to do so when we sweep triumphantly across Europe.
In these circumstances, dare we hope that our good intentions will
be taken at once for granted?

A Purge of Leadership

It may well be that without a purge of Allied leadership our
propaganda in re-occupied Europe is, in any case, doomed to failure.
We have only to look at North Africa to see that reactionary policies
can lead to bitter cynicism not only in the re-occupied territory
but in the Allied countries as well. Propagandists working for the
reconstruction of Europe will find themselves faced with a well-nigh
impossible task if the North African mistake is repeated.

If, however, a propaganda job is to be done behind the advancing
Allied armies then we dare not wait to see what the political situa-
tion will be at the time of victory. Films must be planned, and indeed
made now, and all we can do is to assume that the work of the
propagandists will not be hopelessly handicapped by the machina-
tions of diehard diplomatists.

Clearly, films of fighting must be avoided. We must look forward
not back, avoiding any temptation to present to continental audi-
ences military triumphs of the preceding months which may seem
to contrast with their own forced inactivity. Nor must we remind
them that they owe their salvation to Allied military might. Gratitude
is an emotion on which we will rebuild Europe at our peril. Oui
films must look forward to dignity and decency in the future rathei
than hack to any version of the fable of St. George and the Dragon
If we have won the war our military power and sagacity will be
taken for granted but the question of whether we possess the
power and sagacity necessary to rebuild civilisation will still remain
to be proved. Let us therefore make sure that we send to Europe
a series of lively, warm, unpretentious films which show what we
are doing in Britain and America about building, not simply the
physical structure which the war has shattered, but a new con-
ception of human relationships. Let us have films of people getting
together to plan and carry out undertakings for themselves. Let as
show with films of works committees and other democratic organisa-
tions that the spirit of eager initiative is still alive in the democracies
hoping that from our example a similar spirit may be re-born ir
countries too long subordinated to the Nazi jackboot. Let us show
that even during the war the British people were looking forwarc
to a better post-war world not simply a better post-war Britain
that victory was foreseen as a means to an end, not an end in itself

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 4 1943

Show that there was a time in Britain when the people were as inte-
rested in the Beveridge Report as in the war news. Let all these films
present their arguments in terms of ordinary people living and
working in a community which they are themselves shaping. It will
be clear that the people of Britain are not very different from those
of other countries and this is the surest foundation on which to
build post-war co-operation.

In addition to these films of the new spirit we must have something
specific to say about the material shape of post-war organisation.
Here the propagandist is in the hands of the statesmen. Unless the
Century of the Common Man has become a real thing in our minds
on the day of victory we have no message for Europe that amounts
to more than a jumble of platitudes. At that time it will become
clear whether the war was indeed worth winning. Re-occupied
Europe will become the touchstone by which we will be able to tell
whether our post-war aims are shadow or substance.

It is true that even without films dealing with fundamental
political principles in the post-war world we can nevertheless show
the peoples what form of civil and international machinery there

is to be and who is to operate it. Such films must be made in any
case, but unless they are backed by films of fundamental principles
they will be merely ad hoc and of no permanent consequence.

All that has gone before has been written on the assumption that
the United Nations will be moving forward side by side with a
commonly agreed policy for Europe. It must be recognised that at
present no adequate agreement is within sight of achievement. If
at the end of the war the Allies are following separate lines of
policy then inevitably and disastrously each will make its own propa-
ganda in the countries which it can seize and place under its own
domination. Should this situation arise the task of any honest propa-
gandist will necessarily be to work towards a conformity of principle
between the Allies. Whether he will command sufficient strength to
do so remains to be seen. Clearly it is the propagandist's vital task
to strive towards unity of policy now while post-war plans are
being made, conscious that the alternative will be to find himself
on the day of victory concerned with the parochial differences of
Giraud and de Gaulle, Molotoff and Cordell Hull, ( hiang Kai Shek
and Eden. And then the problem will be one, not of post-war
propaganda, but of propaganda between this war and the next.

NOTES OF THE MONTH

The Films Division and the Industry

in the cinemas we have lately observed what looks suspiciously
like competition between the Films Division of the Ministry of
Information and the commercial end of the industry. It may be
only by chance that Nine Men from Ealing and the official Libyan
film Desert Victory arrived on the screen within a couple of weeks
of each other; it may be by chance too, that Fires Were Started
from Crown and The Bells Go Down from Ealing (both about the
A.F.S. in the blitz) are pre-released in the West End no more than
a fortnight apart ; but when one hears rumours of an official sub-
marine picture racing for completion neck and neck with a com-
mercial film on the same subject, the innocent observer may be
forgiven for wondering if design as well as accident may not be at
work. There are, of course, a number of possible explanations ; but
even if a production overlap is unavoidable — and frankly we do
not see why it need be — surely when two feature films have been
made on the same subject it should be a fairly simple matter to
arrange that an interval elapse between the dates of their release.
It is not simply a matter of commercial advantage and disadvantage.
We are not concerned with whether overlapping at the box-office
means decreased revenue for either party. A much more serious
matter is the fortuitous distortion of propaganda emphases which
may be caused by the plugging of one particular aspect of the war
effort at the inevitable expense of others. It is obviously wrong if
the public is suddenly made 100 per cent "A.F.S.-conscious" for
no better reason than that two films about fire-fighting happen to
have been completed at the same time.

We suspect that the trouble, like most of our propaganda troubles,
is due to a reluctance on the part of the M.O.I, to impose any
kind of plan. Officialdom's affection for the ideals of nineteenth
century laissez-faire sometimes appears to tempt it to indulge
in a little commercial competition of its own. Can it be that some
official in the Films Division gets a certain sly satisfaction
from beating commercial producers on the distribution post?
If so it reveals a complete misconception of the duties and functions
of the Films Division. The Director of the Films Division should be
above the commercial battle. It is for him to see that overlaps do
not occur, certainly not to be the cause of them. Has any attempt
been made to consult with the industry on the production and dis-
tribution of propaganda films so that complete co-ordination of
official and commercial production and distribution can be
d? Is there any reason to suppose that the industry would be
villing to co-operate in such planning? It is surely in everyone's

interests that production and distribution should not be chaotic
and it is certainly the job of the M.O.I, to see that the stream of
propaganda, from whatever source, is regulated and flows smoothly
and evenly into the right channels.

Look at the British Empire

Canada, New Zealand, South Africa. Australia and India have all
accepted the necessity of using the film as a method of telling the
world about themselves and their war effort. Films or film material
are received from all these countries but some of them lag behind
the others in their appreciation of the necessity for the quality of
the film to be good. Films cost money and manpower, films are
considered an important propaganda weapon. To make a first class
cameraman out of a beginner takes years; but to make a beginner
into a competent shooter does not take more than a matter of
months. If he has been a still cameraman before, the process is
even quicker. It ought to be possible for Britain and America to
invite a number of the war film-makers of the Empire to visit them
for a concentrated course in practical cinematography. The benefits
of such a scheme would be out of all proportion to the time and
trouble necessary to put it into action. It could be done on an
exchange basis so that no gaps in production need be caused. It
may sound as though such an idea would be too difficult to carry
out in the middle of a war. This is not necessarily true. It's surprising
the number of people who manage to get about, many of them, not
least some financial Tycoons of the movie world, without any good
reason.

it'll be all right on the night

It will read better when we have a fuller treatment

The shooting script will smooth that over

It will look different when you see it on the screen

We can cut away from that

A montage sequence will make all the ditference

But wait till you hear it with the music

It will look better when it's cut down

The opticals will smooth that out

There's nothing like a show copy for really judging a film

Wait till you see it in a proper cinema

It's not really the sort of film the critics ever like

We didn't make it for the West End

Well anyway its bound to make its cost nowadays

After all, old man. the treatment was pretty stinking, wasn't it?

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 4 1943

FILM OF THE MONTH

"Fires Were Started9'

Fires Were Staited Production: Crown.
Direction: Humphrey Jennings. Camera:
C. Pennington-Richards. Sets: Edward
Carrick. Music: William Alvvyn. One hour.
M.O.I.

Who would have thought that a film about
the blitz could seem timely and important
now? It is the great achievement of Fires
II ere Started that you're just as interested
and the film means just as much now as if it
had been made and shown in the middle of
the raids; and it will mean just as much in a
few years' time when the war is over. And
this makes it, with the original Merchant Sea-
men, the best of the Crown films. Films like
Target for Tonight or Coastal Command
concentrated on the day to day routine, the
organisational machinery of their subject.
They were the typical official idea of propa-
ganda, in which a thing like the close liaison
of Admiralty and Coastal Command assumes
a great importance and you have to show an
Admiralty bloke popping out of his office
every few minutes to visit Coastal Command,
though he's got nothing to say when he gets
there, just to prove to the public that they
work closely together. The result is that these
and similar films had a purely ephemeral
how-the-wheels-go-round interest : to-day
they're as dead as mutton. And what is
worse, by concentrating on the organisation,
they make propaganda only for bureaucracy.
With a few small changes (such as different
uniforms) they'd do equally well as German
or Japanese propaganda— intrinsically they
take sides no more than a Bren gun does.
Now it is the great merit of Fires Were
Started that it does take sides, that it is not
afraid to come out with a confession of faith.
Of course there is a certain amount (too
much in fact) of people answering tele-
phones, writing things on blackboards and
moving little coloured discs about, but that's
not what the film is really about ; it's about
men, how they live and how they die, how
they work together on the job and how they
live together off the job. And that will be just
as interesting after the war is over as it is now.

The film is so good that it is a shame to
have to pick holes; but it has bad faults, so
let's get them over with. Writing o\' love,
I). II. Lawrence made a savage attack on
that solid old middle-class philosopher
Benjamin Franklin for giving a lot o\' com-
monsense hints on how to "'use venery".
I awrence's point, and he was perfectly right,
was that love is a thing that exists on its
own, has rights and duties of its own and is
worthwhile tor its own sake; it's debasing it
to "use" it lor some meagre middle-class
end. In the same way Jennings has not been
content to let the men and their job stand

for what they're worth ; he's tried to tie up
their heroism and their decency with the
war effort in the shape of a munitions' ship
leaving the dock safely next morning. Now
there was not the least need to do that.
Jennings did it before in Heart of Britain
when he tried to sew up the cheerfulness
and efficiency of the people we'd seen into
a Whitley leaving to bomb Germany. It
cannot be stated too firmly that people,
their way of life and their qualities, can
safely be left to stand on their own feet —
they don't want this spurious veneer of
war-time patriotism to provide their justi-
fication for existence. No doubt it was
tenderness for official feelings that led Jen-
nings to make so much of that munitions'
ship, and also to make much of the fact that
the A.F.S. was drawn from all classes, which
is only a snivelling bureaucrat's point. But
Jennings must be held entirely to blame for
the three or four occasions when, with some-
body playing the piano or reading or reciting
poetry (in his worst Words for Battle manner)
he goes all arty for a moment, then after a
nervous glance at the embarrassed audience,
his courage fails him and pretending that he
didn't mean it really he proceeds to take the
mike out of himself.

Real and alive

Never mind, these faults in the end do not
detract from what is the real strength of the
film — the best handling of people on and
off the job that we've seen in any British
film. In spite of a couple of middle-class sore-
thumbs, Jennings has got together as real
and alive a collection of people (Cockneys
mainly) as you could meet with anywhere.
Maybe for the first time we have proper
working-class dialogue on the screen and
dialogue that's really getting there and
meaning something. At a guess, his success
arises from keeping his people together for
days on end, watching them like a lynx and
listening to them like a mass-observer, and
building up the dialogue by rehearsing them
for hours on end. Anyway, whatever he did,
he's certainly got the goods this time.
There's a cheerful ex-taxi driver whose good
humour is based on the fact that he's got
his feet firmly fixed on the ground and
nothing that happens can shake his absolute
command of the job. There's a bald-topped
humourist whose liveliness and practical
joking arc absolutely invincible. And there's
a man whose wile keeps a paper shop, whose
long mock-miserable face, ape-long arms,
and forthright way of putting on his scarf
and pushing off on his bike, are a complete
embodiment of the rough warm strength of
the ( lockney. And there's half a do/en more,
including a sub-officer whose waj of going

on with his men is a perfect pattern of how
to run a job.

Perhaps the nicest thing about the film is
that it shows us for the first time how a job
gets done in England. People who talk
scathingly about the British workman and
think that anyone having a backstretch is
slacking, have no idea how heavy work gets
done — if they do half-an-hour's digging they
tear at the job and end with blistered hands.
They don't understand the slow run-up, the
odd and essential cup of tea, the backchat
and horseplay which go to make up the
rhythm of heavy work, without which it
cannot be done properly. As we watch these
firemen by day, doing their routine chores,
chatting, whistling and tripping each other,
or at night on the job running out the
branches, finding water, getting on the roof,
methodically (it would look slowly to the
ignorant), with complete physical confidence
and control over their job and with a dis-
cipline that comes only from the job itself,
we know we're seeing on the screen for the
first time a true picture of how the English,
the best and quickest workers in the world,
really set about doing a job. And from this
film the A.F.S. with its loose semi-naval
disciplinary set-up, seems (or rather seemed)
an ideal way of organising an important
service.

There are plenty of other nice things in the
film. The men coming to work, one on his
bike, one stopping to pat a horse and so on,
the arrival of the newcomer under the quiz-
zical glances of the men in the yard and a
bucket of water down his trousers to wel-
come him; the little touches of humour like
the man and the dustbin, and perhaps, best
of all, the morning after, with the tired,
scorched, dirty men struggling to i oil up
the branches over piles of rubble and pools
of water, their job nearly over for the
moment, but only the prospect of a day
cleaning up and another night of heat, dirt,
wet and danger before them. As you watch
this film, the certainty comes over you that
it was just these men, running their job and
their lives in just this way, who kept London
from burning to the ground. And then you
read of the new discipline that is being cook-
ed up for the N.F.S., of polished buttons,
belted and buttoned tunics and inspection
before going on to the streets, and you read
stories of the experienced commanders
being replaced by "good disciplinarians",
and you wonder if all this hi-de-hi discipline
is going to be any good at putting the tires
out. Anyway Fires Here Started is a fine
and fruitful record of a way of living and
doing a job that did work and of a discipline
that came from the job itself, the only true
discipline.

Technically the film is well photographed
on the whole, the sets very good, the sound,
except for one or two studio echoes, excel-
lent, but the cutting a bit on the slapdash
side. Its whole purpose is to get the men over;
and that it does magnificently.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 4 1943

No. 12

THE COUNTRY

MAID AND HER

MILK CAN

A Country Maid was walking along with a can of milk
upon her head, when she fell into the following train of
reflections. "The money for which I shall sell this milk
will enable me to increase my stock of eggs to three
hundred. These eggs, allowing for what may prove
addled, and what may be destroyed by vermin, will pro-
duce at least two hundred and fifty chickens. The
chickens will be fit to carry to market just at the time
when poultry is always dear so that by the new year I
cannot fail of having money enough to purchase a new
gown. Green — let me consider — yes, green becomes my
complexion best, and green it shall be. In this dress I
will go to the fair, where all the young fellows will
strive to have me for a partner but no— I shall refuse
every one of them, and with a disdainful toss turn from
them." Transported with this idea, she could not forbear
acting with her head the thought that thus passed in her
mind when down came the can of milk, and all her
imaginary happiness vanished in a moment.

REALIST FILM UNIT

47 OXFORD STREET, W . 1
Telephone: GERRARD 1958

British Films Instruct
New York Gardeners

The following is from a brochure issued
in \. m York by '//<' Museum of Modern

An.

NEW YORKERS who would like to spend a lunch
hour or two learning how to dig. sow, plant,
hedge, ditch, plough and furrow victory gardens
will find very practical instruction on the subject
at the Museum of Modern Art during the next
two weeks. Since the outbreak of war in 1939
the United States has given large quantities of
vegetable seeds to England, which now recipro-
cates by sending to this country ten short
films winch show in the most practical fashion
how to get the maximum value from seeds and
gardens, how to store vegetables for winter, in
fact how to wage a victorious war with the
weapon of food production.

Iris Barry, Curator of the Museum of
Modern Art Film Library, says of the series:
"These are the best instructional films 1 have
seen, well-made and entirely practical vet full
of human interest. Members of the staff of
the Museum — a surprising number of whom
are ardent weekend gardeners themselves —
were so enthusiastic at a special showing that
there seemed no alternative but to make them
available at once to our Museum visitors.

"Apart from their practical value, I suspect
that the films will tend to draw American
audiences into closer sympathy with the
common man and woman of England, shown
coping with the same problems thai confront
us today. One of the most refreshing qualities
of these films is the absence of the so-called
Oxford accent. The commentary is spoken by
plain people with plain voices remarkably
easy on the ear."

The films are as follows: Hon to Dr.;- Hedging,
Sowing and Planting, Stoi rig I. tablet Indoors,
Storing Vegetable < hud ■■.</*. Moie Eggs from
n,ur Hens, Ditching, I Wa) to Plough, Turn of
the Furrow, II inte m th I

In the firs 'I Bin H Dig will

undoubtedly be fo most New Vol ts an eye-
opener on the iiii.kviisuvm! -.uhect of the
proper use of a spade. The amount of footwork
entailed in Sowing and Planting will be quite
a revelation too. More Eggs from Your Hens
goes beyond simple tips on utilizini
scrap of kitchen waste and provides personal
appearances by several hard-working I nglish
backyard biddies.

The second group of films, on farming topics,
makes clear what skill and economy lie at the
root of England's handsome but sturdy hedges,
and gives a forthright lesson on the right way to
drain and ditch a field. Alarmingly calm and
competent land-girls demonstrate efficient
ploughing so that even a greenhorn can under-
stand. Last and best of this group is Winter on
the Farm in which an English farmer answers
the question so often put by his city friends:
"What do you do on the farm in winter-time'.'"
His graphic facts and figures provide an un-
usually intimate and thought-provoking study
of the' economy and management of a typical
small farm. The film also affords a strikingly
beautiful glimpse of rural existence and of its
problems, which prove to be much the same as
for the comparable American farmer.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No 4 1943

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Covering with Affection. Film Advisory Board,
Bombay. Producer: Shantaram. Director: Bhas-
kar Rao. Commentator: A. I. Stalyarkhan.

Subject: Making blankets lor Indian soldiers.
Treatment: It doesn't sound a likely subject, but
it's a competent film. Covering blanket making,
from sheep to soldier, the film manages to pack
in a lot of good shots of" Indian people and their
background. Excellent exterior camera work and
good editing (neither of which are mentioned on
the credits) overcome the defects of the studio
opening and the clever-clever commentary.
Propaganda value: Good We hope to see
many more films of this quality from India.
Starting with last year's batch of films, such as
Changing Face of India and Made in India, there
seems to be a new spirit and vitality in Indian
short film production.

Note: The film is to be re-commentated before
being shown over here.

Debris Tunnelling. Production: Shell Film Unit.
Director: Ray Mander. Camera: W. Suschitzky.
Producer: Edgar Anstey. M.O.I. 19 mins.
Subject: How to get people from under the debris
of bombed buildings by means of a tunnel.
Treatment: One must certainly hand it to the
Shell Unit. Here is a subject tha,t might well have
baffled the toughest director. The process of
tunnelling is long, repetitious and difficult to
understand. Any technical mistake would be
glaringly apparent to the specialised audiences
for whom the film is intended and there was no
place for any dramatic flourishes. But were
Shell and Miss Mander daunted? Of course not.
Nails are driven into wood, wood is driven into
debris, processes are driven into the audience.
I could build a tunnel, you could build a tunnel
and I wouldn't be surprised if the Shell Film
Unit didn't actually build one to see how it went.
It's a nightmare film. Cold, dry and technical
as it is, it borders on the edge of lunacy. The
word debris covers a lot of things and tunnelling
through it means perhaps working through
a cupboard or a sideboard, it involves questions
of what is in drawers because it is obviously
more difficult to tunnel through a cupboard
stuffed with tinned salmon than through one
filled with evening dresses. You are not only
tunnelling through bricks, but through the
sudden broken strata of people's lives. Like
entering a house through the gas oven or finding
yourself in somebody else's bottom drawer.

But why do Shell persist in using amateur
commentators? It's a nice idea of course, but the
voice tends to be that of the Ancient Mariner
instead of Schehere/ade. It is bettei to be be-
guiled than buttonholed.

Propaganda value: Excellent instructional but
they might have told us how long it lakes to build
a tunnel. One never knows when the knowledge
might be good for one's morale.

Stooking and Stacking. Production: Realist

I ilm i mi- Director: Rosanne Hunter. Camera:

A. E. Jeakins. Commentary: Finlav Currie.

M.O.I. 13 mins.

Subject: The importance of good stooking and

stacking and the right way to do it.

Treatment: Ably following in the experienced

footsteps of Miss Thompson, Rosanne Hunter
has turned out yet another of the excellent agri-
cultural film series. The exposition is clear, the
camera work excellent and the subject easily
and unobtrusively well directed. Only once did
there seem to be a lapse and that was when the
commentator, in his rather wee bairn's voice,
was talking of the importance of building the
stocks up to the centre. To the ignorant critic
it looked very definitely as though the men
were doing the opposite and making a depression
in the middle of the stack.

Propaganda value: The film should be invaluable
in teaching new agricultural workers 'how to do
it', and it will perhaps remind old hands of
a thing or two they have forgotten.

Extract from TIME, March 15

At the Front in North Africa (U.S. Signal Corps
— Warner) might be more appropriately entitled
"Darryl Zanuck's War". A Technicolor panor-
ama of the early stages of the North African in-
vasion, it was filmed by 42nd Signal Corps
photographers under Cinemaestro Zanuck's
personal direction. It has all the Zanuck finger-
prints: it is flamboyant, melodramatic, some-
times corny, sometimes hysterical — but never
dull. A pretty picture, it never approaches the
unvarnished realism of the best Nazi or Soviet
war films.

The film covers the North African campaign
comprehensively. It begins with a review of
French and Arab soldiers who greeted the U.S.
troops in Algiers, ends with a front line view of
the first major contact of U.S. and German
forces : a tank battle at Tebourba. There, from a
hilltop that looks little more than a grenade-
throw from the battlefield, the camera watches
a group of Nazi tanks deployed in a small
valley. German cannon, concealed in straw-
thalched sheds fire at approaching U.S. tanks.
Then U.S. artillery takes effect; the Na/i tanks
turn tail (their tails are painted red to identify
them for their own planes). As they crawl away,
one Nazi tank is smacked by a direct hit, spins
helplessly on its tracks.

But the film's most exciting shots are those of
air battles. At the Front has some of the most
detailed close-ups of attacking planes yet seen
on the screen. It shows low-level enemy attacks
so close that bombs can be seen falling from the
bomb bays. Again and again enemy planes,
machine guns spitting, dive head on at the
camera. The camera shows the results: Allied
trucks flaring up in brilliant orange and red
flame, wounded soldiers being picked up. men
milling in shock.

These shots and the sound effects are the best
things in At the Front. But Zanuck, invincibly
Hollywood-minded, tried to dress up the film
with arty shots of tank treads, dawns, sunsets,
and many another ill-placed frippery.

When At the Front reached U.S. cinema
houses. Colonel Zanuck himself was not quite
satisfied. Wrote lie in his log:* "I don't suppose
out war scenes will look as savage or realistic
as those we usually make on the back lot, but
you can't have everything."

* Tunis Expedition (Random House- $2), to be
published next month.

NEWS LETTER

MONTHLY SIXPENCE
VOL. 4 NO. 4, 1943

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

stands for the use of film as a
medium of propaganda and in-
struction in the interests of the
people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of
common people all over the
world.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER

is produced under the auspices
of Film Centre, London, in asso-
ciation with American Film Center,
New York.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Edgar Anstey
Alexander Shaw
Donald Taylor
John Taylor
Basil Wright

Outside contributions will be
welcomed but no fees will be
paid.

We are prepared to deliver from
3 — 50 copies in bulk to Schools,
Film Societies and other organi-
sations.

Owned and published by

FILM CENTRE LTD.
34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON
W.l GERRARD 4253

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 4 1943

Documentary Developments
In America

by Donald Slesillger {from National Board of Review Magazine)

T represent a very minor branch of the motion
■^picture industry. We have no Music Halls, no
Clark Gables ; and none of us was troubled by
the President's §25,000 salary limitation order.
Our audiences create no traffic problem. And
very few States bother to censor what we show.
We can't even claim to be something i
the sun. Rather we are a throwback to first
principles in the cinema, before actors were
used; when the camera's chief function seemed
to be to record, to testify— or as we like to say
now, to document. You will see how really
insignificant we are when I tell you that we used
only some 20 million feet of film last year out
of a billion and a half.

Yet there seems to be some glamour about
our work. Not in the fan magazines — but among
the technicians and creative artist in the industry.
In the last year and a half, dozens of first-rate
Hollywood workers have stopped in my office
to wonder how they could get into documentary
production. Sam Spewack came over to make
documentaries for the Office of War Information
Film Bureau ; Frank Capra is doing it for the
Army, John Ford for the Navy; Robert Riskin
is doing it for our overseas programme; and
Kenneth MacGowan has just completed a docu-
mentary sabbatical with the Co-ordinator of
Inter-American affairs. There are countless
others in the armed forces and in civilian
branches of government. Some are in little
organizations in New York, Chicago, Holly-
wood itself. And with all the irritation of small
budgets, government red tape and sponsors
they seem to be satisfied that what they are doing
is important.

I use these famous names that have glamour
for all of us, because the documentary film has
glamour for them. Although some of them
may one day be, they are not yet leaders in this
new field. Standards are still being set by people
that are relatively unknown — people like Willard
Van Dyke, Henwar Rodakiewicz, Ralph. Sterner
—and soon once again (I hope) Pare Lorentz.
Why is the documentary film and what is
happening to it to-day so fascinating to so
many?

Perhaps a glance at the audiences will give us
a clue. I have said that it was small in comparison
with the one that patronises the theatres. But it
is composed of people who are earnestly using
the film for new experience — new knowledge.
Farmers will travel miles after work to a grange
or village hall to learn about rural electrification
or forest fire control; doctors come to study
new techniques in medicine and surgery; school
. children hear something about the world they
live in; adults study their jobs or their fellow
men. Day after day, night after night, in small
groups of 30 or 40, from 4 to 500 they gather
wherever there is darkness, electricity and a few
chairs. And they often stay after the lights go on
to talk about what they have seen, discuss the
problems presented — even occasionally vote to
do something about it. Making a film for that
kind of audience puts a man in almost personal
contact with the people he is addressing. And
their talk, though he may never hear it. is a

personal response. That is the first fascination of
this field.

The second is its complete freedom of subject
matter. We are not concerned with who will
be entertained or who will be offended. We
neither expect nor want a universal audience for
every film. We are in the position of the writer
or columnist who has something he wants to
say — and a medium in which to say it. So our
first preoccupation is with the world we live in
— and we tell about the parts of that world
we understand or love or hate. The film thus
is a potent means whereby we may say what
we think and feel to others on a direct personal
basis. Of course we don't always think socially,
or clearly. And often we fumble with our
medium. But so do writers and talkers. We are
no better than we are. We have no single
philosophy or co-ordinated social aim any more
than do radio broadcasters. Our common
ground is a medium that is concrete, real,
persuasive.

Those two fascinations have always existed.
But there were problems outside of production
that had to be solved before the documentary
or fact film (and 1 use the term in a broad sense to
include even training) could come into its own.
Resources and drive were lacking and though
we should like to say that we finally furnished
both ourselves, the truth is that Hitler did it for
us. For he created a world situation that made
it imperative for our country to develop to the
full all of our communication resources. The
airplane and the non-theatrical film have jumped
ahead 20 years under the terrific pressure of war.

Distribution has always been a knotty prob-
lem. Facilities existed all over the country,
but they were completely uncoordinated. Under
the leadership of the Film Bureau of the Office
of War Information a lot of loose ends are being
drawn together to make a national non-theatrical
set-up. To aid the Government, and to do their
own pre- and post-war job more effectively, the
State film libraries are building up a vast non-
theatrical co-operative. According to recent
reports these libraries, with the 20,000, mostly
mobile, projectors available to them, reach a
national audience of over 30 million people
who look at films because they want something
other than entertainment. The Army and Navy
show films to millions for training and orienta-
tion. Other millions learn about our war effort
and are trained in techniques of civilian defence
by government films; still others are trained to
do better jobs in industry. We have now reached
a point where a civilian agency upon completion
of a film immediately releases from 500 to 750
prints, and the prints are worked overtime.

We have learned too, that the film is a
common basic language. The Germans used
them to spread fear and hate. We are using them
to develop a common understanding. And we
are sending prints to the remote corners of the
earth— China, India, Egypt, Australia, South
America ; prints of films that try earnestly and
honestly to tell the world our right names.
The war has made an esoteric journalism into
a universal means of communication.

When the war ends we shall have developed

a system of world-wide communication through
the documentary film. And in this country the
main network will probably be in the hands of
the non-profit film lil i tries. This network will
make moderate cost production pay a moderate
profit so that the field will gradually cease to
depend upon government enterprise. I he flexible
mobile distribution will carry films to small
towns and rural areas that do not now have
theatres. This will, of course, be a challenge to
the theatrical part of the motion picture industry
to serve all levels of age, intelligence, economics
and every point of view, instead of the mythical
average it serves now. For if the theatrical motion
picture industry doesn't, the non-theatrical
motion picture industry will find ways of making
production earn its way even if it appeals to
only one section of the population.

There is no reason why the motion picture
industry should not feel the same responsibility
to all the public that the book publishing indus-
try feels. Indeed, if it did it would bring into the
theatres a vast audience that now scarcely ever
attends.

I hope the theatrical section of the movie-
industry will take care of that problem. For, if
I could, I should like to see us remain unambi-
tious and even poor. We are teachers primarily
and what we have to do is too important to
turn aside from now, or after the war is over.
When peace comes we shall share with other
teachers using other media of communication
the tremendous job of educating citizens of the
post-war world. To do that we must concentrate
on our problem, which is first — what to say —
then to whom it must be said, and finally how
it can best be said to many special audiences.
And we must keep our medium free of both
economic and governmental domination so that
the best minds in the country will use it freely
in the interest of the public good.

SIGHT
and
SOUND

SUMMER ISSUE

FILMS IN SWEDEN

A PLEA for D. W. GRIFFITH

CHILDREN'S CINEMA

EIRE

6d.

Published by: The British Film Institute,
4 Great Russell Street, London, W.C.I.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 4 1943

STORY OF A RUSSIAN MOVIE MAN

Filming the Battle for Moscow

From the diary of Feodor Bunimovich

Fr<

th<

"American Cmematographer"

T^or many weeks now we have lived in a car,
*- listening to the purring of ils engine, oc-
casionally verifying whether the spring and lyres
are in good shape. There were three ol us:
cameraman Pavel Kasatkin, driver Pavel Shish-
ko, and myself. We trust our old car despite sev-
eral holes made by mine fragments, a twisted
running hoard, smashed headlights, throbbing
valves. There was not a single instance when
she went back on us.

As if subject to the laws of mimicry, she has
already changed her colouring three times.
Originally black, she became a spotted green.
Then, with the arrival of autumn, Shishko
smeared her with mud and she became grey and
quite invisible on dusty country roads or
amid naked trees. When snow fell she changed
into a white coat. Such are the requirements of
camouflage.

After a two-hour ride we reach the first
village where we stay for the night. In the
morning we proceed into the thick of a forest
where we find a well-equipped hospital. Dr.
Merkulov, head of the surgical division, meets
us with an apology, "I am sorry, but 1 cannot
talk to you now. I haven't slept since yesterday
and there is still a lot of work to do. Decide for
yourselves what you want to him. . . ."

At headquarters we were told that a trench
mortar battery commanded by Semcnets had
tired eighty projectiles during the day, destroying
two enemy machine-gun nests, two dugouts and
a large number of men. Semcnets was somewhere
in tile front detecting the enemy's gun emplace-
ments. The battery was silent. I informed the
commander over the telephone that motion
picture cameramen were visiting the battery.

"Wait a bit," he replied, "we will establish the
enemy position in a moment and then we will
be ready to welcome you."

A little while later the order came for the
battery to open lire on two enemy fortifications.
One shot was lired, which we filmed. Then the
range was somewhat changed and a second l:o
tired. The man in charge of the battery told us.
"That apparently was adjustment fire. In a
moment we will probably open tire from the
whole battery. Get ready. . . ."

We took up advantageous positions for filming
and held the cameras in readiness. Ten minutes
passed. . . . fifteen minutes. . . . No order came
to open (ire. I again rang up the observation
point. The reply was: "Inst two shots fired
destroyed both enemy fortifications. There is
no need for more lire."

.An episode for a nevvsreel was thus quite
abbreviated. It was a success scored ioi the
mortarmen, but it left us nothing to boast of. . . .

The first time we met him was at the front
line. I saw a Red Army man running from the
side o\' the enemy. Now and then he fell. rose,
crawled. He was not wounded why then was
he running from the battlefield?

Only when he got to the trenches and lay
next to me I realised (hat he was a signalman

He looked not more than twenty years of age.
His big blue eyes were naive and his smile shy.
His face and hands were covered with clots of
sticky mud. As he lay near me he tried to regain
his breath as soon as possible, in order to con-
tinue on his way. My questions he answered in
monosyllables and obviously unwillingly. Several
days later, in conversation with Battalion
Commissar Storozh I mentioned the signalman
I had seen.

"Why, that must be Fedoseyev!" exclaimed
Storozh, "he is a wonderful fighter, bold, re-
sourceful, finds his bearings quickly in any
situation and under any conditions. There were
instances when Fedoseyev made his way toward
a tank that had gone far ahead, climbed up from
the rear toward the turret, knocked as had been
previously arranged. The tank crew then trans-
mitted through him all the necessary information.
You and your friends will do the right thing
filming him in action."

In Action

We managed to film Fedoseyev as he was
taking a report from the front line. Shell ex-
plosions did not deter him. In the most dangerous
spots he dropped down and crawled on. His
face was all scratches, and on his brow — despite
a cold, penetrating wind — were visible large
drops of perspiration. We see him running
across a field toward a country road, darting
into the bushes where his motorcycle is hidden.
He starts the machine. His report will be de-
livered on time. . . .

Carrying a white flag of truce a lieutenant
of Yarokhin's brigade and an accompanying
Red Army man crossed the front line. The lieu-
tenant had a perfect command of German.
Explaining to the German patrol that they were
bearers of a truce flag, he asked to be taken to
Colonel Neudind.

"You are surrounded," said the lieutenant,
"to avoid unnecessary bloodshed the Red Army
command urges you to surrender."

Indeed. Klin was then in an iron ring.

To the Germans, Klin was an important
strategic point— it served as a forwarding centre
for supplying the German army which had been
assigned the task of enveloping Moscow.
After losing 250 tanks, about 1.000 trucks, more
than 100 medium and heavy guns and a great
number of men, the Germany army was in
retreat. However, the Germans disliked the idea
of withdrawing from Klin. The negotiations
brought no result and Soviet troops launched an
assault.

Major General Chernyshev's troops attacked
from the north, Colonel Lukhtikov's troops
from the east and Major General Ivanov's
mounted group from the south, hour days
later Klin fell. Colonel Neudind lied westward.
' a thousand men killed.

We are now proceeding along this road.
One or two miles from Klin we came across
the first traces of the Germans' "planned"
retreat. In ditches lie twelve cars with the

wheels turned upward, two heavy guns, one
medium sized tank.

A car in front— judging by the scattered
documents and maps, a staff car — was hit by
a shell and blocked the road. The trucks follow-
ing were stalled. Our artillery in the meantime
had continued to shell the column. The frantic
Germans threw into the ditches not only the
smashed cars, but some that were in perfect
working order. All strove to get clear of the fire
and abandoned everything. One German soldier,
stricken by a bullet, remained petrified in a run-
ning attitude.

As we proceeded further along the road we
came across even larger numbers of dead
German soldiers and abandoned cars, guns,
tanks.

With difficulty we got as far as the village
of Petrovskoye before nightfall. A vast field
was covered with enemy machines. Kasatkin
mounted one of them and filmed this amazing
panorama from practically every angle. . . .

When we approached Klin our troops were
entering the town. Automatic riflemen wearing
white robes, cavalry, artillery, advanced past
smashed and deserted German trucks and
tanks, past demolished buildings, past numerous
crosses with German helmets — frightful traces
of the "victorious" retreat of the Germans.

We filmed the entry of the Red Army troops
into Klin from the roof of our car. Then we
proceeded toward Tchaikovsky's house where
lived and worked the great composer. We found
the gates smashed, the fence broken— apparently
the place was used as a tank garage. Near the
entrance lay a German motor-cycle and along-
side it, scattered in the snow, were manuscripts
and Tchaikovsky's broken bust. In the rooms
where Tchaikovsky had created works of
genius, the Germans repaired motor-cycles.
The wall panels of Karelian birch were torn off,
all wooden objects burned, stage models
smashed.

"The German soldiers took a special fancy
for a model of the ballet stage production.
Swan Lake." explained the director of the
museum, "the) extracted all the figurines of
danseuses and fought over the division."

Klin is practically burned to the ground.
Before retreating the Germans blew up the
bridge and even the town's new polyclinic.
Near its iron fence we met a woman in tears — she
was the polyclinic's head doctor.

Cakes for Red Army

The Klin inhabitants rejoiced and gave a
rousing welcome to the Red Army, which
brought them liberation. Everyone tried to
expic-s appreciation bv bringing presents. When
a truck with Red Army men halted near Tchai
kovsky's house a woman brought out a big
plate of cakes for the men. . . .

Artillery lire had somewhat subsided, the
rumbling receding ever farther into the enemy's
positions.

from the forest on the right our tanks appear,
crushing trees as ihev rush forward. It is a tank
regiment going into action — the regiment to
which we knew our friend Gureycv has returned

The tanks are followed by infantry. Groups
of men are scattered all over the battlefield.
Shouting. "Hurrah' lor our country, for

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 4 1943

(Russian Diary cont.)

Stalin!" men rise from the trenches and dash
forward.

One minute ago these men were pressed close
to the walls of the trenches, shrinking at the
loud whining of shells. Now in a burst of
enthusiasm they are rushing forward against
the enemy, paying no attention to exploding
mines all around. One commander shouts
something, brandishing his revolver. Then he
falls, apparently wounded in one leg, rises on
the other and continues to shout, urging his
men on. We, too, swept by the general enthusi-
asm, rise from the trenches and begin filming
the engagement.

That day the enemy in our sector wavered
and began to fall back. . . .

Shock troops of Major General Zakhvatiev
were engaged in a battle for the village of
Spasomazkino. We left our car in a deep ravine
about a mile and a half from the village. The
road toward the village was kept under strong
fire. Very often we had to crawl and snow got
into our felt boots, sheepskin coat sleeves and
camera. The camera's mechanism was affected
by frost and for each filming it was necessary,
while lying in the snow, to warm it beneath the
sheepskin. A battle was being fought on the
outskirts of the village. Our men were vigorously
dislodging German automatic riflemen from all
shelters.

Near the school we beheld a terrible picture
which we will never forget. Thrown together in
a heap lay the dead bodies of old men, women
and children. Some had legs and arms broken,
others disfigured faces. All had been shot with
automatic rifles. Somewhat aside lay embraced

an old peasant and a young woman with an
infant in her arms. Whv had those people been
shot? The infant had apparently been wrapped
in a kerchief or blanket. This the Germans had
torn off, and the woman had pressed the naked
body of her infant daughter to her own. Bullets
had pierced the child's shoulder and breast,
the blood was congealed in scarlet strips.

Our men. their automatic rifles still steaming,
stopped near the dead and then silently, with
lips compressed, proceeded to the place from
which came the noise of rifle shots and reports
of exploding hand grenades. Soon German
resistance was broken and our troops, advancing
in a long column, entered the village. . . .

Below I see black dots in motion. These are
German soldiers scurrying in all directions.

I scarcely manage to turn aside somewhat
before the gunner opens machine-gun fire upon
the dispersing enemy infantry and machines.
Then discerning something in a side window,
he goes up toward a machine-gun and opens fire.
"A fascist plane," I say to myself. Two of our
pursuit planes pass above us, heading straight
for the enemy. As if racing they keep overtaking
each other. 1 prepare the camera for filming.

A bright sun shines straight into the cockpit.
It has dispelled the mist and several rays are on
the gunner's smiling face. The plane flies
smoothly, confidently. We pass over enemy
positions. Below we see several explosions of
anti-aircraft shells. The Germans apparently
collected their wits and decided to ambush us
on the way back.

For three days after that we filmed the life
of fighting fliers. . . . We motion-picture camera-
men flew in two separate planes.

Each of us took up a position in the rear of

* For uour information

IN every progressive enterprise there must be leaders
and those who follow behind. As artistic and
technical progress in kinematography quickens to the
tempo and stimulus of war, " KINEMATOGRAPH
WEEKLY" is always to be found " up-with-the-
leaders ", its well-informed pages radiating perception
and far-sighted thinking. Kinematography's
leaders themselves know this for truth
and turn to " K.W." week by

week for information and
enlightenment. f

jtpm

*9*jgjl

93 LONG ACRE
LONDON W.C.2

the cockpit of the dive bombers alongside the
gunner and wireless operator. Each motion and
turn were figured out beforehand so that we
could do our work and not be in the way of the
gunner. Over us flew pursuit planes guarding
the heavier machines.

Two enemy planes, Junkers 88's, appear in
front of us. They avoid an engagement. I descend
to the lower hatch where I squeeze alongside
the machine-gun. The pose is rather unusual:
feet resting on the seat above and head below.
pivssin" .I'Miiri the machine-gun. I yes water,
there is ,i ru; h o bl( ".i i the head.

\ long ribbon road cuts the snowj waste.
["here are black dots on the road tanks and
lorries. Somewhat farther away we discern a
river crossing.

Bombs are released from the plane. Many
bombs. They drop with a rush, and in a few
seconds flashes of explosions appear along tank
and infantry columns. One bomb hits a crossing.
Soon fires burst out. The fascist lorries and tanks
are burning. I grip the camera and film in a sorl
of frenzy, overcome with the hatred I feel for
the enemies of my country.

Our plane climbs a bit, makes a turn and then
dives. A noiseless drop along the incline, accom-
panied by the howling of a wind which within
a fraction of a second swells into a roar, i can
hardly catch my breath and my eyes smart.
An invisible force pins me to the board and seems
to be breaking my body. Then the plane
straightens out. . . .

Book Review

Man and Boy. By Sir Stephen Tallents. Faber &

Faber. 21. v.

Those who have read The Projection of
Britain will confidently expect good prose in
this book : those who have worked with its
author will expect a good deal of brisk and
energetic action in which the rapier rather than
the singlestick is the symbolic weapon. Neither
will be disappointed.

Many documentary workers— aware perhaps
only of Tallents' inspired pioneering at the
E.M.B. and of his determined championship,
against much opposition and more incompre-
hension, of the documentary film movement, will
be duly astonished to read, in this autobiography
of his earlier life, that he served in the Irish
Guards and was wounded in France 1915; that
he subsequently organised Britain's first food
rationing scheme, in the company of such diverse
people as Beveridge and Walter de la Mare; and
that he was the key representative of the Allies
during the confused post-war period in the newly
formed Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and
Esthonia, and was governor of Riga at a time
when Bolshevists, Latvians and Germans were
fighting each other with grim but lunatic
determination. In addition there is an admir-
able picture of Tallents' childhood and
education which has a curious sense of
universality about some of its memories: for
he has hit on the type of childhood episodes
common to all.

The book ends in 1919. We shall therefore,
look forward with an interest which much ex-
ceeds any local trepidation, to a second volume,
which will bring fully into contemporary
perspective the further activities of a man whose
abilities have been only too frequently mis-
calculated or misprized by lesser men who depend
on their entrenching tools and have forgotten
the horizon.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 4 1943

SCIENTIFIC FILMS IN WAR-TIME

Interchange of expert technical information is
one of the permanent and important founda-
tions of international unity. "Shop" is the one
universal language; and the hieroglyphics of the
mathematician, the biologist, the chemist, and
even today the philosopher, are more equally
intelligible than all the Volapuksand Esperantos.
Nowhere, however, is this lingua franca of the
specialist better illustrated than in the visual
terms of the motion picture. The movies can be
as valid for the footballer as for the surgeon, for
the philatelist as for the physicist.

In war-time there are a thousand and one
points of scientific and technical importance
which must be quickly and efficiently inter-
changed between the various United Nations;
and in many cases one nation will have special
war experiences of its own, the detailing of which
to others is of enormous practical value. A.R.P.
measures, rationing and nutrition are random
examples. But now especially important are the
fields of scientific research and discovery,
whether in the laboratory or on the battlefield.
New techniques, for instance, in the treatment of
wounds under arctic or tropical conditions can
be quickly and accurately disseminated, with the
help of films. Thus what was discovered by grim
experiences in Russia may be quickly transmitted
to surgeons in Alaska ; and the sufferings of men
alleviated more quickly in the Pacific islands
thanks to a visual exposition of methods deve-
loped in the African desert.

Examples could be multiplied almost indefin-
itely. What is more important is to realise that
such films have a moral as well as a practical
value, and may be regarded by each producing
country as being first class propaganda — often in
a sense far wider than that contained in their
original terms of reference.

In fact such films are in many ways the perfect
example of information and morale-propaganda
combined.

Somewhat belatedly, but none the less very
sensibly, more and more attention is now being
paid to the development of this line of film work
in Britain. There is much we can give the world
in many varied fields, and it is good to learn that
a number of subjects are now in production (or
already completed) — some of them of direct use
in training or instruction, others detailing ex-
periments or new techniques for the benefit of
the skilled experts.

Based as they are on the vital needs of a nation
mobilised for war, these scientific films should
represent excellent value for money expended,
even in the eyes of the Treasury. A glance at the
Soviet scientific films which arc now in this
country is sufficient to prove that scientific
validity here goes hand in hand with good
propaganda. I or instance, the justly famous film
of the resuscitation of a dog is first-class Soviet
propaganda— and it is a solemn thought that we
might well have made the same film ourselves in
this country -but didn't.

There is indeed much we can learn from
Russia in this matter. Oncol! he most significant
facts is thai not mciclv specialist personnel but
also specialist studios and equipmenf
able for the making of scientific films. So it
should be in Britain too, if this country, as it
should, is to give a strong international lead to
the use of films in relation to science.

It is not too soon to formulate the structure
of an international organisation for the post-war
world; but in order to do this immediate
national action must first be taken. The activities
of Government Departments, commercial spon-
sors and other organisations need co-ordination
—a job which might well be undertaken by the
Association of Scientific Workers in some form
of liaison with the Ministry of Information.
There is much to be done, and the sooner a start
is made the better.

A conference has been called by the Scientific
Films Committee of the Association of Scientific
Workers to discuss the possibility of setting up
an English Scientific Films Association. Such
a body would clearly be of great value in the
field of work indicated in these notes and we
hope to publish a full report of the conference
in our next issue.

Book Review

Films for the Community in Wartime. By
Mary Losey. Published by National Board of
Review in U.S.A. Price 50c.

Mary Losey has written a lively and imagina-
tive guide to the war-time use of the film under
the title of Films for the Community in War-time.
It is intended for U.S. readers but contains many
practical hints on programme selection and
methods of presentation which will be of interest
and value to anyone in this country who is con-
cerned with propaganda or the use of the film
for public instruction. The bulk of the book con-
sists of recommended film programmes each de-
signed to achieve a specific purpose. There are
programmes of documentaries which v, ill ex-
plain to the people of the United States the mind
and face of their Allies in Great Britain, U.S.S.R,
China, Canada, etc. ; there are programmes to
explain "Global Warfare", "Total Warfare,"
"The Nature of Life in the Armed Forces," and
so on. British documentaries are featured gener-
ously and the book includes a synopsis of every
film mentioned. The programme chosen to ex-
plain Great Britain to our American Allies is of
particular interest. It consists of Listen to Britain,
Citizens' Army, Winter on the Farm, Wartime
Factory, and Newspaper Train. This programme
is described as a 60-minute Guide to Britain.
Miss Losey has necessarily selected her pro-
grammes from those films available in the
United States at the time of writing.

The book includes chapters on various func-
tions of the film including such headings as
"Instruction", "Persuasion or Morale Building"
and "Information and Exhortation". It has
something to say about the mechanics of pro-
jection and there arc excellent hints on good non-
theatrical showmanship. Miss 1 osey makes
clear her purpose in writing the book in her
opening paragraphs: —

"Films can help to win the war, if we use them
intelligently. In this pamphlet we shall be talking
about the use of films for fuller participation in
the war effort by civilian adult and young
people's groups by schools, libraries Y's,
churches, motion picture councils, forums, civi-
lian defense councils, service clubs, social agen-
cies, trade unions, women's clubs.

"The first idea which embraces all others is the
fact of our involvement in a violent world war.
A war of such enormity that none of us can fully
understand or be fully informed. Only by ex-
changing the fragments of knowledge of the
worker, farmer, soldier, teacher, doctor, indus-
trialist, grocer, geographer, housewife, sailor
and all the other specialists you can mention, will
we begin to put together the scattered parts of
the puzzle and see the war as a whole. And when
we see its wholeness involving the lives and the
futures of all the people in the world we will
begin to understand it."

Correspondence

You may be interested in the enclosed copy of
my report to my Executive Committee on a
Course on the Film given to local units under
the Army Education scheme.

Report on Course "The Film Then and Now"

This course was initiated as the result of casual
shows under the category "Entertainment" to
several local army units. I felt that something
more in the nature of a connected series of
shows would be well received and I discussed
this with the Army Education authorities. Two
local Education Officers agreed to take the
course : the one to three units, the other to two.
The Regional Committee for Education in H.M.
Forces gave authorisation for transport and paid
the lecturer's fee towards the cost of film hire.

The plan I had in mind was to begin with
historical material — the film to 1914, the growth
of the cartoon, the documentary film, the films
of Chaplin and after accustoming the audiences
to this (for them) new technique of talking about
films, pass on to films grouped to illustrate sub-
jects. This will be seen in the programmes listed
below.

Much space could be given to the incidents of
projection from snowy sites to country houses,
on all sorts of current supplies and to the most
fluctuating audiences: commonplaces of Army
Education. More interesting was the reception :
no one believed that this was education, the
general belief being that we had pulled one over
the authorities and that it was all entertainment
disguised. 1 think the only thing which did any-
thing to help this myth was a very restless show
of Last Laugh in which 1 was certainly not the
least bored person in the room.

My forecasts o\' reception were often upset:
the early cinema material got a poor reception
and Film and Reality failed to arouse the enthu-
siasm I had myself (this may have been a failure
of mine) : Femme du Boulanger went over well,
although 1 was nervous of it : Thunder over
Mexico was liked; but the biggest applause of
all the course was given to a film which started
off with all the disadvantages oi being German,
sung in a foreign language and needing a plot
outline beforehand — Lotte Reiniger's Papageno.

Foreign films did not seem to be too much of
an obstacle and the only person who objected to
our showing German films was a W.V.S. driver.

The course is to be repeated this term to an
R.A.F. audience and to a civilian class here.

M, W. HFRFSFORD,

Percival Guildhouse,
Rugby
(.-! Community Centre for Adult Education)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 4 1943

A LETTER TO DOCUMENTARY

from Arthur Elton

two things were recently delivered to the
M.O.I. — the February issue of D.N.L. and a
training film called Debris Tunnelling, useful not
only at home, but in every English-speaking coun-
try. The February issue contained a leading article
"based on material supplied by several corre-
spondents in the United States" which states:
". . . our method of presentation [of films to the
U.S.A.] is usually wrong. Much of our vernacu-
lar is unintelligible to U.S. audiences; some of
our accents sound sissy and irritating to them."
Debris Tunnelling had a commentary spoken in a
West Country dialect. Since the producer of
Debris Tunnelling is a member of the Editorial
Board, I must assume that he does not support the
leading article in his own paper. Or may I hope
that he suffered a twinge of conscience before the
paper went to bed?

Another member of the Editorial Board
manages one of the best documentary
units in the country. Their films are sensitive
and human. Yet this unit has made itself master
of the mumble, and has argued from time to time
that the Empire and the United States should
be made to understand our lingo, and that we
should not translate ourselves for our Allies.
I hope that this member of the Board also had
a twinge of conscience, and that he now supports
the views of your correspondents. One or two of
this Unit's films, by the way, will not only be in-
comprehensible in the United States and the Em-

pire, but difficult to follow in many parts of Great
Britain as well. Last year they made what I be-
lieve to be, with Nine Men, one of the best docu-
mentary films that has yet been produced. I mean
The Harves! Shall Came. This film was taken over
by the Ministry of Information and shown widely.
The reports of its success were unanimous. So
were the reports that many audiences could not
easily follow the speech. The film was played by
actors, but they spoke in a stagey Suffolk dialect.
Fortunately, the virtues of the film overcame the
handicaps, and triumphed over its obscurity.

The article goes on : "Our tempo is too slow
for what they (the Americans) believe to be
their hustling way of life. As a result our films
lack speed, punch, attack and news value — all
of which are marketable commodities in the
U.S.A." This criticism is valid — and only the
editors of D.N.L. and their colleagues can put
it right. If themes and subjects are wrong, that
is the fault of Films Division. But if technical
treatment is wrong, that is the fault of the
makers.

Hitherto documentary has turned to natural
types because they are "real" and convincing;
and because the audiences reached have been, on
the whole, relatively small, sympathetic and ready
to meet documentary halfway. To-day things are
different. If, for example, a film is to be made
about Joint Production Committees, better the
whole world should get the message from ham

actors, than only half the world the message
from the managers and workers themselves.
I watch both with respect and dismay valiant
efforts to turn our neighbours into actors.
I am respectful because I know the difficulties
which a director of natural types, such as
Humphrey Jennings, often so brilliantly over-
comes. I am dismayed because I think that this
path can end in a brick wall.

Not that I suggest the jettisoning the use of
people as people, but only that, if people cannot
be persuaded to act or to speak clearly so that
everyone can understand, then it is better to use
good actors than to turn ordinary people into
bad actors. In short, what documentary needs,
and what it is slowly— too slowly — finding, is
a school of documentary acting which will
allow it to take advantage of the technique of
the studio and everything which goes with it.

I believe that documentary will solve the prob-
lem because it has kept its vitality and strength.
But the question which to-day still faces every
documentary director has yet to be decisively
answered. Is documentary going to build on the
substantial foundations it has laid over the last
fifteen years.? Or is it going to hand over its
technical achievements to the fiction school of
films, allowing documentary technique to be-
come separated from the basic ideas which
created them. Arthur Elton

(Films Division, M.O.I.)

G.B. INSTRUCTIONAL LTD.

The Studios
LIME GROVE - - SHEPHERDS BUSH, W.12

Working for

ADMIRALTY WAR OFFICE

AIR MINISTRY

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION

BRITISH COUNCIL

'Grams:

GEBESTRUCT CHISK, LONDON.

''Phone:
SHEPHERDS BUSH 1210

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 4 1943

Stock Rationing
and Film Trailers

Following upon the note in our last issue on
stock rationing, film trailers and Mr. Paul
Kimberley's National Screen Service, a reader
has sent us the following extract from "Tatler's"
page in The Daily Film Renter of February 22nd :

"One thing that has afforded me some con-
siderable amusement is that, when I was in
Liverpool the other week, I wondered why — and
that applied to quite a few other people — Paul
Kimberley happened to be up in the Merseyside
city at that particular juncture. It seemed to be
almost more than a coincidence. Here were the
trailers being discussed at General Council, and
lo and behold! Paul makes a dramatic appear-
ance, although I should have thought his duties as
Director of Army Kinematography would have
made his journey quite impossible.

Trailers were considered and, in response to
the urgings of many delegates that they ought
automatically to be thrown out, they had a stal-
wart defender in Fuller. Paul loomed large at the
luncheon, even being called upon to make a
speech — and I still couldn't understand — nor
could quite a lot of other people. When I
tackled the worthy General Secretary on it a day
or two back, I was blandly informed Paul was
feeling tired and came to Liverpool for a couple
of days change.

Well, that's the official explanation. Person-
ally, I shouldn't have thought the air of the
Merseyside city was so terribly invigorating. But
the hospitality definitely was. In any event, per-
haps he was stimulated by the resultant defence
of trailers, and, so far from them being out, I find
them more in than ever, because the rumour goes
that in future those companies who were making
their own — namely, Metro, Paramount and
Warner's — may in future do them through
National Screen — so probably the journey was
invigorating? It would appear so!"

Film Societies

At the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street, the
London Scientific Film Society gave film shows
in the winter of 1938 and again in 1939. The
average audience was 30(MK)0 people, and two
typical films shown were Rain ami its Causes and
how the Telephone Works. Both are good ex-
amples of film being used to bring alive real facts
about the world to the layman. They showed
also that these scientific facts are not a jumble
of abstruse theories and complicated formulae;
on the contrary, the scientific film presents the
inexplicable and the complex as a lucid pattern
of thought. This is an important aspect of the
social relations of science. Why?

Science has built up its structure, and so
achieved its power of moulding our environment
to suit our needs, very largely by abstracting itself
from everyday human affairs. But the next step —
implementing the promise of that power — in-
volves stepping off the pedestal of abstraction
into the commonplaces of men's day-to-day
lives. Every time somebody, by talks, books,
radio or films, makes the complex appear lucid—
by showing how the radio valve works, how
chromosomes affect our lives, how a bomb
explodes — he does something which gives men a
greater faith in objective, accurate thinking. That

is why lucid exposition is important in developing
the social relations of science. The good scientific
film can achieve this lucidity more easily and
strikingly than can any other method.

A moving picture is seen on the cinema screen.
The words of a commentary or dialogue inform
about it. They develop the idea and make an ab-
stract generalisation— a thing which does not
come happily to the ordinary man, for it nearly
always means removing the familiar emotional
values. But the film steps in with the visual inter-
pretation of the abstraction — a diagram, a chart,
a photomicrograph — and the difficult thought
process is helped on. Then the abstraction can be
succeeded by a familiar object which may be
relevant to it — a man, a house, a child, a doctor.
The impersonal, and thus unlikeable quality, of
the abstraction is torn away. Its likeable, rational
quality remains. The idea that objective thinking
must be cold and inhuman loses just a little more
ground as the film winds into the take up box.

The Hayes Scientific Film Society was formed
during March following a successful series of
film shows run by the local Branch of the
Association of Scientific Workers. There is a
very encouraging critical interest in scientific
films in the district, but as yet it only comes from
the technical workers. One of the aims of this
Society is to endeavour, through the Shop
Stewards and Trades Council, to draw in work-
people from the various factories; to get them
to say what sort of shows they want, criticise
them when they see them, and hence say what
films they think should be made. It is realised,
for example, that although radio is one of the
major local industries, there is scarcely a worth-
while film on the subject, either of general interest
or suitable for the training of assistants. It is felt
that an organisation such as this Society should
not be just a passive body, but that it should be
a channel for constructive thinking and doing
about scientific films.

STRAND FILMS

MAKERS OF DOCUMENTARY
FILMS SINCE 1934

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR - MANAGING DIRECTOR

1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l.

NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE.

LIBRARY

I II M PROGRESS 1 1 I HL ILKi I' l.»

NOTES OF THE !

WOOD vs. HKII MS

NEWS LETTER

NEW DOCUM

MOVIES ARE IMPORTANT TO RUSSIA

BOOK REVIEWS

FILV1 OF THE MONTH

VOL 4 NO. :

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON Wl

WHAT WE ARE WORKING FOR

Journalists, teachers, statesmen, and film makers, assorted pur-
veyors of assorted ideas, are most of their time experiencing great
difficulty in seeing the wood of ultimate purpose for the trees of
present expediency. They are so caught up in their war-time
chores that the long-term issues and the wider tasks tend to be
forgotten. It is good sometimes to take stock of the ends to which
we are working.

We have the privilege today of living in the most exciting period
of the world's history. Man at last has the power of moulding the
place he inhabits to suit his needs. It is also true that he has the power
of killing off his own race more quickly than unaided nature can
ever do. This present period is exciting because, even as we use our
power to the end of mutual extermination, we are doing more, on
balance, to shape the world as we want it.

Due to the impetus of technical developments, man is out of joint
with his times. He doesn't know how to get enough food when
there is an economic slump ; he doesn't know how to keep well when
he works in the dusty air of factories and mines ; he doesn't know
how to be good friends with formerly distant foreigners who are
now his neighbours; he doesn't know how to live his family life now
that the needs of the communi y are of a wholly different order from
what they were half a century ago. Man has eaten some of the tree of
knowledge and by no power whatever can he undo that act. True, it
has given him the power to see that he cannot alter the past. Now
he needs to appreciate that he can mould the future.

The very technical resources, which have put him at cross pur-
poses with the world, also give man the means to fashion himself to
meet these changes, and to have an adventurous time turning them
to good account.

The trouble is that the world has grown ten times smaller — or, if
you like, time goes ten times more quickly— and that most people
just don't know it. It is as if a man who has lived for many years in a
spacious town house with high ceilings and wide stairs, suddenly
finds himself in a country cottage. At first he bumps his head on the
ceilings and keeps tripping up the stairs. He has to accept the fact
that he is in a new house, and then to make himself at home in it.
The sooner he does that, the sooner he will be able to spend time
getting to know the fascinating new life of the countryside and the
quality of the people who live in it.

The answer to his problem is that he should have more knowledge
of himself and of his new world. The first conquest of man's sur-
roundings demanded that- he should not too closely work out just
what was his precarious hold on life. He would have been appalled
at the truth. Shielded by ignorance he could, helped by those who
served as unquestioning slaves, build up his modern tools of science
and industry, and following on them, a wealth of new conceptions.

Now that they exist it is vital that all men should understand these
new tools and ideas so as to use them wisely — for no one can avoid
coming into contact with them every day of his life.

One example of the new tools is radio. As we know, it was used
by the Nazis to cut off their people from relations with other peoples.
The German people did not know the potentialities of the new instru-
ment ; they did not know that radio sets which receive only stations
broadcasting one kind of idea, and no ofher, are a mighty force for
evil.

But another quality of this new world is that fresh groups form
themselves in the community; one such group is the National Fire
Service. (Its existence is related to the invention of the incendiary
bomb.) Here was the opportunity for men and women to meet, talk
and grow to know the rich world of one another's experiences. The
fullness of this opportunity could only be realised by a conscious
effort — they formed discussion groups, the germ of a new political
idea.

These are bare indications of the possibilities. But they stand no
chance of being realised in any healthy form unless people know
that they exist — as possibilities. This interpretation of man to him-
self and his new world is the vital factor upon which his social pro-
gress and, indeed, his continued survival depends. It is upon this
fact only, and not upon any aesthetic virtue in the "creative inter-
pretation of reality" that the great goal for Documentary is based.

Every documentary film made must be directed to this end — of
showing reality so that people can understand it; and showing it
excitingly so that they want to know and feel more of it.

That reality may be anything from the biological processes by
which their baby grows into a man or woman, to the opportunities
that baby will have for a full and happy life in later manhood; from
the way a wireless set works, to the way that a wireless set can be
used to plunge the world into war or bring about a new era of
vivid healthy living. The real world is made up of people and things,
and ideas about people and things. All these can be made exciting
and attractive without building fantasies to cloak their true nature.

The way in which we make the real world seem exciting does not
matter — it may be by slick montage, clever stories, lots of colour,
pretty people, in films, radio, or television, in music or painting, in
ballet or sculpture.

But whatever method is used it must be to the point that men and
women welcome the idea of living in a real world. It is only by
knowing it truly and honestly, that they can work and play in it
happily. With knowledge of that real world they can have such a
full life that all of man's heavens, from Mount Olympus to Holly-
wood, Calif., will seem as less than the dreary emptiness of a ball-
room in the morning sunlight. People will see that the world
itself is rich enough and noble enough to provide for all their needs.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 5 1943

FILM PROGRESS IN THE SERVICES

The British Armed Forces have become very important makers
and users of films, though, in each of the three Services, film
activities began in a small way. This survey is concerned primarily
with the position today, and likely future developments, but an idea
of the original status of films in the British Army, for example, is
represented by the predicament of its only two cameramen in
1940 — Harry Rignold and Walter Tennyson D'Eyncourt. They
were in France when that country was over-run, and accordingly
were sent home. A few good pictures of blitz scenes in French towns
were turned in, but the military history of Dunkirk had to be left to a
single newsreel operator working with the Navy.

Army Films

From these beginnings has grown the organisation of today,
centralised in P.R.2 — Public Relations 2. The two cameramen have
grown, at the moment of writing, to some eighty together with eight
directors, distributed on various fronts. These units send in their
material to P.R.2, who sort, process, censor and classify it into
library. From P.R.2 the material goes to its various users, of which
the chief is the Army Film Unit at Pinewood.

Some of the details of this organisation give an encouraging pic-
ture of a public relations policy attuned to its responsibilities and
growing on sound lines. There is an Army Film and Photographic
Service (A.F.P.S.) whose job it is to shoot material on the scene of
action, be it battlefield or rear base. They get still pictures (using still
cameras) as well as film-scenes which are, of course, their prime
concern. Attached to the Eighth Army and covering the Middle East
(Syria, Iraq, Iran, etc.) is No. 1 Unit of the A.F.P.S., consisting of
four directors and forty cameramen. This, under David MacDonald,
is the largest unit of the kind. Laboratories in Cairo process its
rushes which can therefore be viewed by the technicians on the spot.
No. 2 unit, with the First Army in Tunisia, has its rushes despatched
by air for processing at Pinewood, whence it gets detailed reports
by cable. This section is under Geoffrey Keating and consists of
three directors and thirty cameramen.

Each section is a self-contained unit operating under control of the
Assistant Director of Public Relations at Army H.Q. Thus each unit
on the field works in close liaison with, but not under the direction
of the local H.Q. of the area in which it is operating. It is self-
supporting in all matters, including transport — the latter is obviously
a pre-requisite of real independence of action. The remaining two
sections are much smaller — No. 3, attached to Home Forces, con-
sists of three cameramen only, while No. 4, attached to an Airborne
Division, has lour cameramen and one director, Paul Fletcher. Both
these sections retain their independent status, that is, they are
answerable to P.R.2. but naturally work in close liaison with
Ci.H.Q. Home Forces or the Divisional O.C. The Army Film and
Photographic Service has, besides these four units, two cameramen
u ho operate independently, one at Gibraltar and the other at Malta.
The whole organisation has to be a fluid one — adaptable to meet
any possible changes in the war situation.

The cameramen of the A.F.P.S. are trained soldiers of high
medical category with the rank of sergeant. They have been through
the full battle-training course as well as the special training needed to
make a cameraman, though naturally a number of them were
cameramen in civilian life. One-third of the personnel of No. 1 unit,
in fact, had such previous professional experience, but No. 2 unit
is made up wholly of men new to camera work as a profession.

These men are to be thought o\~ as soldiers using a specialised
weapon the cine camera, or in some cases the still camera. They
are not simply cameramen who have been put in uniform. \s a re-
sult, the Army film man is part of the social group whose activities
he records— he knows it and feels it ; and he needs to be tough if he

is to match up to the mobility and staying power of the trained
soldier. This invokes a basic principle of documentary — that the
technician must be in touch with the people he puts on the screen.
The full value of this principle can only be brought out if the film
technicians make use of it. They must not be content with
showing the bare military implications of what. the soldier does;
the soldier's life as a man — or woman — is very relevant to the
Army story.

The Director of Public Relations is Major-General Lord Burn-
ham; he has the qualification of being a soldier by profession, and
a knowledge of the Press, derived from his previous association with
the Daily Telegraph. The department P.R.2 under Ronald Tritton
is responsible for film propaganda. Contact is kept with the Ministry
of Information, and there are fortnightly meetings at the War Office
with its Film Officer, Mr. Jack Beddington, where questions com-
mon to both organisations are discussed.

One interesting feature of broader developments is that two film
directors have been loaned to the Indian Government at the request
of the latter. It was felt that Army activities in India required better
cover than they were getting, as indeed is evident enough from their
absence on British screens. Here appears to be a much needed oppor-
tunity for developing a wider awareness in this country of one side
of the Indian scene. But that is up to the Indian Government, and
P.R.2 is more concerned with affairs here.

As has been mentioned, one of the users of the film material
administered by P.R.2 is the Army Film Unit at Pinewood, under
Hugh Stewart. (Here nearly all technicians are experienced profes-
sionals.) Besides film production and the issue of reports to the
A.F.P.S. they run a school at which British, American, Canadian,
Polish, Dutch and Norwegian soldiers are trained as cameramen—
at present some 45 men are being so trained. From the pool thus
formed cameramen are sent, when fully trained as described earlier,
to feed units posted away.

Feature Films

Directors return to Pinewood to finish their films. Up till a little
while ago the Army Film Unit concentrated on short films which
could do little more than portray various sides of Army life — not
to imply that this was unimportant. For with our military activities
developing hopefully, let us say, rather than inspiringly, the simple
informational film had its value. Now that the war is developing as a
series of major campaigns, the policy of P.R.2 is to make feature
length films to tell the campaign story. Desert Victory was the first
of these, and is soon to be followed by the story of Tunisia.

At Pinewood, too, the R.A.F. and Crown Film Units have their
headquarters, and the studio can thus form a useful common
meeting ground. There is also contact here with some American
Units. Mutual contact with them, not to mention other Allied
Service organisations, is felt to be very desirable. The American
forces show a wide-awake appreciation of the importance of films;
but this appears to be correlated with a many-sided organisation,
with which mutual dealings would be easier, were there some centre
for direct approaches.

Apart from Pinewood, other users are the M.O.I, who need library
material for a large number of their films. They get it. of course,
without charge. Also commercial producers sometimes make use of
it, paying at the usual commercial rate.

Important users are the newsreel companies, who get material
free. This arrangement is justified in that the Army obtains through
the newsreels a good deal o\' valuable screen lime. (An example o(
the speed of working required to meet newsreel conditions is the
5|-hour job on Churchill's North African \isit. The undeveloped
rushes arrived at 1 1 a.m. They were processed and screened for the

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 5 1943

Film Progress in the Services (continued)

Censor, to whose requirements the negative had to be cut; five
censored lavenders were wanted, one for each of the five newsreel
companies; and they saw the censored positive at 4.20 p.m.)

To all censor's screenings of rush material come representatives
of A.K.S.— the Army Kinematography Services. They are another of
the group of users served by P.R.2, and quite separate from it;
they handle all the Army training films.

From information derived from its Policy and Planning branch
(A.K.I) it is possible to give an idea of the trend of development of
A.K.S.

As regards the scope of work hitherto undertaken it can be said
that in the main all of the Primary Training subjects have been
covered by films. (Primary Training is that basic training given to
every recruit during his first six weeks of service in the Army. It in-
cludes such things as ordinary foot drill, gas drill, the use of such
weapons as rifle, bayonet, grenade, Lewis gun, and so on.) The type
of film made until a few months ago has been the straightforward
instructional, the production of these being handled by 12-15
commercial companies.

A.K.2(Z>) is the department of A.K.S. which deals with produc-
tion by commercial companies. These instructionals were wanted
quickly and companies which had experience in producting quota
shorts were given the job of producing many of them. Without
seeing a representative selection of the films it is of course impossible
to do more than guess how effective such qualifications are for this
kind of work. In their practical application these films brought out
certain principles. The soldier is interested in the real matter of this
kind of film — he wants to learn his job. It used to be common
practice to put into instructional films humorous asides, attuned as
it was thought to the soldier's outlook. In fact the soldier found
them unwelcome intrusions — particularly after he had seen them a
few times. The practice has been given up, and in the same way other
principles, long accepted by people who know documentary, have
been validated.

Training Films

The trend now is towards films whose approach to training is
tactical — that is to say, they show the use of a given weapon, or
special procedure, not as something on its own, but in tactical rela-
tions with other activities. It is clear that the demands of invasion
landings, for example, are bound to include a very full appreciation
of the inter-relations between groups. One may imagine for a
moment the intricacies of landing a mere fraction of the Sicilian
invasion force — say a thousand men. Ammunition, weapons, trans-
port vehicles, telephone and radio sets, food and medical supplies,
the right number of the right specialists — the provision and adminis-
tration of all these has to be linked with Naval and Air Force spheres
of activity to make one coherent plan of attack. Then the fighting
could start. The unique role, in preparation for this work, which
can be filled by well-made films, demands full recognition of their
worth.
The problem of security came to the fore with this new type of

i film, whose production obviously entailed the film technicians
being in close touch with military developments. Fox Studios at
Wembley were taken over, and A.K.3 — the department of A.K.S.
concerned with the Army's own direct production — installed there.
Thorold Dickinson, who made Next of Kin when he was at Ealing,
and Carol Reed were in this department. While he was there — both
he and Dickinson have since left — Carol Reed made a film, The New
Lot. Its purpose was to show how all types of men, who might at
first sight seem unlikely to fit well into Army life, can in fact settle
down far more happily than they thought they would. It can do
much to counter the "browning off" which may well arise before a

: man has been trained up in the job found for him by the Army
Selection procedure. A film has also been made for the A.T.S., to
show the different kinds of work available to them. Such films are
made in close consultation with Army psychiatrists. This is an ex-

ample of how the Army needs to have its own special problems of
morale smoothed out by films — we shall see a similar thing later
in the R.A.F. — but in many cases these films can be of value to
civilian audiences as well. The success of Next of Kin will be re-
membered, but until The New Lot has been viewed one cannot
judge whether it has equal merit.

The branching out of the training film into the "morale" film is
linked with difficult but vital problems. The outlook of troops a long
way from home, of troops who may later be living in now enemy-
occupied territory, and their approach later to questions of de-
mobilisation, needs to be informed by good sense which films can
do much to augment. It is, of course, essential that all such films be
absolutely faithful to the character and outlook of the people
they portray.

The more direct training films of the new tactical type are now
the main occupation of A. K. 2(a). At Wembley there are three to
four military film units — the production organisation necessarily
has to be fluid. The producer — whose position is at present unfilled
— has the rank of Major. (It took a little time incidentally to sort
out what rank the various technicians were to have ; films make their
own peculiar demands upon any rigid organisation.) These military
units cover exercises and, at Infantry Schools, new tactics and drills
directly these have been laid down. Thus they can bring on to the
screen every new set of procedure — or "drill" — as it appears. It is
appreciated now that only the best instructors should be consulted
on training film production; experience makes them more film
minded, with increased efficiency resulting.

Training films are made of an average running time of 20 minutes,
to fit training periods of 40 minutes. The rate of film production is
given as approximately 100 a year.

Films can also be used to bring to the screen new developments
which may arise in distant theatres of war. Two cameramen are
travelling with a special commission of inquiry which is investigating
such matters in certain areas of the Far East.

It is interesting that films can bring new "drills" to the soldier
before pamphlets can. It takes about two months to get a film into
general circulation, whereas to train instructors, to provide pamph-
lets and training equipment takes a month longer. Offset against this
is the difficulty of keeping films up to date. Since very few "drills"
remain set for long, with the Army's tendency to ever-increasing
elasticity of organisation, this seems to demand a remedy. The
difficulty of solution is not to be glossed over but the same problem
on a smaller scale has often been the worry of non-theatrical dis-
tributors who have had to handle different versions of films, or
films with different sets of titles. It should be possible to devise an
organisation which keeps a close check on distribution of copies,
and withdraws outdated films for amendment when necessary.

The distribution and exhibition of films is run by A.K.4. They
have got over the early trouble, common to all the services, of lack
of equipment. Now there are 150 mobile projectors in addition to
those installed at every training establishment, most of which are
35 mm. machines. Together, with A.K.5, who get the recreational
films and give entertainment shows for the Directorate of Army
Welfare and Education, they give 15,000 shows a week. Projec-
tionists— many of whom are A.T.S. girls — -are trained at Wembley.

Naval Films

In the Admiralty, as a whole, we see a rather different approach
to the film. It is used solely in relation to training. All propaganda
and Admiralty public relations films are produced by the M.O.I.,
or by newsreel companies whose cameramen operate by special
arrangement on H.M. ships. The production of the training film
is in the hands of the Training and Staff Duties Division of the Naval
staff. The Director of this Division is Captain Oram; in his hands is
the co-ordination of the work of the Division, and its integration
with the Admiralty needs. In charge of the Film Section is Com-
mander John Hunt.

As all the film production energies of the Admiralty are thus
{continued overleaf)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 5 1943

Film Progress in the Services (continued)

concentrated on training, one sees in the Division a more intense
development in this field than appears elsewhere.

In general, these training films are made by outside commercial
companies, but, on occasion they are made by the Royal Naval Film
Section at Plymouth. This is the Admiralty's own training-film
production unit, which supplements production carried on by the
trade. Little information is available about its activities except that
its personnel consists of a total of 30-40 people. It has grown in
size, and the organisation from time to time has been adapted to
meet changing demands.

The film is considered as part of a procedure designed to impart,
in the shortest possible time, the information a man requires to learn
his job. Other training techniques must also be used with a full
understanding of their capabilities and limitations. The film is one ;
the film strip,* blackboard, and demonstration on equipment, are
others.

Film and film strips

So that all these devices shall be used to best advantage, the func-
tions and necessary qualities of the film and film strip are described
in two documents — "Notes on the Design and Construction of
Instructional Films", — issued by the Director of Training and Staff
Duties. They are both outstandingly good compilations, and it is
reassuring to know that they have been circulated to the other
Services, to Government Departments and other interested organisa-
tions. They are "issued as a guide for those concerned in preparing
and producing these valuable contributions to efficient training.
They are based upon present knowledge, which is still in a theoretical
stage : they should not therefore be read in a rigid sense but rather
as a formulation of current opinion and, as such, liable to extension
or revision as experience dictates." Part I is concerned with the film
itself; an introduction says: "As a first and cardinal principle it
must be recognised that the purpose of an Instructional film is to
teach and, if it is to present a clear picture, it must be shorn of all
extraneous material that is not essential to the subject. There is a
tendency to blur the instructional value of films by building the sub-
ject round a story. The argument put forward to justify this practice
hinges upon a plausible theory that men under training need a
titivation of interest, It is, however, entirely wrong to attract atten-
tion to a manufactured story which purports to provide human
interest if, in doing so, attention is distracted from the subject that is
being taught. Mental alertness must be aroused by interest in the
subject and it should be the main purpose of the designer of an
Instructional film to see that the subject is made interesting." It is a
pity that this sound sense had not earlier permeated the organisa-
tions concerned with Service training films.

Part II deals with the 'still synopsis', a film strip which
summarises a film in a number of still pictures with sub-titles. "The
primary purpose of a 'still synopsis' is to recapture the salient
features of instruction and rivet them on the memory. The criterion
of its work is the amount of 'sticking power' it gives to the scraps of
information that it imparts" ( — from the same document). Thus each
still has to be carefully selected so that it will bring back to mind a
key piece of information. This can act as a reminder of a sequence
ol ideas w hich depended on and arose from that piece of information
in the original film.

The film strip is also— but less frequently — used as an entity in
itself — i.e., not as a synopsis of a film but as an "Instructional still".
It is. of course, fully understood that the film strip (used in either of
the above ways) is definitely not a substitute for a film : it is made in
a different way, from a different point of view, for a different, but
important purpose. For example it cannot show essential movements

* The "film strip" is a strip of cine film, a few feet long, which carries on its
standard cine frames a series of stills and titles, ["hey are thrown on to a screen
by means of a simple, specially designed pro.icctoi in the same way as lantern
slides would be. Film strip projection has a great advantage over the irumic
lantern in that the apparatus is tar lighter and more compact, and the stills
cannot be projected in any other than the correct order.

in an operation, nor can it effectively give that integration of one
part of a process with the whole, so necessary with complex proce-
dures. The film can do both. On the other hand, with the film strip, a
class can take notes during its showing ; and it can be used effectively
for revision purposes. The film cannot be so used. The two devices
are complementary. Nearly every film used has its film synopsis,
and those lacking one will soon have it.

It is impossible to give exact figures, but roughly, the number of
British made films in use is about 350, with something like 50 films
in production. There are some 400 British made film strips and film
synopses in use. A large number of American films are used too —
about 1,100 film strips and film synopses, and rather fewer films.
It must be remembered that these figures are very fluid, for films go
out of circulation and fresh productions are continually being added
(Continued on page 213)

NOTES OF THE MONTH

we hope that the Films Division of the M.O.I, is checking up the
extent to which distributors are honouring their undertaking to
show the new monthly 15-minute films. Some people believe that
the change over from weekly 5-minuters to the monthly series was a
retrogressive step into which the Films Division was tricked by
Wardour Street at its wiliest. Regular cinema-goers in London's
West End report that to see a M.O.I, film is an extremely rare
experience. During the first week of release of a recent issue of the
"Into Battle" series, the programme particulars of two of the
biggest London cinemas showed that in one case the M.O.I, film
was shown only at 1 1 .40 a.m. and the other cinema was not showing
it at all, but nevertheless had found room to include in its programme
a recuiting film for the U.S. Air Training Corps. The inclusion of this
film in the programme seemed to demonstrate that there was no
question of giving preference to a film with box-office appeal, for it
proved on viewing to be unbelievably dull and completely without
interest in this country. The cynical observer may be forgiven for
frequently feeling that the war effort of the leaders of the exhibiting
and distributing sides of the British film industry is more apparent in
their speeches than on their screens. Yet if these films are not being
widely shown, it is the Ministry of Information which must take
principal blame. Ministry officials are much too timid in their
dealings with the black sheep of an industry which on the whole is
keen to pull its weight.

Comings and Goings

j. d. davidson has joined the Films Division of the M.O.I.
Davidson is already proving as practical and tireless in his organisa-
tion of M.O.I, production as he was in the days when he was laying
the foundation of Documentary's technical methods with the Empire
Marketing Board Film Unit. Basil Wright has left for a six months'
visit to Ottawa where he will assist John Grierson in the develop-
ment of ambitious plans on behalf of the Canadian Government.
Geoffrey Bell (director of Transfer of Power, Fire Guard, Control
Room, and Secretary of the London Scientific Film Society) has
joined the Board of D.N.L. Increased activity in the field of Docu-
mentary generally and the movements of key personnel are miking
difficult the regular production of D.N.L. (for everyone concerned
very much of a spare-time job). We shall continue, however, to
publish as frequently as possible and we hope that our rea icrs will
sympathise with us in our difficulties.

You Have Been Warnered

Airforce, Howard Hawks' large scale feature film for Warner
Brothers, did not quite get the press it deserved in this country, and
few critics noted the significance of its shape and method of treat-
ment, both of which stemmed more from the documentary stable
than any Hollywood script or show copy has done since the Grapes
of Wrath. Airforce is not in the same class as the Stein epic, but it is

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 5 1943

NOTES OF THE MONTH (Cont.)

significant in the brutal casualness of Dudley Nichol's story, which,
by and large, keeps very much to the hard realities attendant on
flying a bomber across the Pacific Islands immediately after Pearl
Harbour. "Love interest" and "story value" have both been jetti-
soned, with the result that there is a mounting instead of a diminish-
ing sense of realism. This is thrown all the more into relief by the
final reel, apparently added by a tycoon with cold feet, in which a
batch of Flying Fortresses sink every ship in the Japanese Navy and
Merchant Fleet twice over and are patted on the back by Hollywood,
Abraham Lincoln, Elmer Davis and Uncle Tom Okum and all. But
despite this, Airforce may well be seen as an encouraging portent
of things to come.

Films in the Services

the article on Film Progress in the Services which we publish
in this issue is the first attempt at a complete and authoritative
statement on this subject. It is based on official statements made to
our representative and we do not claim it to be exhaustive. There is,
for example, no reference to the film activities of the Army Educa-

tion Services which we know to be most enlightened and forward-
looking. We hope in the future to carry our present survey one
stage further by viewing a representative collection of the Services
films which are being made and by investigating the conditions
under which they are being shown. In the meantime our readers
in the Services will know best what divergencies exist between
theory and practice.

Science and the Films

the formation of the English Scientific Film Association, an-
nounced on another page, is a step forward in the interpretation of
science to the public. An organisation such as this can do much to
give a new meaning to science, showing it as something of interest
and value to the ordinary man, rather than the cult of veiled and
often harmful mysteries which he is often led to suppose constitutes
the meaning of "science". The recent increase in the number of
Scientific Film Societies has shown that a focus of interest exists
which is capable of great expansion if given organised expression.
We wish the English Scientific Film Association every success in its
aim to develop this healthy interest in the world of real things.

FILM PROGRESS IN THE SERVICES (Cont.)

It is most satisfactory to note that experiments
have been carried out to find something of the
relative value of these visual aids. Details are
not available for publication until full confirma-
tion of the validity of method is forthcoming,
from its application in normal use. One can
say, however, that the experiments were carried
out in collaboration with Admiralty psycholo-
gists, and that 700 pupils were used.

As regards proposals for the immediate future
the Division plans to get every Naval Training
syllabus covered by films and film synopses.

Air Force Films

Film production in the Royal Air Force lays
relatively less ejnphasis on the training film than
do either of the other two Services, though the
pattern of organisation is broadly similar to that
of the Army. (The parallel of small beginnings
holds good too; R.A.F. film production started
simply as an historical record-keeping establish-
ment.) As in the Army, there is a Public Relations
branch, this time called P.R.I, which deals with
films; in charge, is Wing Commander Twist.
Cameramen send in from the battlefields of the
Middle East, to Pinewood, their war front rushes.
Pinewood distributes the material to its users.
These include the newsreels and M.O.I., the
R.A.F. Film Production Unit and "T films" —
the branch of the Air Ministry Training Director-
ate concerned with getting films made by outside
concerns. One valuable use of film has been in
training for aircraft recognition. Particularly
when the Americans came over with numbers of
new aircraft types, speedy instruction in recog-
nition became pressing.

As we have seen before, the internal "morale"
film is linked to the training film, though here
some are made by the R.A.F. Film Production
Unit, not exclusively, as in the Army, by the
Training Department. An example is a film
called Jumps Ahead, intended to prepare para-
troops for action. The film shows what para-
troopers are going to go through in their train-
ing, and generally gives an impression of the way
of life peculiar to this new activity. The film has

the job of cultivating the paratroopers' outlook.
Since they carry out paratroop training, the
R.A.F. produced the film.

Another interesting use of the internal
"morale" film is the monthly cinemagazine —
called "The Gen" — which gives a picture of what
different parts of the Air Force are doing. It is
valuable for showing at stations posted in out-
lying parts; personnel are kept in touch with
what is going on in the organisation as a whole,
and can feel they are part of a group who breathe
the same air.

The R.A.F. Film Unit works at Pinewood
under the operational direction of P.R. 1 . (It may
be a pointer to the importance attached to films
by the R.A.F. that the film work of Public Re-
lations is handled by a department so numbered.)
It is found convenient for the catering and other
ancillary services at Pinewood to be run by one
organisation, so such work is done by R.A.F.
personnel, for the Crown and the Army Film
Units, as well as for the R.A.F. Unit itself; thus
there are at Pinewood appreciably more R.A.F.
than Army personnel.

One major occupation of the R.A.F. Film
Unit arises from the fact that film records are
made of most of the important operations, with
the exception of those exclusively invoking
fighter 'planes. It is interesting to see how the
special character of air warfare demands exten-
sive use of film. The highly technical nature of
Air Force operations means that results of all
kinds — bombing, strafing, air combat — must be
scientifically analysed by skilled men. They can-
not observe results directly except possibly on
rare occasions ; and in any case direct observation
would give very inadequate data owing to their
instantaneous nature. So the cine camera is used
to bring back a permanent record which can be
studied in full detail. One fact arising from this
is that people in responsible positions in the
R.A.F. have grown to appreciate the value of
film as a war weapon. Another point of interest
is that many of these film records, or stills from
them, have been released for publication, and by
them the general public have been given a striking
picture of modern aeronautical developments.
(Stills are commonly taken from films ; in most

R.A.F. photography it would be difficult to select
the best moment for a still shot, and the in-
creased "picture value" of a still, taken from the
right moment in a film, easily makes up for loss
of quality.)

Because of the value of their time to the com-
munity, it is usual for highly placed statesmen to
travel, on matters of political significance, by air.
As security in these circumstances is also of vital
importance, it happens that the R.A.F. cover
such news items both for record and news value.
This was the case on the occasion of Molotov's
visit; because of the need for full secrecy, as well
as continuity in treatment, the same unit covered
later incidents connected with the visit. This
again is an indication of the increasing import-
ance of the air as a new sphere of social move-
ment. The film, from its nature of being essenti-
ally an expression of modern life follows closely
in the track of developments in the air.

The General Trend

To summarise. We see, in the Army and the
Air Force, that the power of film has become
recognised, in a matter of two years, as some-
thing unique. The organisations for handling it
are still developing, a large number of young men
have been trained as film makers.

In the Air Force, the very dynamic nature of
the work it does probably has the effect of select-
ing into that service mainly people whose per-
sonality has also a dynamic quality. They take
readily to films. The relative lack of emphasis on
the training film may arise because the skills
needed for flying operations depend so much on
bodily and mental agility —things which can
only be acquired by doing rather than
watching. As regards the use of the film
internally the Admiralty appears to be doing
work whose importance to the other services,
and potentially to the community at large
is very considerable. It is to be hoped that
the silent tradition will not hamper the eventual
spread to the wider educational fields of civilian
life, of the knowledge that is being gained due to
(Continued on page 214)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 5 1943

Films in the Services (cont.)

the special war-time demand for efficient training.

The information (as opposed to the opinions)
contained in this article has been obtained from
the Services themselves and while, broadly
speaking, it is possible to vouch for the state-
ments made, there are various matters of degree
and detail which would need a fuller investigation
for their description in proper perspective.

From all the Service authorities concerned we
have received in the preparation of this article
very considerable co-operation and facilities.
There is no reason to doubt that the information
we have obtained accurately represents the inten-
tions of all the Service units dealt with. D.N.L.
has not infrequently in the past directed criticisms
against the activities of various Service film
organisations ; and while our survey makes it ap-
parent that many of the lunacies which marked
the earlier stages of Service film making have
been abolished, there may well be scope for con-
siderable improvement as regards certain aspects
of the work. In the meantime, it is most satis-
factory to learn that the experience of the use of
training films in the Army has been sufficiently
successful to warrant official consideration
being given now to the question of making
training films a permanent factor in the Army
after the war.

Particularly as regards the receiving end of
Service film production, data are naturally not
easy to come by. Apart from the praiseworthy
Admiralty investigation, about which full in-
formation is not yet available, judgment of the
effectiveness of the distribution of training and
morale films must be reserved. It is here per-
missible to ask whether all officers concerned
are sufficiently conscious that, however excellent
the work done on the production side, it can be
completely wasted if distribution methods and
projection conditions are not equally well
organised.

Obviously there are other difficulties which
are bound to arise in Service film production and
which are not easily solved. We may, for instance,
refer to the possible difficulties of dovetailing the
personal relationships between film makers with
the disciplinary relations of Service personnel.
The team work required for the making of a film
is not the same as the discipline required for the
efficient working of a military unit. Clearly the
most obvious anomalies have, except in possibly
a few cases, been dealt with ; but it may be ques-
tioned whether the higher authorities have yet
realised the full implications of this problem.

Finally, has inter-Services collaboration yet
been developed to the degree which it should.' No
great emphasis appears to be laid on inter-Ser-
vices collaboration at present. But this is surely
highly necessary in view of the modern techni-
ques of combined operations.

At Pinewood Studios where Services film
personnel and the civilians of M.O.F's Crown
Film Unit are working under one roof, there
potentially exists the war's most significant de-
velopment in factual film-making. But it is still
only potential.

HOLLYWOOD vs. BRITAIN

Reprinted by permission from The Picturegoer

DOCUMENTARY
NEWS LETTER

Monthly Sixpence
Vol. 4 No. 5

What part does Hollywood propose to play
in the future of British films?

The query springs from the announcement that
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has "merged" its British
subsidiary with the London film interests of
Sir Alexander Korda.

The new deal means that M-G-M British,
through which will come the necessary financial
succour, has space in England's largest and most
modern studios, ft can draw upon Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer of Hollywood, for stars, direc-
tors, writers, producers and technicians which
together are acknowledged to be the cream of
Hollywood's motion picture talent.

No other British production concern, with
or without help from some Hollywood combine,
can hope to do better; few can hope to do as
well.

f talked with Sir Alexander Korda as he packed
his bags.

He acknowledged that "although my job for
the present will be to sell Britain to U.S.A. and
U.S.A. to Britain", the new merger represents
Hollywood's initial step towards post-war re-
habilitation of Anglo-American film production.

It doubtless is an astute preliminary to a
world-wide alignment with the "New Economy"
which we are told is to come after the war.

It reveals, at least, that Hollywood is planning
ahead for the day when United Nations influence
having usurped all Axis, as distinct from dicta-
torial influences, motion pictures as a cultural,
as well as entertaining factor, will once again
girdle the world . . .

The British Government and the British film
industry are pre-occupied with the urgent busi-
ness of war.

History repeats itself so far, with Hollywood,
although part of U.S.A. at war, a haven of com-
parative peace and prosperity . . .

It was much the same during the last war,
when the slight but flourishing British film indus-
try died in khaki to be called back in spirit by the
first British Quota Act of 1927.

Its "materialisation" never has led to the
foundation of a British film industry, which in
corporate unity and pseudo-competitive co-
operation, offers a fair comparison to Holly-
wood, in terms of a potential film monopoly.

The British Film Producers Association never
achieved for British films, what "the Hays
Office" achieves for Hollywood. The British
Government never has shown any significant
grasp of the vital importance of a national film
industry, for each and every great nation,
Britain included.

Even admitting that the Conservative British
Government of 1927, by enacting the "quota law "
did for British films, more than Hollywood had
ever received, or even requested of Washington,
it still is true that, according to its problems and
its needs, Hollywood can get, at beck and call.
more action from Washington than British films
have yet had cause to hope for, from Whitehall.
The reason is that Hollywood is organised: is
united and has its own trivial political machine
evei al work, at home and abroad, to align its
commercial and industrial policies with ever-
changing world trends.

I hat is why today. M-G-M leads the rest of
the Hollywood combines, in taking up a new and

slightly more strategic position on the playing
fields of British films.

Already other foreign film production centres,
including Soviet Russia, are being carefully ex-
amined by experts in Hollywood's employ, with a
view to framing post-war policy.

Sir Alexander Korda tells me he will at once
commence production of British films compar-
able to the most ambitious which he, and
M-G-M British, have turned out in the past.

Shows like Goodbye Mr. Chips, A Yank at Ox-
ford, The Citadel, Four Feathers, The Thief of
liiixdud and so on, most of which, unlike many
other tip-top British pictures, enjoyed United
States release on terms fairly equal to those avail-
able to the best of Hollywood's films.

I am not saying that the quite considerable
profits they earned in U.S. theatres, returned in
any bulk to Great Britain. That is a point upon
which native British film production chiefs like
Arthur Rank, A. G. Allen, Michael Balcon, and
the others may sharpen their wits.

If you like British films, you may feel like tell-
ing me that you are getting some jolly good ones ;
that you expect to keep on getting a "jolly sight"
better and so what does it matter who makes
them?

Your definition of "a British film" may be "a
film made in Britain", or it may be "a film about
Britain", or again, "a film produced by British
capital and British labour." f don't know.

My definition of "a British film industry" is
"a unity of British capital and creative talent, ex-
pressed in and through a united and enlightened
industry, with the will and capacity to compete
on equal terms against all foreign industries in its
own line".

That would mean that it would build up its
own stars, directors and writers to "international"
significance.

It would maintain its own contacts, commer-
cial and creative, in all the overseas countries
which represent markets or potential markets for
the type of British film which would express — in
the way the Hollywood film expresses — some-
thing of the great country in which it originated
and the characteristics and problems of the
people there.

Then and then alone, could we hope, that
British films might begin to do for Britain what
Hollywood films have, for the past twenty years,
been doing for the United States.

I speak now of a "cultural" force much too
subtle to be referred to merely as "propaganda",
which has made all Britain, America-con-
scious . . .

The British film could do the same in U.S.A.
and elsewhere. But first it has to get on the
American screens. At present it can do so only by
consent of American film combines, ruled by
Hollywood. Is it likely that Hollywood is going
to work overtime to build up competition
against itself?

Instead we may expect that by good business
sense, Hollywood will, if possible, exert a con-
trolling influence on British film production, to
the end that such British films as do show in
U.S.A. will not "get in the way" of Hollywood's
own movies.

There is nothing especially sinister about this.
It is big business, that is all.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 5 1943

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Inside Fascist Spain. March of Time No. 1 1 .
18 mins.

Subject: Spain as it is to-day under the Fascist
regime.

Treatment: March of Time at very nearly its best.
"Very nearly" because the commentary lacks the
richness and the subtle nuances of the commen-
taries of such earlier issues as Inside Nazi Ger-
many and the famous item on Austria. The pic-
tures are, however, among the most sensational
that M.O.T. has ever brought to the screen.
Pages and Rebiere, a team responsible for the
best of March of Time's pre-war continental
films, after escaping from France, succeeded in
persuading the Spanish Government to allow
them to make the most horrifying exposure of
fascism in action that has yet reached the screen.
The reason for the full facilities granted them was
apparently that Franco officiate (loath to allow
pictures of depressed life in Spanish towns) were
only too anxious to show how they had incarcer-
ated thousands of their Republican enemies in
the most nightmarishly modern prisons one has
ever seen. Franco is apparently proud that, in
his mercy, he has not wiped out every single
democrat but has been content to massacre only
in hundreds of thousands. The prison interiors,
beautifully photographed by Rebiere, have all the
glaring white claustrophobic impact of Room's
Ghost That Never Returns. Here we see perpe-
trated the ultimate horror of fascism. Musicians
— ex-members of the State Orchestras under the
Republic — are compelled to play fascist airs as
members of a prison orchestra formed to enter-
tain teeming Republican prisoners. Imprisoned
journalists who worked on democratic papers
are compelled to turn out a fascist sheet of
"redemption" for the "re-education" of pris-
oners. The children of imprisoned democrats
are shown being trained, almost from the day
they can walk, to perform outrageously militar-
istic evolutions in fantastic comic-opera uni-
forms. There is scarcely a scene without its
priest or nun underlining the full significance of
this attack by ancient and modern methods (the
inquisition as well as the concentration camp)
upon the minds rather than the bodies of men.
Propaganda value: Inestimable, wherever it is
shown.

The Crown of the Year. Green Park Produc-
tions. Director: Ralph Keene. Assoc. Producer:
Edgar Anstey. Camera: Ray Elton and Reg.
Wyer. M.O.I. 20 mins. non-T. 15 mins. T.
Subject: The harvest.

Treatment: As rich and satisfying as the soil itself
is Keene's final film chapter of the four seasons.
It is visually beautiful, yet there is no forgetting
of toil and planning, nor are practical considera-
tions neglected for the sake of romanticism, that
bogey which seems always to be hanging around
when the town looks at the country. We see the
fruits of the earth being gathered, and implicit
in the shooting is the sweat that has gone to their
growing. Official planning makes its appearance ;
but for once on the screen it is concerned with
understandable fact; the plan of the farm is
looked at, the river land is to be ploughed up to
add to the nation's food supply. The film is com-
mented by the farmer and often as we have
nattered at the use of the unprofessorial com-
mentator, we have to admit that this one is per-
fect. His voice has a warm country flavour but
every word is clear and there is no need of the

usual ear trumpet and glossary. The makers have
carefully avoided the bountiful Mother Nature
ending by carrying the film on to the toil and
preparation for next year's harvest. The music
by William Alwyn is as rich and satisfying as the
picture.

Propaganda value: It is good for any country to
have some things to boast about and the progress
of British agriculture during this war is one of
them. This film does its subject justice. Although
we have no agricultural land as spectacular as
prairies or steppes, we seem to be leading the
world in one aspect of the important job of
making much out of little.

Breathing Space. Producer: Alex Shaw. Direc-
tor: Charles de Lautour. Camera: Charles
Marlborough. Editor: Alan Osbiston. Strand
Films. M.O.I, for U.S.S.R. 30 mins.
Subject: British entertainment and culture in re-
lation to her war-time effort.
Treatment: The manner and the matter of this
film both arise from its specific purpose which is
to explain one side of our life in Britain to our
allies in Russia. The activities depicted include
bands in the Parks and Trafalgar Square, Art
exhibitions, a National Gallery concert, a dance
at a Service aerodrome, a factory canteen con-
cert, and suchlike. The commentary being in
Russian, a language of which your reviewer
knows exactly five words, one of them indelicate,
the full import of the descriptive part of the film
(which is obviously a vital part of it) could not
be assessed during projection. Subsequent en-
quiries, however, indicated that the scenes of
leisure depicted were not allowed to deceive our
Allies into thinking that we were only half at
war. The visuals indeed, even without comment-
ary, have been carefully selected to emphasise the
urgencies of effort in which our wartime culture
and entertainment are framed. De Lautour has
directed the film with skill and sensitivity, aided
andabetted by first-class camera work and editing.
The cogency of the results obtained varies with
the subjects treated, which, as already indicated,
swing from the sublime to the meticulous: in the
former category come the factory concert sequ-
ence (the best thing in the film) and an impressive
montage of British tanks in action with an Elgar
"Pomp and Circumstance" as sound : the latter
is represented by an over-long and not over-
cheerful canteen-dance at an airfield, and by a
semi-imaginative presentation of the genesis and
plugging of an Addinsell song-hit.
Propaganda value: If the Russians today want a
picture of the English not taking their pleasures
sadly, this will be very useful. The film goes no
further than this, and is presumably designed to
fit in with others dealing with other aspects.,

Close Quarters. Production: Crown Film Unit.
Direction: Jack Lee. Camera: Jonah Jones.
M.O.I. 75 mins.

Subject: A routine patrol of a submarine.
Treatment: A similar film to Target for Tonight,
Ferry Pilot and Coastal Command, and the best
of the lot, although it is bound to suffer coming
as it does two months after We Dive at Dawn.
The real-life crew are very well directed by Jack
Lee and brilliantly photographed by our old
chum Jonah Jones. Close Quarters in many ways
gives a better idea of what it must be like to
dive and live under water than does its studio
counterpart. There are a number of details that

suddenly make you think of the 100 or 150 feet
of water overhead : a mix from a truck out of
the port-hole of the supply ship to a close-up
of the closed hatch of the conning tower and
a pan down to the crew; the aimless walk of
the captain in a moment of tension ; the conning-
tower hatch closing ; the crew sleeping in a heap
on the floor; the surprising width of the fore-
deck; the reactions of the crew to the depth
charges.

In Close Quarters the torpedoes are tired
almost casually— in We Dive at Dawn with a
great deal of maneuvering and aiming. They
both can't be right surely.

Propaganda Value: Home and abroad excellent,
but was it necessary to have two films on the
same subject? The M.O.I, must have known that
We Dive at Dawn was nearly finished when they
commissioned Close Quarters.

We Dive at Dawn. Production: Gaumont Brit-
ish. Direction: Anthony Asquith. Camera:
Jack Cox.

We Dive at Dawn is a first class studio docu-
mentary, excellent dialogue, casting, photo-
graphy, sets, acting and direction. Some people
complain about the home-life sequences and
they are stagey — and not particularly well
thought out— but they are well intentioned and
seriously presented. The trouble may be that
very few English actors have the vaguest
idea of how anyone below a duchess behaves in
normal circumstances, and as script writers
suffer from the same fault, working-class home
life in films usually ends up as a caricature of the
real thing.

All the sequences on the submarine are ex-
tremely good, the sailors and officers are well
built up as individuals, and the vast amount of
technical material which might have been dull,
is handled so well that it becomes really exciting.
(continued on page 2 1 6)

SIGHT
and
SOUND

SUMMER ISSUE

FILMS IN SWEDEN

A PLEA for D. W. GRD7FITH

CHDLDREN'S CINEMA

EIRE

Published by: The British Film Institute,
4 Great Russell Street, London, W.C.I.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 5 1943

Documentary Films contd.

The torpedoing of the Brandenburg is nearly all
technical detail but it is done so well that it
becomes easily the best sequence of the whole
film and most likely one of the best action
sequences ever.

All that remains to be done is to compliment
Anthony Asquith both for a good honest film
and for his adaptability and to regret that the
film didn't finish when the Sea Tiger came in
sight of the pilot boat.

The Silent Village. Crown Film Unit. Producer-
Director: Humphrey Jennings. Camera: H.
Fowle. Editing: S. MacAllister. M.O.I. 36 mins.
Subject: What might have happened if a Welsh
mining village had been in Czechoslovakia
when the Germans went in, or alternatively,
what might have happened if Lidice had been
a Welsh mining village.

Treatment: It is very difficult to say anything
against this film without getting involved with
its subject. The tragedy of Lidice is world famous,
and like many great tragedies it has both horri-
fied and uplifted mankind. But tragedy demands
genius for its interpretation. In this film we have
sensitivity, good taste and cinematic technique,
and occasionally these combine to produce
moments of feeling. But that seems scarcely
enough.

Propaganda Value: It is impossible to imagine
why this film was made. The strangely oblique
approach robs the film of any direct impact
because it has been translated into "It might
have been like this" not "It was like this". It
has moments of aesthetic and technical interest
but this certainly does not seem the time for the
tentative and the semi-obscure.

World of Plenty. Production: Paul Rotha Pro-
ductions Ltd. Script: Eric Knight and Paul
Rotha. Associate Director: Yvonne Fletcher.
Additional Dialogue: Miles Malleson. Music:
William Alwyn. M.O.I. 46 mins.
Surveying from almost stratospheric height the
problem of Man and Food, The World of Plenty
marshals citizen and scientist, fact and forecast
in a brilliant display of cinematic technique.
Aided by animated diagram, trick optical and
Messrs John Orr, Woolton, Easterbrook and
Emmett with President Roosevelt and Henry
Wallace thrown in for good measure, the film
tells us of the past present and future of the
world larder.

Man depends on the land and its produce.
This fact is easily forgotten in peacetime city
living, but in war is grimly remembered. No one
toiling on an allotment is likely to overlook the
connection between sweat and dinner, and the
almost universal nostalgia for steak and onions
suggests a lively interest in the food situation.
Therefore World of Pit
advantage, we go to se

what it has to say. And it has got a lot to say.
It says that before the war people starved in one
place while food was destroyed in another, that
children went without, while crops rotted in the
fields for lack of a market. It tells of a world of
waste and inefficiency, a world where food meant
money and not life. The story is told by two men
— a commentator and a heckler. The first puts
across a smooth, urbane story of supply and
demand, an official tale in which apples and
cows arc divorced from their real meaning. The
heckler interrupts him, makes him explain and
amplify. When they come to a difficult point
(continued on page 220)

ith an initial
t prepared to listen to

THE WOLF ON
HIS DEATH-BED

A Wolf lay at the last gasp, and glanced at the events
of his past life. "True, I am a sinner^' said he; "but
let me still hope, not one of the greatest. I have done
harm; but also much good. Once, I remember, a bleating
Lamb, which had wandered from the flock, came so
near me, that I could easily have throttled it; and yet
I did nothing to it. At the same time I Listened to the
jeers and jibes of a Sheep with the most surprising
indifference, although I had no watchful Dogs to fear."
"I can explain all that," interrupted his friend the
Fox, who was assisting in preparing him for death.
"I have a distinct recollection of all the attendant
circumstances. It was precisely the time that you so
lamentably choked yourself with the bone, which the
kind-hearted Crane afterwards drew out of your
throat."

REALIST FILM UNIT

47 OXFORD STREET, W.l
Telephone: GERRARD 1958

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 5 1943

Movies are Important to Russia

From New Movies (National Board of Review Magazine)

A dramatic explanation of what movies mean
to war-time Russia can be found in two
seemingly contradictory news items of recent
date. One reported that Soviet actors, directors,
etc., are not drafted for military service. The
other noted that thirty cameramen lost their lives
in filming One Day at War, shown in the
U.S.A. as a March of Time release.

Yet there is no contradiction. Morale films,
fictional features, historical dramas, comedies,
must be made behind the lines, and made by the
best creative and technical talent available. At
the same time, faithful to Dovzhenko's words,
"the Soviet camera records the visual aspect of
war completely and unflinchingly." Unflinchingly
means, among other things, a cameraman loaded
down with heavy equipment in the thick of the
actual fighting, getting footage, at the cost of his
life, footage which will prevent some care-free
young critic from complaining: "But we don't
see any Germans in the shots of infantry advanc-
ing."

Yes, both kinds of movie-making go on apace
in Russia. It went on throughout one of the
toughest sieges in all history as we may discover
in Siege of Leningrad, currently being presented
to American audiences.

Grim and death-defying kind of documentary
photography also went on while Stalingrad rose
in triumph from its ashes. On this point, Roman
Karmen, one of the Soviet's ace newsreel men,
writes :

"When our gunners had pulled their guns into
the streets to fire point-blank at the enemy and it
was clear that the Germans at Stalingrad had
very few hours left to live, we newsreel photo-
graphers worked feverishly to use every moment
of waning light of that short winter day. In order
to cover all sectors of the front ; fifteen of us
were distributed among various Red Army units.

"Our cameras caught not only the street fight-
ing but the mass surrender of German officers
and men. . . . We filmed the surrender of Field-
Marshal von Paulus. We also recorded the sur-
render of Lieutenant-General von Daniel. The
camera caught him walking down the street, fol-
lowed by a file of luggage-laden officers. Soon the
epic of Stalingrad will unfold on the screen. The
film will show not only the siege of Stalingrad,
but the majestic epilogue, a meeting of soldiers
and civilians in the central square of the liberated
and heroic city."

For America

Other documentaries, completed and soon to
be available for American release, are Black Sea
Fighters and Russians at War. The first of these
was edited, very likely in Tashkent, from footage
shot by cameramen assigned to the Black Sea
Fleet. It describes the patrol work, landing
parties, reconnaissance and offensive and defen-
sive operations of a large naval force, but this is
no mere full-length instructional film. It is a
tense, emotional portrait of men and ships, al-
ternating the sweat of engine rooms with the ice
of wintry seas above decks. During a sequence of
battle with Nazi fighting craft one sees a Soviet
sailor burst through a doorway with flames
streaming from his back — a human firebrand.
No effort is made in the film to conceal the dam-
age done by combat and weather, but the final

impression is that nothing will ever drive the
Soviet Black Sea Fleet out of its native waters.

On the fictional front, Soviet films continue to
show vast variety and vitality. Diary of a Nazi
is the newest of the out-and-out war dramas to
reach the United States. It traces the unsavoury
career of a blackshirt S.S. Regiment through
Poland, Czechoslovakia and the south of Russia.
The remnants of the regiment end up as prisoners
of the Red Army.

One of the most unusual items on the produc-
tion agenda of the Alma-Ata studio in Central
Asia is a film to be called Wait For Me, based on
a poem of the same name, by Konstantin
Simonov, war correspondent and playwright,
who is doing the script. The author of this tender
poetic concept also wrote A Lad From Our Town,
a historical film dealing with the Civil War hero,
Kotovsky.

Historical Films

This (Kotovsky) film is part of a cycle of his-
torical subjects which the Russian industry feels
is excellently calculated to give deeper roots to the
fighting patriotism of the average Russian.
Eisenstein, a director known to Americans for
his Potemkin, shown to many audiences here, is
putting finishing touches on his Ivan the Terrible,
concerning himself not so much with the mon-
arch's eccentricities and cruelties, but with his
efforts to occidentalise Russia and to import
some of the fruits of Renaissance culture such as
printing, chemistry, etc.

The Tashkent studio have finished Sukhe-
Bator, the story of a national hero of the Mon-
golian People's Republic and in Ashkhabad, on
the Iranian border, a studio has completed How
the Steel was Tempered, adapted from Ostrov-
sky's novel about the German occupation of the
Ukraine in 1918. In Stalinabad, a biographical
film is being made about Lermontov, Russia's
great nineteenth century poet. It's a short jump,
in any studio, from a nineteenth century poet to a
twentieth century composer, by virtue whereof
Alma-Ata is working on a film called Leningrad
Symphony, which uses the creation of the Seventh
Symphony by Shostakovich as the background of
its story. The script is by Alexei Kapler, war
correspondent for Red Star.

This list could be made longer. Certainly it
should include V. I. Pudovkin's production, The
Face of Fascism, based on short stories by the
anti-Nazi German writer, Berthold Brecht ; a full-
length satire on the Nazi armies entitled New
Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik; and a
film tentatively titled Who Is She? based on the
heroic life and death of 17-year-old girl guerilla,
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who was executed
by the Nazis.

Comedies

The Russians have their comedies, too, but
most of them don't find their way to this country
because the popular humour of almost any
country is too idiomatic for successful exporta-
tion. Even these comedies, you may be sure, deal
with the war and make Nazis harassed by the
Russian winter and Soviet guerillas, the butt of
their humour.

It will be observed that none of the films

touched on herein is completely divorced from the
war or from the broader aspects of Russian
patriotism. Notice, too, that some of the scen-
arios are by war correspondents. Apparently the
Russians do not feel the need for films of escape,
a form of moral therapy recommended in other
lands as an excellent lift to the war-time spirit for
soldiers and civilians alike. The real key to the
shaping of Soviet film fare in war-time may be
found in the earnest and inspiring call of Alex-
ander Dovzhenko to the world's film makers:

"Film workers, don't varnish the world of to-
day. Do not 'make it up' out of your imaginings.
The world is now very ill. Do not divert your art
to trivial, individual matters. The cinema must
and can give the answer to the sorest, sharpest
contemporary problems. It must honestly help
suffering mankind to find its bearings."'

60 Films a Month on
Science and War

(From the Metropolitan Motion Picture Bulletin)
By Peter Furst

(Copyright 1943, by Field Publications, Re-
printed by permission of the newspaper PM.)

Leonid Antonov, special representative of the
Russian motion picture industry, and himself a
producer and director, now in Hollywood to
study American film production and to purchase
a number of American-made films, reports that
his country plans to produce at least 100 full-
length feature films, 10 full-length documen-
taries and more than 700 short subjects in 1943.

The short subjects, dealing primarily with
science and the war subjects, are now being pro-
duced at the rate of 60 a month, the Russian
producer declared.

Feature films include Lidice, the story of the
destruction of the Czech village; Mendel, story
of a Jewish shoemaker who becomes a hero in
the eyes of the Soviet people; Flight over Berlin
and an as yet untitled film based on a story by
Mark Twain. One full-length film already pro-
duced is Defence of Stalingrad, which Antonov
said will be released in this country soon.

While cameramen in the Soviet Union today
are right up in the front lines with the army —
with the result that many have already lost their
lives — creative artists are still deferred from direct
military service since the Government recognises
their immense morale value, according to
Antonov.

This particular statement has made Holly-
wood producers a little jealous, since the man-
power problem in U.S. studios is becoming
more serious every day. Antonov also told of the
tremendous difficulties encountered by the
Russian motion picture industry. All the major
studios had to be removed, lock, stock, and
barrel, to central Asia. Two of the largest
studios, Mosfilm and Lenfilm, formerly situated
in Moscow and Leningrad, have been trans-
ferred to Alma-Ata, beyond the Urals. News-
reel and war front documentaries, however, are
still being turned out in the Moscow and Lenin-
grad plants, of the studios, who employ a staff of
160 cameramen in the front line.

Cameramen are being trained in Government
schools to take the place of those who lose their
lives in the line of duty.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 5 1943

Book Reviews

I hi In m Sense, by S. M. Eisenstein. (Faber &
Faber. 10.?. 6d.)

Eisenstein is one of the six great living film
makers frill in the other five for yourself), and
any books by him, let alone his first, which this i
is, must command (and be read with) attention.

The Film Sense is not, in any sense, a practical
study. It is an attempt to erect a complete theory '
of film aesthetic from the original theory of |
montage (no — not you — Mr. Vorkapitch) which
Eisenstein himself invented. To do this he in-
dulges in elaborate post facto theorising on
sequences in existing films (notably in an analysis
of picture and sound from Alexander Nevski ) and
also studies montage (as it appears to him) in the
works of various practitioners in other arts —
including da Vinci, El Greco, Van Gogh, Bach,
Verdi, Rimbaud, Whitman, Gogol and so on.

At this point your reviewer must confess that
he finds himself, for the first time in his life,
being a thorough low-brow, and would like to
add that the thing he enjoyed most in the book
occurs in Appendix 3 — a record of the shot
sequence of the finale of Eisenstein's Strike. It
reads as follows :

10. The bull's head is fastened with a rope
to a bench.

1 1 . One thousand persons rush past the

As an extremely esoteric study of the more
curious aspects of film theory, The Film Sense is
certainly interesting. It is full of exceedingly
interesting quotations, and is illustrated by stills
and diagrams, including one long one at the
back which pulls out.

Photographic Optics by Arthur Cox. Published '
by The Focal Press. 1 5.?.

This book sets out to explain, in language which
can be understood by the layman, the highly
technical business of the optics of photographic
lenses; and it does that very successfully. Into a
little over 300 pages the author has crammed an
astonishing amount and variety of information.
The man who uses a camera, whether he is a
beginner, "advanced" amateur or professional,
will find in these pages everything he wants to
know about lenses, told in plain English and
"without using the much dreaded mathematical
arguments" — to quote the dust jacket.

Of course it is impossible to talk about optics
and leave out formuke altogether, but these
have been kept to a minimum and are of the
kind that can be followed without a knowledge
of higher mathematics. In addition, a great
number of very good diagrams are used to
clarify the explanations given in the text.

Starting with elementary definitions of light
rays, focal length, depth of focus, focal numbers
and so on, the reader is led almost painlessly to
more ad\anced discussion of lens performance,
the defects or aberrations found in lenses, and
basic lens types. There is a chapter on how to
test optical equipment; and a fair amount of '
space is devoted to infra-red, polarising filters, f
lens hoods, surface coating, view finders, range
finders, lenses for enlarging and projection,
film viewers, etc., etc. This very rough outline
of the scope of the book is intended to show that
compactness has not been achieved by sacrificing
thoroughness. This is the ideal book on
the subject for the practical worker in photo-
graphy. I

Some Opinions about

WORLD of PLENTY

CABLE FROM WORLD FOOD CONFERENCE, HOT SPRINGS, VIRGINIA, USA

WORLD OF PLENTY WAS SHOWN TO A FULL HOUSE OF THREE HUNDRED
DELEGATES AND PRESSMEN. WAS RECEIVED WITH PROLONGED APPLAUSE
AND EXCITED MUCH COMMENT AND ENTHUSIASM AT THE CONFERENCE.
USA PRESS RELATIONS OFFICER SAW IT TWICE AND WAS PARTICULARLY
IMPRESSED. WE HAVE REQUESTS FOR. THE FILM FROM CHINESE, EGYPTIAN,
INDIAN AND AMERICAN DELEGATES. THE FILM HAPPENS TO SUMMARISE AND
si I loRTH PICTORIALLY SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CONCLUSIONS OF
THE CONFERENCE.

Something of a model in this method or posing important problems for
serious screen discussion is the study of international nutrition recently
produced for the Ministry of Information. The audience are left with the
impression that they have been treated to a frank, realistic, and pictori-
ally lucid discussion of a complicated problem. It is important to note,
however, that the film would not have served this or any other useful
purpose if it had not contrived, while treating a serious subject seriously,
to keep expectant and amused the spectator's pleasure-loving eye. —
Leading article, The Times.

The whole art of advocacy is revealed in this film about food. The art, of
course, is to state a short, simple thesis in many words, illustrating it
over and over again, until the argument just cannot be missed or for-
gotten.— Evening Standard.

World of Plenty is much more than a first-class documentary. It is a political
event. It is the first satisfactory use of modern technique to explain to the
public one of the great world problems about which common people as
well as statesmen and technicians must be compelled to think. World of
Plenty is a front-page story and a leading article thrown at the heads of
cinemagoers, and, whatever its success or failure as entertainment, it will
implant a seed. — New Statesman.

There is an urgency and bitterness in this film, both in its simple state-
ment of the nightmare contradiction of the pre-war world of starvation
and glut and in the inevitable unanswerable conclusion — a world plan for
food must be found. Regarded as entertainment, it is as dramatic as any
thriller. The selection of material, the editing, the welding of it together
by means of an under-running, vivid and pointed conversation between
two men, show how completely the producer is the master of his
medium. — News Chronicle.

It is the function of this film to inspire determination and it represents a
major contribution to the United Nations' will to plan. — The Spectator.
It has tense, dramatic dialogue. It has drama and beauty and ugliness as
well as searing reality. — Daily Mirror.

A difficult subject has been handled in su< h a waj as to give it excitement
instead of the air of massive deliberation which sometimes broods over
the film of fact. World of Plenty makes one think of new movements, new
ideas, on the fa< tual side.- -Sunday Times.

PRODUCTION PI RSONNE1

Script: Eric Knight and Paul Rotha. Associate Director: Yvonne Fletcher.
Music: William Ajwyn. Maps and Diagrams : The Isotype Institute. Addi-
tional Dialogue: Miles Malleson. Speakers: Eric Knight, E. V. 11. Emmett,
Robert St. John, Henrj Hallatt, Thomas Chalmers. Length +8 minutes.

Distributed by Paramount
PAUL ROTHA PRODUCTIONS LTD.

21, Soho Square, London W.l.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 5 1943

FILM OF THE MONTH

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp:
Archers Production : Written, Produced and
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric
Pressburger.

IT is sometimes said that nowadays mere
size, rather than symmetry or grace, is
sufficient to impress the majority. On this
thesis The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
is certainly a veritable Albert Hall of a film,
and impressive in exactly the same terms.
Its West End success is undoubted, and pre-
sumably its inordinate length has something
to do with it ; nevertheless, about 70 minutes
could easily be removed and the film would
be not a whit the worse and probably a good
deal better.

But the interesting thing about Blimp is
not so much the film as its philosophy of life,
and the propagandist slant which it puts
forward.

Having agreed therefore that it is too long,
has the best acting and the worst colour
seen for a very long time, and one sequence
(the duel) which is real movie, let us pass to
a consideration of what factors have con-
tributed to the sublime un-Englishness of the
whole affair.

There is no question at all of the sincerity
of its makers, Powell and Pressburger. The
film is a genuine and often striking attempt
to pay tribute to the English.

But the difficulty is that the English people
in the film represent what people from the
European mainland think they would like
them to be ; and this is not the same thing as
what they are. This is a fact which the Ger-
mans are constantly having to discover over
again; which makes it all the more extra-
ordinary that Blimp has to be taught to
adapt himself to modern life (and death) by a
Prussian.

However, it is worth examining in more
detail the apparent thought processes which
evolved the story.

They appear to be something as follows :

1. What about making a film about Low's
Colonel Blimp?

2. Maybe Blimp isn't really a reactionary
and dangerous old soldier. Maybe he has a
heart of gold. Maybe there's a logical back-
ground which explains his attitude today.

3. All right, let's make a film about his life
history and explain him to the ordinary
people. Then they'll understand he doesn't
mean any harm and will be quite all right
after the war and prepared to see their point
of view.

[ 4. All right then. For simplicity's sake we'll
confine the whole story to the wealthier up-
per middle class group and reflect the whole
thing through the eyes of a German. Not a
Nazi, mind you, but a converted Prussian
officer.

5. And don't forget some scenes for Deborah
Kerr.

6. And be lavish.

In all seriousness, however, there is some-
thing highly disturbing in the very sincerity
with which our pseudo-British gent is pre-
sented. Not only is he not Low's Blimp ; he is
the very reverse — an apologia for the upper-
class specialists who misguided this country
into the mud of Munich and the disasters of
1939-40.

It is not without significance that the film
contains no report of what Blimp was doing
and thinking at the time of Manchukuo,
Abyssinia, or the Spanish Civil War. (There
is a hint that he was Governor of Jamaica —
but only in terms of paying an oblique
tribute to the Colonial Empire).

No, the real trouble is that the Blimp of
this film is the Englishman that a certain
type of emigre would like to think exists —
stupid, brave, amiable, kind to animals and
domestics, and, au fond eminently amenable
to reason, particularly if put forward by
someone of another nationality.

Unfortunately the type does not exist ; the
nearest approach being not the diehard,
who sincerely and openly professes his inten-
tions and doesn't try to be nice about it, but
rather the quisling or Munichite who con-

ceals his venom under the facile charm of
you-know-who.

The best thing Blimp can do is to reassure
the reactionaries by making it clearer that they
are, as they have themselves so often sus-
pected, the salt of the earth. And it is re-
markable, if you think back over the film,
that not one single ordinary person, such as
you may meet in the street or a bus in Eng-
land, has anything more than a walking-on
part in the entire film. But the people are per-
haps not important in comparison with the
huge collection of financiers, soldiers,
diplomats, judges, etc., who pat our Prussian
hero on the back in 1919 and promise to put
Germany on her feet again. Note, too, that
it is the Prussian who reneges on the Nazis,
while the financiers, soldiers, diplomats, etc.,
as we well remember — carried on the good
work of backing up Hitler.

As one sees Blimp reunited to his German
friend, and being taught by him a few ele-
mentary facts about international affairs, one
wonders who is the real hero of the film — the
German who doesn't like Hitler or the Old
Soldier who refuses to die?

And, as a final postscript, can anyone ex-
plain the scene in the last war where Blimp
proudly announces that we are winning be-
cause we play fair, and then leaves a South
African officer to torture some German
prisoners? Was this put in to make a drama-
tic contrast with the Boer War opening
scenes? Or do the Archers just dislike South
Africa?

^k For your information

TN every progressive enterprise there must be leaders
-*-and those who follow behind. As artistic and
technical progress in kinematography quickens to the
tempo and stimulus of war, " KINEMATOGRAPH
WEEKLY " is always to be found " up-with-the-
. leaders ", its well-informed pages radiating perception
and far-sighted thinking. Kinematography's
leaders themselves know this for truth
and turn to «K.W." week by crttl

:ek for information and j,.. „/-/ff'§ *

enlightenment.

i&^r

w

93 LONG ACRE
LONDON W.C.2

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 5 1943

STRAND FILMS

MAKERS OF DOCUMENTARY
FILMS SINCE 1934

THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD.

DONALD TAYLOR - MANAGING DIRECTOR

1 GOLDEN SQUARE, W.l.

NATIONAL STUDIOS, ELSTREE.

DOCUMENTARY FILMS Contd.

they consult the experts, a British and American
farmer, a housewife coping with rationing
problems or one of the bevy of celebrities men-
tioned above. War brought tremendous prob-
lems on the food front but it also brought far
reaching and revolutionary solutions to them.
In Britain it happened swiftly, in America
with her vast resources it is happening more
slowly, but now every person gets a fair share
in the country's food supply. If it can be done
in war, it can be done in peace. This is one of the
things the film says. To give this message the
necessary trumpet blast, Henry Wallace is
brought in to say his celebrated piece about the
Common Man.* This provides an excellent
finish to what is an important film. But many
people will prefer Sir John Orr, who towers
above his screen companions. t His words, we
admit, have not got the right spellbinding quality
for a peroration but, with the implicit suggestion
of effort and toil, they suggest that there is
work to be done before achievement and that
no one enters upon the promised land without
fighting.

The Common Man indeed. He who has ever
looked in a mirror and said, "I am the Common
Man" deserves no World of Plenty.

If there was ever a film of which it might be
truly said that everyone should see it, this is the
film. Alwyn has written music which matches
the film in breadth of vision. We are glad to
hear that after its initial successes with
specialised audiences it is to be shown publicly.

* / vyr that the century on which we are enter-
ing, the century which will come into being after
this war, can be and must be the century of the
Common Man.

t We cannot attain freedom from want until
every man, woman and child shall hare enough
of the right kind of food to enable them to develop
their full and inherited capacity for health and
well-being.

Scientific Films

The English Scientific Film Association was
formed on Saturday, May 15th, 1943, at a meet-
ing representative of science and films, convened
by the Scientific Films Committee of the Associa-
tion of Scientific Workers. Mr. Arthur Elton,
who was in the chair, stated that the new asso
tion was to be independent and seif-governing.
An Interim Planning Committee was appointed
to frame the constitution and to propose condi-
tions of membership. Contact has already been
made with the equivalent Scottish Association.
Among the aims of the English Scientific Film
Association are the following:

To promote the national and international
use of the Scientific I ilm in order to achieve
the widest possible understanding and appre-
ciation o\' scientific methods and outlook,
especially in relation to social progress;

to collect, collate and distribute information
oi\ the Scientific Film :

to publish comprehensive lists of Scientific
Films graded according to scientific merit :

to establish relations with Government de-
partments, public bodies and other organisa-
tions which arc in a position to make use or
circulate scientific films;

to support and consult a representative panel
of scientists to advise producers of films of all
tvpes in scientific matters, and to maintain
close com, ict with the film industrj :
The acting secretary is Mr. M. Michaelis,
51 Fitzjohn"s Avenue, London. N.W.3.

E
NEWS LETTER

CONTENTS

KE HEED FOR TOMORROW

I HI MONO HI HIM) I HI I II MS

NOTES OF THE MONTH

NEW DOCUMENTARY I

FILM SOCIETIES

KERS WEEKEND

SOUND ON IX XI MINIARIIS

FILM OF THE MONTH

VOL 4 NO. 6

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON Wl

TAKE HEED FOR TOMORROW

We are at a stage in the war when it is opportune for document-
ary film-makers to take stock. Inevitably and rightly they are
looking towards the final phase and assessing their role. It is clear
that the documentary film can and indeed must in the future play a
vital part.

Let us examine the achievements of the past. In almost every
wartime field the film of fact has made its contribution. With the
help of films the fighting services have turned civilians into soldiers
with a speed and efficiency surpassing anything previously known.
The civilian population has been helped by the film to weld itself
into a war-winning force no less essential than the uniformed men
in the front line. The Civil Defence services have relied on films to
increase the efficiency of firemen, fireguards, rescue workers, first-aid
workers. The Ministry of Agriculture has used film to achieve a
phenomenal increase in the productivity of our farmlands and our
allotments. The health and morale of factory workers have been
ministered to by the film ; and the meal-break film show has come to
be recognised as a permanently desirable adjunct of factory life.

We cannot pretend that the film has everywhere been used with
maximum vision or efficiency. In many fields the achievements have
been potential rather than real. Let us not pretend either that the
tiny British documentary film movement of the pre-war years can
claim credit for everything that has grown from its early and often
unhonoured efforts. Yet it would be dangerous from motives of
modesty or of any other kind to close our eyes to the when and the
where and the why of the sowing of the original seed of this war-
time achievement. For if we neglect origins we may overlook the
persistent neglect of certain original documentary purposes, pur-
poses which have always been in the forefront of documentary policy
but have not always been reflected on the screen to a comparable
extent with the instructional and expositional types of films listed
above.

The source of anxiety is that few of the above films look forward
with hope to the future. This is not to say that Britain at war has
made no good propaganda films. When it was a question of demon-
strating to the- world the courage and determination of the British
people such films as Target for Tonight and Desert Victory could
scarcely have been bettered. Yet the limitations of this field of prop-
aganda are now clear. Defensive courage in the bombed streets of
London and offensive courage on the field of battle are now ac-
cepted all over the world as British characteristics and the continued
promotion of such themes has therefore ceased to be of primary
importance". Nor should we any longer concern ourselves with the
production of films extolling the past achievements of democracy
and seeking thereby to justify its survival. Democracy has already
been adequately justified and will survive. But it will survive only so
long as it indicates a path forward. Democracy therefore needs, not

films which show the solution of past problems, but films which
postulate new ones. The world is now anxious to know what are the
ultimate and civilising aims of the British people.

Let us not exaggerate the change required in documentary
emphases. The production of instructional films calculated to
increase civil and service efficiency must go on. It is necessary also
that we achieve the formulation and co-ordination of plans for the
production of post-war educational films on an enormously broad
scale. We must bring pressure in every way possible upon all
appropriate bodies, both official and unofficial, to see that the
instructional use of film — so clearly demonstrated in war — is fully
utilised in peace. Nevertheless the fact remains that this great pur-
pose cannot by itself give full scope to the potentialities of the
documentary medium.

The main objective of documentary film policy has always been
the production of films which would reveal the need for and the
means towards progress in the social organisation of the com-
munity. If ever there was a case in the past for the relegation of such
subjects to a second place of importance, that time has clearly
passed. The issue of the fighting war (and indeed its continuance to
final victory) may well depend on the clear perception of social goals
by the peoples of the United Nations. Documentary must again
become militant in the social field, returning to its most clearly
creative function. For social criticism is amongst the most creative
of all activities.

We need again in our films the crusading spirit of Workers and
Jobs, Housing Problems, Enough to Eat, Children at School, Face
of Britain and The Londoners. During the war there have, it is true,
been a few attempts in the same kind. The Harvest Shall Come and
World of Plenty represent new milestones along the old road.
Techniques will change. New audiences will be won by new and
more popular documentary styles. There is work to be done in the
blending of documentary and traditional feature film techniques
towards social ends. Mi/lions Like Us, though its message may be
obscure, is an example of a production technique with vast poten-
tialities. The need is pressing, the field is vast, the techniques are
available. The British democratic choice is between nationalism -
and internationalism, imperialism and emancipation, vested interest
and public interest. It is a choice which the documentary film has
been designed to articulate, objectively setting out the facts and
leaving its audiences to draw their conclusions.

There has been much talk of the coming need for vocational
training films: surely the first vocation for which we must train is
active citizenship. Ahead of us lies the greatest opportunity which
the documentary film movement has known. It is an opportunity
which will not remain open indefinitely.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 6 1943

THE MONEY BEHIND THE FILMS

By Henry Fullerton

By courtesy of "Tribune"

Some of our readers will have read the following article when
it appeared originally in "Tribune". We believe they will agree
with us that it is of sufficient importance to warrant reprinting
in a film journal. However, we do not necessarily associate
ourselves with the conclusions advanced by the author. This
version of the article is abridged.

IN a report issued in October, 1936, at the peak of the boom, the
Film Council wrote:

"In the first ten months of 1936 loans of nearly £13,000,000
were poured into the three great spheres of production, renting
and exhibition. Banks, insurance companies, legal investment
trusts, even motor manufacturers, are falling over each other in
their eagerness to stake a claim. Men and women who have
scarcely given a thought to films all their lives are clamouring for
posts in the studios, attracted by the rumours of high salaries
and speedy promotion. ... All across the country, queues of
people wait outside the new super-cinema, while perhaps two
streets away the steel girders of yet another half-finished 2,000-
seater rise into the sky."

Let us now take a look at the structure of the British film industry
before it emerged from what was certainly the most highly-specula-
tive boom in the history of finance. Broadly speaking, the field was
divided between three powerful groupings, each of which exerted
varying degrees of influence over all three branches of the industry.
Occupying a key position through their powerful renting organisa-
tion were the big American companies — M.G.M., R.K.O., Radio,
20th Century-Fox, Warner and First National, Paramount, Colum-
bia and Universal. Between them, these companies controlled
various quota production units, but their exhibition interests were
limited to a London pre-release hall, a dozen or so super-halls in
key towns and an arrangement with the Union Circuit.

Next came the important Anglo-American alliance — United
Artists — which had created a satellite swarm of "quality" produc-
tion units and acquired a large interest in Oscar Deutsch's rapidly
expanding Odeon circuit.

Against these two groups stood two major and independent
British "Empires" — Associated British Pictures and Gaumont-
British — whose main strength lay in their vertical organisation
based on the control of nearly 600 cinemas. Apart from these two
companies, the British industry was split into a number of small
circuits and privately-owned halls; a variety of independent pro-
ducers, and a number of minor British renters such as Associated
British Film Distributors, Twickenham Film Distributors, British
Lion, Equity British, Butcher's Film Service, etc.

This, then, was the position at the end of 1935 ; and it was a posi-
tion ripe with possibilities for any man or group of'men endowed
with the necessary organisational ability, business acumen, and
financial resources. As we have seen, lack of funds was the last
thing from which the British industry suffered; but it must be
realised that the greater part of the industry's financing in this
period was of a planless and purely speculative nature. It holds true
of any industry that loan-financing leads towards monopolisation
only when practised by a restricted number of powerful financial
groups acting on a predetermined, long-term plan. Operating
quietly and unobtrusively beyond the limelight shared, at that time,
by the "Napoleons" of the industry (Mr. John Maxwell of A.B.P.,
the Ostrer Brothers of Gaumont-British and Mr. Oscar Deutsch)
was a Man with a Plan . . . and money . . . and influential "tie-ups."
The plan began to unfold when a certain Mr. C. M. Woolf
resigned, in May, 1935, from the board of Gaumont-British. With

the aid of an English finance concern known as General Cinema
Finance, Woolf founded General Film Distributors—an important
new renting organisation which, within twelve months, was taken
over by General Cinema Finance. Now, two of the finance com-
pany's directors were also on the board of the American company
Universal. The result was a fusion of the renting interests of the
American and British companies and the emergence of a new group
which was shortly to make itself felt in all three branches of the
industry.

In examining the directorate of General Cinema Finance, we find
ourselves face to face with some of the most outstanding personali-
ties in the world of English finance-capital.

Lord Portal of Laverstoke, chairman of the great Wiggins, Teape
paper combine, and related to the famous Glyn banking family.

The late Lord Luke, chairman of Bovril, and with other interests
ranging from gold mines and banks to publishing companies.

Paul Lindenburg, director of vast financial concerns in Britain,
Canada, Austria, Rumania and the Netherlands.

Leslie William Farrow, holder of four chairmanships, three
deputy -chairmanships, and 17 directorships in paper and- other
interests.

And . . . Mr. Joseph Arthur Rank.

Rank's Background

Rank inherited three things from his millionaire, mill-owner
father : a fervent devotion to the Methodist cause, one of the largest
fortunes in England, and a Machiavellian prowess in matters of
modern financial practice. He inherited another thing — that peculiar
quality of irrational austerity to which so many rich men attempt to
"convert" a proletariat already forced to practise it by necessity.
This trait was most strongly marked in his father who, on one
occasion, after examining the plans for a new and handsome five-
storey block of offices to be erected in Hull, dismissed a suggestion
that lifts should be installed with the comment: "Workers can
walk." Yet Joseph Rank is said to have given, in his lifetime, over a
million pounds to the cause of Methodism.

Arthur Rank has himself given thousands of cine projectors to
Methodist churches and halls up and down the country, but does
not permit himself the luxury of owning a machine for his own
private use. This interesting contradiction in his character was very
effectively displayed some time ago when a reporter, sent to inter-
view him on the successful conclusion of a particularly smart
financial deal, found him taking his usual Sunday school class at
the Methodist Church, Reigate, where he lives.

Of his intentions towards the industry, over which he now wields
such a large measure of control, it has been suggested (a) that he is
primarily interested in the film's possibilities as a medium for the
dissemination of religious doctrines; (/>) that he is exclusively con-
cerned with the personal power and material rewards derivable
from a watertight monopoly over the industry.

As is so often true of such cases, the truth lies somewhere between
these two propositions — though exactly where it would be difficult,
if not impossible, to determine at this stage.

It is indicative, for example, that in his biggest business deals he
has been content to play a waiting game, sometimes for years,
moving his players here and there on the chessboard of high finance
until he has created a situation where he can finally strike with a
minimum of financial outlay to himself and a maximum of financial
sacrifice to his competitors. A man of his enormous wealth, inspired
— as has been suggested — by the impatient ardour of a religious
crusader, would surely have been acting truer to type in going out for
quick victories regardless of the immediate cost. On the other hand
it can be pointed out that his very first activities in the industry, 15
years ago, were in connection with the production and distribution
of a religious film; that his 61 chairmanships and directorships

DOCUMENTARY NEW LETTER No. 6 1943

encompass Methodist Newspapers Ltd., Methodist Publications
Ltd., Methodist Times Co., and Religious Films Ltd., and that he
has already stopped the production of a number of films which, in
his opinion, lacked a sufficient moral basis.

As man, millionaire and Methodist, Rank has remained, and has
the quality of continuing to remain, an enigma. As a potential
monopolist he is at once an open book and a manual of instruction
to anyone who cares to study his operations from 1935 to date.
Considerations of space make it impossible for us to deal separately
with the variety of small and relatively uninteresting acquisitions
which followed the fusion between Universal and General Film
Distributors early in 1936. Suffice it to say that as early as the
autumn of that year the horizontal structure of the Rank interests
loomed large out of the amorphous organism of the industry.
The big story of those years lies in the circumstances attending
Rank's greatest single triumph — the acquisition of the vast Gau-
mont-British "empire."

When Woolf resigned the deputy-chairmanship and managing-
directorship of Gaumont-British in 1935 to join Rank he left a
company which had experienced sufficiently good trading results to
pay an average dividend on its £3,000,000 Ordinary capital of
13| per cent for each of the past three years. He also, presumably,
brought with him a complete dossier of all the facts and factors
which contributed to that great combine's strength — and — more
important — the nature of its weaknesses, actual and potential.

The Gaumont-British Deal

It began in the summer of 1936 when 20th Century-Fox, in
alliance with Loew (the largest shareholder in Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer) made a spectacular bid for the control of Metropolitan and
Bradford Trust, the holding company controlling Gaumont-British.
Such a deal, had it gone through, would have produced the most
formidable Anglo-American alliance in the industry ; but, curiously
enough in view of their bargaining power and prestige, the Fox-
M.G.M. offer was not immediately accepted by the Ostrer Brothers
(who held the key voting shares in Metropolitan and Bradford).
The late John Maxwell, then chairman of Associated British Picture
and Rank's greatest British rival, swallowed the bait, hook, line and
sinker. Alarmed on the one hand by the apparent prospect of a new
and all-powerful competitor, and captivated on the other by the
vision of creating a solid phalanx of 780 theatres (A.B.P. owned
295; Union Cinemas, acquired later by Maxwell, owned 136, and
Gaumont-British owned 345) Maxwell made a lightning bid for the
Ostrers' interests.
The Ostrers were most obliging. They sold him 250,000 non-
| voting shares in Metropolitan & Bradford for £618,125 (the market
value of the shares at that time was £209,375) and gave him an
option to purchase their 5,100 "A" voting shares — in which reposed
the control of Gaumont-British — for £800,000. As soon as the non-
voting shares were transferred, 20th Century-Fox, who held the
balance of 4,900 Metropolitan & Bradford "A" shares, announced
that they would exercise their right to veto the transfer of the
Ostrers' "A" shares to Maxwell. As a result, the Ostrer Brothers
I made a profit of £408,750 and incurred a debt of gratitude to the
master-mind behind the plan, while Maxwell paid heavily for a
block of strategically valueless shares and saw his hopes of an
| A.B.P.-Gaumont "empire" fade and then vanish completely.

Meanwhile, the new policy of producing "quality" British films

f for the world market — initiated by United Artists and taken up in a

I big way by the Rank combine — had had most unfortunate reper-

[ cussions inside the hitherto prosperous Gaumont-British "empire".

In November, 1936, Mark Ostrer had to inform his shareholders

[ that the company's overdraft with the National Provincial Bank

I had risen by £482,000 over the previous year — of which amount

approximately £247,904 represented indebtedness incurred in the

company's efforts to produce and distribute for a world market. The

only hope, he declared, of restoring the company's profitability on

the production side lay in the abandonment of this policy and the

production of cheap films for the home market.

But the company's profitability was not restored. Net earnings in
the following year fell from £375,506 to £195,213, and shareholders
went without a dividend for the second year in succession. Nor did
'they receive anything until 1942, when control of the company
finally passed to Joseph Arthur Rank. Throughout this period, Mark
Ostrer persistently refused his shareholders' demands for the publica-
tion of a consolidated balance-sheet which alone would show the
company's real financial position.

Now for the denouement.

Four-Power Alliance

In October, 1941, Rank bid for, and acquired, the Ostrer Brothers'
5,100 "A" shares in Metropolitan & Bradford. The price paid for
the shares was £700,000— or £100.000 less than that offered by John
Maxwell. Moreover, 20th Century-Fox made no attempt, this time,
to frustrate the deal. Earlier, in January, 1939, Rank had joined the
board of another "empire," Odeon Theatres, in which he held a
large block of shares. Three years later, almost to the day, Oscar
Deutsch died, and Rank became the new Odeon chairman. Against
Associated British Pictures was now rallied the might of a mam-
moth, four-power alliance: Gaumont-British, Odeon Theatres,
General Film Distributors and Universal. John Maxwell, who had
come so near to the Promised Land, was spared the humiliation of
seeing it lorded over by his powerful rival. He died in the summer
of 1941. Had he lived, his cup of bitterness must certainly have
overflowed on October 1 3th, 1942, for on that date it was announced
that the 250,000 non-voting shares in Metropolitan & Bradford
Trust which he had bought, on behalf of his company, for £618,125,
had been sold to Rank for £450,000.

It remains now to examine the structure of the British film indus-
try as it exists to-day ; to determine to what extent the industry is
endangered by Rank's monopolistic activities, and to propound
what we believe to be certain fundamental pre-requisites to the
healthy development of what, rightly directed, can become one of
the nation's most valuable cultural, educational and economic assets.

On the production side, Rank now controls approximately three-
quarters of the studio space not taken over by the Government.
Indeed, with the exception of the Ealing studios (largely owned by
Stephen Courtauld of the rayon family), Lady Yule's National
Studios at Elstree, and Warner Brothers' studios at Teddington,
we have been unable to trace a production unit of any importance
over which Rank does not exercise either direct personal control
through his English companies or indirect influence through his
American associates.

American Renters Dominate

On the renting side, the American companies still dominate the
field — handling, between them, 70 to 75 per cent of all films shown
in this country. It should be noted, however, that Rank distributes
the films of three of these companies — Universal, United Artists
and 20th Century-Fox. (The managing director of United Artists
joined the Odeon board in 1942 and Fox, as we have already seen,
is a large shareholder in Metropolitan & Bradford Trust.)

On the exhibition side, Rank's only real competitor is Associated
British Picture. Through Gaumont-British he controls approxim-
ately 350 cinemas; through Odeon approximately 300, and recent
traceable acquisitions bring the grand total up to 700. The majority
of these properties are of the "super cinema" type, and it is estimated
that these, and the great number of independent cinemas with which
Rank has renter-contracts, absorbs about 7,000,000 of the country's
cinema-going population. Were Rank to gain control of the
A.B.P.'s 500-odd halls, it is certain that he would become the
supreme arbiter of the cinema-going public's entertainment and
instruction. What are the possibilities of this happening?

Control of A.B.P. was originally vested in John Maxwell's
holding of 4,050,000 of the company's 8,000,000 Ordinary shares.
On his death the benefit of this holding passed to his widow. Sub-
sequently some 2,000,000 shares were sold to Warner Brothers, but
it was stated at the time that control remained in British hands.
Now the A.B.P. Ordinary shares are in units of 5s., which means

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 6 1943

The Money Behind Films (cont.)

that Rank, by open market, or covert transactions, has only to lay
out, say, £625,000 to acquire control of this £4,000,000 combine
over the heads of Mrs. Maxwell and her nominees on the A.B.P.
board. It would be interesting to know — (a) what happened to the
300,000 A.B.P. Ordinary shares which were part of the purchase
price in the deal between John Maxwell and the Ostrer Brothers
(Mark Ostrer is now a joint managing-director of Gaumont-
British), and (b) how many A.B.P. shares are at present held by
Rank, his nominees and his associates? Perhaps Lord Winterton, of
the Odeon board, can be prevailed upon to supply this information
in the Commons, of which he is a member.

In view of the war-time shortage of studio space Rank can pick
and choose the producers to whom he lets British "stages," and im-
pose on these producers whatever conditions he pleases. He can
then distribute the finished products through his own renting
organisation and exhibit them in his own cinemas. He has thus
already achieved a virtual monopoly over the production, distribu-
tion and exhibition of British films. But his stranglehold on the
industry does not end there. Up to January, 1943, nearly 90 per cent
of the cinemas in the country depended for equipment and servicing
facilities on two companies — G.B. Equipments Ltd., and Kalee Ltd.
These two concerns have now merged, under Rank's control, into,
a single organisation known as G.B. -Kalee. Rank also controls
two newsreel companies, one of which (Gaumont-British) circulates
extensively at home and abroad, and is being used as a mouthpiece
for the expression of views and comment of a singularly narrow
nationalistic nature.

Dalton Steps In

But with all this, Rank's greed for power remains unabated.
Some months ago, Mr. F. Del Giudice, of Two City Films Ltd., put
forward a proposal that his company and the other concerns con-
trolled by Rank should come to an agreement with the major
American renters to supply them with all their British quota require-
ments, and to form "Scenario Institute Ltd." to buy up film rights,
screen plays and scenarios. This latest ballon d'essai brought matters
to a head in the industry. The Association of Cine-Technicians de-
scribed the Del Giudice proposal as an attempt to monopolise film
production on the one hand and creative talent on the other without
offering any safeguards as regards trade union conditions and rights
"and greatly reducing both the opportunities and remuneration of
technicians". Mr. T. O'Brien, general secretary of the National
Association of Theatrical and Kine Employees, made a public ap-
peal to Parliament to give some attention to what was going on in
the industry. "Trustification," he declared, "was expanding so
rapidly that unless it was checked all the main control of the enter-
tainment industry would be in the hands of a monopoly."

Under pressure of public opinion Mr. Dalton, President of the
Board of Trade, was forced to intervene, and on July 14th it was
announced that he had met Mr. Rank and had informed him that
the Government could not acquiesce in the creation "of anything
like a monopoly at any stage in the film industry". Mr. Dalton's
strange conviction that the Rank "empire" is completely devoid of
any monopolistic aspect is shown in a letter which he addressed to
Rank at that time. In it he refers to Rank's undertaking not to
acquire any additional film interests without the prior consent of
the President of the Board of Trade, "such consent not to be un-
reasonably withheld" Now, the very least that can be said of
Ranks organisation is that it bears more than a fleeting resemblance
to a monopoly. How, then, can the President of the Board of Trade
— if he is honestly opposed to "anything like a monopoly" — give
his consent to any further absorption by Rank of the very limited
number of independent producers? And in what circumstances ca"n
his consent ever be "unreasonably withheld?"

But Rank is not worrying unduly. Dalton left him with a loop-
hole wide enough— to get a cinema through. "In cases in which bids

already made are accepted," he said in his letter, "I raise no objec-
tion." Since July, Rank has acquired four Paramount "super-halls''
in London, Liverpool, Glasgow and Birmingham, three London
halls from the Metropolitan Cinema Investment Corporation, and
the six London and suburban halls owned by Joseph Mears
Theatres. It remains to be seen how many more independent com-
panies have been pondering, since July, over the highly attractive
spot cash offers which Rank is in the habit of making.

What Can Gov;rnment do?

So much for the rise and fulfilment of the Rank "empire". And
now, what of the future? By what means can the Government, acting
on behalf of the people, break the dangerous stranglehold which
monopoly-capitalism exerts on the industry without damaging it in
the process?

First and foremost, legislation must be enacted on the pattern of
the U.S. anti-trust laws which forbid any ownership link between
the three branches of production, distribution and exhibition.
These three branches must be disintegrated financially and made
completely independent.

To reduce production overheads and ensure an adequacy of funds
for the employment of skilled technicians, actors and writers, and
for other costs incurred in production, the Government must:

(a) Requisition all studio space which would be rented on a non-
profit basis to British production units.

(b) Take the highly profitable business of distribution out of the
hands of the quasi-parasitical "middleman" and put it in the
care of a reconstructed Film Council. Divert all net profits
therefrom to a central fund for the subsidising of "quality"
production.

The country's 5,000 cinemas should come under the control of a
public corporation responsible to Parliament through a Council
representative of producer, distributor and trade union interests.
Part of the profits from exhibition should be applied to a fund for
the renewal, improvement and expansion of cinema properties and
the balance to the reduction of entrance charges.

The quota of British films should be fixed, after the war, at a
statutory minimum of, say, 30 per cent. This quota should be raised
as and when the output and quality of the domestic product justifies
such an increase and the present statutory "ceiling" should be
abolished.

We do not claim that the implementation of these measures
would, automatically and immediately, bring economic prosperity,
functional virility and artistic efflorescence to the film industry.
There remains a host of minor and incidental problems to be
tackled before such a far-reaching step as the complete "de-
trustification" of the industry can be taken. But we believe that
there are few, if any, of these minor problems which do not admit
of easy solution provided the essential measures listed above are
fearlessly implemented by a Government drawn from the people
rather than from the Directory of Directors.

One final point. Half-hearted measures aimed, for example, at
restoring competitive independence in the sphere of production
will do more harm than good if they are unaccompanied by legisla-
tion, on the lines mentioned above, in the other two spheres. The
problem is too big and the industry too volatile to admit of niggling,
unco-ordinated action on the model set by Dalton last July. The
choice is no longer between private capitalist enterprise and
monopoly-capitalist trustification : it is between monopoly owner-
ship and public ownership.

Appendix!

All references in this article to persons living, dead or unconscious
are made in a spirit of cold objectivity. Mr. Rank has a sufficiently
good opinion of himself to accept ours with equanimity; Mr. John
Maxwell is past caring; the President of the Board of Trade is past
hope.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 6 1943

NOTES OF THE MONTH

Vocational Training Films

the war office has announced its intention of sponsoring the
production of vocational training films which will help to prepare
soldiers for post-war employment. This is an admirable project but
surely it should not be undertaken by one of the Services in isolation.
If Army, Navy and Air Force each make independent plans for
placing their personnel after the war, the only result will be hopeless
confusion. Moreover, the nature of vocational training should so
obviously be determined by probable post-war industrial demands
that training film programmes should be drawn up only in associa-
tion with the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Labour. The
Board of Education, if it is in the future to take a wide and courage-
ous view of its responsibilities, should also concern itself with this
matter. The solution would appear to be the setting up of a joint
committee on which would be represented, the Services, the Board
of Trade, the Ministry of Labour and the Board of Education, the
function of this committee being to deal with matters affecting the
employment of demobilised servicemen including their vocational
training by means of the film.

Aubrey Flanagan

outside Trade circles, the day-to-day work of film trade journalists
is little known. If you can stomach the gawdy adverts, you can often
read some first-class criticism — hard-boiled but honest. A film trade
critic not only reviews current production from an entertainment
angle; his job can also mean keeping abreast of the political and
commercial moves that stir the industry. He is, as it were, a reliable
informer in this underworld of bluff, intrigue and jollity.

Aubrey Flanagan was a trade-paper film-man of high repute.
His sudden death is a deep loss, not just to his many friends — and
he had more than most men — but to the whole industry. For ten
years he was assistant editor to The Cinema; from 1938 London
Editor of the American Motion Picture Herald; from 1926 to 1930
film critic to the Sunday Worker under the name of Henry Dobb ;
and he contributed from time to time to World Film News and
Documentary News Letter.

A sane, level-headed critic of films, sensitive to new ideas and
developments yet never forgetting the entertainment objective of
most feature product, Aubrey was a born news-getter. Alert to
everything worthwhile that happened in the contemporary scene,
he never wanted to do anything but write. Boxing was his first love,
then variety, and then the movies. From his earliest days, he had
an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes and a rich sense of humour. His
flood of stories about film-trade personalities was unrivalled, always
subtly revealing of character. At the same time, he was without
dispute the most reliable mine of information about the industry in
Wardour Street. Always a warm believer in documentary, he was
quick to spot its weaknesses and never hesitated to state them.
He hated the dilettante, the phoney, and the stooge. He could pick
out the honest attempt from the tawdry imitation, and did not fail
to expose the fake.

Earning his own keep since he left school when his father died,
Aubrey never lost touch with the ordinary people. That was his
great strength. In the London blitz he frequently went down to the
East End and sang again those old Cockney songs which at one time
he sang outside pubs to raise his fare home. No trade lunch at the
Savoy, no cocktails in the vestibule could deceive his acute estimate
of a film, and the people who produced, rented or showed it. War-
dour Street knew him as a trade-paper writer ; some of us shared his
love for the English countryside — its churches and villages, its pubs

and its history. As his oldest friend says: "He was never bored and
he was never boring." He was 46 when a heart attack killed him last
month. We shall miss him greatly; the Trade has too few such
people.

Harry Rignold

Too often producers and directors in documentary take for fact
the part played by photography in their films. The group of
cameramen which has grown up in our British documentary world
has given much to the prestige with which our films as a whole have
been credited. True some directors handle cameras themselves;
many films have more than one cameraman ; material from stock
plays an increasing role in production; yet the hard fact sticks, it is
the visuals in such films as Night mail, North Sea and Face of Britain
that hang in the mind. The documentary cameraman is often over-
shadowed by the director or the cutter. He's a technician around the
place, turning from one picture to the next, from one director to
another. He has not the satisfaction of seeing a film right through
from script to married print. His reward is the quality of the
rushes ; after that, anything may happen to his work. He shoots in
the craziest of conditions which any studio-trained cameraman
would refuse. He seldom gets newspaper credit. George Noble,
Jimmie Rogers, Stanley Rodwell, the late George Pocknall, Jeakins,
Frank Goodliffe, Jack Parker, Frank Bundy, Bud Onions, Jonah
Jones, Chick Fowle, Teddie Catford, Beadle and Jago— these are
some of the patient workers to whom our films owe so much over
the past thirteen years.

And going through almost all that decade was Harry Rignold,
now killed in action in Italy: A Captain and a Military Cross.

Harry — no one really called him Rignold — was working as an
assistant to Freddie Young when, after a bit of bad luck, the studios
passed him up, in 1933, and he was taken on by Bruce Woolfe at
Welwyn. In the next seven years he worked on many documentaries,
at first as an assistant in turn to Jack Parker, George Pocknall and
Jimmie Rogers. From Pocknall he learned his knowledge of
exterior photography at which he became in the top class. In 1934-
35 he went twice round the country with Paul Rotha shooting
material for The Face of Britain and he was all through the twelve
months location work on Shipyard. Attached to G.B.I, he also. did
much work for Mary Field. In 1936 he joined Strand, and shot for
Hawes, Alexander, Shaw and Ruby Grierson. He joined Rotha
again on New Worlds for Old, was right through the six months
shooting on The Times film, in which his exteriors were brilliant.
At the outbreak of war, he was with the G.P.O. Film Unit, worked
on The First Days, and was the first cameraman to join the then
miniature Army Film Unit. The stories of him in France and North
Africa were all characteristic of his never-failing good humour,
unlimited capacity for hard work and ease with which he got along
with people. This latter quality made him a great asset on a unit.
Not only did Harry maintain friendly relations within a unit, but he
most often guaranteed smooth working in relations without. In the
summer of 1941, the A.F.U. loaned him to Rotha Films to photo-
graph Nieter's Blood Transfusion film and this probably represents
his best lighting work ... he was destined to be very good.

But what is the use of saying more? As the offensive sharpens. I
suppose it is inevitable that documentary will lose some of its best
workers and friends. One of those was Harry. He often thought
we were crazy in what we asked him to shoot, but he always shot
it well. He never refused to work, he never had an alibi, he was
always enthusiastic and deeply camera-conscious. He was the
smoothest operator I have ever known. We can ill do without him.
He was the kind of person who made the struggle of production a
great deal easier by his generous outlook.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 6 1943

more detailed description, in the commentary,
of the technique of bronchography would have
added to the value of that sequence.

In the course of investigation the patient is
bronchoscoped, realistically enough. We see
two remarkable diagrams of views down the

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Words and Actions. Realist Film Unit. For the following up this film with others and thus

British Commercial Gas Assoc. Director: Max wrestling still further with the problem of reality

Anderson. Camera: A. E. Jeakins. Commenta- on the screen.

lor: Colin Wills. Script: Frank Sainsbury and Propaganda I'ulue: Words and Actions was not bronchoscope but are brought to earth with

John Taylor. Producer: E. Anstey. made by the M.O.I, but we hear they are giving bump by a crude cartoon of the larynx accom-

Subject: How democracy can be made to work. it their maximum non-theatrical distribution, panied, fatally, by the remark "The vocal cords

Treatment: The apparently rough and ready The only drawback to the film is that some of the are normal"! It would be so much better left

treatment given to film subjects by the Realist incidents which serve as illustration to the main out, or at least passed without comment. The

Unit has often the effect of unprovoked aggres- theme are a little dated, not so much because doctors consult at length, as is entirely right and

sion. If a film can be said to have a chin, Realist they are not current events, as because they were proper, but it would have been interesting to

films always have theirs stuck out. There is matters of great importance a year or so ago. know their findings and how they were led to

seldom any nonsense about trimmings in the way However they do not in any way interfere with decide upon operation. Without this, the se-

of smoothing opticals or soothing music, their the job of putting across once more the import- quence is too long.

characters are not chosen with a view to charm- ant message that the world is run by people and Preparation of the patient for operation is well

ing nor is their message wrapped up in pink that we, the audience, are the people and that done. The anaesthetic technique, without whose

cellophane. That this is by design and not acci- what sort of a world we get depends on us. development such operations would not be

dent would seem to be obvious to anybody who possible, is dealt with mainly by some excellent

gives more than a moment's thought to their . diagrams. I feel that valuable detail has been

films, and the fact that one is seldom able to Silage^ Ileal ist I ilm Unit. Director. ^Margaret sacrificed to the desire for continuity (the patient

we see is not the one who actually undergoes the
operation). The piece de resistance, the operation

for«ct anv of them is a tribute to the success of Thompson. Camera: A. E. Jeakins. M.O.I. 10

the method mins- non-T-

In a world where loose meanings are attached Subject: Two methods of making silage.

to words and slogans and headlines have re- Treatment: This film is a straightforward exposi-

placed coherent thought, it is refreshing and tion of how to make silage. Like nearly all the

stimulating to find a film which sets out to re- films '" this series it has the important quality of

state the essential meaning of one of the most not only showing you how to carry out a process,

prostituted words in our language. Democracy it also makes you want to go and do it immediate-

has become a word, for narks, a narcotic for by. Even if you haven t got any cattle to f;ed m m cinematograph or anv other medium, a

frightened minds "After all," they probably the winter and are not interested in the shortage tnis? alone> makes the film we„ worth wnile

of imported cattle cake, silage making, on the From these dizzy hdghts we fall once more t0
screen, looks like an extremely interesting job. hvds suitable rather for entertainment than for
This, in spite of the commentator's sinister instruction and pass through some pretty scenes
reference to "many failures". Technically, it is of rehabiiitatjon centres, blossoming orchards
interesting to note the artfully simple way in and the Uke to our happy ending The only
which the two methods of making silage, one in a gaffe_the patient waiks off to the consulting
silo and the other in a clamp, are interwoven

itself, is magnificent. The shots inside the chest,
for instance, give a view that is seen, normally,
only by the surgeon and, perhaps, by his first
assistant. The surgical technique is faultless.
The result is far and away the best description
of an operation that I have ever come across,
in cinematograph or any other medium, and

mutter, as they scan their prosperous activities,

"Old So-and-So uses it and he was always on

our side— it must be a good word to use." All

the old nefarious, anti-social activities flourish

and the more they flourish the louder they cry

Democracy.

Words and Actions shows how democracy can be

made to work, in fact, does work. Not on the without losing clarity.

hocus pocus level of Freedoms and Charters, Propaganda Value: The sheer efficiency of the

but on the day-to-day and important level of agricultural series makes them outstanding

rent and army pay and hire-purchase agree- ' films-their propaganda value rather depends on

ments and allotments. The film takes several how many farmers see them and how many of

instances-a woman with a husband in the those farmers are in need of their lessons.

forces who cannot pay her instalments on the

furniture, another woman who is not getting an Surgery m Chest DisCase. Production : G. B

extra allowance from the army— and other Instructional for the British Council. Director

problems which make up the texture of people's
daily lives. It shows the individual confronted
by these problems and putting up with them as
part of life's general miseries.

Then he or she talks to other people about the
problem, suggestions are made by friends,

Reginald DDbson. Camera: Frank NDrth.
Diagrams: H. L. Stringer. Scenario: M. Cath-
cart Borer. Time: 40 mins.

Reviewed by a doctor
this film "is primarily intended for exhibition to

officials, welfare officers. Then comes the realisa- overseas medical audiences. ... It is hoped that
tion that the individual can do something about the film will serve to give to such audiences an
it. can take action. This is the crucial point of indication of the scope and level of Chest
the film, when the ordinary citizen wakes up Surgery and collateral services in Britain",
and realises that he or she does not have to put The choice of the most difficult and hazardous
up with things, but actually has power, even operation in chest surgery, of the surgeon, of
if it is a very small amount, to act and get things the anaesthetist and of the hospital, has pro-
done. No less important is the preliminary lesson duced something worth bragging about. Whether
that co-operation between people — not vague the bragging has been done in the most effective
People with a capital P — but the fellows one way is less certain.

knows and meets as one moves about, one's own The opening— a mass radiography of in-
sertion of the world is the beginning of success- dustrial workers, including the patient — is
ful action. effective. His subsequent progress is followed in
The handling of the actors in the film is detail. Much of this— his arrival in the Out-
excellent— they look like real people and they patient department, his interview with the
behave like real people. The effect of reality is almoner, and more— is irrelevant, and could
enhanced by the camera work which successfully well be cut out entirely or, at most, briefly indi-
avoids the Sunny Side Up technique, so popular catcd by much shorter sequences. While our
with many lighting camera men, and yet does not patient enjoys a cup of tea in bed, we tour the
find it necessary to follow the technique of the ward, inspecting other cases of various types of
Hot Spot in the Black Pit or Art is All. It is a chest disease and are shown, briefly, their
great pity that Max Anderson should now be diagnosis and treatment. This section is very
training for a temporary career at sea instead of good, and more could have been made o\' it. A

room arm-in-arm with the sister — drew laughter
and applause from the audience. Alan Howland
wrestles nobly and, on the whole, successfully

SIGHT
and
SOUND

A cultural Quarterly

MOMHLY F.LH BCILETBN

appraising educational

and
entertainment values

Published by: The British Film Institute,
4 Great Russell Street, London, W.C.I.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 6 1943

with the outlandish medical jargon of the com-
mentary.

This is the most ambitious, and the most
successful, medical documentary film yet pro-
duced, and all concerned are to be congratulated
on a very real achievement. My criticism is based
on the opinion, with which many will disagree,
that a frankly instructional film would provide
more substantial and more impressive fare for a
medical audience and, being less obvious, would
be the more effective propaganda.

Bill Jack v. Adolf Hitler. March of Time. 17

March of Time re-enters the arena of controversy
with several loud explosions in this latest issue.
As a revelation of the fundamental simplicity of
the American mind it would be hard to beat.

Bill Jack, a former Trade Union "business
agent", now runs a factory of his own which has
apparently astounded the whole U.S.A. with its
production output. There are, in the film, very
few signs of production at all— indeed the
workers (who include some of the most glamor-
ous girls it has ever been our good fortune to see)
are far too busy (a) hooting late arrivals,

(b) knocking off for doughnuts and coffee,

(c) having their corns examined in the factory
foot clinic, (d) listening to pep talks from the
boss, (<?) dancing at their machines to recorded
jive, (/) reclining in steam baths, and (g) holiday-
ing in Florida.

Despite all this we are informed that the 7,500
employees (called "associates") work twelve
hours a day, seven days a week and just love it.
After the war all the girls will be sacked and the
mobilised men given back their jobs, and they
love that too. This is to be understood, because
"the management are brilliant mass psychologists
who have succeeded in convincing the workers by
unmistakable, concrete signs that they have their
welfare at heart".

Our favourite scene was the Union shop
steward accompanying the boss on a visit to tell
some misguided worker that he was a dirty so-
and-so for not pulling up his socks and co-
operating with this paragon of employers.

It should be added that this is the best photo-
graphed American subject March of Time has
produced for many months.

Workers' Weekend. Production: Crown Film
Unit. Narrative by Officer of Royal Canadian
Air Force. M.O.I. 13 mins.
Subject: The assembly of a Wellington bomber
by aircraft workers in 23£ hours of their week-
end spare time.

Treatment: Straightforward location shooting
during the occurrence of the incident. The work
was covered by several cameras. The com-
mentary is done in radio eye-witness style, which
helps the film to retain a vigorous quality of
newsreel immediacy.

Propaganda Value: Indirectly good. Not so much
because of the effect on morale of knowing that
aircraft workers are prepared to give their own
time to such a purpose, as because they are seen
working with good comradeship and with
pleasure in their craft. The films reminds us that,
whether we like the fact or not, a great many
documentary films stand or fall by the quality
of their commentary. In Workers'' Weekend the
visuals are excellently shot and edited, but they
are altogether conventional in style and pretty
familiar in content. Neither does the commenta-
tor say or do anything revolutionary, but the

Canadian voice, speaking in an easy-going,
colloquial, racy style, manages to give the narra-
tive a warmth and intimacy which lifts the film
out of the ruck. A passing reference to a worker
glimpsed only for a fleeting close-up is sufficient
to put us on good terms with this ex-hair-
dresser or merchant seaman.

Here is a film, successful because of its sim-
plicity, which demonstrates the importance of
film-makers cultivating their ears as well as their
eyes.

Before the Raid. Production: Crown Film Unit.
Producer: Ian Dalrymple. Direction: Jiri Weiss.
Camera: E. Catford. M.O.I. 35 mins.
Subject: The looting of a Norwegian fishing vil-
lage by the Germans; resistance by the Nor-
wegians; German reprisals and the escape of
some Norwegians to Britain. The story being
told as a flash-back by Norwegians who are
returning to Norway on a Commando raid.
Treatment: A well directed and occasionally ex-
citing film. Good use of natural British resources
for Norwegian background.

Before the Raid is a much better job than any
of the studio Occupied-Europe films. It tells a
simple story honestly, but only in one plane.
The chase sequence in Norway and the small
boat sequence in the North Sea, are fresh and
exciting.

Propaganda Value: A simple film that should
come as a relief to cinema audiences after the
appalling Occupied-Europe muck they have had
to sit through in the past.

The Battle of Britain. Production: U.S. War Dept.
Special Division S.O.S. with co-operation of the
Signal Corps. M.O.I, lhr.
Subject: The Battle of Britain; the fighting

qualities of the Royal Air Force; resistance of
civilians to bombing.

Treatment: The Battle of Britain was made by
Frank Capra especially for American soldiers
coming to Britain. It deals fairly honestly but at
great length with the history of Britain between
May 1940 and May 1941. Nearly all the material
comes from Ministry of Information films, and
like most assembly jobs it is well cut. The actual
blitz sequences tend to be too long for British
audiences, but on the whole it is a clear, neat job.
Propaganda Value: It should help to improve
Anglo-American relations, in this country.
People always like to know that someone
thinks well of them.

Documentary
News Letter

stands for the use of film as a medium of
propaganda and instruction in the interests
of the people of Great Britain and the
Empire and in the interests of common
people all over the world.

Owned and Published by

FILM CENTRE LTD.

34 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.l

GERRARD 4253

* For your information

IN every progressive enterprise there must be leaders
and those who follow behind. As artistic and
technical progress in kinematography quickens to the
tempo and stimulus of war, " KINEMATOGRAPH
WEEKLY" is always to be found " up-with-the-
leaders ", its well-informed pages radiating perception
and far-sighted thinking. Kinematography's
leaders themselves know this for truth
and turn to "K.W." week by
week for information and
enlightenment.

93 LONG ACRE
LONDON W.C.2

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 6 1943

Film Societies

The Manchester and Salford Film Society began
its autumn session with Lenin in 1918. At the
performance on November 21st Eisenstein's
Alexander Nevski will be the principal film and
there will also be some distinguished short films.
The Hon. Secretary is R. Cordwell, 31 Cringle
Road, Manchester, 19.

The Film Society of Ayrshire will hold eight
ordinary and two repertory meetings both at
Ayr and Kilmarnock during the present season.
Among the films shown will be some early
Disneys, some French, Russian, Dutch and
American films and documentaries from Britain,
Canada, America and Russia. The Hon. Secre-
tary is Arthur J. Nelson, 6 Hilary Crescent, Ayr.

The Belfast Film Institute Society showed at its
November meeting The Postman Always Rings
Twice. Later in the season will be shown
Flaherty's Nanook of the North, The Blue Angel
and UEtrange M. Victor. The membership
Secretary is Miss Doreen McFetridge, 52 Done-
gall Place, Belfast.

The Aberdeen Film Society began its present
season in October with a membership which has
increased from 150 to 501. Afternoon and even-
ing performances are being continued. At the
November meeting Derriere la Facade was
shown. The Magnificent Ambersons may be
shown later on. The Secretary is Alice C. Hendry,
7 Queen's Terrace, Aberdeen.

The Devon and Exeter Film Society continues on
a reduced scale, with sub-standard films. Meet-
ings are held at the Visual Education Centre,

University College, Exeter. A season of eight
shows includes the following features : The White
Hell of Pitz Palu, The Cheat, Nanook of the
North, Kameraschdaft , General Line, Jew Siiss,
South Riding, Film and Reality, with supporting
documentaries. Time is allowed for discussion.
The Society co-operates intimately with the
Film Council of the South-West.

The London Scientific Film Society's sixth
season opened on 6th November. The pro-
gramme included three Russian films, one on
mechanical coal-mining in the Donetz Basin, and
two dealing with the work of the Pavlov Insti-
tute for medical research in Moscow. There was
also shown the first of the series of "research
films" which the Society is screening this year.
It was described in a talk by the producer, and
illustrated the use of the cine camera in research
— in this case to produce a slow motion colour
study of stresses set up in a transparent plastic
model section of a railway line. The programme
concluded with Nemo-Psychiatry, the recent film
on the treatment of war-time neuroses made for
American medical audiences.

The Society's efforts in obtaining films such
as the latter, not normally available to the public,
is greatly to be commended. It has previously
shown specimens of naval technical films and it
is to be hoped that examples of the other two
Services' work will be forthcoming.

Response to the Society's announcements this
year reflects an immense interest in the scientific
fi'm. In fact, applications for membership have
been so heavy that the Sociely has had regret-
fully to close the membership list for this season
owing to limitations of theatre accommodation.
Plans are however being made for operations on

a larger scale next year and full details of these
will be pub ished later.

The Dundee and St. Andrews Film Society has
decided to show during the coming season some
of the best American pictures, among them
The Magnificent Ambersons, All That Money
Can Buy, and Winterset. There will be some
Continental films and also Russian films. A
children's film show will be given on Sunday,
December 26th. The Hon. Treasurer of this
Society is G. A. Kinnear, 3 King's Road,
Dundee.

The Film Council of the South- West continues to
cater for the film needs of the South-West
Region, in the non-theatrical field. Its area Film
Library distributes films all over the region. At its
headquarters (University College, Exeter), it pro-
vides information, advice, lectures and film
shows for a great variety of bodies and indi-
viduals, educational, social, medical, national
defence. The Film Council, together with the
lectureship in Visual Education, and an In-
formation Bureau, Reference Library and
Education Laboratory constitute a Visual
Education Centre. Teachers are trained, educa-
tional thought and discussion on modern media
are promoted and research is carried on. A sur-
vey of existing visual materials of all types is
being carried out. Readers of D.N.L. are invited
to submit material (stills, film strips, illustrations-
charts, catalogues, etc.) for this survey. A Satur-
day morning Film Forum for showing and dis-
cussing documentary and educational films has
been organised. The Film Council will publish a
Visual Bulletin describing the work in greater
detail. Enquiries should be addressed to G.
Patrick Meredith, Visual Education Centre,
University College, Exeter.

GLASGOW

introducing . . .

LONDON

RUSSELL PRODUCTIONS

LTD.

188 St. Vincent Street

Glasgow, C.2

tel. CENtral 7670

and

39 Uphill Grove
London, N.W.7
tel. MILIhill 2612

LONDON

GLASGOW

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 6 1943

SHOOTING "Workers' Week-end"

by Ralph Elton

'X'he Ministry of Information is often criticised
-*- in being behind the times with its film releases
and unfortunately these criticisms bounce back
on the film makers. As film makers we are only
too conscious of the hold-ups in film-making
caused by delay in script approval, facility grant-
ing, delays between the film's final completion
and its release and all the rest of it : but, we are
still to be criticised in our speed of production
and there are people who do not fail to make the
accusation. *

Lately, the Crown Film Unit has had the
opportunity of researching into the possibility of
answering this accusation. There is not a com-
plete answer but it has at least been proved that a
proportion of "hot on the minute" films could
be at the disposal of the Ministry of Information
should they care to ask for them. The production
of Workers' Week-end served as a useful pointer
towards a method of procuring them in spite of
the fact that this particular subject was about
aeroplanes and some three years cold.

We found the subject for ourselves while we
were researching into another film. The manager
of an aircraft factory suggested that he would
have a bomber built in thirty hours as an answer
to Kaiser and his Liberty ships, provided that we
would cover the operation with a camera. We
undertook the challenge in spite of the fact that
we were a little pessimistic. We felt that we should
offer our encouragement to the factory but we
foresaw little more than a glorified newsreel item
as a result of our work. The result was a very
agreeable surprise, and what was more surprising
still was that it should have come from a Unit
that had been criticised more than most for its
slowness.

At first sight it appeared that a director would
be superfluous on this film. We were informed
that no interference with the work on the record
bomber could be tolerated. Personal direction of
the cast was out and so were rehearsals. We were
given a schedule for the building of the bomber
and the approximate times and places at which
the various operations would take place. Every
facility in the way of mechanics of film making
was offered but the shop stewards and the man-
agement were adamant on the point of not being
"mucked up" during the actual job. "Hot" sub-
jects will probably be closely tied to the national
effort, and interference will not be welcome.
This may well be the usual sort of thing that the
"hot" film maker will have to face.

At this point there will be advocates for using
camera only on this type of film, but this would
inevitably lead to the making of an "item" as
opposed to a film. The director has his function
to fulfil although that function is very different
from the normal. The usual arguments apply re
continuity of thought, relation of one shot with
the next and visualisation of the final film, but
instead of the director adapting the schedule to
his ideas he must adapt his ideas to the schedule.

He should, of course, know his subject visually
to perfection and it may be possible — as it was
with us — that he may be unable to study his sub-
ject action before shooting. A bomber being built
in a hurry looks very different from one being
built at the normal speed. If he cannot study his
subject at first hand he must rely very largely

upon the descriptive powers of those employed
on the location. Nevertheless the director must
form a film conception and then bring his
specialised knowledge to bear on the manage-
ment's schedule. He must draw up a shooting
schedule to dovetail perfectly with the manage-
ment's. As far as film people are concerned it is a
case of the tail wagging the dog. The subject and
its schedule dictate to the film conception and the
director's function becomes a case of juggling
with the various schedules and making the very
best of them to ensure that no filmic possibilities
are unnecessarily wasted. It is all a matter of
foresight and anticipation and when he has
exercised these talents to the full the director can
do no more than hope that it "all be all right on
the night".

One Set-up Ahead

It will probably not be all right on the night
and the director will learn a lot about this new
film technique to his cost. Our teething troubles
were many. In the first hour's work there were
some six takes on the main location, but the
number of set-ups — including lamp shifting—
was prodigious. Our trouble was that by the time
we had set up for a shot, the process which we
had intended to film would be over and finished
and we would be left high and dry with nothing
in front of the camera. If the director follows
the normal practice and tries to stay with his
camera while shooting he will attain nothing but
valuable minutes lost in watching the camera
moved and in peering through the finder. He
should always be one set-up ahead and he should
make sure that he is informed by some reliable
person on the location of the filmic possibilities
in the work to be done within the following half-
hour. In the beginning we lost a number of
action shots because we were not expecting them
at the moment and because we could not set up
in time to catch them. Again, the director's func-
tion is very largely a matter of anticipation. At
the same time the camera man should be pre-
paring ahead and leaving his operator in charge
of the camera. In fact, there should be a repre-
sentative of each department preparing the way
ahead and the call on a unit is heavy. Although
we represented two production units on Workers'
Week-end we were doing the work of four. The
electrical staff got the worst of it. They had to be
in two places at once : with the two directors and
chief camera-men ahead and with the two
cameras behind. They were lighting some big
stuff too. There were five main locations in the
factory entailing five complete changes in power
mains. We all know how long it normally takes
to light a long shot in a factory. One very long
shot was lit in something like ten minutes on this
occasion. Fifteen electricians were none too many
and their vast collection of lamps was not over-
sufficient either.

There was one other departure from the nor-
mal routine of film making worth mention. We
had a commentary writer on the location with us.
In spite of the director's "script-cum-schedulc" it
was left to him to collect colourful word detail
from the location. As we moved from one shot to
the next he questioned the people we filmed and
took notes of their names, their attitude, and any
relevant details which in the end might give life
and humanity to the finished film. This method of
working in spontaneous and close co-operation

with the commentary writer proved extremely
successful.

On the whole the management's schedule and
the script-cum-shooting schedule worked out well
in spite of the bomber being some six hours
ahead of time and calling for some pretty hasty
adaptations to the shooting schedule. We exposed
more than ten thousand feet of film consisting of
more than two hundred and fifty individual set-
ups which gave us a show copy length of one
thousand two hundred and fifty feet. The
mechanics worked well from using an electric-
trolley as a kind of powered light carrying tripod
to holding the camera in the hand. The script —
what there was of it — came off. In the finished
film the detail and the impressionistic stuff indi-
vidually fell into line. The cut-aways and tricks
worked. The climax, unbelievable as it seemed to
us, was over shot. After three day's preparations
and one day's shooting it looked as if "hot" films
.had been proved a possibility. The commentary
was written up in the train on the way back to
London and recorded within twenty-four hours
of the last piece of film being exposed. There was
a rough-cut within the fourth day and a show
copy on the tenth in spite of there being a day's
delay in sending the rushes into the laboratories
and another before starting to cut.

Film Societies (Cont.)

Edinburgh Film Guild has opened its fourteenth
season with a record membership of over 1,500.
Daring the summer an Exhibition of Film Decor
was held and the Guild also took the initiative
during the autumn in arranging for the formation
of an Edinburgh Scientific Film Society. A per-
formance of scientific films was given.

The season opened on October 17 with Le
Bonhew (Marcel L'Herbier), High Over the
Borders (Canada), Common Cause (M. of I.),
and Western Daze (George Pal). On October 30
My Universities (G_>rki) was shown with Danger
Area (M. of I.) and Spanish Fiesta (Ballet Russe
de Monte Carlo). On November 14 Sir John Orr
and Paul Rotha were present and spoke during
the performance of World of Plenty. The pro-
gramme also included Thunder over Mexico,
which can now be seen free from controversial
complication, and Massingham's /// Which We
Live (M. of I.).

Pians include the showing of a group of
Polish films by Eugene Cekalski in December
and feature films booked are Burgtheater (Nov-
ember 28), Derriere la Facade (December 12),
La Fin du Jour (January 9), and The Magnificent
Ambersons (January 23).

The Guild has taken new office premises at
21 Castle Street, Edinburgh, 2, and while
Forsyth Hardy is in London, Agnes Smith is
acting as Interim Hon. Secretary.

The Merseyside Film Institute Society held its
annual general meeting on August 4th and re-
elected W. Lyon Blease as chairman, T. F.
Wilson as Honorary Secretary, and A. E.
Harrison as Honorary Treasurer.

The new season opened on October 8th with
the performance of LEsclave Blanche. A poll
was taken at the show to assist the committee
in choosing next year's programme. Out of seven
films La Fin du Jour came out on top, with
Citizen Kane in second place. The remaining
shows this year were My Universities in Nov-
ember and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse in
December.

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 6 1943

Sound on Documentaries
Could be Improved

by Ken Cameron

Crown Film Unit

A s a documentary sound engineer I have more
•^■■than once been disconcerted by people who
bluntly ask: "Why is the sound on your films so
bad?" or who perhaps say : "I never seem to be
able to hear what the characters in some of your
films are saying." It is humiliating and exasper-
ating when one hears such remarks; particularly
so when one realises that more often than not
they are absolutely true. The offer of a little
space in documentary news letter seemed to
me to be an admirable opportunity for saying
some things to the documentary film world as
from a pulpit ; for turning the lame defence that
inevitably is the technician's reply to lay criti-
cism into a direct attack upon some of the
methods of the documentary producers. Many
of the films for the sound of which I have been
responsible have unsatisfactory sound tracks. I
know that more than anybody. But I resent
deeply the comparisons which are so often
made between our semi-intelligible dialogue and
the smooth crisp sparkle of, say, the average
American film. I envy intensely, and shall always
try to imitate, the polish that is almost always
there.

Some time ago documentary news letter
printed an article specifically damning the ap-
palling level of intelligibility that characterises the
average M.O.I, non-theatrical show. Perhaps it
was this article that inspired discussions that be-
gan to take place. The object of these discussions
was, of course, to locate and remove the causes
of the trouble. Many of them are technical.
They are problems that should all be soluble.
Any sound engineer, when he knows that a film
is to be played on inferior 16 mm. equipment in
acoustically impossible halls, can, and generally
will, make obvious little modifications to his re-
recording technique. He will perhaps harden up
the speech, open up the range between dialogue
and the background, and so on. He should, I
think, prepare thereby a second sound negative
which will be used for all prints, both standard
and sub-standard, intended for non-theatrical
projection. Equally, provided he has the time and
the necessary information, he will bear that slight
but firm pressure upon the laboratory doing the
work to ensure that dupe negative and prints are
competently made. If he was very fortunate he
might even have the opportunity of viewing a
print or two at random to see that his instruc-
tions are being carried out. But in view of the
pressure of work under which most of this
country's sound departments are labouring at the
moment, 1 feel that the main part of the work of
laboratory supervision and print checking should
be borne by the controlling distributor — gener-
ally the M.O.I. This work appears to have been
done by them in the past with a singular lack of
effectiveness. As a rule, however, the engineer
who after all is ultimately held responsible for
the quality of the sound, is not told that the film
will be reduced to 16 mm. ; he will not know what
laboratory will handle this and other release
work; he will certainly not be given the chance
of ensuring that all his careful work is not ruined

by official negligence and technical incompetence.
There will often be some commercial or political
reason why the release printing of some short
film must be done by a laboratory which has
shown itself in the past to be unwilling or in-
capable of making a satisfactory job of the
particular system of recording involved. At least
that sort of thing has frequently been my experi-
ence. This, however, is only one side of the story.
The other, and to my mind more important
reason why some British documentary films
merit adverse criticism of their sound tracks is
purely the fault of those in charge of the pro-
duction. The first and obvious example is their
choice of actors for speaking parts. I am con-
vinced that, at all costs, dialect, in the accepted
sense of the word, should be avoided. The
reasons are plain. Broad Suffolk is perhaps
tolerated in East Anglia ; it is laughed at in Scot-
land; in the Mid West U.S.A. it is not worth
running. Recordists who after all are not born
saboteurs, agree with their directors that the best
person to play the part of a Cornish fisherman is
a man who is at least connected intimately with
both Cornwall and fish. Such realism is the life-
blood of documentary. But in so many cases a
more careful choice of artiste could result in a
sound track that would satisfy all needs. So often
tests are made, and principles chosen without

real regard to their diction, their accent, or their
control of the spoken word. Provided the bloke
has a roof to his mouth he'll do. And vague
promises of subsequent post synchronisation are
rarely kept. Fortunately I believe that these
habits are waning. I believe that the documentary
man is beginning to learn the lessons that were
learnt by the commercial studios years ago.

Again, in many cases the location where many
sequences are shot gives the recordist no oppor-
tunity to do good work. A reasonably quiet back-
ground is essential if the final track is to
be controlled and smooth. The present day
documentary is rapidly ceasing to be a simple
commentary-music-effects affair. The sync,
camera is much more to the fore than hitherto.
And rightly so. But the methods of our directors
must grow up with their ideas* The recordist
must be regarded as an essential and valuable
member of the production unit, and no longer as
some sort of necessary evil. He should be con-
sulted on artistes, on locations, on sets and on
dialogue. Is this too much to ask? He will give
valuable help and co-operation in the pre-
liminary stages of a film. But he will expect simi-
lar co-operation from his director whilst on the
floor. When the film is finished, the M.O.I., if it
is to be released under their banner, should
notify the studio concerned when they order
dupes and prints, and from which laboratory
they order them. The sound engineer would thus
have an opportunity of following his work
through its final stages. The vast amount of foot-
age now being processed for the M.O.I, theatrical
and non-theatrical shows makes it increasingly
hard to ensure first-class prints, but at least let
us make some effort in the right direction.

WORLD WIDE
PICTURES LTD

Producers of Documentary Films for:
TMIE WAR OFFICE
BRITISH COUNCIL
MINISTRY OF INFORMATION
Etc. Etc.

.IA>li:s I A It It Mnnaginij Director
ItALPII HO .Ml Producer

52 SHAFTESBURY AVENUE, W.I

4.i:itlt Alt II 1 736 7

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 6 1943

FILM OF THE MONTH

Victory through Air Power: Released by United
Artists, made by Disney Unit. With Major Alex-
ander D. Seversky. 65 mins.

Victory Through Air Power is the perfect civil-
ian armchair critic's guide to the war, particularly
for those in the Eastern hemisphere.

Anyone who saw the real films of the last war
such as West Front 1918 or All Quiet on the
Western Front is bound to remember the
sequence in All Quiet on the Western Front where
Lew Ayres on leave home again in Germany
after four years in the trenches is so disgusted
with what he finds at home that he hurries back
to his comrades in the firing line before his leave
is finished. Particularly good was the scene in
the pub where he wanders aimlessly from table to
table where the elderly civilians he once knew
well have the war maps spread out before them
and each one a perfect amateur strategist, each
demonstrating with eager shouts the key to
victory— Push on to Paris.

It would be interesting to know exactly how
Disney came to be tied up with such a film:
whether he undertook this work out of a pro-
found political conviction or whether he is now
open to every form of sponsorship. As far as
technique is concerned, the film must have given
his technicians a good many headaches. The
first quarter is a quite successful attempt to give
a flippant but good humoured picture in human
terms of the progress of aviation from the
Wright Brothers to the outbreak of the present
war, but from then on it is our old mate, Major
Seversky, giving a lecture on the strategy of the
present war. There is quite a lot of the stuff we
all know so well. Seversky sitting at desk.
Seversky pointing at maps. Seversky wagging his
finger at the audience. Seversky striding across
the room to twiddle his technicoloured globe.
But most of it of necessity is diagram — some-
times animated diagram but often enough just
plain diagram to illustrate the sales talk. And
often it is no livelier and often a good deal duller
than any diagram film that we have seen for the
past fifteen years, though the bright colour, of
course, lends an added touch to the rhetoric.

But taking the film as a whole, Disney has
seen fit to plunge from his safe little nest of
Christopher Robin and the Farmyard into the

boiling waters of political policy and world
strategy and it is by those standards that the
film must be judged, and by those standards the
film is childish in the extreme, not likely to help
anybody understand what this war means and
only too well calculated to encourage the "push
on to Paris" school. Seversky's and the film's
main thesis is that the Allies, because of their
long, difficult and dangerous supply lines, are
foolish to try to compete weight for weight and
weapon for weapon with the enemies' short in-
terior lines and their reliance should be placed
almost exclusively on giant long-range bomber
and fighter airplanes to devastate the enemy's
industrial centres. This thesis as expounded,
sounds completely unconvincing, and as illus-
trated on the screen, becomes positively childish
To take only a few examples : the statement is
made that the island of Crete rather than Gibral-
tar or Malta now dominates naval strategy in
the Mediterranean through its land-based
craft. You wonder why such an absurd state-
ment should be made until you come shortly
afterwards in the film to the fact that Crete was
captured by the use of air power alone. Similarly
it is without evidence or foundation claimed that
Norway was taken and the Maginot Line broken
solely by the use of air power and that it was
only the local ascendancy of the R.A.F. (rather
than the ill-conceived German concentration on
the German drive to Paris) which permitted
Dunkirk. By this time the trend of the fake
argument is clear and we can hardly be sur-
prised when the Battle of Britain is presented as
a victory for eight-gun Spitfires over one-gun
Junkers 87's (which I believe scarcely appeared
over Britain after the first few days) whilst the
civilian victory over the night bombing of
London, Coventry, etc. — the first real try-out
and failure of Seversky's strategy — is totally
and significantly ignored. By now the effect of
the diagrams has become just comic and we are
privileged to witness through the diagram some
of Seversky's pet bogeymen — U-boats which
need not venture near the surface, whose tor-
pedoes cannot miss their target, rocket-boosted
bombs which pierce the concrete U-boat pens
like paper (we are not told how they make the
bomb hit the pen in the first instance), giant
10-ton bombs which burrow deep underground
and cause major earthquakes for miles around!

I don't know how he came to overlook the idea
of dropping giant bombs into Vesuvius to blow
up Italy and in any case I much prefer my own
ideas of electrifying the sea as a weapon against
U-boats and of driving a giant tunnel, com-
pletely undermining and blowing up Germany
as an effective finish to the land war. After seeing
a diagram of the German war machine repre-
sented as a wheel with Allied attacks as arrows
making vain thrusts against the hub, until our
pal's bombers pour over and annihilate thehubat
which the whole wheel shrivels up, you are bound
to reflect that simply by altering thedraughtsmen's
orders, bombs could have been made just as
effectively to bounce off the hub and the arrows
to go piercing through the hub and spokes.

But much more than all this technical non-
sense is the generally pernicious attitude to the
war which the film propagates. Surely in the
U.S.A. the man in the street is a little nearer to
the facts of war than this. The whole business is
presented like the Douglas Social Credit Plan
by which, through the adoption of some one
man's scientific technique, all the nasty mess can
be painlessly avoided. Anyone who has been in
or near a war or has taken part in any really
worth-while human activity must know that the
real thing — the agony, bloodshed, the hunger,
the disillusionment and most important of all,
the long wearing grind of the plain hard work
without which nothing worth having is ever
achieved — cannot so easily be by-passed. It is
the real criticism of Disney and of this film that
they should have lent such complacent hand to
this pernicious doctrine. It is a pity to find in this
film, the American film business slipping so
easily into place inside the particular brand of
fascism which the American technocrats are so
busily building up. Somebody ought to tell
Disney (never mind Seversky — nobody cares
tuppence about him) that large-scale bombing did
not beat British war production, that it is people
in the end and not fancy machines that win wars
and finally, and most important of all, that neither
the U.S.S.R. nor China, nor damme, if it comes to
that, even the British people, are going to be
pleased with the prospect of wasting their people
and their creative energy year after year until Sev-
ersky's fancy "made in America" toys are ready
to take over and show them how it should be
done

UNITED

MOTION

(LONDON) LTD.

PICTURES

are proud to announce that they have perfected a system

of 16mm direct recording, which has been unanimously

acclaimed by the experts

We hope that it will be our pleasure to
demonstrate these recordings to you.

STUDIO AND SUB-STANDARD PREVIEW THEATRE
24 DENMARK STREET - LONDON W.C.2

Temple Bar 7525 & 3868

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 6 1943

THE ASS

AND THE

NIGHTINGALE

An Ass happened to see a Nightingale one day, and
said to it: "Listen, my dear. They say you have a great
mastery over song. I have long wished to prove if
your talent is so great as they say." On this the
Nightingale began to show her art; whistled in
countless ways, sobbed sustained notes, passed from
one song to another; at one time let her voice die
away, and echoed the distant murmur of the reed;
at another time poured through the wood a shower
of tiny notes. There was no one that did not listen
to the song: the breezes died away, the birds were
hushed, the cattle lay down on the grass; scarcely
breathing, the Shepherd revelled in it, and only now
and then as he listened did he smile on the shepherdess.

At length the singer ended. Then the Ass, bending
its head towards the ground, observed:

"It's tolerable. To speak the truth, one can listen
to you without feeling weary. But it's a great pity
you don't know our Cock. You would sing much
better if you were to take a few lessons from him."

REALIST FILM UNIT
34 SOHO SQUARE, W.l

Telephone: GERRARD 1958

Correspondence

Dear Sirs,

May I ask your reviewer of The Silent Village
some open questions :

(1) Since when has the line of "This might have
been you" had no propaganda value? I know
few better ways of bringing tragic or political
facts home to people.

(2) In order to work out this line, did Humphrey
Jennings take the trouble to live and work with
and understand a mining community, or did he
not?

(3) As a result, did he or did he not in his film
give a fair impression of a mining community,
and so put across the idea of "This might have
been you" to a large section of the British people?

I suggest that whatever intellectual arguments
there may be against The Silent Village there is
here much positive achievement and much that
only Jennings could have done. I know one or
two of the people whom the Crown Film Unit
worked with in South Wales and I suspect I know
mining communities in general better than your
reviewer. I talked to one of the principals after
the shooting was finished, and I know that it was
a fair fight while it lasted, and that in the end
the miners Jennings worked with respected him
and his unit, and that the unit respected the
miners. The picture that came out of it all had
far more than "occasional moments of feeling".
It was an honest co-operative attempt to imagine
a situation which is almost unimaginable. Did
they aim too high? Did they in many ways fail to
arrive? I saw the film in Sheffield (a city sur-
rounded by coal-mines incidentally) and I felt
that it was a success ; it was accepted, it was not
dismissed as phoney. There are many things in
the film that I for one would prefer to have done
differently, but let us give credit for an honest
and sincere attempt to do something more
difficult than most of us ever dare to undertake.
Yours faithfully, donald Alexander

1943-4
SEASON

L

Scientific
Film

Society

Shows at Imperial Institute Theatre,

S. Kensington , 4 p.m. on the following

Saturdays: II December 1943

15 January 1944

19 February 1944

25 March 1944

D. N. L. VOL. IV INDICES

(1) ARTICLES AND BOOK REVIEWS

Reviews of Books are indicated by an asterisk.
As Others See Us, 197

Casting "Nine Men" (llaiiv Walt). 179
( ataloguc "I M.O.I. Minis. Sec : MinistM nl Inlorniatioii.
(racked \ nice ol Propaganda. The. 187
Correspondence, 171, 184, 192, 206, 232

Documentary Developments in Vmciica (Donald Slcsingcrl.

Film Board of Canada, 167

Ml m in I ilin-atinn. I lie (K. S. Miles). 176
Film Progress in the Services, 210
Film Sense. The* (S M.I iseilslelll I. 218
Film Societies. 208, 228

I s ami Peopled S.A.), 172

Films for Re-oe. upied Furope, 198

Films lor the Conimunitv in Wartime* (Mar\ Losev ), 206

Minis ol (he Monti,. I 79. IN'). 200. 219, 231

First Documentalist, The (Sgt. James Dugan), 190

Hollywood v. Britain, 212

It Won't be Done by Kindness, 16!

s made and acquired from July 1

Man and Boy* (Sir Stephen Tallents), 205
Ministry of Information

Catalogue of Filrr

till December ,31st. 1942. 192

U.K. Non-Theatrical distribution. 1941-2. 177
Money behind the Films. The (Henry Fullerton), 222
Movies are Important to Russia, 217

New Democracy, The. h62

New Documental > Minis. 165, 181, 191 . 202, 215, 226

Notes of the Month. 163, 175, 186, 199, 212, 225

Photographic Optics* (Arthur Cox), 218

Scientific Films, 219

ScieiKilic Minis in \\ ar-Time, 206

Shooting "Workers' Week-end" (Ralph Elton), 229

>t Technical and Instructional Films. I rV

g Film Workers, 16*

They Laugh at Kcabs,

I Roger Manvell), 188

e Working for, 209

(2) NAMES OF PEOPLE

\lttcd ll

inder, Donald, 191, 225, 232*

v. (... 214

176

182, 200, 215, 216, 22(

Anders, .ii. Max, 226
Andrews, E.S., 163*
Angelina, Pasha, 170
Annakin, Ken, 181
Anstey, Edgar. 182. 202. 215, 226
Antonov. Leonid, 170, 217
Archibald. George, 184
Asquith, Anthony, 215, 216
Astaire, Fred, 186
Ayres, Lew, 23 1

Bach, J. S., 218

Baines. John, 182

Balcon, Michael, 179, 214

Barlow, Roger, 172

Barrie, J. M., 179

Barry, Iris, 201

Basil. I lain. 172

Bav Sir Arnold, 170

Bazykin, 169

Beadle, Sidney, 225

Beddineton, Jack, 210

Beerv, Wallace, 180, 188

Hell, i icolVrey, 212

Beresford. M.W., 206*

Beskov, S., 169

Beveridge, Sir William, 161, 162, 199, I

Blc.ise. W. Lyon, 229

Bond, Ralph, 182
Borer, M. Cathcart. 22(1
Brcht, Bcrthold. 217
Br\an, Julian, 172
Hi Mil honenko, 170
Bundv, Frank, 225
Buniinovich. I eodor, 204*
Burdenko, 169
Burnham, Lord, 210

i, Frank, 203

Carrick, Edward. 200
(ass. Henry, 181

i. Alberto, 179, 180, 186, 196*

Cekalsk., __

(' hernvshev . Major. 204
Chiang Kai Shek, 199
Chudakov, Y. A., 170
( hutchill, Robert, 172

Cooper, Budge, 181
Cooper. Gary, 198
(ordwcll. R.,228
Corbusier, 182
( ..urtauld, Stephen, T.
Coward, Noel, 163
Cox. Arthur. 217. 218
Cox, Jack, 215
Craven. Marcel, 172
Crawford, Merritt, '
Crosby. Bing, 198
Cross. Eric, 181
Currie, Finlay, 202

90

Harlan, -\dm

, Bette,

da Vinci, Leonardo, 218
Davis, Elmer, 213
dc Gaulle, General, 199
de la Marc, Walter. 205
dc Lautour, Charles, 215
Pel Guidice, F., 224
de Marney, Derek, 181
Demchenko, Maria. 170
de Sevigne, Madame, 182

Dohb, Henry, 225
Dobson, A. Reginald. 226
Doublier, Francis, 190
Dovshenko, 217
Dubinskv, 170
Dugan. Sgt. James, 190*

I astcrhrook, L. F., 216
I den, \nthony, 199
Edison, Thorn; *"'

i. S. M., 218, 228

Fedoseyev, 204

lento, John, 172

Feyder, J.. 189

I icld. Marv. 176, 225

Fitzpatrick, 165

I Liberty, Robert. 164, 168, 172

I lanagan, Aubrey, 225

I letcher, Raul, 210

1 letcher, ivonne, 216

Lord, John, 203

I ord, Richard, 172

I owle. Cluck. 216, 225

Franklin, Benjamin, 200

Frie/e-Grecn, C, 190
Fullerton, Henry, 222*
I urst, I'eter, 217*
Fyffe, Will, 188

Gable, Clark, 203
Galkin, 169
Gall, 169

(■arson. Greer, 186

Oiratid. General, 199

Girgolan, 169

( ilendmning, Raymond, 165

(ioebbels. Joseph. 162. 174, 196

Goring. Marius, 174, 196

Haldane, J. B. S., 170

Hank,,, son, Michael, 165

Hardy. Forsyth, 229

Harper, Alan, 181

Harris, .n, A. E., 229

Hartley, Irving, 172

Harlncll. N, .Milan. 179

Haushofer, 162

Hawes, Stanley. 225

llawkcs, Howard, 212

Hay, Roy, 181

Hayes, Helen, 168

Hccht, Ben, 168

llcndrv, Alice C, 228

llcibcit, Brian, 195

Hess, Rudolf, 174. 175, 196

Hitler, \doll, 162, 163, 174. 175, 181,

Hudson, J. L„ 189
Hope, Bob, 186

Hull. ( ordcll, 199
Hunt, John, 211
Hunter, Rosannc, 202
Hunter. Will, am. 175
Hurwil/, Leo, 172
Huxley, Aid,, us, 180
Huxley, Julian, 166

Jo, 166, 225

as, A. E., 165, 181, 202, 225, 226
lennings, Humphrey, 200, 207, 216, 232

Kapler, Alexei, 217
Karin, 169

Karnien, Roman, 217
Kasatkin, Pavel, 204
Keating, Geoffrey, 210
keene, Ralph, 181, 182, 215
Keliher, Alice, 172
Kerkov, Herbert, 172
Kerner, Ben, 172
Kimberley, Paul, 194, 208

Koestlcr, Arthur, 165
Korda, Sir Alexander, 214
Kosmodemyanskaya, 217
Kotovsky, 217

Lawrence, D. H„ 200
Lahedev. V. N., 169
Lee, Jack, 215
Lee, Jenny, 166
I egg, Stuart, 167, 172
Lcjeunc. C. A., 179
Lenin, V. I., 161, 169
I erncr, Irving, 172
•• ■ er, Marcel, 229

Loew, 223
Lorentz, Pare, 203
Losev. Mary, 206
Low. David. 219
Luke, Lord, 222
Luklmkov, Col., 204
Lumiere Brothers. 190
Lupitio, Ida, 186

Mas Mister, S., 216
MacUthur, Charlie, 168
Met nil, -ugh, Donald, 16
MacDonald, David, 210

Mason, K. H. B., 171*

Massineham, K.. 22')
Mawvcil. John. 222, 223, 224

credit h, G. Patrick, 22S
ciktilov. 1>i . 2114

[ii hael, 220

. Jicharin, 170

Micklewood, Fric, 180

Miles, R.S., 176*
Mitchell, Leslie, 181
Molotov, 199, 213

Naplas. Albert, 172
Nelson, Arthur J. . 221
Nelson. R. Q., 168

Nietei Mans. I'd. 225
Noble, t.eorge, 225
North, 1 rank, 226

Ostrer Brothers, 222, 223, 224

Pal, George, 229

Pennington-Richards, C, 200

Pichela, 170

Piper, I red, 180

Pocknall, George, 225

Portal of La\erstokc, Lord, 222

Powell, Michael, 179, 219

Presnyakov, 170

Pressburger, E., 219

Pfior, F. A., 194

Pudovkin, V. I., 169, 217

Radford, Basil, 182
Rank, J. Arthur, 214, 222. 22 i. 224
Rao, Bhaskar, 202
Rebiere, 215
Reed, ( arol, 211
Reiniger. Lotte, 206
' ■ r, Hans, 172

Rimbaud, 218
Ripley, 182
Riskin, Robert, 203
Kod.ikicv.ic/, llcnwar, 203
Rodwell, Stanley, 225
Kotti, i.in, Julian, 172
Rogers, Ginger, IS6, 18s
Rogers, Jimmy, 225
Roclini, Ernst, 174
Rommel, General, 181, 189

Sainsbury, I rank 226

Sevcrskv. A. D., 162,231
Shantaram, 202
Shaw, Alexander, 215
Slu.ko, Pavel, 204
Shubtn, 169

Simonov, Konstanlm, 217
Slcsingcr, Donald. 203*
Smith, Agnes, 229
Spcwack, Sam, 203
Stalin, 169

Stah.ukhan A. F., 202
Steinbeck, John, 212
Steinei, Rudolf, 203
Stem. Lena, 170

s, Sir Stephen, 205

Taylor, John, 165,226
Tchaikovsky, 204
Thomas, Dylan, 174*, 195

Thompson, Margare
Tojo, 163, 164
Tracy, Spencer, 188
Trench, Paul, 194

Twist, Wing Comdr., 213

Vasilvev, L, 16')
Vaughan, D. M., 184*
Verdi, 218

Vladimirs'ky, 170

von Daniel. Lt.-Gen., 217

von Paulus, Field-Marshal, 217

Vorkapitch, 218

Wallace, Henry, 162, 216, 220

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms,

170
Experiments on the Circulation of the Blood.

169

Face of Britain, The, 221,225

Face of Fascism, The, 217

Fatigue and the Struggle against it. 169

Femme du Boulanger, 206

Him and Hralilv, The, 206
lire Guard. 176, 212
Fires were started, 199, 200*
First Aid in Accidents. 164
First Days, The. 179, 225
Five Menu! Velcsl,. Ihe. 1st,

Weiss

.. 227

n North Africa, 202*

B.ti.C. Brains Trust, 166*
Bells Go Down, The, 199
Betti i I licsscs Filth floor, I 72

Blood I ranslusion, 225

Bread Bakery and Confectionery,

Breathing, 169

Breathing Space, 215*

Chemical Weapons, 169
Children at School, 221
China, 191*

( hristm.is under Fire, 173, 179
( itadel, The, 214

( lean Milk, 181*

( lose Qu triers, 215*

Coastal Command, 173, 200, 215

Common ( ause, 181 *

Control Room, 184, 212

(nurse ol the Motor Tractor, 170

( oieiiug with Attcction, 202*

Crown of the Year, The, 215*

Debris Tunnelling, 202*, 207
Defence oj Stalingrad. 217
Desert Victory. Is1'. I"4. 210. 221
Development o! the Embryo. The, 169
Development ol the frog. The, 169
Diary of a ,\a;i, 2"

Digestive Organs, The. li

Earth and Cloud, 164

il orld, 179

I nmigli to I il ' 'I

o I ranee. The, 180, 188

Four Feathers, 214
49,7, Parallel, 173, IBs
Freedom of Aberfeldy, The, 181*

s, Orson, 186, 189
Wells. IE G., 182
Well ., William. 172
WJi.tinan, Walt, 218
Wills, Colin. 166, 210 .
Wilson, I. I., 224
Wintcrton, Lord, 224
Wmtle, Julian. IS2
Wool!', CM., 222. 223
Woolion, Lord, 216
Wright, Basil, 165, 191, 212
Wright, I lovd. IS2

Yule, Lady, 223

Zakhvatiev, Major-Gen., 205
Zanuck. Darryl, 202
Zelenin, 169
Zguride, 169

(3) FILM TITLES

Titles appearing in lists, and under "Film
Societies" are omitted. Titles in italics
indicate a length greater than three reels.

Abortion, 169

Ai,l,,rec, 212, 213
Alcohol, 169
Alexander Nevski, 217
All Quh

Ghost that neve, Returns, Ihe. 215
Glimpses ol Soviet Science, 170, 186
Good-bye Mr. Chips, 214
Grapes of Wrath. The. 1SS. 212
Great lakes. 167
Green Algae, 169

Harvest Shall Come, The, 187, 207, 221

Heart ..I Uritain. Ihe 173, 200

Hedging. 201

Here is To-morrow, 172

Hermitage, The, 170

High over the Borders, I

g Problems, 163, 221
e Steel « ~

?d, 217

n Europe, 164

Na/i Gcrinanv. 21 ;
live IWhavioui in Animals, 169
of the Heart Rhythm, 169

Invincible? 181*

Which We Serve, 163, 18c
irrigation, 169

Labour and Health, 169

Lad Iran, Car lawn. A, 217

Land, The, 172

Last Laugh. The, 206

Leningrad Symphony, 217

Eelte, limn Home, 173

Lidice, 217

Life and lie ah at ( aland Blimp, The, 2

Lite Begins Again, 184

o Britain, 173, 206
I ittle Ships, 197
London Can Take It, 173, 179

Eon 1442. 181*. 197

Londoners, The, 221
Magnificent Ambersons, The, 18'
Malta (,.( . 170*
Mechanism of the Brain, 169
Mendel, 217

Men oj the Lightship. 175
Merchant Seamen, 173, 200
Millions like I s. 221

Mosses, 1

Mr. and Mrs. America, 1!
Mrs. Uiniscr, iol
Multi-1 athc Work. 170

Neurasthenia. 169

New Words fi

Next of Lin. 173, ISS, 210

Night Mail, 174, 225

One Day of War, 188, 217

One of Our to, rail is \/<vv„n,. ISS

Operational Heights, 191*

Organs ol Vision, 169

Our Film, 182

Our Russian front. 172

e History of "Pravda", 1

Principles ol Simple Surgery, The, 169
Problem of Nutrition, The, 169
Public Health Services, 172
Pushkin's Handwriting, 170

St. Paul's, 197

Salt, 169

Save Your Own Seeds, 181*

Saving of Bill Blewitt, The, 179, 1

Science and Technique, 1 70

6.311 ( nllcction. 174

Sound, 169

Sowing and Planting, 201

Spare 1 inie in the Army, 172

Spiders, 169

Squadron 992, 173, 179

Stooking and Stacking, 202*

Storing S egetablcs Indoors, 201

Storing Vegetables Outdoors, 201

Street ! rglrting, 184

Strike, 217

Structure of Vegetable Cells, The, 169

Struggle for Life, 169

Suluei i lor Discussion. 191*

Sukhe-Bator, 217

Summer on the Farm, 182*

Surgery in Chest Diseases, 226*

Tank Battle, 165*

Target for To-night, 173, 179, 200, 215, 221
I herese Raquin, 189
These arc- the Men. 174, 195*
Thiel oj Bagdad, The. 214
This abase All, 161. 163
Thunder over Mexico, 206
Total Plastic Surgery ol the Throat, 169
Trailers, 182*
Transfer of Power, 212
I ranslormer ol Nature, The, 170
Treasures of the Forests, 169
Intvakov Gallery, The, 170
Triumph des IVillens, 174, 195

Turn of the Furrow, 201

21 Miles, 173

Two Discoveries, 170

Victory Through Air Power, 231*

Wait for Me, 217

II ar against Mrs. Hadley, The, 161

W artime factory, 206

Way to Plough, A, 201

We Disc at Dawn, 215*

We Sail at Midnight. 173

H7,o is Sue' 217
Wingeii V isitors, 169
Winter on the farm. 201, 206
Words and Actions, 226*
Words lor Battle, 200
Worker and W arfront, 1 87
Worker and Warlront (3), 165*
Work., and Wariront 1,4), 166*
Worker and Warlront (5), 191*
Workers and Jobs, 221
Workers' Week-end. 226*, 229
World of Plenty, The, 216*. 221

Yank at Oxford, A, 214

(4) ADVERTISERS

Films of Great Britain. 166

(,.li. Instructional, 207

Kineniatograph Weekly. 170, 178, 191,205,

214, 227
I ondou Scicntihc I ihn Society, 232
Paul Kotlia Productions, 216
Realist film I nit, 172, IS3, 196, 201, 216,

232
Russell Productions, 228

Sight and Sound, 167, 180, 190, 203, 215.

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300107235

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