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ONE SHILLING

AUTUMN 1934

DALLAS BOWER
FORSYTH HARDY
HERBERT READ
D. F. TAYLOR

CURT COURANT
G. F. NOXON
PAUL ROTHA
ALEX. WERTH

JOHN GRIERSON
P. M. PASINETTI
DAVID SCHRIRE
NORMAN WILSON

BERWICK- ON -TWEED

BUT

3 Jri il Ju JL

ON THE ROAD

YOU CAN BE SURE OF SHELL

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FORSYTH HARDY

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Czechoslovakia —

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India —

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Soutli Africa —

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CINEMA
QUARTERLY

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

EVASIVE DOCUMENTARY. David Schrire:

John Grierson replies .

ITALY'S "INTERNATIONAL" INSTITUTE
G. F. Noxon ....'.

66 FILMS IN A LIDO HOTEL P. M. Pasinetti
EXPERIMENTS IN COUNTERPOINT. Herbert Read

THE FUNCTION OF THE CAMERA-MAN

Curt Courant — Ernest Dyer .

WAGNER AND FILM. Dallas Bower .

FILMS IN PARIS. Alexander Werth

NEW ABSTRACT PROCESS. Claire Parker

A. Alexeieff

BRUCE WOOLFE, ROTHA, AND "RISING TIDE"

John Grierson .

FILMS OF THE QUARTER. Forsyth Hardy, John
Grierson, Paul Rotha, D. F. Taylor,
Norman Wilson .....

FILM SOCIETIES

THE INDEPENDENT FILM-MAKER

12

14
17

22
27

30

34
37

39
55
59

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Street: McGill's News Agency, 183 Elizabeth Street.

Vol. 3. No. 1. AUTUMN 1934

LONDON
FILMS

THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL

SANDERS OF THE RIVER

WHITHER MANKIND?

THE REIGN OF
KING GEORGE V

CINEMA QUARTERLY

Volume 3; No. 1

AUTUMN

1934

THREAT TO NON-FLAM. While the ordinary public perfor-
mance of films printed on standard inflammable stock is strictly
controlled by regulations framed to secure public safety but also used
to enforce an undefined but far reaching measure of censorship, the
exhibition of non-inflammable film, as used with all sub-standard
projectors, has so far remained free from official interference. There
are indications, however, that this freedom may be short-lived.
The Home Office is said to be considering the introduction of new
regulations which would bring non-flam film virtually under the
same restrictions as apply to standard stock.

Such a move would have a disastrous effect on the development
of the use of the film in education, social welfare, the public services,
and in every sphere where it can serve the interests of the com-
munity. The value of the film as a means of education and instruc-
tion is being increasingly recognized, and numerous schools and
educational organizations throughout the country have already
installed apparatus which may now become unusable.

The proposed regulations, it is understood, are intended to lessen
the physical danger to public safety, apart from the risk of fire,
which it is feared may be present at uncontrolled exhibitions. It would
be difficult, however, to trace any case of accident or disturbance caus-
ing injury to any member of the public as a result of using safety film.
It would appear, therefore, that if the regulations are to be as stringent
as has been hinted, the intention is either censorial or is to satisfy
interests opposed to the spread of non-theatrical exhibitions and the
increase of advertising shows organized by large commercial firms.

To endanger the unrestricted development of the sub-standard
film, particularly in the field of education, in order to eliminate a
particular type of performance unwelcome to certain other vested
interests, would be an act of supreme folly. Until the official text
of the proposed regulations is made public there is little that can be
done to organize opposition, but every one concerned with the use
of safety film should be primed in readiness to take joint action in
appealing against the introduction of any measures which would
place unnecessary restrictions on the exhibition of films used for

3

educational and cultural ends. All film societies, educational
organizations and other bodies interested in the development of the
film should immediately consider the possibility of co-operating in a
nation-wide campaign to safeguard their interests and to oppose any
encroachment on the existing liberties of the community.
SENSE AND CENSORSHIP. Bernard Shaw in his preface to
" The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet " said possibly everything that
need be said against the bourgeois principles of censorship ; but since
then there has grown up a complex system of film censorship arising
out of a network of regulations created for entirely different pur-
poses, and it is as well that the tyrannical implications of this system
should be kept constantly before the public. Ivor Montagu has
already dealt with the political aspect of the question in a pamphlet
which showed how the Government, by working through an "un-
official" board of censors appointed by the film trade, could use its
control without the burden of responsibility. In " The Censor, the
Drama and the Film" (Allen and Unwin, 7s. 6d.) Dorothy Knowles
now examines the entire field. Her closely documented marshalling
of facts is an effective exposure of the inefficiency of a system which
winks at crude pornography and unhesitatingly mutilates works of
artistic integrity and serious intention.

While we may agree that some form of control is necessary to
prevent the outbreak of public disorder and to guard children against
undesirable influences, it is against all radical principles of liberty
that every film and every audience should be subject to restrictions
intended to control mass re-action in the conglomerated interests of
state, society, and religion.

Unfortunately the attitude of certain film producers, whose pic-
tures are little better than animated versions of a particular kind
of Continental post card, makes it difficult for any revision in censor-
ship regulations to be considered. It is these muck-merchants, who
fortunately are not the entire film trade, who have brought into
existence the legions of decency and the countless busybodies whose
unintelligent interference the rest of cinema could well do without.
Even the news-reels, which have always remained free from super-
vision, have in recent months so violated every standard of decency
in their exploitation of sensationalism that they will have only
themselves to blame if they are brought under official control.
Paul Rotha's indictment of their policy, contained elsewhere in
this issue, should be read as a solemn warning.

The enlightened age in which we can expect complete freedom
from censorial interference is still far off, but it is the task of the film
societies to see that, as specialized audiences of intelligent people,
they secure the right to show films free from the niggling restrictions
intended for morons.

4

THE FILM INSTITUTE. The first annual report of the British
Film Institute, which has now a membership of nearly two hundred,
shows that a considerable amount of work has been undertaken
during the year in setting up machinery which, if properly handled,
could be used to tackle some of the more important problems which
call for attention. Among the "advisory panels" which have been
formed is one on sub-standard films, and as it is largely composed
of members of the B.K.S. and apparatus manufacturers its policy
with regard to the proposed new non-flam regulations will be
awaited with interest. There is also a panel on documentary films,
but so far not one on news-reels. In view of recent tendencies it
would be exciting to see what would happen if such a panel were
formed.

SINCLAIR-EISENSTEIN AGAIN. Upton Sinclair and Sol Lesser
are about to release a second film, called Day of Deaths "rescued"
from Eisenstein's Mexican mileage, and Seymour Stern and his
storm-troops are already at their heels. The days of protesting
and "debunking," writes Stern, are now over, and the future of the
campaign lies in an effort to negotiate with Sinclair for a return of
the negative to Eisenstein. If this is ever achieved Stern will have
earned our admiration for bringing to a happy conclusion one of the
most sordid chapters in the history of art.

DEATH OF JEAN VIGO. Cinema is not sufficiently rich in genius
that it can afford to lose in early youth one of its most promising
directors and serious experimenters. Jean Vigo, whose Atalante and
J?ero de Conduite were exciting essays in imaginative realism, after a
serious illness in Paris not helped by his burning enthusiasm for
cinema, has passed away, leaving the ranks of the independents —
in whose hands he believed lay the entire artistic future of the film —
poorer by one of their most original and brilliant artists. A melan-
choly interest will be attached to the exhibition of J?ero de Conduite,
which is to be shown by the Film Society during the coming season.

Norman Wilson.

VOLUME THREE

THE THIRD Volume of Cinema Quarterly commences with the present number.
Copies are obtainable through any bookshop, but if any difficu'ty is fxperienced an
annual subscription (Great Britain, 4s. 6d ; Abroad, 7s. 6d.) should be sent to the
Manager, Cinema Quarterly, 24 N.W. Thistle Stteet Lane. Fdinburgh, 2. Binding
cases for Volume Two are now ready, price 3s. 6d. each, postage 6d extra No further
expense is necesary as these are self-adjusting. Casts for Volume Three, in which each
copy may be placed as issued, are also ready.

BASE NEWS-REEL SENSATIONALISM

It seems likely that important issues with regard to the function
and scope of the news-reel may at last be brought to a head by the
widely-shown item of the assassination of King Alexander of Jugo-
slavia. On several recent occasions it has been evident that the
news-reel companies' rival efforts for sensationalism would sooner
or later provoke public indignation. The ' Outrage at Marseilles '
provides that required incentive.

In at any rate one version of the incident, the picture has been
edited in such a way as to heighten the effect of the occurrence ;
by cutting to build suspense and by inserting details (a battered
strawT hat ; a hand with a gun slinking through the crowd) which
may or may not be authentic. It is surely the news-reel's task to
present as accurate as possible a record of an event. As soon as it
begins to dramatize, to construct an incident creatively by cutting
for increased effect, news-reel encroaches into the documentary
field. Once news-reel adopts documentary approach, almost any
event can be given implications to suit any point of view. In
this age of social and political unrest, such manipulation holds many
dangers.

The inclusion of the Assassination item in ordinary programmes,
along with Colour Symphonies and amusement films, is causing
wide comment. As pointed out elsewhere in this issue, it defeats
the entertainment purpose of cinema, for no studio-made story can
stand up to this vivid moment of real life. It suggests that there is
scope for extension of news-theatres and that news-reels, except
those of the most uncontroversial topics, should be removed from
the general theatres. Not for one moment is it implied that records
of such events should be suppressed. It is important that they should
be exhibited to permit the public to draw its own conclusions. But it
is equally important that they should be available only to those who
desire to see them and not inserted in the ordinary programmes.

Such exploitation policy is not new. Recently we have seen human
suffering literally forced before cameras and microphone, with the
participants actually demonstrating their unwillingness to make
public their private emotions. There can be no other purpose
behind this than exploitation for profit. I do not blame the news-
reel cameramen. They have courage and skill and are only
obeying instructions. I accuse the policy behind some news-reels
and deplore their lack of social responsibility. I condemn the minds
that adopt the attitude that there are incidents — be it pit-disaster,
shipwreck or strike riots — which can be exploited for gain by laying
special emphasis on the brutality or pathos of the occasion. It is
a wholly despicable approach to reality. Paul Rotha.

6

EVASIVE
DOCUMENTARY

DAVID SCHRIRE

It is a queer commentary on socially conscious film critics on whom
we have come to rely for judgments unaffected by economic com-
pulsives, that they have scrupulously refrained from turning the
full force of their condemnation on a new tendency in cinema. In
reality, this tendency is not new but its growing popularity and
pseudo freshness give it the character of novelty and experimentation.
Idyllic or evasive documentary of which Flaherty is the arch priest,
is beginning to carve out for itself a well-nigh unassailable place in
cinema.

Except for Grierson's far too kindly articles in Cinema Quarterly
and various obiter dicta on the subject of documentary, little criticism
has been directed against this new menace. A whole-hearted
full-blooded frontal attack, showing its dangers, enlarging on the
consequences of such so called "escapism" and revealing — didacti-
cally if necessary — the correct orientation for documentary pictures
is urgently needed. That it has not already been done is an omission
that may yet prove fatal to the true interests of documentary.

Possibly these critics imagine that they would be doing the cause
of documentary a disservice by exposing and attacking "escapism."
They must think that, as this form is after all an aspect of docu-
mentary, a stepping stone to what they really want to see established,
it would be bad policy and tactics to give it a kick in the pants:
that it is after all a solid box-office draw and is acquainting the
public and the producing companies with an idea of the potentialities
of documentary pictures.

This is a dangerous argument for it rests on a fundamental theo-
retical fallacy. It premises that that which differentiates a docu-
mentary picture from others is the use of natural material, and the
use of natural material alone. In point of fact pictures by Flaherty
et hoc genus omne have no real title to be styled "documentary." To
do so is to water down the essential purpose of documentary, abort
its function and render impotent its raison d'etre. The words "idyllic "

or "evasive" as applied to that type of picture are preferable to the
term "escapism." For "escapism" lays the emphasis on and evalu-
ates the picture in subjective terms of the director's mind; and not
as an objective sociological phenomenon.

Idyllic documentary is documentary in decay, documentary with
pernicious anaemia. It is the wax moth of true documentary. It
changes the nature of documentary, gives it a new quality, a new
form. It may be realistic, deal with actual people and things; but
realism inheres not alone in the material used but in the material
plus treatment. It is the purpose to which a film dealing with
natural material is put that classifies it and not the material employed.

It is necessary to define what we mean by documentary before
we can solicit the agreement of readers or proceed to discuss the
pictures of Flaherty. Documentary or documentary pictures may be
defined as the imaginative delineation through the medium of
films employing natural material of current social struggle and
conflict; the word "social" is used in its widest sense, embracing
political, economic and cultural aspects of modern life. This
definition follows from a generally accepted dictum that if cinema
is to mean anything it must serve a purpose beyond itself, have some
justification other than its own very medium. If that is true, there
is one purpose above all others that is of paramount importance
to-day — that of making a living. But it is not man's relationship
with nature and the forces of production in our modern world
which is the true subject of documentary, not the Industrial Britain
or Cinemagazine approach. Production to-day is adequate for our
needs. The struggle is in a different sphere. It is the relationship of
man with his fellow man within the existing economic structure of
society, his struggle to abolish hunger and unemployment, earn a
decent wage and, finally, equate distribution with production — ■
these problems are the taut sinews of modern capitalism. Man's
struggle with nature to wrest from her his means of subsistence has
lost importance to-day. It is his struggle for the right to divert what
he has produced to the interests of humanity that is the vital question.
And it is there that documentary has its justification, in truthfully
depicting modern economic relationships, in rendering audiences
conscious of their interests, of their economic claims, aware of their
remedy. That is the true sphere of documentary if it is to serve the
most urgent purpose beyond itself.

In the light of the above definition let us consider the position
of Flaherty. We are accepting the excellence of his cutting, his
fine photography and that superb feeling he has for cinema. These
formal attributes are admitted without question. They merely make
more regrettable the loss that documentary has suffered by his
idyllicism.

Flaherty reveals a joy, an unholy pleasure in his subject matter;
he revels in it. And its distinguishing quality is a deliberate turn to
the fringes of civilization or to an anthropological present, a present
for which the Industrial Revolution need never have taken place;
and romanticism and "lo, the noble savage" pervades the whole,
wraps it in the old miasmal mist of irrelevancy and distraction. In
Flaherty's world of cinema there are no such things as machinery
and smoke-grimed factories, hotels and labour camps, unemploy-
ment and hunger, tenement houses and mansions. But the primitive
Esquimeaux, bronzed Polynesians, virgin snows and coconut trees,
surf and elemental storms are the normal material for his celluloid.
And it is not as if he is a sensitive soul who cannot bear to contemplate
the misery and pain of our modern economic life; Flaherty is no
emotional vegetarian. For he can face and shoot individual pain
with an all too facile relish (vide the tattooing scenes in Moana).
It is just that he is a throwback, an artistic atavism to whose apologia
"I like this idyllism. It satisfies my artistic conscience," there is no
reply. For "aesthetic" individualism cannot be overcome by
rational argument. The only course to follow is to give the " artistic"
product of such people the tribute of our condemnation.

Flaherty is an institution. He rushes to the bucolic present for
material to fashion into his exquisitely finished product. Our econo-
mic system breeds such types as this by the score and their film
prototypes are merely logical reflections of their role in every aspect
of modern culture.

Their threat is twofold; in the first place, they are conditioning
the mind of the public to this evasive idea of documentary. They
are no longer isolated. Numbers of imitators have already sprung
up and "mocumentary" is beginning to dig itself in as a normal,
item in supporting programmes. Secondly, they have led cine mag-
nates to imagine that documentary deals either with the noble
savage in his native environment, or is a spineless, elegant reflection
of the pleasant trivialities of modern life. And may the Lord preserve
documentary from the support of the commercial producing
companies !

Documentary will have a hard fight to establish itself. It is
already probably too late to break the title that Flaherty pictures
have to the word. Another one may have to be coined. That we
have assisted " mocumentary" in establishing itself is unfortunate.
But let us now realize, clearly and finally, that the pictures of Flaherty
etc., are hindrances to the growth of documentary; that not only
must we withdraw all support, not only cease damning with faint
praise, but that the time is over-ripe to attack evasive documentary
for the menace that it really is.

JOHN GRIERSON REPLIES

Flaherty with his Man of Aran has caused almost as much division
of critical opinion as Thunder Over Mexico. David Schrire's article
puts the principal objections: that Flaherty is a romantic escapist
and that the film is only so much idyllic fudge. As I originally, I
think, invented the word "escapism," and used it on Flaherty in the
very early days of Cinema Quarterly, it may seem scurvy in me to
double-cross a supporter. But I do not agree with this estimate
either of Flaherty or Man of Aran.

In the first place one may not — whatever one's difference in theory
— be disrespectful of a great artist and a great teacher. Flaherty
taught documentary to create a theme out of natural observation.
He brought to it for the first time a colossal patience in the assembly
of effects. And this was necessary before the discursive travelogue
could become a dramatic — or dialectical — analysis of event.

It is of course reasonable for a later generation of film-makers to
want a documentary tougher, more complex, colder and more
classical, than the romantic documentary of Flaherty. It is fitting
that it should want a documentary in which both material and theme
are found in our own social organization and not in literary idyll.
But there are considerations one must watch carefully. The first
one is that Flaherty was born an explorer, and that is where his
talent is: to be accepted on its own ground. It would be foolish, as
Professor Saintsbury once remarked, to complain of a pear that it
lacks the virtue of the pomegranate.

I call it futile, too, to ask of Flaherty an article which cannot under
commercial conditions be possible. Some of us can make do with a
thousand pounds on a production, and we buy our independence
accordingly. Flaherty's method involves the larger backing of the
commercial cinema. He has of necessity to obey its rules. These
rules are not always articulated but they are understood. Whatever
Flaherty's carte blanche on the Aran Islands, the controlling factor,
you may take it, was that he did not want to let his masters down.
This factor was undoubtedly responsible for making his film more
sensational and more spectacular than was expected. It was res-
ponsible for making it spectacular at the expense of elements —
possibly deeper elements — which under other conditions he might
have included.

But rather than complain of the result, I wonder that so much
was done within commercial limitation. No English film has done
so much. Not half a dozen commercial films in the year can
compare with Man of Aran in simple feeling and splendid movement.
I am all for congratulating Flaherty on pushing the commercial

10

film brilliantly to its limit. I am all for commending his fortitude
in yet another sickening encounter with commercialism.

It is good to remember when these arguments arise how — till the
gold plaque came in from Venice — lacking in unanimity was the
first enthusiasm. Even Man of Aran was too difficult and too high-
brow for the trade generally, and might have fizzled indeed if
Flaherty has not gone out himself with his collection of Islanders to
ballyhoo it into appreciation. It plainly is a difficult world to
manage anything at all in, when the artist has to turn showman in
self defence.

Flaherty not only had to make the film but he had to sell it.
Wardour Street, which knows how to sell its own line of damarroids,
has never the belief nor the salesmanship, to sell anything different.
Where, as in the case of France, the Man of Aran job was left to the
usual commercial agents, the film was cut to a five-reeler and billed
below the line as a subsidiary feature. As they congratulate them-
selves on their gold plaque, Gaumont-British should pause to consider
this strange anomaly.

A last consideration, which Flaherty himself urges strongly.
Man of Aran has been blamed for distorting the life of the Islanders,
for going back into time for its shark hunting and its dangers, for
telling a false story. But is it unreasonable for the artist to distil life
over a period of time and deliver only the essence of it? Seen as
the story of mankind over a period of a thousand years, the story of
the Arans is very much this story of man against the sea and woman
against the skyline. It is a simple story, but it is an essential story,
for nothing emerges out of time except bravery. If I part company
with Flaherty at that point, it is because I like my braveries to
emerge otherwise than from the sea, and stand otherwise than against
the sky. I imagine they shine as bravely in the pursuit of Irish
landlords as in the pursuit of Irish sharks.

In the commercial cinema, however, sharks are definitely
preferable. You can stuff them and show them in a Wardour
Street window. You can even cut them down, as G.-B. did, to fit
the window. You cannot, unfortunately, do the same with Irish
landlords. That is the case for Flaherty.

RECORD OF SUBSTANDARD FILMS

In response to numerous enquiries Cinema Quarterly is compiling a
record of sub-standard films of a documentary, educational, or
experimental nature. Both amateur and commercial producers are
invited to submit details of such films, including contents, size,
length, and also rates and conditions of hiring.

11

ITALY'S " INTERNATIONAL "
INSTITUTE

G. F. NOXON

On the Via Nomentana outside the ancient Papal walls of Rome,
lies a large property surrounded by a high sun-baked wall and
watched over by a number of rather embarassed-looking armed
guards. Somehow, in this quiet Roman suburb they feel themselves
hopelessly out of place. They guard the Villa Torlonia. Within
the walls there are actually two villas, the one elegant, the other
a trifle down-at-heel. The former villa is the home of Benito
Mussolini and the latter is the seat of that somwhat obscure organiza-
tion— The International Institute of Educational Cinematography.
The I.I.E.C. sits, as it were, in Mussolini's back yard. It was founded
on the Duce's direct instigation in 1929 in affiliation with the League
of Nations. It has therefore an official link with the League and
flies League colours over its international business. It is not however
financed by the League but by Signor Mussolini through the Italian
Government which pays to the tune of one million lira per annum
to maintain this so called international "Institute." At the founda-
tion appeals were of course made to other goverments for finance,
but contributions were scanty and rare. Great Britain, America,
France and Germany have given nothing. Poland, Hungary and
Roumania have made minute contributions. The finance of the
Institute remains 99 per cent. Italian.

Anyone who has the least knowledge of Signor Mussolini's
political methods will ask immediately why he chooses to foot the
bill for this Institute, and anyone who knows Mussolini's methods
well will at once find the answer. Wherever the original idea of an
International Institute of Educational Cinematography cropped up,
it was and still is a brilliant conception. Mussolini's move to give
the idea some sort of concrete shape, which in the boom year of '29
passed almost unnoticed as just one more extravagance of the
expansionist mentality, now appears as further proof of his political
astuteness.

It is curious that the realization of the cinema as a potent medium
for propaganda seems to come naturally to one kind of politician
and to escape the perception of others entirely. To Mussolini it
was obvious that the investment of a mere million lira a year was a
cheap price to pay for the control of the I.I.E.C, which, while

12

flying League of Nations colours, would yet remain his own propa-
ganda organization, both internally and internationally, by simple
reason of his financial control.

To give the Institute the requisite International flavour a Govern-
ing Body was formed. Governors were chosen from a variety of
countries and the token to Internationalism was paid. The alto-
gether estimable gentlemen who form this governing body convene
once a year at Rome in the glorious autumn weather for which that
city is justly famed. They pass resolutions and they make recom-
mendations, they take drives into the Castelli Romani, are enthusias-
tic over the sunsets of the late year, are entertained at garden parties.
It is all very charming and the Governors return to their various
homelands with feelings of quiet satisfaction.

But what of the Institute's work throughout the year? What
sort of structure is there behind the facade of its long name? Is it a
solid useful building really serving the cause of an international
cinema?

The chief work of the Institute is the publication of a monthly
review in five languages. Numerous periodicals are read and notes
are made. There is a library. There is much cataloguing. There
is a great deal of idling.

The staff of this " International Institute" is composed largely of
Italians. Many of them hold unabashed sinecures by reason of
party influence. Few have the least idea what a film is and they feel
no compulsion to instruct themselves. Then there are the "editors"
of the Review: An Italian Editor, a French Editor, a Spanish
Editor, a German Editor, an English Editor. These gentlemen are
editors only in name ; actually, they spend the greater part of their
time translating and have practically no say in the make-up of the
Review. They have no control whatsoever of the policy. They are
part of the international facade. The policy of the Institute and the
Review is under the sole control of Signor Luciano de Feo, the
Director, who is doubtless inspired on issues of importance by
communications from above. The Institute is not located in Musso-
lini's back yard for nothing. De Feo is not a newcomer on the
Fascist scene. He was at one time Director of the Italian State Film
Organization — LUCE, which supplies carefully vetted news-reels
to all Italian cinemas. It is known that he enjoys the Duce's favour
and is well established in the party.

Apart from the Review, de Feo has a couple of hobby horses —
"the international exchange of educational films" and the com-
pilation of an international encyclopaedia of cinema terms. He has
likewise signified the Institute's interest in the formation of an
international catalogue of worthy educational films — worthiness to
be decided by the I.I.E.C. The gentlemen of the Governing Body

13

can find nothing to quarrel with in these pious and useful aspirations.
They make their yearly pilgrimage and remark, as the English mem-
ber of the Governing Body once remarked — "After all, he who pays
the piper calls the tune."

It is true that de Feo's tune is a trifle weak. The Review is frankly
so badly put together that, even though it does from time to time
contain good work, few can bother to sort out the grain from so
much chaff. The Directors' efforts in other directions have met with
little success — with one notable exception: the Venice Exhibition
film show is first rate travel ballyhoo for Italy. And here lies the
danger: Italian control of an "International Institute," with
Italian aims behind it, not only fails to advance the truly international
purposes of the cinema but serves to block the path for a real inter-
national organization. The general ineffectiveness of the I.I.E.C.
precludes it doing any serious harm and must incidentally give
Mussolini the idea that his million lira might be otherwise more
ably administered to the same purpose. And it is just possible that
our own carefully organized national Film Institute and other similar
national organizations may be deceived into co-operation with the
I.I.E.C. through ignorance of its real nature.

The intention of the I.I.E.C, is not educational but political. It
is not an international institute in any sense : it merely exploits
internationalism for its own national propaganda purposes.

66 FILMS IN A
LIDO HOTEL

P. M. PASINETTI

An exhibition of Cinematographic Art was held in Venice at the
Hotel Excelsior, Lido, in August. I understand that it was a great
financial success and a great asset to Venice as a means of attracting
tourists ; but, officially, the attraction of tourists was not a concern
of the organizers and, although the circumstances frequently made it
difficult, I attempted to keep in mind that I was attending an
exhibition of art.

The Exhibition lasted twenty-seven days and sixty-six films were
presented. These were generally of the previous year and the
majority of them had been shown in Britain. In Italy, foreign films

14

are not at present shown in their original languages, nor are there
cinemas which specialize in foreign films, such as the Academy
in London, though I understand several small ones are to be founded
now. Films are shown in dubbed versions and the effect is often
cruel. Thus one of the attractions of the Exhibition for us in Italy
was that the films were shown in their original versions.

My first impressions of the programmes were not favourable,
as it was immediately clear that the organizers did not intend to
present only films of outstanding artistic importance. Much shoddy
stuff was included in the programmes. Two major films and
several shorts were presented each evening, with supplementary
morning and afternoon performances on the last days. The most
interesting Soviet films were presented privately in the forenoons.

As has been announced, the Mussolini prize for a foreign film
was awarded to Flaherty's Man of Aran, while the prize for an
Italian film was given to Teresa Confalonieri, an episode of our
Risorgimento, a heroic episode of which we are proud, even if the
pride does not extend to the film. Such films as Man of Aran and
Machaty's Ekstase gave me a thrill of aesthetic pleasure, even if I
had seen the former previously in Ireland; but it was maddening to
find included in an Exhibition of Cinematographic Art Death Takes
a Holiday — its performance being announced as the first in Europe
which, even if it had been true, was hardly an honour; and Going
Hollywood with Marion Davies, the star meanwhile appearing in the
hall of the hotel, signing post-cards. Fan worship was by no means
absent from this Exhibition of Cinematographic Art.

So many films seen within a short time provided special oppor-
tunities for comparison, particularly from the point of view of
national characteristics in production. I do not bring it forward as
a new observation, but the decadence of American production was
one of the things most apparent at the Exhibition. The American
system with its standardization, fear of experiment and lavish
expenditure on duplicating what has been previously found success-
ful, is failing. At a time when the historical film was regarded as
suspect, The Private Life of Henry VIII appeared as an independent
and courageous production; while The Private Life of Don Juan,
notoriously inferior to the first film, seems to have been produced in
accord with the American system of repeating what has been already
found successful. The state of American production to-day shows
how dangerous that system is. Let Europeans use it as an experience
in corpore vili. Lot in Sodom was the most interesting example of
American film art. It was amusing to find an experiment in abstract
coming from America ! Very few could follow it, but all admired its
technical perfection. The commercial film was much more widely
represented, but the choice of pictures was often remarkably unin-

15

telligent. I hope that on a future occasion, a committee shall not
ask the different nations to send whatever they please, but that an
approach will be made direct to the production firms for definite
films. Moreover, we would prefer to see ten films rather than
sixty-six.

European production appears to be most hopeful when it is
not under the control of the commercially-minded who regard
film-making merely as a method of making money. Such small
countries as Czechoslovakia and Holland often provide the best
examples of independent and courageous artistic production.

There is nothing to prevent anyone having a thousand films
shown in the garden of a grand hotel, without any significance
attached to the selection, the exhibition intended to provide only
a pleasant pastime. But it is a different matter when such a series
of performances is described as an International Exhibition of
Cinematographic Art. Film art is not a definition to be treated
lightly. The directors whose work is presented — and the organizers
of the Exhibition themselves — should be people who already have
some standing in the sphere of film art, or whose work at the Ex-
hibition is going to reveal their worthiness. The programmes
might be arranged to reflect aspects of the development of the film :
comparisons for example, between primitive and contemporary
films, obtained by short and representative excerpts. Similarly, the
outstanding film artists ought not to be forgotten and programmes
could be devoted to the story of Pabst's genius or of Mamoulian's
cleverness, or to the career of any other prominent director. Of the
Going Hollywood type of film, ten yards of celluloid could be selected
to show what the film is not to be.

The responsibility of the organizers grows when they publicize
the Exhibition and attract many people. Under such conditions,
the audience will include not only students of the cinema but a large
percentage who are cinematographically uneducated. The character
of the exhibition is particularly to be regretted when, as at present,
education in film matters is spreading. That education at present
is not at all complete, as was shown at the Lido during the per-
formace of Rutten's Dood Water (Holland), but undoubtedly people
are developing their film taste, are able to distinguish the work of
the major directors and are becoming familiar with film technicali-
ties. It is unfortunate that lovers of good cinema should have been
deceived by an exhibition so pompously announced and should have
been again confronted with the invasion of industry into art when
they thought that, for once, they could have shed their worries
on this score and left them at the entrance of the Hotel Excelsior
like a wet umbrella.

16

EXPERIMENTS IN
COUNTERPOINT

HERBERT READ

Ever since sound became a practical adjunct of the films, the
commercial producers seem to have had no other desire than to use it
in the interests of an ever faithful naturalism. Indeed, naturalism
is the unintelligent standard of all the arts still controlled by people
other than artists. In the arts of painting, sculpture and poetry,
where the artist is an individualist in supreme control of the process
of production, the bourgeois ideals of the nineteenth century are a
thing of the past. It is only in industrial art, and in arts like the
theatre and the film, in which the control is financial or capitalist,
that the creative activity is inhibited or distorted in the interests of
ideals and policies external to art.

The comparison of the film with the art of painting is particularly
instructive, because in so far as both are visual arts, and both arts
which use a two-dimensional surface for their projection and
presentation, their problems are to that extent identical. Naturally
the complete difference of technique soon puts an end to the value
of such comparisons, but even in technique it is worth insisting
on the actual plasticity of the camera's material (not so very far
removed from the plasticity of paint) ; and even, on the other hand,
on the concreteness of the painter's materials. Both arts, we might
say, are concerned with the arrangement of solids in relation to light.

Painting, in the last fifty or sixty years, has completely liberated
itself from the naturalistic convention ; it is safe to say that there is
not a living painter of distinction in the world to-day who regards
the exact imitation of natural effects as the aim of his art. Even the
Academicians pay their tribute to some mild form of impressionism ;
whilst at the other extreme the most talented painters in Europe
have completely divorced their art from any conventional notion
of reality, and attempt to create a new order of reality. That new
order may be suggested by the natural world, or may be of an in-
tuitive or hallucinatory origin ; but essentially it is a reality
parallel to the existing order of things. Some painters call it a
super-reality (surrealite) , but admittedly that is rather an arrogant
assumption ; it is sufficient to call it another order of reality.

The potentiality of the film (once it becomes the mode of ex-
pression of the artist) is already great purely as film ; but the

17

invention of sound-recording" apparatus has more than doubled
that potentiality. For it means the creation, not merely of a realistic
adjunct, adding the sensation of hearing to the sensation of sight
as a synchronized reproduction of reality ; but actually the creation
of another dimension in the art of the cinema. The independence
of the sound strip, both in recording and montage, means that
sight and sound can be combined in a counterpoint which is entirely
independent of realism. Rudolf Arnheim expresses the idea neatly :
" The principle of sound film demands that picture and sound shall
not do the same work simultaneously but that they shall share the
work — the sound to convey one thing and the picture another, and
the two jointly to give a complete impression."*

Arnheim, in his interesting chapter on " Asynchronism," discusses
some of the possibilities and dangers of this new technical device.
A certain welding-together of incongruities only ends, as he points
out, in a chaotic pseudo unity. There must be a certain notional
or imaginative unity behind every combination — a simple illustra-
tion would be the combination of the sound of rhythmic machinery
and a marching army ; the machinery might alternate with, or
even be superimposed upon, the sound of a marching song. But
obviously such combinations are going to call for great aesthetic tact
— indeed, for a new type of film artist, as much musician as producer,
who builds up symphonies of sight and sound.

In one of those few laboratories of experiment which exist in the
world — the G.P.O. Film Unit, which has succeeded to the Empire
Marketing Board Film Unit — John Grierson and Alberto Caval-
canti have been carrying out experiments in this direction which
are of the greatest interest. They are limited by the kind of film they
are required to produce — documentary and propaganda — but even
within these limits they have shown how usefully this counterpoint of
sight and sound can be developed. Perhaps the most ambitious of
these experiments is a comedy, Pett and Pott, directed by Alberto
Cavalcanti. Here a large variety of asynchronous devices are used
to produce special effects. In addition to what might be regarded
as the normal device — an accompaniment of music which induces a
sympathetic mood, there are suggestions of a more complicated
symphonic construction; the interweaving of direct naturalistic
sounds with the formal musical rhythm — at one point, for example,
the meaningless clatter of a rough-and-tumble fight is reinforced by
the strains of a drum-and-fife band, and the fight proceeds to the
rhythm of the music. More original is the formalized chorus used,
for example, in a scene which depicts a suburban train, full of
identical suburbanites reading identical evening papers. They begin
to read the headings of the latest suburban sensation — a robbery
* Film : London, Faber & Faber, 15s.
18

From Basil Wright's documentary, "The Song of Ceylon/
Recording is in progress at the G.P.O. studio at Blackheath,

Further stills from

Basil Wright's documentary

of Ceylon.

with violence. Their voices gradually rise in chorus and the chorus
beats out a rhythm which is the rhythm of the train. The train
whistles, and the scene fades out to an actual scene of violence, the
whistle of the train continuing as a woman's scream. Pett and Pott
is an excellent example of popular comedy heightened by an intel-
ligent use of the potentialities of cinema technique. In a more
serious context two new documentary films, 6.30 Collection (E. Anstey
and R. H. Watt) and Weather Forecast (Evelyn Spice), show a discreet
use of sound symbolism — the diminishing sound of an aeroplane
to suggest height, sounds of various modes of transport as a back-
ground to the final sorting of letters, various storm sounds "off"
when all that is visible is the heaving sea, or the storm signal.
The most advanced use of a continuous but disconnected sound
strip is found in Granton Trawler — a simple documentary film shot
with a hand-camera by Grierson and adapted for the screen with
the aid of Cavalcanti. The "orchestral" means are extremely
primitive — a mouth organ, a drum, the conversation of some Scots
fishermen, but all combined in a symphonic effect. The subject of
the conversation, for example, is of no importance — actually it is
football ; it is the impressionistic character of the vocal sounds that
combine with other sounds to produce an asynchronous reinforce-
ment of the visual effect.

Such experiments mark only the infancy of a new development
in film technique. I think the analogy with counterpoint in music
is fairly justifiable, and just as counterpoint in music led to a com-
pletely new development of the art, so this new counterpoint of
sight and sound may lead to a completely new kind of film. But
the difficulties ahead are enormous. For one thing, the device must
go beyond mere impressionism, to some synthesis of a more abstract
or formal nature. But before such an art can be possible, we have to
develop a new type of artist — an artist who combines visual and aural
sensibility and can use them simultaneously in the service of that par-
ticular plastic imagination which is the mark of the true film creator.

•
MANUAL OF LAW FOR THE CINEMA TRADE. By Gordon Alchin (London
Pitman, 30s.). A comprehensive work which will enable anyone to obtain infor-
mation on any matter of a legal nature connected with the production or exhibi-
tion of films. The sections dealing with statutory and local regulations governing
performances are of special value to everyone engaged in non- theatrical exhibition.
For producers the chapters on the subject matter of films and sound records have a
particular interest in view of the many copyright questions involved in production.
THE 1934-35 MOTION PICTURE ALMANAC. (New York, Quigley Pub-
lishing Co, 20s.). Over 1,000 pages of reference dealing with every aspect of com-
mercial film production in America. There is a comprehensive who's who covering
actors, technicians and executives, details of the year's film output, and full par-
ticulars of every organization connected with the American industry. There is
also printed the full text of the famous Production Code of Ethics.

21

THE FUNCTION OF
THE CAMERA-MAN

CURT COURANT

Interviewed by Ernest Dyer

"In the first place," said Courant, "the word 'cameraman' is
unfortunate. The suggestion it conveys is too limited, too technical
'Chief artistic collaborator,' were the phrase not so clumsy, would be
less misleading. The cameraman collaborates with the director
and the scenic designer and others so as to produce an artistic
picture. At the same time he is the captain of a team of specialists.
On this film, for example" — we had just come off the sets of The Iron
Duke — "I am 'chief cameraman.' I have as assistants two 'first
cameramen' and four 'assistant cameramen' — one first and one
'second' assistant to each camera. (We shoot everything through
at least two cameras). Then there are all the studio electricians.

"You ask me how far the cameraman is creative. Well, what
does good camera-work imply? Is it just to secure a clear, clean,
rich picture — a 'good photo' in the Kodak sense of the word?
This is only the basis. No, good camerawork is to give to each scene
the atmosphere which the scenario of the particular film calls for.
Each room, each set, each exterior has to reflect the mood which is
suggested by a reading of the scene. If the mood of the scene is sad,
then the camerawork must be in harmony and must invest the
scene with just the right ambience. I read the scenario like an actor
and then try to interpret it in terms of atmosphere. Sometimes per-
haps the result may not be ' good ' photography in the Kodak sense,
but that does not matter if it is the right camerawork artistically
for that scene."

E. D.: "So we cannot evaluate any shot fairly apart from its
sequence. That seems to me well illustrated by your own work in
Ces Messieurs de la Sante where the lighting seems to change with the
period, from the murky gas gloom of the little shop to the electric
radiance of the modern store."

G. C: "In those early scenes I wanted to make you feel the dust.
You do not want the screen always bright. Think of the paintings
of Menzel and Rembrant, so dark that you have to go right up to
them, yet perfect in mood. We cameramen are after the same
things as the old painters. Instead of pigments and brushes we

use lamps. We paint with light. Instead of colours we have a scale
in monochrome. But what our cameras record is what our imagina-
tions create when we paint our sets with light."

E. D.: "To what extent do you control the sets themselves?"

C. C: "That is a matter of collaboration with the designer and
director before shooting begins. We discuss the sketches and models."

E. D. : "But that scene you have just been shooting, with that
broken gun-wheel you arranged so carefully upon the mound, does
your script give you the details of that?"

G. G. : "Oh, no. Such a scene can be arranged upon the floor.
Then I paint my sky-cloth with light to help the composition. That
big ball-room set you saw us shooting the other day — every column
of it has its roundness touched off by some specially placed light,
so that the scene had form and depth and pictorial balance as well
as the softness appropriate to candle-illumination. The lighting made
it a composition."

E. D. : "What of the risk that shots with intrinsic pictorial appeal
may distract from the thematic content of the film? Robert Edmund
Jones says that he is most content with his stage settings when they
fit a performance so perfectly that the audience does not notice
them. Does not that apply to camerawork?"

G. C.: "The photography should enforce, not distract from, the
thematic content. Selfish photography is like over-acting. The
beauty of camerawork must be absolutely lap-dissolved with the
mood of the story. It is like some vital part in the mechanism of a
watch. The audience — members of the average audience — should
never be aware of the camera.

"For instance, the camera's angle of vision is more limited than
that of the human eye, so that if we wish to convey the impression of
the unhampered movements and gestures of George Arliss we have to
follow him with pan and track and keep him always 'trained'
by a moving focus. We must not allow him to be the prisoner
of the frame. But the audience is not aware of that constant camera
movement. When the audience feels that anything is technical
then it is bad. So with angles. The right angle is the natural angle.
When a technical trick is so good that the audience does not see
that a trick is being used then it is artistic camerawork.

"Look at that set in there. A sound-stage lumped with ioo tons
of dirt and turned into the battlefield of Waterloo. 30 electricians
and 7,000 amps to light it. An artificial sky within a few dozen
feet of the foreground. Yet the camera will give you a perfect
illusion of miles of depth. Shafts of sunlight touching the stone walls
and the branches of the tree. Every blade of grass almost with its
separate lighting. The impression of an exterior rendered in the
studio by artificial light!"

23

E. D.: "But why shoot it in a studio? Why not go outside to
begin with?"

C. C. : "Good! Consider the scene. It is the afternoon of battle,
between day and evening. There is a feeling of hopelessness on
the part of the French. Ney makes his pathetic last stand. It calls
for an atmosphere that is mellow and triste. What odds on finding
that lighting when you wanted it in Nature ! What hopes of keeping
it fixed, if need be, for two days ! Besides, there is the action to be
lit, too. That may want lighting differently from the set. Different
players need different lighting. I do not light Arliss as I light Veidt.
We experimented and found the quality of character lighting which
would give Arliss the rugged Wellington mask."

E. D. : "So that you would light Arliss differently in two different
films?"

C. C. : "Quite. A young girl on the other hand would need soft
lighting."

E. D.: "To what extent can you modify the script once you are
working upon it?"

C. C. : "The camerman could always put a proposition to the
director. Saville, though, works very close to script."

E. D. : "To what extent are you limited on the floor?"

C. C. : "Only by time. I have to have my lamps ready by the
time the director is ready. Often perhaps I could go on trying still
better lighting. But you cannot hold up a studio where hundreds
of salaried players may be waiting."

E. D. : "To what extent can you control the processing or indulge
in the tricks of delayed development and so on, beloved by the ama-
teur photographer?"

C.C.: "Developing is mechanical, automatic, entirely uniform.
The whole of a day's work, perhaps twenty set-ups — will be developed
together in one strip. And the sound-track must have absolutely
even development. (That is only one of the limitations imposed
by sound).

"It means that the cameraman in the studio is responsible for
the balance of light and shade in the film shown on the screen.
Day after day, through some 1,500 different set-ups, each with
its slightly individual quality of lighting, he has to maintain a general
level of light. All the time he has to have in mind the finished pro-
duct on the screen.

"You ask how he is a creative artist. Consider. A camera is a
machine, a vehicle for the film; the lens is a piece of dead glass;
a lamp is a lamp; the film itself is a chemical product; the projector
is another machine, another vehicle. The man who can visualize
a scene in terms of these dead things and from them create a work
of living beauty, he is a creative artist. That is my 'cry.'

24

From "Atalante," a French film of barge life,
by the late Jean Vigo.

From "Weather Forecast/'
a G.P.O. film.
Production: John Grierson.
Direction : Evelyn Spice.

WAGNER AND FILM

DALLAS BOWER

Hugh MagDiarmid's article in the Spring issue of Cinema Quarterly
gives me a cue. A cue moreover, awaited with growing impatience,
for, with my belief never disturbed, I have been waiting a long while
in the wings. One memorable evening in Bloomsbury (such a
fitting environment!) I outlined to Miss C. A. Lejeune my ideas upon
the obvious association of Wagnerian music-drama theory and sound-
film. Those of my friends, or persons whom I choose so to call, who
may read this know that the subject is my favourite pastime; and
many in varying degrees of production eminence have suffered.
Or so I feel. For never do I appear to have convinced anybody
worth convincing. Even the distinguished critic of " The Observer"
merely said "Yes" to everything I said. Here, I thought was a
candidate fitted for inefficient continuity keeping, not the Omniscient
Critic of my imagination. But, in retrospect, I thought how wrong
I had been in my estimate, for quite obviously the lady knew nothing
about Wagner. Nor do the majority of film theorists — not even a
little bit. Which gives my case an added significance, I feel; for
if they did, they would see how simple it is.

Now, MacDiarmid, as a poet, will have pity on me maybe; at
least, he will listen. And MacDiarmid, dropping as he does on ben-
ded knee as T. S. Eliot passes, will probably think Wagner just too
too much; but I would have him bear with me for a short while.
The quintessence of his article is a plea for the poetic film. That if
a film has aesthetic sensibility it cannot therefore be a "proposition
for showmen" is slowly losing weight with the better film- trade
critics, because the box-office is beginning to show to the contrary.
Let us then, accept the commercial desirability of the poetic film,
using the term poetic in MacDiarmid's sense. Accepting also, the
rather obvious premise that the poetry, the music and the film must
be specially composed, synthesized as a co-operative whole, may
we not ask if such a film potentially does not exist? Inevitably, said
Wagner, the poet's art, in its sublimest moments, becomes music.
And he chose to write his epic poems (forget how bad they may be
as pure poetry) in a medium which asked for visual representation,
physically free. That he needed visual representation he could not
substantiate; essentially and primarily a man of the theatre, wish-

27

fulfilment played its part. But he knew the physiological value in
relation to aesthetical appreciation of aural and visual synchroniza-
tion. Possibly that was his excuse for the stage, because he knew
the stage was inadequate for a scientifically genuine synthesis. It
lacked physical freedom; and he was only on the edge of understand-
ing the difference during his lifetime between spatial and temporal
art-forms. In short, he needed cinema. Had the vast technical
resources of the modern cinema deus ex machina been available to him,
one wonders how different in practical construction his music-dramas
would be. His theory is a long way from his practice. He knew
his ideal was unattainable, and he knew also just how far he could go
in his stage directions without destroying the respect of his stage
machinist. For instance "Rhinegold" Scene I runs : —

"At the bottom of the Rhine. Greenish twilight, lighter above,
darker below. The upper part of the scene is filled with moving
water which restlessly streams from R. to L. Towards the ground
the waters resolve themselves into a fine mist, so that the space to a
man's height from the stage seems free from water, which flows
like a train of clouds over the gloomy depths. Everywhere are steep
points of rock jutting up from the depths and enclosing the whole
stage. All the ground is broken into a wild confusion of jagged
pieces, so that there is no level place, while on all sides darkness
indicates other deeper fissures. Round the rock in the centre of
the stage, whence its peak rises higher into lighter water, one of the
rhine-nymphs is seen merrily swimming.55

We most of us know what a Covent Garden (or even a Bayreuth)
Rhine-nymph looks like. It can be done — up to a point. And
largely, the same might apply to film. We are at once confronted
with the human consideration. O, those fat Isoldes ! And a Tristan
nearer fifty than thirty. We have our physical freedom, we can by
scenario construction and a certain technique in shooting achieve
real movement in contradistinction to film movement — in fact, the
poetic film in the Wagnerian sense tends to sweep Kushelov into
the dustbin — but we are still faced with the purely physiological
problem. It is only the magic of the music that permits us at all to
believe in an elderly Siegfried. From the hideous discomfort of the
gallery or the delicious debauchery of a thirty-five shilling stall,
we cannot see the facial contortions that are actually taking place
on the stage. Even with Messrs. Negretti and Zambra5s most
powerful assistance, that strange desire to see the singer nearer
cannot by any conceivable means be satisfied to the extent it could
be in a close-up on the screen. And a head and shoulder close-up
of Siegfried singing would be revolting. The makers of "musicals'5
soon found out that one cannot play a person singing nearer than
three-quarters figure height in medium shot. As a special treat

28

we occasionally get a big head of Jeanette MacDonald singing in
bed; but only for a little while. Just a short shot so that we know
the miserable editor has been given something to which he can cut.
No : in our new Wagnerian theatre we cannot tolerate the idea of seeing
the singers sing but we might be prepared to consider hearing a
different voice to that of the person seen on the screen. There
would, of course, be no question of lip synchronization either. We
would use two casts: visual and aural. I was once audacious enough,
after a preliminary discussion, to ask Elisabeth Bergner if she would
like to play a visual Isolde. She said it would probably be very
amusing for children. I suppose I could not have made myself less
understood. For Bergner, whose discourse on and knowledge of
Wagnerian histrionics is as brilliant as her appreciation of Pudovkin
is stimulating, knew very well I was serious. But Paul Czinner
(who is a Wagnerian student) has really concluded any argument
as to the final shape a Wagnerian adaptation should take. One
could possibly use part of the vocal line ; but in the main, one would
use the Sprech-melodie of the line and it would be spoken from the
screen. Thus, we have largely solved the physiological problem.
As to the fitness of a Wagnerian adaptation, that of course, is
another question. I suspect MacDiarmid might say no. We know
" The Ring " is unwieldy and the material out-of-hand; we treat its
devices, its leit-motiv and visual symbolism as elementary now, but
the old magic still remains. The human universals are in its spirit;
and to depreciate it or Wagner, like Sacheverall Sitwell, is coming
near to depreciating " Lear." And no matter what our enthusiasm
for cinema, we know that no film ever made has one tenth of the
intrinsic value of " Lear." The affinity between Shakespeare and
Wagner it would be redundant for me to discuss ; of both it can be
said for certain they occupy seats in immortality very close; of
Shakespeare that he was the greater artist even if only because he was
so much less a charlatan. Where the poetic film is concerned, the
choice of existing material is relatively unimportant; it matters little
if it be " Tristan" or "The Tempest" (with the magnificent Sibelius
score), an attempt at "The DivineComedy" or "LeMortd' Arthur."
But let us remember that Shakespeare, who would have delighted
in cycloramas and revolving stages (O, heresy!) and Wagner, who
would have relished them, were both, greatest of poets and greatest
of composers respectively, great scenarists. They burst the walls
of their theatre on every hand. Can we not work as interpretive
artists in putting some of their work into the medium which fits it
best? Should we not be doing better work cinematically in the first
instance than doing new work? For maybe, in the words of a Holly-
wood supervising production executive, "There don't seem to be
no Shakespeare around this joint, boys!"

29

THE FILM ABROAD

FILMS IN PARIS

ALEXANDER WERTH

The death of the avant garde movement is an old story, but its tragedy
still clings to all consideration of French cinema. Nowhere is the
victory of cheap commercialism so resented and the outlook of
directors so hopeless. The French avant gardists were innocents.
They built a school of cinema, and the films of Cavalcanti, Clair,
Epstein and Jean Renoir created a specialized but powerful audience.
Both the distributors who handled them and the little theatres
which showed them prospered. Unfortunately, the distributors
and the exhibitors made money and they used it to go utterly
commercial. The directors were abandoned. The specialized
audience was abandoned for the boys and girls of the boulevards.
That specialized audience has disappeared. Complacent theatre
directors tell you so.

The best film of the moment is Jean Vigo's Atalante, partly financed,
they say, by Vigo himself. A great mistake the Film Society not
taking last season 2jro de Conduite, his satire of school life, and one
they must make up for this year. Vigo is young, and at 26 his style
has not yet matured, but he is strangely fanciful — with little out-
bursts of surrealist imagery that mark him a poet.

Fritz Lang's latest film Liliom is out. It appears under Pommer's
production but, as Pommer was ill most of the time, the film is very
much Lang's. This is a fairly ordinary account of the tale in which
Liliom, the tough of the sideshows, lives and loves and fights his
way to an early death, ascends into heaven, and is given his day on
earth after sixteen years in purgatory to make amends. The heaven
scenes are in the manner of Metropolis. Angels sit amphitheatre fashion
on clouds with stars twinkling about, and judgment is a star-dusted
version of the police court Liliom abandoned below. This Sunday
school dream is presented literally, without poetry or satire or fun.
But the film is well made and, as to trick work, excellent. Lang
got his Hollywood contract on this.

By coincidence Marie by Fejos, with Annabella, has just come in
from Hungary, with the self-same theme. Marie, the little girl
with the illegitimate baby, is hunted and harried from door to door,
till, when the baby is taken away from her, she too dies and ascends
into a star-dusted heaven. There is word of Marie going to the Lon-
don Academy, though the English censorship ordinarily bans all

30

reference to heaven. Halcyon horizons must be strictly de Mille.

From the French studios themselves, there is only Le Grand Jeu
to take account of: a Beau Geste affair by Feyder out of Algeria and
the legionnaires. It is an efficient performance with fine acting by
Feyder's wife, Francoise Rosay, and proves that the French cinema
can occasionally make a film as well as Hollywood. But this tragedy
of a young man who, abandoned by a mercenary mistress, finds a
better hearted double in the Sahara, is hardly important. Feyder
has lost the command of atmosphere which made Atlantide great ten
years ago.

What a fine film in comparison to all these is La Chienne, a three-
year old Renoir which is still running, and what a pity it is the
censor in England has banned it. It is sentimental in part, with its
story of a bank clerk who falls in love with a prostitute and finally
murders her, but in the total effect of its descriptive realism and finely
built action, it is a great film — the greatest Renoir has done. The
murder scene is near to Dostoievsky.

Renoir is not working. Feyder is not working. Jean Lods has
had to find asylum in Russia. Jean Vigo is too ill to work. Epstein
and Clair are tossing fanfares in the commercial circuit. Cavalcanti
in England seems to have found freedom to experiment and
carry on the tradition of the old days. He gave a private show of
Pett and Pott recently, at the F.I.F. theatre on the Champs Elysees.
The audience rose to its many innovations of sound, and it was a
great personal triumph for him.

AMERICA

At the present time, when within the movie industry it is practically
impossible to produce a vital picture, mystery stories offer promising
material to the creative director. Innocuous stuff for the most part,
mysteries seldom provoke the antagonism of censors, sensitive
patriots, religious, moral and political traditionalists, and other
powerful groups. Their plots are exciting, clear cut, and visual
rather than intellectual. And because they generally make money,
the producer is inclined to allow the director more than usual free-
dom. Thus it is that two of the best directed Hollywood films of the
last quarter are mysteries, Fog Over Frisco, directed by William Die-
terle, and The Thin Man, directed by W. S. Van Dyke.

R.K.O., having experimented in Technicolor for some time, has
recently produced a colour short, Cucharacha (cockroach), named
after the popular Mexican song which is worked into the story.
The plot is stereotyped and inconsequential. The direction is pro-

31

saic. What is significant to the producer as well as the critic, is the
colour, which has been supervised by Edmund Jones, the Broadway
stage designer.

Reactions to the colour after seeing one screening: (i) Enjoyed
observing for the first time chromatic detail in non-animated film
worked out by an artist. Shades, blending, contrasts of colours
built up into a composition, in contrast to the usual colour post-
card effect. (2) Bewildered by having to watch colour, direction,
movement, and story all at once. Almost like trying to see every-
thing at a three ring circus. (3) Noticed a theatricalness in the design
of the coloured set. Seemed that the set was not designed for camera
angles, close-ups, and dolley shots. (4) Felt that colour does the
following: gives the material a stereoscopic roundness and unusual
depth ; emphasizes what may not be desired, such as a bright orange
tie in a close-up; spoils the possibilities of two-dimensional design
present in black-and-white film. (5) Amused at the unimaginative
and incomplete attempt to use colour as an intrinsic part of the
plot: a face darkens from embarrassment in rather halo fashion
with the aid of a spot light (Disney's Big Bad Wolf changed colour
more convincingly), and yet a few minutes later the same face, in
agony from the effect of an over seasoned salad, doesn't change in
colour; a scene of anger is played before a wall bathed in passionate
red-orange light, while two steps to the right the wall is a green grey.
(6) Concluded that colour paradoxically renders natural material
artificial, and that therefore it would be most successful in fantasy
and musicals and stylized productions.

According to inside authority, M.G.M. has spent about 300,000
dollars on David Copperfield (not yet in production) merely testing
actors for the various parts. So far no one has been selected for
David. It cost about 30,000 dollars to produce Madchen in Uniform.

"Time," the news magazine, is launching a new type of news-reel.
As reported in the "Motion Picture Herald," the experimenters in
charge have been working "on the theory that in the proper picturiza-
tion of each news sequence there should be depicted : ( 1 ) the events
leading up to the beginning; (2) the events that transpired between
the beginning and the end, and (3) the end itself, all three parts to
be built up dramatically at both the studio and on the actual scene
of the incident." Thus stock shots and studio scenes will augment
the actual news-reel event.

The idea sounds promising. But "Time" will not have to go far
to surpass the Hollywood news-reel, what with its disregard of impor-
tant events, and monotonous repetition of beauty parades and
military manoeuvres. Mack W. Schwab.

32

GERMANY

Though regimented under Nazi control the Ufa studios are not
to be used for constructive propaganda in the manner of the Soviets,
but are to produce pleasant narcotics intended, no doubt, to ease
the pain of other measures of reform. The new theatrical pro-
gramme, which sets out to " give the public what they want —
namely a means of forgetting care and finding amusement," is
headed by Baron Meuhaus, a musical comedy of the time of Maria
Theresa, directed by Gustav Ucicky, who will also make Barcarole,
with Offenbach's music. Dr. Arthur Robison, of Warning Shadows
fame, is to make The Secret of Woronzeff, a. society film of the Riviera
and Paris, featuring Brigette Helm.

From a scenario by Thea von Harbou, Gerhard Lamprect is to
direct Turandot, Princess of China, a lavish Oriental spectacle designed
by Herlth and Rohrig, remembered for their work on Faust and
Tartuffe; Wagner will photograph. A Strauss operetta, The Gipsy
Baron, will be made by Karl Hartl. Holidays from Myself is a comedy
of life in a Silesian sanatorium where every patient has to lay aside
his "everyday I," adapted from a romance by the poet Paul Keller
by Olaf Fjord.

But however far Ufa may have departed from its traditions in
dramatic production, the new programme of the educational
department promises a continuance of Neubabelsberg's interest in
scientific achievement and fine workmanship. In the Tracks of the
Hansiatic League is a survey of the Gothic architecture of the Hansia-
tic builders and a description of the League's influence on German
civilization. Dr. Ulrich K. T. Schulz is directing a new series of
films dealing with the life of meadow and forest. Two biological
films, Voices in the Reeds and Fowl for the Hunter, show with the use of
telephoto lenses the habits of timid wild game, and new secrets of the
plant world are revealed in The Speech of Plants and Orchids. Six-
legged Builders is announced (with evident pride) as showing the
"state-like arrangements and organization of different kinds of
German ants."

Dr. Martin Rikli has directed a number of films such as The
Infinite Cosmos, dealing with astronomy, and Whirlpools in Water.
These will be followed by Motor Highways; Gorch Fock, illustrating
the training of naval cadets ; and F.P.I. Becomes a Reality, a German
Air-hansa film. Wilhelm Prager will make a number of films of
German landscape and German life. Various language versions
are being made of all these films.

33

NEW ABSTRACT PROCESS

Night on the Bare Mountain is the result of a year's experiment to
achieve a new method of production related in some ways to the
animated cartoon, though the relationship is one rather of contra-
diction than of similarity.

In cartoon production, one drawing is traced on the drawing
which preceded it, and it is relatively easy to move the lines or
surfaces with the necessary precision. The serious drawback lies
in the impossibility of reproducing with precision in a series of
drawings the grey tones or shadings in movement. In other words,
the animated cartoon corresponds to a line drawing. And this
drawing is rather summary because of the large number of pictures
to be made.

Now Alexeieff has arrived at a means of creating a film, made
by hand, but analogous to an engraving, containing all the finesses
of tone and shading. The idea of filming a single picture, artificial
and mobile, has existed for several years. Starting on this principle
of a single picture being capable of indefinite modification, we have
realized a process absolutely supple from all points of view and
allowing the artist to put in film form everything the imagination
can conceive.

At first it would seem easy to make a picture with charcoal,
in oils, or with the aerograph, and to retouch it after taking each
picture with a camera turned frame by frame; but none of the
materials existing in painting, engraving or drawing would permit
of retouches so numerous and so delicate as the film demands.

The invention of a material both sensitive and resistant, offering
all the shades of grey, was the problem. This material we eventually
found, and it is the basis of the process in question.

The picture is made on a screen of considerable dimensions,
with the aid of this material which allows of all possible effects
and surpasses in brilliancy and delicacy of tint everything that
is known in engraving. The picture is then modified as the successive
stages are photographed.

The scenario of Night on the Bare Mountain was based on the music
of Mussorgsky recorded on a gramophone record. With the aid
of a stop watch, the music was analysed and timed phrase by phrase
to a fifth of a second. A study of the orchestra score enabled lis to
perfect this exactitude to a twenty-fourth of a second. Thus the
pictorial and musical compositions are intimately bound together
and the visual image derives its form and evolution from that of the
music.

Claire Parker, A. Alexeieff.
34

From Rene Clair's new film, "Le Dernier Milliardaire," to be
included in the present Academy season. Raymond Cordy,
Max Dearly and Marcel Carpentier are in the cast.

Raimu in "Ces Messieurs
de la Sante," a satirical
French comedy directed by
Pierre Colombier.

(Courtesy of Academy, London).

Conrad Veidt and Paul
Graetz in "Jew Suss"
(Gaumont-British),
directed by
Lothar Mendes.
Photography:
Bernard Knowles.

BRUCE WOOLFE, ROTHA,
AND "RISING TIDE"

This is Paul Rotha's second documentary under Bruce Woolfe,
and Gaumont-British have publicly announced that it marks their
entry into the field of documentary. Fine. Like Contact,
Rising Tide is a three reeler — a size which, in documentary,
requires both ambition of idea and solidity of design. One
can wander discursively or descriptively over one reel, or a
reel and a half. Thereafter it is the theme that counts. Rotha
knows this. Contact has the theme that air transport brings
the nations closer together. Rising Ride has the theme that great
construction plans (in this case the building of a Southampton
Dock) are intimately related to the economic life of the country.

This is a fine theme, but of course a dangerous one, because it
goes to the heart of economics. It means that if the film is to be
dramatically or humanly true, the development of the theme must
be economically true. And the whole idea is too near to our common
concern to allow of rhetorical or other superficial solution. Here,
if anywhere, cinema has to be right, as well as good looking, to
justify itself.

The film describes lines of unemployed, and very dramatically,
to introduce the problem. It sets about the building of the dock,
and describes it in really terrific photography. It opens the sluices,
and fills the basin. It brings in the ship. But what then? Magically,
and without explanation, somehow, just somehow, by no more than
a temporal juxtaposition of sequence, the world is set to work again.
The cotton factories whirl — and very magnificently — the steel
workers in rhythmic splendour fill their furnaces. Much photo-
graphy indeed, but no economics. By what extra efficiency in
Southampton, of all places, Lancashire commands new markets,
by what process of rationalization the dole line decreases, is not
explained. "Life follows art," said Oscar Wilde. Yes, but it only
does so if it is true art going to the heart of things and revealing their
growing point. Rising Tide will not pass muster, and Rotha knows
it won't. But see his relation to the business. Some of the material
he fell heir to, and the idea was given him already half digested.
He was, in other words, not his own master in the formulation of
the problem, and all he could really bring to it was his eye for pic-

37

tures, and his power of tempoed sequence. These virtues may demon-
strate a great talent. They do not make a film. It is the old story
of the wood and the trees. In Rising Tide Rotha is a master of foliage.

The whole business so demonstrates the essential problem of
production, and so reveals the mistaken relationship which may exist
between producer and director that a friendly critic may be per-
mitted to analyse the case still further. If this producer-director
relationship is to be fruitful, there is one matter on which the two
partners must be agreed — and that is on the theme. On the details
of photography, cutting and sound, they may fight as much as they
please, for they do not finally matter. The theme does. It must be
agreed together, believed in together, slaved at in common, from
the inception of the film until its completion.

It is not for the producer to dictate a theme in which the director
cannot follow him. That way lies every disaster of production. The
directors 'best' deteriorates inevitably into a demonstration of
virtuosity. What was meant to be important, for the lack of con-
viction that goes with it, comes to pretence and disappointment.
The director indeed (though he probably needs the money) lends
his reputation to an impossible task.

Nor is it for the director to dictate the theme to the producer.
The producer has his own responsibilities : it may be to finance, or to
doctrine, or to art itself. But though his intentions for a film are
thus defined, it is to his interest that the director, as the interpreter
of his hopes, should see eye to eye with him. That way he uses another
talent and inspiration to complement his own.

The solution is really a simple one. Find the theme on which there
is absolute unqualified agreement and shoot to it. It may not be
the biggest or the deepest possible theme, it may not be what each
separately considers the best theme, but let it be a theme commonly
agreed: one indeed in which they can join their energies. Bruce
Woolfe and Rotha might consider this. Rotha has a talent well
worth exploiting and there is much they might develop together.
They cannot afford to be out of step, as would seem to be the case
in Rising Tide.

The remainder of the criticism is more personal to Rotha. He is
still a silent director. His eye seems to be still exclusively glued to
visual design and the pleasing passage of images across the screen.
He adds sound but he does not seem yet to think sound. This is
wrong of him, for sound, with its many human perspectives, has
more to give him than almost any other documentary director. It
will warm his sequence and intensify his reference. It will save him
from the self-consciousness of his photographic style. Atmospheric
music and rhythmic beat are not enough. Sound too must be narra-
tive. John Grierson.

38

FILMS OF THE QUARTER

DEVELOPING SOUND

FORSYTH HARDY

A new consciousness of sound as a means of enriching the expressive-
ness of the film is the most interesting development of a quarter
singularly unproductive of notable pictures. Ever since Jolson broke
the sacred silence, of course, there has been a realization, in theory,
that sound ought to have more than a merely naturalistic purpose
in cinema; and a few experimentalists have made fleeting attempts
to do unconventional things with the sound-strip. There is no
need to detail again the experiments of Clair, Hitchcock, Lubitsch
and the others. Their isolated outbursts of imaginative experi-
mentation with sound have already been analysed with so much
reverence that they are almost elevated into a doctrine, instead of
being accepted as haphazard gropings towards the light. The limit
in the expressive use of sound was not reached with Clair's
cine-opera or the soliloquy before the shaving mirror in Murder.
These and such other celebrated experiments as the choral accompani-
ment to the unemployment sequence in Three Cornered Moon and
the police-car call prologue to Beast of the City ought to have been
regarded as minor discoveries in an unknown land. But instead
of being the starting points for further exploration, they have been
too often estimated as final achievements — devices to be copied
perhaps, but not ideas to be understood and developed. Thus
there has been no general march forward : the pioneers have faltered
and for the most part fallen back. The result is that we are not now
much nearer to a fully expressive use of sound than we were in the
days of The Great Gabbo. We have made sound more distinct, but
not more dramatic.

There has been some evidence this quarter however, of a change in
attitude. Grierson and Cavalcanti at the G.P.O. have been making
a series of experiments in the art and practice of sound-which are in
advance of anything yet attempted and which have a real significance
for the development of film. The tentative departures from con-
vention in 6.30 Collection and Cable Ship, which Grierson has already
described in these pages, have been followed by more exciting
developments in Granton Trawler and Weather Forecast, while Pett
and Pott represents a complete departure from the traditional form
of the talking picture and the emergence of a sound film with an
aural expressiveness related to, but not merely dependant on, the

39

visuals. Grierson himself describes this and his other new sound-
films as the first sods cut in a new country. He wishes them to be
assessed only as beginnings. Yet Pett and Pott in its three reels con-
tains more effective achievement in the expressive use of sound than
there was in the collected work of all the previous experimentalists.
Grierson and Cavalcanti have not shut their eyes to previous
developments and there is for example, a comic sequence in a
suburb-bound tube with a five-part chorus as commentary which is
reminiscent of the methods of Clair; but we do not have a mere
disguised excerpt from Le Million but an idea greatly elaborated
and playing its inter-related part with other new ideas in the se-
quence. This as with the other experiments of the film, is not a hap-
hazard interlopation but part of a co-ordinated sound accompani-
ment that runs on, now providing a background comment for the
scene, now coming forward to dominate the visuals, and always
making the film more expressive than it would have been with
natural sound. I shall not attempt here to work out the significance
of all that Grierson and Cavalcanti achieve in Pett and Pott; that is
best left to the producers themselves. But it is important to record
that a sizeable pebble has been dropped into the pool of complacency
over the problems of sound and that the ripples will inevitably
spread far and wide.

Walt Disney has for long been accepted as one of the major figures
of the sound cinema. Rotha, writing in "The Film Till Now,"
considered that "the essential characteristics of the Disney cartoon
films, where distorted linear images are matched with equally
distorted sound images, are those of the visual sound-film of the
future." For a time certainly, it seemed that Disney was working
out the principles of a sound-film which, eschewing naturalism, would
use sound images in counterpoint to increase the expressiveness of
the film and supply through the sound-strip a comic commentary
for the movement of the cartoon. But this line of development has
not been followed out in his cartoons ; many of the early experiments
with distorted sound were given up and Disney was apparently
satisfied to concentrate on draughtsmanship. Possibly the immense
popularity of his work made experiment more difficult. Colour
has for the past year been absorbing his attention — for which
development we are deeply grateful — and the quarter's colour
Silly Symphonies, The Wise Old Hen, The Flying Mouse and Peculiar
Penguins, are as fine as anything he has done. But the most exciting
cartoon of the quarter is undoubtedly Orphan's Benefit which seems to
indicate that Disney has begun to think again in terms of sound.
The comic high-lights of the cartoon do not occur in its draughts-
manship; they are pure sound jokes. A burly Buff Orpington who
appears as an opera star at Mickey's concert, has not a prosaic

40

From " Night on The Bare Mountain" produced by a new
method, giving the impression of an animated engraving,
invented by AlexeiefT. To be shown shortly by the Film
Society, London.

Nova Pilbeam in " Little Friend" (Gaumont-British), directed by Berthold
Viertel. Photography: Gunthur Krampf.

human voice but clucks, cackles and screeches in deliciously dis-
torted imitation of a palpitating prima donna. The unexpectedness
of the sounds produces an instantaneous response in laughter.
Sound is used with a similar comic effectiveness in the attempts of
a duck to recite "Little Boy Blue." The fact that Disney is a comic
artist does not necessarily mean that his work is without significance ;
and an analysis of his comic uses of sound does not preclude us from
honest enjoyment of the fun.

Experiment with sound has not yet spread generally to the com-
mercial cinema, though it is not too much to suggest that Pett and
Pott will in time initiate a new approach altogether to the studio
film. Meanwhile there has been a sudden outburst of song in the
cinema. The crooner has been ousted by the opera star and the air
is filled with Wagnerian melodies. Snippets of opera in sentimental
stories, of course, must not be mistaken for the real thing and it
would be wrong to deduce from the popularity of Blossom Time
and One Night of Love that the British are a nation of opera lovers.
Yet the new vogue for musical films has not come without con-
siderable public demand and we may assume that this demonstrated
desire for something more than jazz and crooning does indicate
an advance in musical appreciation. For the most part the new
operatic films conform to a conventional pattern and there is
little attempt to use music and song dramatically from a filmic
point of view. Exceptions are a scene towards the close of Evensong:
Irela is resentfully realizing that her career as a singer is over while
the voice of the new favourite runs on throughout the scene in a
sortofcommentative chorus of exultation ; and another in One Might
of Love when the young American student sings from the window
of a Milanese garret and gradually all of the musicians in the studios
within earshot adapt their playing to her song. But generally
the new musical films are content to use the microphone con-
ventionally to record straightforwardly the voice of the chosen
operatic star. In addition, we have had Jan Kiepura in My Song
for Tou and Joseph Schmidt in My Song Goes Round the World.

Foreign films of the quarter have been comparatively few. The
Curzon opened its season with The Slump is Over; the Academy with
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, which Rotha reviews elsewhere. An
interesting list of forthcoming attractions includes the new Clair
picture, Le Dernier Milliardiare, a Swedish comedy, Pettersen and
Bendel and Jacques Feyder's Pension Mimosa. There are vague fore-
casts of new Russian films including Three Songs of Lenin by Dziga-
Vertov and The Great Consoler by Kuleshov, and the Film Society
promises strange importations from Turkey (Aysel, Fille de Montagne)
and Poland (Chalutzim). If the promises are fulfilled, it ought to be
an exciting Continental season.

43

JEW SUSS

Production: Gaumont- British. Script: Rawlinson. Direction: Lothar Mendes.
Photography: Bernard Knowles. Sets: Alfred Junge. Editing: Otto
Ludwig. Length: 9,740 feet. Distribution: G.-B. Distributors. With
Conrad Veidt, Frank Vosper, Benita Hume, Cedric Hardwicke, Paul Graetz,
Gerald du Maurier.

Nine years ago Feuchtwanger ushered in a new era of historical
fiction by writing what is to some minds the greatest historical novel
of all time. Jew Suss the film might have ended an era of costume
pictures by in turn being the biggest effort of its kind. Instead it con-
tinues the vogue for which Korda must be given the credit of starting.
But because of what Suss might have meant for cinema in general
and British films in particular, because of the wide-spread discussion
it must provoke, and because in some ways it is a very ambitious
endeavour, it deserves greater space than the other historical pictures
of the year.

With his magnificent opening chapter, Feuchtwanger set the scale
for his whole story of the Jew. We were conscious at once of the
wide horizons of the eighteenth century, of the bustle and life and
intrigue within these limits of Wiirtemberg. Everything that fol-
lowed, the craft, the guile, the whoring, the praying, the intriguing,
the private struggles and public issues fell into place on this vast
canvas. Everything had significance within the boundaries of the
epoch. Therein lay the greatness of the author's approach. It
is precisely this vision, this magnitude of mind, that the film does
not possess.

The book has been well pilfered. All the plums are here, all the
bombastic moments, all the bloody minutes, all the natty spectacle
and all the shining pomp. On the surface it spreads a grand array.
Men talk of doing this and doing that, but never do we see them
doing it. Suss declares his lust for power, becomes the Duke's prop,
is the indispensable and hated Jew, but why and how he contrives
these things is a mystery. Never are we taken beneath the gilded
scene, never are the real issues behind Siiss's behaviour or the eco-
nomic motives underlying the political intrigue revealed. Here
is no cross-section of the eighteenth century which might have been
such grand material for movie. The film is founded on the super-
ficial appearance of men and things, an approach that has never
and can never achieve the level of greatness.

This is no destructive broadside. The film is too big for that, big
enough to stand criticism. Big in money. So big that all the

44

furniture, the costumes, the jewels, the nick-nacks and baubles
might well have been ticketed with their hire price. I remember
some publicity about the countless dozen tulips for Suss's garden,
real tulips. But, alas, they mean little on the screen. They are
overdone. It is all overdone. Except taste, which is absent. There
is nothing of the finer qualities of observation and selection, of the
instinctive feeling for what is right and what is wrong. There
is no modulation or balance. That is a director's job and that, I
think, is where Mendes fails to qualify for the task. Why, I wonder,
was Mendes chosen to make this film? His previous record shows
The Four Feathers, Love Makes Us Blind and Dangerous Curves — all
probably estimable pictures of their kind, but that kind was not
Suss. Small wonder, then, at the opportunities missed. The climax,
for example. Why ignore Feuchtwanger's special emphasis on the
iron cage and its history, when it offered such dynamic reference to
the hanging?

Veidt we have watched since Cesare in Caligari. A parade of
Borgia, Nelson, Ivan, Baldwin, Orlac, Louis XI, Gwynplaine,
Rasputin and Jew. They are all here. The demoniacal laugh, the
furrowed brows, the straying locks of hair. He shares with Garbo
a physique rich in photogenique meaning. But since he has lost
touch with significant direction, he has given way more and more to
mannerisms. Some call this great acting. It is powerful but I
doubt if it is great. With the exception of Hardwicke, most of the
others overact, with Vosper's Karl Alexander the worst offence.
Scarcely any can wear their clothes save the dignified du Maurier,
who alone of the company appears to know how to manage his sword
when he sits down. But the part of Weissensee, important in the
book, is so clipped that from the anxious expression on his face, Sir
Gerald must have been bewildered at his own presence. The sets
are lavish; but then Jiinge can do this sort of thing standing on his
head. Did he not design hunting-lodges for Franz Joseph?

What then is the result? I do not believe that anyone will ever
make better if as good historical films than did the Germans in their
heyday. Federicus Rex, Dubarry and Manon Lescaut. They gave
everything (save fantasy) that cinema has to give in their attempt
to bring alive the past. And they achieved nothing better than
museum value. When shall we realize that the camera belongs to
the present, that its concern is actuality not artificiality? The news-
reel of the Marseilles assassination shown in this same programme
proves this better than my theory. Its chance rendering of a living
(and dying) moment transfixed the audience. What chance had the
mere hundred thousand odd pounds of Suss against reality ?

Paul Roth a.

45

NELL GWYN

Production: British and Dominions. Direction: Herbert Wilcox. Photo-
graphy: Fred Young. Art Direction: L. P. Williams. Distribution:
United Artists. With Anna Neagle, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Esme Percy.
Length: yjig feet.

Despite its origins which, rightly or wrongly, we have hitherto
regarded with suspicion, this is one of the more sizeable films of the
quarter. The co-operation between the production staff which gave
a special interest to The Queen's Affair is here more prominently in
evidence. Wilcox, by some strange genius, seems to have made a
harmonious team out of his production staff and the result is a well-
knit job which makes no concessions to either kind of brow and is
a good honest film.

The story, though by choice revealing only a small facet of history,
neither perverts nor unduly "musicalizes" the facts of history.
Hardwicke gives an exceptionally fine performance, investing the
part of Charles II with all the vacillations and strange twists of
character which were a part of that monarch, yet retaining a certain
dignity which the film commendably lives up to. Anna Neagle,
despite a certain harrying of the part of Nell, never achieves any-
thing notable. She lacks the divine fire and we are only too conscious
of a hard-working actress doing her best. But even although her
performance is only adequate, the film does not suffer unduly as
Wilcox has shrewdly arranged that it does not depend merely on
stars for success. That is an unusual achievement for a factory-made
film.

In the titles, credit is given to Charles II, Nell Gwyn and Samuel
Pepys for the dialogue; and Miles Malleson has selected, arranged
and augmented this admirably, so that while it is on occasion
colloquial, it is never cheap. It is the finest we have had in any
historical film in this country. We can forgive Wilcox everything in
his film past for this production which marks, for this country,
an entirely new standard of co-operation between the technicians.

D. F. Taylor.

ATALANTE

Direction: Jean Vigo. Production: Gaumont-France.
Barge stories are bad luck in cinema, or so they say. There is
association of slow tempo and dirty water, and drab pedestrian
happenings on water fronts. A bargee, like any other slum dweller,
lives in confined surroundings without horizon of storm or distance.
Vigo's film is beautiful because it makes its story out of these very
elements. A peasant girl marries a barge skipper; the barge sets
off on a long tramp to Paris. The girl is excited at the notion of
Paris and makes dreams of it; the skipper, like a good bargee,

46

From "Nell Gwyn," a British and Dominions film directed by
Herbert Wilcox, with Anna Neagle and Cedric Hardwicke.
Photography: Fred Young.

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organisers of cinema performances in connection
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TERLY has established a central organisation,
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knows better. They go ashore. The girl becomes still more excited.
They quarrel and separate, and the barge goes on. Realism wins,
and they come together again.

It is all very simple but true. The only possible criticism is that
Vigo makes the coming together more sentimental than it need have
been. The girl wanders overmuch on desolate bridges looking for
the " Atalante," when any good proletarian would have had the
sense to use the police. The issue would not have appeared any less
desperate.

The chief thing about the film is the quality of Vigo as a director.
He tells the right story; he tells it in a style peculiar to himself.
It is an exciting style. At the base of it is a sense of documentary
realism which makes the barge a real barge — so exact in its topo-
graphy that one could find one's way on it blindfold and dead
drunk on a windy night. This is important in barges as in all ships,
and sea films never seem to realize it. But on top of the realism is a
crazy Vigo world of symbols and images. The mate forward has
his cabin stuffed with bric-a-brac from junk shops and from deep
sea voyages. He too, more monstrously, represents romance:
with shells, sword fish, pictures of harlots, musical boxes, and the
pickled hands of a departed shipmate. He is tattooed — as he proudly
demonstrates to the eager skipperess — to the nines. The trip ashore
is similarly rendered. Here romance is not described but
imaged in the crazy antics of a colporteur or ribbon man, who cycles
down high hills, is a first rate sleight of hand merchant, and, for
no reason at all, appears occasionally with a one man band. It is
a novel and fascinating way of story-telling, and Vigo is clearly one
of the most imaginative young directors in Europe.

John Grierson.

DR MABUSE

Production : JVeroJilm. Script: Thea van Harbou. Direction: Fritz Lang.
Photography: Fritz Arno Wagner. Sets: Karl Volbrecht. Distribution:
A. Fried. With Gustav Diessl, Rudolph Klein-Rogge, Otto Wernicke,
Oscar Beregi, Vera Liessem, Camilla Spira. Length: 10,620 feet.

This is the last film made by Fritz Lang in Germany, produced
by Nebenzahl's Nero company which sponsored Kameradschaft,
Ariane, M. and Atlantide. Much celluloid has been spoiled since the
original crazy exploits of the hypnotist Mabuse were shown in part
form in England but even now, in days of sound, Lang remains
unchanged. Perhaps the literary use of noise assists the building
of the suspense of which he is so fond, as in the opening of this
picture; probably the American gang films have loaned an idea or
two, as in the car murder; but the formula remains essentially the
same. Incredible robberies, the unseen master-criminal, the sub-sect-

49

ion B and the murder squad, street corner bombing and houses that
flood and unflood at will — these are the authentic Lang materials
by way of Thea von Harbou from the Magnet Library. Here are
all the old vices and not so many of the virtues. The story is atro-
cious drivel, the reasoning does not bear inspection, human psycho-
logy is totally missing; but the detail is elaborately contrived and
some of the situations ingenious and it is all well staged in the good
old German style. There is the usual capable playing by Gustav
Diessl, Klein-Rogge and Otto Wernicke, reminding us how capable
is this school of German acting. What a pity that Lang is so super-
ficial! You feel he has a flair for sensational incident and a know-
ledge of melodrama which might be useful in cinema if only he had
some foundation on which to base his work. Imagine, for instance,
a Lang film of the burning of the Reichstag. There is nobody who
could handle better the nefarious plot and counterplot, the elaborate
scheming that preceded the crime, the precautions undertaken,
the drama of the event itself and the floodgates of murder that it
opened. It is all astonishing melodrama surpassing anything
that Lang or his Mabuse could conceive. But the subsequent trial
would need a greater mind than Lang's, a Pabst or a Pudovkin, to
bring satire to the tragi-comedy of its chain of self-exposures.

Paul Rotha.

CRIME WITHOUT PASSION

Production, Direction and Script: Charles Mac Arthur-Ben Hecht. Associate
Direction and Photography: Lee Garmes. Sets: Albert Johnson. Dis-
tribution: Paramount. With Claude Rains, Mar go, Whitney Bourne,
Stanley Ridges. Length: 6,080 feet.

We may be excused for paying more than ordinary attention to
this very entertaining melodrama, for it not only marks a new
departure in production methods of studio films but presents the
Hecht-MacArthur writing team in the new role of producer- writers
in an attempt, they tell us, to prove that good pictures can be made
with a maximum of intelligence in a minimum of time and expense.
This is the first of four pictures commissioned for a Paramount
release but shot without Hollywood supervision in the Long Island
studios at New York with the technical aid of Lee Garmes, erstwhile
ace-photographer of Z00 i-n Budapest and Shanghai Express among
others. There is nothing especially fresh in this story of a famous
criminal lawyer who believes he commits a crime and is ultimately
exposed by the skill with which he disguises the murder. It is the
familiar mouthpiece story told backwards, with the trial at the
beginning instead of at the curtain. But there is something fresh
in the treatment applied with its endless succession of original
twists, and intelligent dialogue. With the exception of Rains, the

50

cast plays like human beings instead of actors, maintaining an
unnaturally low key, thereby giving emphasis to situations which
otherwise would fall into the ordinary rut of melodrama. This
particularly applies to Margo, night-club dancer fresh to the
screen, who brings here a curiously attractive personality far re-
moved from the orthodox star's prescription. Whitney Bourne,
Manhattan socialite, is not so successful, obviously playing to
Hollywood precedent. To Garmes, I think, must go credit for most
of the direction and also, I am afraid, the self-conscious artiness
which now and again crops up to destroy the realism of the treat-
ment. Left alone, these ace-cameramen always seem destined to
run amok with arty-impressionism, in this case a double-exposure
trick of the lawyer's second self to goad him into false security. It
is odd that a man of Garmes's ability should not have realized that
sound alone gave all he wanted for this second self gag without
throwing back to the crude old ideas of the Germans. Apart from
this criticism and the doubtful wisdom of allowing Rains to overact,
the film is certainly to be noted as an advance in independent
methods and augurs well for coming films from the same team.

Paul Rotha.

LITTLE FRIEND

Production and Distribution: Gaumont- British. Direction: Berthold Viertel
Script: Margaret Kennedy. Photography: Gunthur Krampf. Sets: Alfred
Jtinge. Editing: Ian Dalrymple, With Matheson Lang, Lydia Sherwood,
Nova Pilbeam, Fritz Kortner. Length; 7,650 feet.

There is a solid honesty behind this film which, despite its many
shortcomings, I commend to your notice. True, it is doubtful if
it would have been produced without the previous examples of
Poil de Carotte and La Maternelle, but this we must accept as part and
parcel of the picture business. Of one thing we may be certain, that
Viertel believed in his story and was sincere in his direction. His
undoing lies in the mistake that Nova Pilbeam is neither mentally
nor physically suited to the part she is called upon to fulfil and that
his handling of the story is foreign to the essentially English atmo-
sphere that pervades the whole. You can see how successfully
he worked with Krampf, Kortner and Jiinge because they under-
stood his requirements. But the only member of the remainder
who shows comprehension of his aims is Lydia Sherwood, whose
sound acting ability stands her in good stead in an underestimated
performance of the unhappy mother. For the rest, they are dull
and wooden, giving poor Viertel little help and speaking their badly-
written lines without feeling or interest. If the treatment generally
had been more cinematic, this might not have been so obvious, but

51

Viertel stays close to the theatrical tradition and scarcely ever dares
to embrace the film medium for what it could give him. The
interiors are beautifully lit and have that grace of style which we
associate with Jiinge but the exterior Park scenes are feeble in the
extreme. But, and this is the point, it marks a breakaway for
Gaumont-British into more worthwhile subjects and for that
deserves our recognition. Paul Rotha.

LOT IN SODOM

Production, direction and photography: Sibley Watson, Jr., and Melville
Webber. Music: Louis Seigel. Length: 2,234 feet.
Surrealism apart, we know that the film can be more than a mere
mirror of reality, or the dramatic simulation of reality. Word
strewn epics, symphonies, the sterner stuff of documentary, and even
the simple lyric, we are familiar with. But cinema has still other
genres to develop. It has still the higher reaches of Parnassus to
assail. Watson and Webber in their interpretation of the Bible
episode of Lot's travail in the city of perversion have had this in
mind, and if their film is no more than a self-conscious preening of
feathers before spreading the wings for flight, it must be welcomed
as an attempt at experiment, even though we deplore the choice of
theme and the decadent artiness of its treatment.

To anyone unfamiliar with the Old Testament narrative the
film is barely explicit. But that is no concern of poetry. The beauty
of its visuals, integrated with Louis SeigePs Hebraic orchestration of
sound reflecting mood and intensifying atmosphere, appeals purely
to the senses. Distorting mirror and prism are creaky mechanics
with which to reach the higher flights, but even so there is achieved
a sort of white fire of passion — as in Lot's description of woman's
labour — alternating with a cold, harrowing sensuality, whipped up
by flute and harp and laid low again by the morose chanting of
Hebrew voices. As an achievement in film poetics Lot in Sodom
is scarcely a milestone, but it is at least a signpost to a road which
independent producers might profitably explore.

Norman Wilson.

THE SLUMP IS OVER. (French. Nero Film. Made at Joinville.)
The spiritual father of this film is Le Chemin du Paradis which some of
you may remember with affection. Given as good songs, this film
would be as great a success at the box-office. There is a cheerful
air of spontaneity about the whole production, which is not to be
compared with the mechanical gaieties of Rene Clair. The story is
about a shoe-stringing theatrical company and from the appearance
of the film, I should imagine it too, was produced on a shoe-string.
The cheerful atmosphere of this kind of production, the happy co-

52

operative spirit it breeds, has been caught in the story and in the
acting. There is an agreeable freshness about the film and though it
has not removed my mind from la crise, it at least succeeded in doing
so for ninety minutes. The sound is indifferent and the print worse
but the gaiety shines through. There are none of the arty effects
of Clair, nothing is carefully timed to get the maximum effect, yet
the very honesty of its fun is infectious. The director is Robert
Siodmak, maker of Menschen am Sonntag and subsequently with Ufa.

D. F. T.

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF DON JUAN {British. London Films).
Stylistically, this film is what we have come to expect from London
Films but it has no other points to commend it except style. It is said
that Korda has brought to the screen a sophistication which British
pictures have hitherto lacked ; but it is the sophistication bred in the
Mayfair drawing-rooms of Evelyn Waugh. His other screen accom-
plishment is a pleasant, if somewhat exact, sense of pictorial compo-
sition, accompanied by efficient art direction. But when, as here, he
has no Laughton or Bergner to depend on, the film appears thread-
bare. Douglas Fairbanks with all his graces — and they are many
— is not an actor. He is given a part which not only is he incapable
of handling but which patently suggests his own swan song (an
unfortunate association of ideas for the box-office) . The film has a
generous gallery of attractive women and Binnie Barnes gets some
rousing life into a broad sketch of a barmaid. One or two small parts
are noticeably well done, particularly the major-domo. The major-
domo has long been a stand-by in British films. D.F.T.

NIGHT ON THE BARE MOUNTAIN {French. Film Society).
This short film introduces a new method of animation, the particulars
of which are the secret of the inventor, AlexeiefT. The general effect
is of animated engraving. There is a soft shadowy quality in the
form, and none of the hard precision of line associated with cartoons.
The forms emerge from space, they have the appearance of dissolving
to other forms. Three dimensional qualities seem to be easily
achieved, and models in animation can be introduced without
disturbing the general style. The film, apart from its technical
interest, is an imaginative performance, though difficult to describe.
Imagine however, a Walpurgis Nacht, in which animated footsteps
indicate spirit presences, goblins and hob-goblins appear and disap-
pear and tumble fantastically, scarecrows do a fandango with their
shadows on empty hillsides, white horses and black tear across high
heaven and skeletons walk. The animation is to the music of
Mussorgsky. All film societies should see this film. It is as astonishing
and as brilliant a short as they are likely to find. J.G.

53

TREASURE ISLAND (American. M.G.M.). As we might have antic-
ipated from the film's origin, Stevenson's story has been transformed,
if carefully, to provide a starring vehicle for Wallace Beery and Jackie
Cooper, late of The Champ. This Hollywoodian Long John
Silver and Jim Hawkins have a stronger personal attachment than
Stevenson depicted and the film makes him connive at Silver's escape
and suggest in the end that they may one day return to the island for
the remainder of the treasure. Jackie Cooper is not equal to the
complexities of Jim's character but his performance has the merit of
stolid consistency. Beery as Silver is almost all of the film. Stevenson
might not have immediately recognized this smooth, smiling villain
with a merciless streak craftily concealed, but he would have loved
him. Faithfulness to R. L. S. apart, the film is, until the maudlin
final scene comes, a lively record of swashbuckling adventure, broad
in its sweep (Victor Fleming of The Virginian directed) , exciting in its
photography and, curiously, distinguished by a more stirring sense
of British patriotism than most of our own films. F.H.

CES MESSIEURS DE LA SANTfi (French. Film Society). Engendered doubtless,
by the Stavisky scandal, this satirical comedy of high finance is amusing and well
made. Its satire is not cinematic, but lies in the script and acting. Raimu who
plays the part of a financier who builds a moribund corset shop into a modern
finance corporation, carries the film on his skilful shoulders. Pierre Colombier's
direction holds the balance neatly between fantasy and comedy. Skilful and
successful rather than brilliant and inspiring.

DAWN TO DAWN (American. Cameron Macpherson). A moving little pastoral
film which relates in sombre but not depressing terms the story of a jealous invalid
father, his repressed and work-laden daughter and a young man who wanders by
chance into her life and out again — a short story whose length (3,000 feet) is
exactly appropriate to its theme. The sincere direction of Josef Berne, the imagina-
tive photography of Paul Ivano and the finely economical dialogue give the film
distinction. Julie Hayden is the girl, Ole M. Ness the father and Frank Eklof the
youth.

BLOSSOM TIME (British. B.I.P.). This lyrical romance of the music of Franz
Schubert, with Richard Tauber as the composer, is the finest film that has come
from B.I. P. for years. Under Paul Stein's direction, Tauber has lost the fussy
affectation which spoilt his previous screen appearances; he sings superbly
Schubert's more popular compositions and his impersonation of the composer as a
naive and forlorn figure has considerable emotional appeal. Skilfully the film is
filled with music — orchestra, choral and solo singing. Photography is finely in
mood and there is a lovely sequence of schoolboys singing in a meadow.

LITTLE MAN, WHAT NOW? {American. Universal). This adaptation of Hans
Fallalda's novel is faithful as far as it goes. Inevitably it omits the deeper intimacies
of the original and unfortunately it leaves out also some of the sterner qualities
from the character of the husband which made more comprehensible his young
wife's unfaltering devotion. The emphasis of the film is more idyllic than
economic : Frank Borzage is still in his Seventh Heaven. The story is told with
extreme simplicity and sincerity and if it is emotionally a little strenuous the
natural acting of Margaret Sullavan and Douglass Montgomery keeps it clear of
sentiment.

54

FILM SOCIETIES

Of its own volition, without any organized plans for expansion, the film societies
movement is growing rapidly throughout the country. The formation of several
new societies in important centres is recorded in our notes, and preliminary
negotiations are in progress prior to the setting up of similar bodies in other
districts. An important development is the tendency of societies to co-operate
even more closely than formerly with the trade. Northwich Film Society, follow-
ing the practice of Billingham, is now holding its performances in a local cinema in
the course of the ordinary weekly programme instead of in its own hall. In a
small town where competition in the supply of entertainment is likely to cause
bitterness this is a wise course to follow, so long as the society reserves the right to
exhibit privately films which, because of the nature of their appeal, are not
suitable for general audiences. In any case it is a move to induce and support
the public exhibition of worthwhile pictures and is therefore to be welcomed. In
ditricts where it is impossible to obtain permission to hold private performances
this method of exhibition is certainly preferable to simply doing nothing.

In still smaller centres, or in towns where a serious interest in the cinema is
not sufficiently developed to justify the formation of an exhibiting society, it has
been suggested that " film circles " should be formed. Wherever there are a few
cinema enthusiasts they should get together if only for the benefits to be derived
from friendly discussion and organized study. But if they are true enthusiasts
they will have something of the preacher's zeal and will soon convert others to
their way of thinking. Thus the modest little circles will grow and in time will
become the nucleus of more important organizations. How can such circles be
formed and how would they function ? A letter to the local press, or an advertise-
ment, which should make it clear that the proposed circle is not a star " fan "
club, will quickly bring together those who are interested in the idea. Then by
means of combined study, discussion, lectures, etc., a fuller understanding of
cinema will develop. The local cinema may be prevailed upon to book certain
films in which members are specially interested, in return for which the circle
can arrange to organize public support for the picture, and for its members and
friends the circle can give occasional performances on sub-standard apparatus.
The smaller towns, and even the villages, need not look with envy at the large
cities with their apparently greater opportunities for securing worthwhile films.
The formation of film circles may be the first step to securing similar facilities.

Cinema Quarterly will be glad to assist any one desirous of forming such a circle
and will willingly supply whatever information may be required regarding films,
the organizing of shows, apparatus or lectures. We shall also be pleased to publish
the address of anyone wishing to get in touch with other readers with a view to
forming a circle.

THE FILM SOCIETY, 56 Manchester Street, London, W.i. The tenth season
will consist of eight performances at the Tivoli on Sunday afternoons. Students
of universities and other institutions, as well as film technicians with a salary not
exceeding £10 per week, are eligible for membership at a reduced subscription of
15s. The ordinary rates of subscription are 66s., 45s., and 26s. 6d. The final
selection of films for the season is not yet available, but there are many interesting
prospects including, Vigo's Zero de Conduite, Atalante, Dziga-Vertov's Three Songs
of Lenin, Kuleshov's The Great Consoler and Basse's So lebt ein Volk.

55

ABERDEEN FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, Stephen Mitchell, 15 Golden Square
The first season of this new society will consist of five performances to be given in
The Picture House on Sunday afternoons. Lectures will also be arranged. A low
subscription of 10s. is intended to secure a large membership. The first perfor-
mance on November 18 will include Leibelei.

BILLINGHAM FILM SOCIETY, 3 Cambridge Terrace, Norton-on-Tees. There
is no formal membership of this society, which enters upon its fifth season with a
credit balance of £84. Anyone may come to its Wednesday twice nightly per-
formances, which are sometimes attended by over 1,000. Oct. 10, Reiniger's
Carmen, Elton's Under the City, Disney Cartoon, Poil de Carotte.

BIRMINGHAM FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, B. S. Page, 21 Carpenter Road.
The fourth season will consist of seven Sunday afternoon performances at a
subscription of 10s. 6d. First performance, Oct. 21, Don Quixote, Industrial Britain,
Canal Barge, Disney's Noah's Ark.

CROYDON FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec. G. R. Bailey, 51 High Street.
Subscription, 15s. for six Sunday afternoon performances in the Davis Theatre.
Paul Rotha and R. C. Sherriff were guests at a luncheon given on Oct. 21, prior
to the first performances which consisted of The Floorwalker, The Bridge, In der Nacht,
and Ces Messieurs de la Sante.

EDINBURGH FILM GUILD, 17 St. Andrew Street. In order to widen the
influence of the Guild the subscription has been reduced from a guinea to 12s. 6d.
The first performance on October 28 will consist of Charlemagne, Pett and Pott,
Weather Forecast and Spring on the Farm. Lecturers in a course on the Theory and
Technique of the Film will include Andrew Buchanan, John Grierson, Alberto
Cavalcanti and John Taylor.

FILM SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. Hon. Sec. D. Paterson Walker, 127 St.
Vincent Street, sixth season. Subscription 12s. 6d. Sunday evening performances
in Cranston Picture House, commencing Oct. 14. The programme will consist
of Industrial Britain, Reiniger's Carmen, In der Nacht, and La Maternelle. Lectures
will be given throughout the season.

HULL FILM SOCIETY. Hon Sec, Hannchen M. Drasdo, 81 Beverley Road.
Meanwhile this new society will operate on 16mm. and performances will be
given in a private studio. The subscription is 15s. for six shows, which will include
Warning Shadows, Waxworks, Crazy Ray and some Russian films.

LEICESTER FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, E. Irving Richards, Vaughan
College. Subscription, 10s. 6d. A series of twice nightly Saturday performances
has again been arranged at Vaughan College. Lectures will be given by Mary
Field, Ivor Montagu and others.

MANCHESTER AND SALFORD WORKERS' FILM SOCIETY, 86 Hulton

Street, Salford, 5. Eight performances will be given in the Rivoli, Rusholme, on
Saturdays at 4 p.m. Subscription 10s. First performance, Sept. 22. Thunder
over Mexico, Tonende Handschrift, Canal Barge. October 20. La Maternelle, Industrial
Britain.

MANCHESTER JEWISH FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, Freda Piatt, 86 Gt.
Clowes Street, Salford, 7. In course of formation.

NORTH LONDON FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, H. A. Green, 6 Carysfort
Road, Stoke Newington, N. 16. A first season of eight monthly performances
will be given at the Plaza, Dalston Junction, on Sunday evenings. A well-balanced
programme of new Continental films and revivals has been arranged. Subscrip-
tion, i os.

56

NORTHWICH FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, W. Baldwin Fletcher, I.G.I.
(Alkali) Ltd., Northwich. By arrangement with Cheshire County Cinemas, Ltd.,
performances will now be given on Tuesday evenings in the Pavilion. These
performances are open to everyone and there is no subscription. Season tickets
are available at ios. 6d., 8s. and 5s. and tickets may be had for single performances
at prices from 2s. to 4d. While this scheme has certain limitations, in so far, for
instance, as only registered films can be shown, it might be copied with success
in towns where it is impossible to arrange private or Sunday performances. There
are hundreds of centres throughout the country where this system of working
ought to be immediately practicable. First performance, Sept. 25. Daily Dozen
at the £00, Industrial Britain. Don Qidxote.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY FILM SOCIETY continues its performances as
before at the Electa Cinema. Oct. 2 1 . Ces Messieurs de la Sante, Silly Symphony and
Mickey Mouse.

OXFORD CITY FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec. Mrs. Hilda Harrison, Flat B,
End Street. The second season commences on Oct. 28 with La Maternelle, Krakotoa,
and Harlequin.

SOUTHAMPTON FILM SOCIETY will commence its fourth season in Novem-
ber. All performances are now given on Sunday afternoons. The Society has
opened a branch office at Winchester, where nearly 100 members were obtained
last season. Hon. Sec. J. S. Fairfax-Jones ; Southampton, D. A. Yeoman, 21
Ethelbert Avenue ; Winchester, Ruth Keyser and C. J. Blackburne, 12 St.
Swithun Street.

TYNESIDE FILM SOCIETY, c/o Literary and Philosophical Society, Newcastle.
Half-season subscription, 6s. Three performances before Christmas will be held
in the Haymarket Theatre on Sunday evenings. A clubroom has been secured
for meetings and displays of sub-standard films. First performance, Oct. 14.
Morgenrot, Tonende Handschrift, Don Dougio Farabanca.

WEST OF SCOTLAND WORKERS FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, James
Hough, 16 Balerno Drive, Glasgow, S.W.2. This new Society has been formed
" for the advancement of education " in the working classes " by the exhibition
of films of an international and cultural character." Twelve Sunday evening
performances will be given for a subscription of ios. First performance, Oct. 7.
Road to Life, Invasion of Shanghai, Paris Markets. Oct. 21, Mutter Krausen^ %uyder
Zee Dyke, Disney Cartoon.

CHILDREN'S FILM SOCIETY will give six Saturday morning performances
at the Everyman, Hampstead. Programmes will include Westerns, cartoons,
animal, documentary and nature films. Stuart Legg, Andrew Buchanan and
Mary Field will give talks on how films are made. The subscription is ios.

Negotiations are proceeding for the amalgamation of the Scottish Educational
Cinema Society (Education Offices, Bath Street, Glasgow) and the Scottish
Educational Sight and Sound Association (17 South Saint Andrew Street,
Edinburgh) and it is probable that the new organization will be known as the
Scottish Educational Film Association. While both organizations were national
in constitution, they were largely regional in influence and the new arrangement
will avoid over-lapping and facilitate development. The former has a membership
of over 600 while a Lanarkshire branch has over 500 members. Organization of
film performances for children is a feature of the Edinburgh organization's work.

57

PHONE

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We desire to thank all those customers who have so
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AT 42, HIGH STREET, PAISLEY?

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THE INDEPENDENT FILM-MAKER

Official Organ of the Independent Film-Makers Association
DOCUMENTARY EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL

ADVISERS: ANTHONY ASQUITH, ANDREW BUCHANAN, JOHN GRIERSON, ALAN HARPER,
STUART LEGG, PAUL ROTHA, BASIL WRIGHT.

IFMA'S FIRST SUMMER SCHOOL AT WELWYN.

"Seldom the time, place and loved one, together." The loved one
being, as a stage actress once said, that tin prostitute, the film.
Digswell Park is a charming place, ideal for the first Summer
School. The weather, an important factor, was kind. The rumour
that there was a movie-maker, with cine-camera, under every chair
is denied. Admitted, there were some queer angles, but none under
chairs.

MARY FIELD on "The Instructional Film."
Her knowledge of the subject, her personality and wit enabled Miss
Field to give an excellent lecture on that branch of the cinema in
which she is expert. She is one of the pioneers of the instructional
film and amateurs would do well to follow her example and make
films for the class-room. The instructional film can make great use
of animated diagrams and maps and here again Miss Field shows the
way for the amateur who wants to do something better than filming
plays.

JOHN GRIERSON on "Sound."

I think I am justified in saying that John Grierson was our star- turn.
Just as, in the early days of cinema, the film was merely a record of
what a play-goer might expect to see from the front row of the stalls,
so it is with sound to-day. Grierson explained how most directors
think only in terms of what we might call unbroken sound, unedited
— as were the early visuals. Sound can be cut, dissolved, super-
imposed, voices can be used for conveying atmosphere instead of
dialogue. Rhyming, chanting, blank verse and the subjective word-
building of James Joyce are all material for the sound-film. In a
short time Grierson had sketched out the possible future of sound in
films for the next five or ten years. A strange sea as yet uncharted.

STUART LEGG on "Shooting."

There are many people and places that just won't be filmed and
come right, but Stuart Legg can make it if anyone can. He told us
how for hours and days he has striven over one shot and then, when
in sight of victory, has had it ruined by an unsuspected onlooker.
Dealing with the person who always knows how a film should be

59

made, shooting in confined space without the facilities for high-
powered lighting, having too much light in the wrong place and the
innumerable difficulties to be overcome in shooting documentary —
these were some of the things Legg spoke about. Several 35 mm.
cameras were demonstrated and fitted with various lenses and
filters, Legg explaining their uses.

BASIL WRIGHT on " Cutting."

A fearsome subject to have to talk about for over an hour, but Basil
Wright came through with flags flying. He showed how by
different cutting and juxtapositioning of the same shots the
content of the whole can be entirely altered. It is not possible to
have a shooting script anything like the detailed instructions of a
studio production. Documentary needed a different working
procedure, Wrright explained. He spoke of how the welding of two
sequences of different content could be carried out to hold the
continuity by cutting on similarity of movement.

PETER LE NEVE FOSTER on "A Movie-maker in Moscow."
By giving the simple unadorned truth about U.S.S.R., le Neve Foster,
perhaps unconsciously, debunked the Soviet propaganda of happy
ending. Fatalism is still extant in Russia, dreamers have not been
replaced by hard-headed technicians and still nobody worries.
Foster visited the new Sovkino "Hollywood," of enormous size,
with huge revolving stage, immense tank for acquatic scenes, large
cutting and dressing rooms, all wired for sound, with everything a
director could wish for — but it wasn't finished. He told us of the
only training college for film-makers in the world and of his meeting
with Pudovkin. This was afterwards illustrated with a 16 mm.
film taken at the time.

W. G. Farr, of the British Film Institute, gave a talk upon the
purpose, aims and functions of the Institute and showed what
demand there is for instructional and documentary films in training
centres and schools.

Films were projected every night during the week-end and included
the following:

Three classics which were well received: St. Joan the Maid, The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Siegfried (Pathe, 9.5 mm.).
The King's Visit to Manchester by Peter le Neve Foster. (16 mm.) This
is one of the best news-reel items I have seen. Atmosphere of waiting
and excitement is definitely created and the shots of vast crowds
and attendant incidents make me wish that le Neve Foster had the
supervision of some of the news-reels inflicted upon us. Good
documentary this. A copy has gone to America for showing.

60

The Outer Isles by W. L. George (16 mm.). Fine photography of the
local industries and occupations carried on in the Hebrides. An
interesting documentary with a feeling for atmosphere.
Cable Ship. Legg and Shaw.

The Hunger Marchers by J. W. Harris (16 mm.) An account of the
recent march starting from several towns all over Britain and
converging on London. But where was the siege of the County
Hall? The film was mainly about the part played in the procession
by the Cambridge University Socialists. I understand that this film
has yet to be edited. Here is a chance to strengthen the idea of the
forces converging.

L. Broadbent had three 16 mm. films shown. A comedy, a holiday
affair and one of a holiday in the Channel Isles. There were some
interesting night scenes in one of these and some good shots of holiday
crowds. All three were good. The other 1 6 mm. film was Lancashire
at Work by D. F. Taylor, a Travel Association Film. Commentary
is in preparation for 35 mm. The reason that Lancashire, the cotton
spinning centre, did come to be situated where it is — namely the
chemical properties of the rain-water, the use of power in production
and the various industries grouped round Lancashire — are all shown
in this well-photographed documentary.
G.P.O. FILM PRODUCTIONS.
Cable Ship. Legg and Shaw.

Repairing a damaged under-sea cable — the part played by the
cable ship in international communications. A new line in com-
mentaries is taken by giving the workman on the job the task of
explaining what he is doing. There is more food for thought in the
construction of the sound here than in a dozen sex-dramas.
6.30 Collection. Grierson, Anstey and Watt.

The first 100% sound film. The Romance of the Post Office sounds
a pretty grisly business but a fantasy has been made out of the rise
and fall of correspondence in the 6.30 p.m. West London Postal
District simply by using sound. As the postmen return and the
keys of the boxes mount higher, tempo increases to a crescendo.
With enchanting destinations, snatches of whistling, ring of keys, roar
of lorries and clatter of trucks — a glorious racket is orchestrated
into a minor symphony of rush, bustle and efficiency.
Pett and Pott. Grierson. Cavalcanti. This is more than comedy;
it is gentle satire, not Swift but Thomas Love Peacock. Is the tele-
phone as bringer of domestic bliss, satire on the Post Office? Any-
how, everyone is happy and that is the idea of the film — goodwill.
The music is ideal and the way in which the sound is shaped is an
inspiration. Nearly all the staff of the Unit appear to be in this jolly
affair and it is obvious that they have enjoyed it. The clergyman
was good and I predict a future for this un-named actor.

61

Weather Forecast. Grierson. Evelyn Spice. "We have been asked
to broadcast the following gale warning to shipping." What
lies behind those words, how the gale was known to be coming,
how that knowledge was communicated all round England and
finally to the Continent, with shipping warned, is shown in this
documentary. The sound was technically good but do winds whistle
like that and what were those thumps? Some good photography
here.

IFMA (LONDON GROUP).

At the meeting of members it was decided to form a group for the
production of educational and documentary films. Markets is the
provisional title of a documentary dealing with three London food
markets, Covent Garden, Smithfield and Billingsgate. Members'
language has become much "heartier" of late, since they have taken
to snooping round these markets at five and six in the morning.
Thomas Baird was appointed director for this first production of
the London Group.

Thomas Baird was elected Hon. Secretary of the Association.
J. C. H. Dunlop was re-elected Hon. Treasurer and thanked for his
past services. Edmund Lightfoot was also re-elected Hon. Asst.
Secretary and thanked for his services. Leslie Beisiegel was elected to
edit the bulletin, and these pages.

A committee of the above and N. Spurr and E. E. Ward was formed.
Many thanks are due to Peter le Neve Foster for his chairmanship of
the Summer School.

IFMA BULLETIN.

Besides these pages in Cinema Quarterly there is to be issued a Bulletin
of information and news of members. This sheet will appear be-
tween the four issues of Cinema Quarterly at intervals of six to seven
weeks; therefore members will have eight bulletins a year. If
members want to unburden themselves of some noble idea or have
a suggestion to make, or seek a co-operator in a film, please use the
Bulletin. Write, in the first place, to Leslie Beisiegel, IFMA, 32
Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W.i.

. . . AND WHAT OF THE FUTURE?

Things being on a firmer footing owing to the meeting and collusion
of members determined to storm the citadel of documentary, the
future is something to look forward to. If a genius doesn't arise from
the ranks of amateurs and astound the film world it won't be IFMA's
fault.

62

AN EXHIBITION OF KINEMATOGRAPHY will be held at the Royal Photo-
graphic Society Galleries, 35 Russell Square, London, from Nov. 6 to Nov 30.
The exhibition will comprise apparatus, stills and films, and there will be a series
of lectures on various aspects of the cinema, illustrated by films. The following
meetings will be open to the public. Friday, November 9, 7 p.m., " Experiences
of a Cameraman in Ceylon." Basil Wright. Saturday, Nov. 10, 3 p.m. Films
entered for the R.P.S. competition. Friday, Nov. 16, 7 p.m. " Sound." S. S.
Watkins. " Schufftan." W. D. Woolsey. " Art Direction." E. Carrick. Satur-
day, Nov. 17, 3 p.m. G.P.O. films. Friday, Nov. 23, 7 p.m. " Films from the Pro-
jectionists Point of View," S. T. Perry. Saturday, Nov. 24, 3 p.m. Advertising
and Commercial films. Friday, Nov. 30, 7 p.m. " The Educational Film." Mary
Field.

G. A. SHAW, who was one of the original members of IFMA, had to resign the
position of Hon. Secretary, now held by Thomas Baird, on going abroad. He is
now a director with Orient Film Productions and though unable to work for
IFMA in an administrative capacity hopes to continue a friendly association, and
to give any help he can.

GAUMONT-BRITISH EQUIPMENTS LTD., Film House, WTardour Street,
London, W. 1 ., have issued a handsome reference catalogue illustrating the compre-
hensive range of their products, which includes everything connected with pro-
jection and exhibition.

IFMA

If you are interested in documentary, experi-
mental and educational production, write for a
prospectus to the Hon. Secretary, THOMAS
BAIRD, 32 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W. 1.

THE ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
EXHIBITION OF KINEMATOGRAPHY

NOVEMBER 7th to 30th

The Catalogue of the Exhibition is in-
cluded in the November issue of the
Society's official organ, The Photograpliic
Journal Price 2/6, by post 2/9.

Enquires and Remittance should be addressed to
Publications Department

THE
ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
35 RUSSELL SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.I

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63

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WILLY FORST'S "MASKERADE "(A, (Austrian)

VICKI BAUM'S "LAC AUX DAMES "(a)

"REKA" (THE RIVER) (Czechoslovakian)

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Notices of New Films will be sent on receipt of Name and Address

Films Made for Teachers
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A n Important Educational Development

# The Gaumont-British Instructional Company have produced their
first series of films — the first sound films made in this country
specifically for Education. These films, made with the co-operation
of the British Film Institute and with the advice of prominent
educationists have received the highest praise from Educational
bodies throughout England and Scotland.

The films include the following subjects :

GEOGRAPHY HYGIENE NATURAL SCIENCE

LANGUAGES LITERATURE

Full particulars of these films together with advice on the use of
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ONE SHILLING

WINTER 1935

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AN IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The Gaumont-British Instructional Company have produced their
first series of films — -the first sound films made in this country
specifically for Education. These films, made with the co-operation
of the British Film Institute and with the advice of prominent
educationists have received the highest praise from Educational
bodies throughout England and Scotland.

The films include the following subjects:

GEOGRAPHY HYGIENE NATURAL SCIENCE

LANGUAGES LITERATURE

Full particulars of these films together with advice on the use of
Educational films and apparatus in schools may be obtained from

THE EDUCATION B/A \P2sk DEPARTMENT

one of the Gaumont-British group.

G.B. EQUIPMENTS, LTD.

FILM HOUSE, WARDOUR STREET LONDON, W.l GERRARD 9292

Edited by —

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Review Editor —

FORSYTH HARDY
London Correspondent —

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U.S.A.—

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MACK W. SCHWAB

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Holland — -

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CINEMA
QUARTERLY

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL 67

THE MUSICIAN AND THE FILM. Walter Leigh 70

THE FUNCTION OF THE ART DIRECTOR

Alberto Cavalcanti . . . .75

DEFINITIONS IN CINEMA. Clifford Leech . 79

A NOVELIST LOOKS AT THE CINEMA. Lewis

Grassic Gibbon . . . . .81

JEAN VIGO. Alberto Cavalcanti ... 86

CHAPLIN'S NEW FILM. Mack Schwab . . 88

THE AMERICAN YEAR. Kirk Bond . . 92

I.C.E. Rudolf Arnheim 95

CAMERA MOVEMENT. A. Vesselo ... 97

FILMS OF THE QUARTER. Forsyth Hardy,
J. S. Fairfax-Jones, John Grierson,
Charles Davy, Paul Rotha, Campbell
Xairne, Thomas Baird . . . .103

FILM SOCIETIES 122

INDEPENDENT FILM-MAKER. Leslie Beisiegel 125

Editorial and Publishing Offices:

24 N.W. THISTLE ST. LANE, EDINBURGH, 2

'Phone: 20425. - Telegrams: Tricolour, Edinburgh

London Advertising Agents:

GREGORY & MCCARTHY, 32 Shaftesbury Ave., W.l

'Phone : Gerrard 6456

DISTRIBUTORS ABROAD : New York, Gotham Book Mart,
51 W. 47th Street. Hollywood, Stanley Rose Book Shop,
1625 N. Vine Street. Paris, Au Pont de I'Europe, 17 rue
Vignon. Melbourne, Leonardo Art Shop, 166 Little Collins
Street: McGill's News Agency, 183 Elizabeth Street.

Vol. 3. No. 2.

WINTER 1935

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Pitz Pahi are available in 9.5 mm. size for
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Copies of many of the epics of the screen are available for purchase outright
or for hire from the Pathescope 9*5 mm. Film Library at reasonable rates.

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CINEMA QUARTERLY

Volume 3, Number 2

WINTER

1935

THE SCENARIO AGAIN. The publication in book form of the
scenario of The Private Life of Henry VIII again raises the question of
the function and scope of the scenarist in relation to direction, cutting
and the whole scheme of production. In his introduction to the
present volume* Ernest Betts, film critic of the "Sunday Express,"
claims that the publication of Henry VIII introduces a new form of
literature. He also denies any knowledge of the meaning of "true
cinema." These statements, taken together, are symptomatic of
much that is wrong with cinema to-day — an inability to escape from
the narrative form of literature and an unconcerned ignorance of
the true nature of film form.

If the function of the scenarist is to create the film on paper and
of the director to re-create it on celluloid, it would appear that
either the one is being denied his rightful recognition as the real
progenitor of the production or the other is being given undue
credit for work which is interpretive rather than creative. This is
more or less the case, except that the scenarist, being a writer rather
than a visual artist, often lacks ability in the use of plastic imagery
and expressive sound, which the director with a real understanding
of the powers of his medium would employ in preference to the
wordiness of literary narration. In actual practice the director has
the power to alter the script as he thinks fit; but a work conceived
as a whole by one creative imagination cannot be altered by another,
working on a totally different plane, without disastrous effects.

The separation of scenario-construction and direction into two
different functions is an artificial one, introduced originally because
the first producers were showmen or technicians who could no more
conceive a story than they could act the juvenile lead. The system
is continued partly out of habit and partly because most of the
original producers are still in control of the studios. The accepted
idea that the film is a "collective" art is also responsible for a con-
tinuance of the convention. The production of a film undoubtedly
demands team work. So does the erection of a building. But without

* London: Metheun, 3s. 6d.
67

an architect to inspire the draughtsmen and instruct the builders,
the result would lack that aesthetic harmony which characterizes all
great architecture. Similarly, unless a film is dominated by the
supreme personality of a creative artist in undisputed control over
every stage of production it will suffer from weakness of character
and uncertainty of design.

The question is not whether the scenarist or the director should
be given command, for obviously the same person ought to be re-
sponsible for both tasks. But until something is done to break down
the present stupid conventions and make possible the development
of new genius capable of undertaking the wider responsibility of
full creative control, it is idle to talk of the scenario as having sig-
nificance either for literature or the film.

COLOUR ARRIVES. Six years' practice of the use of sound has
brought us only to the fringe of learning how to use it with artistic
perception — and now we are faced with colour. At least five separate
systems, each with elaborate claims to recognition, are already com-
peting for introduction to the screen, and whether we like it or not
the colour-film will soon be an accepted form of cinema. That
directors have still enough to learn about sound and movement,
that the audience has never asked for colour nor felt the want of it,
that exhibitors do not welcome the cost of installing new apparatus
— all that is beside the point. The film of entertainment, declare the
producers, requires another infusion of novelty, and just as sound
was thrust on the cinema by the competitive genius of Warner Bros.,
the black-and-white film may soon be swept from the screen by the
flood of colour released by avid producers anxious to dazzle their
rivals.

That they may also dazzle the audience is equally possible.
Judging from efforts such as Radio Parade and the final reel in The
House of Rothschild, colour definition is still far from perfect, and the
essential qualities of tonal harmony and contrast are apparently
unknown. Cautious second thoughts made Gaumont-British with-
draw the colour sequence in The Iron Duke, but Hollywood rushes
ahead with all-colour versions of Becky Sharp, The Last Days of
Pompeii and The Three Musketeers. There are no second thoughts in
America. And soon the rest of the world will be stampeding in its
wake.

Much as we may regret its precipitous imposition, we cannot
afford to scoff and ignore the advent of colour. Its development is
as inevitable as the development of sound. Even Chaplin, lone
champion of the silent film, has been able to remain staunch to his
former medium only by the subtlest of compromise. Is it not better

68

for everyone, theorists and craftsmen alike, to face the matter
frankly and give timely consideration to the possibilities and dan-
gers of the use of colour? Only thus will it be possible to avoid the
chaos and insensibilities which followed the commercial exploitation
of sound.

CENSORSHIP AGITATION. A deputation led by the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury and representative of the various uplift or-
ganizations throughout the country recently waited on the Prime
Minister, the Home Secretary, and the Secretary of State for Scot-
land, to urge the setting up of a Government Inquiry into the
working of film censorship in Great Britain, with power to recom-
mend constructive reform and improvement of the present con-
ditions.

A similar deputation headed by Bernard Shaw and representative
of the radical intellectuals of the community might reasonably have
presented the same request. Both bodies of opinion agree that the
existing censorship is a farce. It is too lax. It is too rigid. It winks
at indecency. It stifles art. It pleases nobody.

Do we require a stricter censorship or a more intelligent one?
Or none? In reply to the present agitation the Home Secretary is
officially reported as indicating "the difficulty of reaching general
agreement on a matter largely of taste." Even the righteous and
omniscient Mr. MacDonald declared that "Inquiries, particularly,
perhaps, where any question of morals is involved, did not always
yield all the results expected of them." He ought to know. The
suppression of political propaganda, of course, is much simpler than
dealing with matters of morals. There are methods. . . .

But Wardour Street may rest in peace.

Norman Wilson.

Cinema Quarterly is obtainable through any bookshop, but if any difficulty is experienced
an annual subscription (Great Britain, 4s. 6d. ; Abroad, 7s. 6d.) should be sent to the
Manager, Cinema Quarterly, 24 N.W. Thistle Street Lane, Edinburgh, 2. Binding
cases for Volume Two are now ready, price 3s. 6d. each, postage 6d. extra. No further
expense is necessary as these are self-adjusting. Cases for Volume Three, in which each
copy may be placed as issued, are also ready. Bound copies of Volume One are available
at lis. 6d. ; Volume Two, 7s. 6d.

69

THE MUSICIAN
AND THE FILM

WALTER LEIGH

Although from its earliest beginnings the cinema has employed
music as an important part of the entertainment which it offers,
the place of music has been an almost entirely subordinate one.
In the latter days of the silent films, certain super-productions were
presented at the big theatres with specially composed music played
by large orchestras, and just before the sound-film arrived, some
experiments on a small scale were made in synchronization of the
film with a mechanical organ or piano, and a synchronous apparatus
was invented for the conductor of the cinema orchestra. But excess
of zeal on the part of the musician often caused the musical accom-
paniment to obtrude itself too persistently on the consciousness of
the audience, and the enjoyment of some films was considerably
impaired by noisy orchestras which, in seeking to create appropriate
atmosphere, would often stress and underline unnecessarily the
action of the film.

The sound-film arrived just at the right time to save an em-
barrassing situation. Its success entailed the acceptance of a new
convention by the audience, the make-believe that sound actually
proceeded from the shadows on the screen. This effort of reconciling
sound with sight was readily made by the audience, and the ap-
parently impossible — a "talking picture" — was achieved. For the
first time the audience, in order to understand the entertainment,
had to listen as well as to watch. Hitherto they had only noticed the
music when it somehow disturbed them ; and they were aware of its
absence if a film was run in silence. But now the sound was no
longer a mere accompaniment, but an integral part of the film;
and for the first time they became sound-conscious.

Unfortunately, however, this miracle of synchronization was so
universally emphasized by film producers that little advantage was
taken of the possibilities offered by the new mechanical device.
Indeed, at the present time, some six years later, the majority of
films still show how great a set-back film production suffered from

70

the coming of sound; long stretches of dialogue are synchronized
with the moving faces of the speakers, all the natural sounds are
carefully synchronized with their corresponding visuals, and the
result has the effect of a stage play observed through a telescope ;
the advantages which the film has over the stage are exploited
hardly at all.

In consequence of this restricted use of sound, the audience's
sound-consciousness, which made such a promising start, has not
been allowed to develop; indeed, the decline in popularity and
virtual abandonment of the theme song seems to show that the
sound is listened to less consciously than it was. On the other hand,
now that synchronized sound is no longer a novelty, there are signs
of the development of a new technique in the use of sound, not
merely as an explanation to the ear of what the eye is watching, or
as a background to keep the ear pleasantly occupied while the eye
devotes itself to the action, but as a part of the action itself, as
expressive in its own way as the visuals, and a necessary complement
to them. And it is in this field that the musician can prove of direct
use in the making of a film, and take a more responsible part than
hitherto.

It is beginning to be recognized that discipline is as necessary
in sound as in picture. Whereas the picture is carefully cut with due
regard to form, rhythm, and emotional effects, the series of natural
sounds which are normally synchronized with the picture form
only a random string of words and noises, some helpful to the sense
of the picture, some an adequate but no more than discreet accom-
paniment, and some actually disturbing in their effect. The eye is
accustomed to constant changes of focus, and finds their effect
pleasing; but the ear is not thus accustomed, and finds the abrupt
shiftings from sound to sound, which follow quick changes of scene,
difficult to accept. Moreover, there is an important difference
between the sound heard in the cinema and that heard in the ordinary
theatre. When watching a stage play, we select for ourselves, out of
the sounds which proceed from various parts of the stage, those
which we are to listen to, such as dialogue and revolver-shots, and
disregard entirely all the unimportant sounds such as the footsteps
of the actors, clicks of cigarette-cases, striking of matches, and
shutting of doors. But in the cinema, all the sounds, proceeding as
they do from a single point, the loud-speaker, are listened to with
equal attention, with the result that sometimes a particular sound,
say of footsteps, may be charged with a sinister meaning that is quite
unintended. Every sound in a film must be a significant one; there
is no room for extraneous sounds. Therefore the effect of each
sound must be properly and carefully calculated.

The musician, then, the specialist in sound and its emotional

71

effects, must be brought in to organize the sounds into a score in
which the effect of each one is calculated in relation to the picture
and to the other sounds. He will do well to abandon many musical
conventions on which he has been brought up, and attempt to
approach this new problem of film-sound as a fresh art with many
unexplored possibilities, which is only now starting to make its own
conventions.

He finds four kinds of sound at his disposal : —

(i) Music.

(2) Natural sound, synchronized (including speech).

(3) Natural sound, used contrapuntally.

(4) " Sound effects," for emotional or atmospheric purposes.

(1) Music undoubtedly fulfils certain functions which nothing
else does: it can excite the emotions more powerfully than either
spoken word or natural sound. This is because its significance is
conventional and imaginary. It is an artificial organization of sound
for purely emotional purposes, a representation of physical move-
ment in terms of sound and rhythm. In a film it may be either
given its full weight, and perhaps, at emotional peaks, even be
allowed to dominate the picture, or it may have only secondary
importance as an atmospheric background, possibly with other more
important sounds superimposed. The composer approaching the
film problem for the first time will be struck by one especially im-
portant fact, namely, that in film-music more than in any other
kind of music the greatest virtue is economy. A phrase of five bars
lasting twenty seconds suitably fitted to thirty feet of picture may
express as much as a whole slow movement of a symphony. One
minute is quite a considerable length for a piece of music in a film.
The academic principles of leisurely formal development are there-
fore of little use in the composition of film-music, though they may
well be employed in the construction of the whole film and its
sound-score. The same need for economy applies to the instru-
mentation; four instruments may well provide a better effect than
forty, and a piece that would sound painfully thin and ridiculous in
the concert-hall will be perfectly satisfactory over the microphone.
It may be said without presumption that the peculiar powers of the
microphone have, with the exception of one or two isolated experi-
ments of which little notice has been taken, not been exploited to
much advantage up to the present. The most obvious possibility is
that of balancing, by placing at suitable distances from the micro-
phone, those instruments whose normal volumes are entirely un-
equal. The film-composer has to recognize that the much-despised
"canned" quality of film-music is actually its most important
characteristic and greatest virtue.

72

(2) Synchronized natural sound makes its appeal to the Treason; its
effect on the emotions is incidental. Its main use is to help on the
action ; it has largely taken over the functions of the sub-title in the
silent film. Being ipso facto tied to the visuals, its value is dependent
on them: it does not, as music does, add anything which is not
inherent in them, but only amplifies and explains them. Its effect
is particularly satisfying in the case of marked rhythmic movements
which obviously produce a noise, such as hammering; the audience,
having made its necessary effort of make-believe that the sounds
are actually produced by the shadows on the screen, feels disturbed
if its expectations are disappointed. Similarly, if the facial move-
ments of speech are prominent on the screen, the audience is justified
in its desire to hear the words spoken, and will feel irritated if those
words are not in perfect synchronization. It is not, of course, by any
means necessary that the actual sound made at the time the picture
was shot should be used. In post-synchronizing a film it is often found
that a particular noise is more satisfactory when reproduced arti-
ficially in the studio. In this field the microphone has been far more
exploited than in music.

(3) The use of natural sound in counterpoint is a new device, and the
most important development since the coming of the sound-film.
It makes a special demand on the audience's power of concentration,
in that they must be ready to listen to given sounds as bound up
with, and yet separate from, the picture. It is, in fact, an appeal to
the emotions through the reason. Its use is similar to that of music,
whose appeal to the emotions is direct; but the value of the sounds,
instead of being intrinsic as in music, is allusive. The sense of the sounds
is related to the sense of the picture, and a specific emotion results.
This use of sound is not a mere stunt ; it is essential to the further
development of the sound-film, a step towards a new and far more
expressive form of film art. When sound has achieved its proper
freedom, the film will be justified in claiming the place once held by
opera.

(4) The use of sound effects, not allusively, but so to speak musically,
for directly emotional purposes, follows as the next step after the
contrapuntal use of natural sound. The possibilities in this field are
as yet unexplored, but it is clear that since the vocabulary of the
sound-composer comprises all the known sounds that it is possible
to record, there is nothing to prevent his orchestrating other than
purely musical sounds to produce certain effects. Since Satie em-
ployed the typewriter in Parade there have been several instances
of non-musical noises combined rhythmically with music, and in
films the noise of a train as a percussion basis to music, and the
Hans Sachs method of hammering as in Man of Aran, are fairly
familiar. But the more subtle use of noises for their own sake, to

73

create certain atmospheres in the same way as music does, has still
to be developed, and it is undoubtedly in this field that the most
creative advances and the richest discoveries will be made.

In the film The Song of Ceylon, an attempt has been made to make
use of the above suggestions in constructing a sound-score which
has a definite shape, and not only is an accompaniment to the visuals,
but adds an element which they do not contain. The film has, in
fact, been cut throughout with an eye to the sound-score. Its form
is musically conceived; an analysis of its four movements would read
like that of a symphony. Each sound has been selected for its seeming
inevitability, as harmonies are in music. Even the commentary is
calculated as an effect and not as a necessary nuisance. The chief
aims of the sound-score are simplicity and clarity. The audience's
difficulty in co-ordinating sight and sound has been recognized,
and confusion has been avoided as far as possible. Two kinds of
music have been used : the native singing and drumming for realistic
purposes, and the western orchestra in an attempt at a palatable
combination of Sinhalese and European idioms, for atmospheric
and emotional purposes. The two extremes, music and synchronized
natural sound, are used respectively for emotional high-spots and
points of rest. Non-synchronized sound is used a great deal for
various specific purposes. An example is the distant bark of a dog
heard during a shot of a native building a hut; the implication of
the dog is a hint at village life not far away, and the effect of the
combination of picture and sound in their context is to foreshadow a
contented domestic life in the house now being built. The sound
of a train is continued over a shot of an elephant pushing down a
tree, and slowed up to correspond with its efforts. Morse and radio
announcers reciting market prices are heard over shots of tea-
pickers, sounds of shipping over the gathering of coker-nuts. Sin-
halese speech, being presumed to be unintelligible to the audience,
is used purely as a sound with its obvious connotation, except where
a close-up of a speaker demands synchronized speech.

One or two experiments have also been made with the micro-
phone. The vibrations of gongs have been picked up by swinging
the microphone close up to the gong after it was struck. Some per-
cussion instruments are used whose virtue is only discernible through
the microphone. A particular attempt is also made at an instru-
mentation suitable for "canning." And all the natural sounds have
been artificially produced in the studio, occasionally by very unlikely
means. That it shows examples of a few of the possibilities offered
by an entirely new approach to the whole problem of sound is the
chief claim of the film.

THE FUNCTION OF THE

ART DIRECTOR

ALBERTO. CAVALCANTI

First of all, why are sets generally used in films? Often the scenes
which they represent exist in nature and could be shot. There
must be strong reasons for the widespread practice of building sets
when nature itself is readily available. Money is not the deciding
factor. On the one hand, it cost more money to shoot Madame Sans
Gene in the Palace at Fontainebleau than it would have cost to
build three times the number of sets for the same script in Holly-
wood. On the other hand, elaborate and expensive sets are often
built when the real scenes can be shot more cheaply nearby.

Sets are not built either out of necessity or economy. There are
other reasons, some psychological, some practical. First there is
the question of how the set affects the acting. Most directors find
that they get better acting on a set than they get from acting in real
surroundings. After all, most film actors have been trained on the
stage where they have been accustomed to working among scenery.
It is not surprising, therefore, that they should feel more at home
on a set than against a background of real life, and that their style
of acting should agree best with artificial surroundings.

But the chief reason why sets help the acting lies deeper still. A
lack of ease in acting in natural surroundings exists even in those
without a stage training. When among the objects of everyday life
actors are apt to be hampered by a feeling of incongruity between the
artifice of their action and the reality of their surroundings. This
affects not only theatrical and stylised acting, but also the more
casual acting peculiar to cinema. Even when shooting people in
their ordinary movements, it is sometimes possible to get a more
unified effect and a stronger feeling of reality by placing them on a
set. One peculiar advantage, for example, is that on a set they
seem to forget the camera more readily. But the director also
benefits from working on a studio set. There he is independent of
the chances of the outside world ; free from the noises, interruptions
and discomforts which ordinarily interfere with work on a real

75

location. He has a greater control over circumstances, and his mind
is freer to concentrate on essentials. (When Sickert was asked why
he never painted in the open air, he said that it was because he
found it more difficult to rule lines out of doors).

The practical and technical advantages of using sets are, in fact,
the advantages peculiar to the studio itself. It is built for making
films. There is direct contact with administration, organization is
easier, and there is centralization of staff and props. The actors have
dressing-rooms which presumably give all the necessary facilities for
making-up. There is everything to help the work of the sound
engineer and the cameraman. And perhaps the most important
factor of all is the complete command over light and, in particular,
top and back lighting, which the organized arrangement of the
artificial set affords. This last affects the control over the image,
which is the essential of camera work; the power to detach it by
nice degrees and if necessary isolate it from its surroundings. Back
light thrown from above and behind the set is the most effective
control possible to the cameraman. It can create infinite stages of
relief and is fundamental to any development of photographic style.

Since there are so many reasons for employing sets and since
cinema affords so many opportunities for learning from experience,
it is surprising that of all the departments of film work the study of
set building has been the most neglected. Except to follow vogues in
decoration, sets have hardly changed in conception from their original
primitive forms.

We are not considering how accurately sets may be got to imitate
nature, nor are we considering how they can be used to create
atmosphere. The essential problem is to see how sets may be con-
sidered and built from first to last for the development of a truly
cinematic point of view.

The set builders whom most producers employ are old studio
retainers who hold their job through custom rather than for any
particular skill or developing knowledge in their work. When
producers do cut adrift from such unimaginative labour they usually
call in painters, architects, stage set designers or interior decorators.
None of these men have a knowledge of the special factors governing
cinema set building. They pass designs made in their own pro-
fessional manner to some hack art director who in turn passes them
on to carpenters without proper adaptation.

The art director should be as alive to the action of the film as the
director himself. In his own field he should have as much initiative
and scope. Just as it is the special job of the director to guide the
dramatic course of the actors to the shape and style of the whole
film, it is for the art director to use his own non-human material
to the same end. And to do his work properly he must be fully

76

aware of all the possibilities of sets and lighting, so that he may
exploit each of them to the full.

With regard to the set itself, the first law to be laid down is that
it must be built to be lit. That is to say, you must never look upon
a set as having an existence independent of the lighting which will
reveal it. The set, not as it is, but as it will appear, is the thing.
The films of Vidor, Dreyer and Chaplin are uncommon for their
understanding of the first principles of set building. In Chaplin's
Woman of Paris the excellence of the sets was due almost entirely to
their full response to the lighting.

The failure of art directors to reckon enough with light has pre-
vented them from adapting their ways of building sets to the changes
which lighting has undergone as cinema has developed. The hard
white arc lights and the mercury banks of the early cinema gave
maximum contrast and hardness to the photography. With the
coming of panchromatic film and wide-angle lenses a softer incan-
descent light is used which gives a much less defined image. This
change should have been followed when necessary by a harder and
more rigid construction of set. Instead, through lack of enterprise
on the part of art directors, all sets now appear with a uniform and
monotonous softness.

Similarly, in its lack of adaptation to the changes in camera
technique, set-building lags behind. In the early cinema the set
confronted the camera as a stage confronts its audience. The
camera, stationary and at eye level (its only variants being a cut
from long-shot to mid-shot, mid-shot to close-up), demanding a
complete stage set with its three walls. Since that time the camera
has lost its immobility. But nothing has been done in set building
to exploit the possibilities of the modern camera with its new battery
of pans and trucks.

Sets could be constructed which wrould give the camera far
greater freedom of movement. But they cannot be, till art directors
fully appreciate the camera point of view. The use of special angles
should also be properly appreciated by art directors. They might
then consider the possibility of making sets of floors and ceilings,
with the back light coming in one case from above and the other
from below. They still unfortunately hug the side walls only and
are, to that extent, as firmly glued to stage tradition as the theatrical
people themselves.

The question of scale is also important in set building. The rela-
tion of scale between parts of the same set must be considered, and,
what is less obvious, the scale of one set as compared with another.
It is a very common fault for exteriors to bear no relation to their
corresponding interiors, particularly when interior sets are used in
conjunction with real exteriors. Small house exteriors are fre-

77

quently given huge rooms; and over-sized settings which originated
in an appeal to the snobbery of the audience, have become the
monotonous rule. In practice the smaller sets have given the best
results. Though they are more difficult for the technicians they are
easier for the actors and for the directors. And they usually look
more convincing. The use of wide-angle lenses can give them a
depth and distortion: a quality of perspective, indeed, which is new
and peculiar to cinema. As such it ought to be exploited. This
deeper knowledge of lenses is of primary importance in the con-
struction of sets, and one may say that no set should be designed
without some understanding of the lenses used in the various shots.
The size of the lens is as important as the placing of the subject.

Another point: the preoccupation with depth has obscured the
fact that the projected image is inevitably a flat image. The em-
phasis is no longer on the volume, but on the line. In every com-
position, therefore, and every sequence of compositions, the play of
lines is important. The dominant lines, straight or curved, vertical,
horizontal or diagonal — have a dramatic and emotional significance
which affects the montage and construction of a sequence. No art
director can ignore it. The jumpiness and lack of rhythm in such
otherwise finely staged sequences as the dancing scenes in The Merry
Widow and Gay Divorce are due almost entirely to this confusion
between set volume and projection line.

The problem is so complicated that one may well understand why
the line of least resistance has so often been taken and why the old
stage set, made rather for the eye of the director than for the lens of
the camera, is still in general use. But the exciting possibilities of
what we might call the camera set as distinct from the stage set must
sooner or later be exploited by all intelligent directors.

EISENSTEIN

It is announced that Eisenstein is preparing a massive film to
portray the history of a proletarian family in Moscow over a period
of five hundred years. Since his Mexican misadventure, Eisenstein —
who is the subject of the cover illustration — has confined his ac-
tivities for the most part to lecturing at the State Kino Institute
(G.I.K.), where his pupils, whose courses extend for three years,
have included a number from countries outside the U.S.S.R. A
note in the " Moscow News " observes that an important factor in
Eisenstein's work has undoubtedly been the photography of Eduard
Tisse, who is not a Russian but a Scandinavian. " A cameraman on
various fronts during the World War, Tisse donned Red Army
uniform and filmed the Civil War and Revolution on many fronts,
under conditions of extreme danger and difficulty."

78

DEFINITIONS IN CINEMA

CLIFFORD LEECH

I fully appreciate David Schrire's insistence on exactitude of ter-
minology,* for the two chief causes of confused thinking in criticism
are the use of an inexact terminology and the incursion of political
and religious prejudices into the domain of the critical intelligence.
By all means let us clarify the meaning of "documentary," but
Schrire is sailing under a full canvas from the rocks of vagueness
which are Scylla into the Charybdis which is prejudice.

" If cinema is to mean anything it must serve a purpose beyond
itself, have some justification other than its own very medium,"
says Schrire. This might be questioned, but let it pass. He con-
tinues: "If that is true, there is one purpose above all others that is
of paramount importance to-day — that of making a living." And
here assuredly I must part company with him. By all means let us
make films of our distressed areas (it is well that our civilization
should know the truth about its decayed teeth), but there are many
things in life, both good and bad, which rival hunger in importance.
The fear of death, the joy of mating, the conversation of friends, the
glory of achievement, the tedium of routine, the quiet normal
horror of egocentricity — all these are of as much importance in the
life of every individual man or woman as the problem of how to
eat and where to sleep. I see no reason why the term "docu-
mentary" should be restricted to the presentation of the most obvious
of man's interests.

Schrire, inconsolable, admits that it is probably too late to exclude
Flaherty's pictures from the documentary class. Then let us not
attempt to establish artificial distinctions which have not been
recognized in the past and cannot be recognized in the future.
Instead, we may find it instructive to make a classification of docu-
mentary films according to their two basic features: the nature of
the material and the approach to that material.

Here, then, are some definitions:

"A documentary film is one which sets out to convey an im-
pression of a phase of contemporary reality." Perhaps the words
"or past" should be added after "contemporary." I am in favour
of widening the definition rather than narrowing it, but historical
films have so far had little to do with reality. Categories other than
documentary include the fantastic (Caligari, Warning Shadows, The

* "Evasive Documentary," Cinema Quarterly, Autumn, 1934.

79

Waltz Bream), the satiric (A Nous la Liberie, Le Dernier Mil liar dair e) ,
and the stylised (Lubitsch). These classes might be profitably
subdivided, but also clearly overlap.

"The term theatrical, in the vocabulary of the cinema, may be
applied to all films which use trained actors and /or studio sets."

Similarly, "the term naturalistic describes films in which the
actors are untrained and are merely directed to reproduce for the
screen the way of life that is ordinarily their own, and in which the
settings are not created for the purpose of the film."

"Realistic, as in literature, describes the approach of the director
who concentrates on faithfully reproducing the surface-aspects of
reality — who takes reality at its face-value."

"Romantic," similarly, "describes the approach of the director who
believes that there are many facets of reality and that he may repro-
duce for us whichever of them he will." Consequently the romantic
director generally shows more individuality of style than the realistic
director, who should suppress his own personality in his attempt to
catch the surface-truth. Moreover, let the warning be given; there
will always be many who will deny the truth of a romantic's vision
of reality. But deliberate falsification is neither realistic nor romantic.

We may now look for, and find, four classes of documentary : —

(i) Romantic theatrical. — Clair in Sous les Toits and 14 Juillet is
the most famous exponent of this type. I do not know whether
Dovzhenko was using untrained actors in Earth ; if not, that clearly
romantic film should be included here.

(2) Realistic theatrical. — Here one could give many examples: — ■
Bruno Rahn's The Tragedy of the Street, Roland Brown's Quick Millions,
Pabst's Westjront,

(3) Romantic naturalistic. — Certainly we must place Flaherty
here, and with him perhaps Eisenstein, who, as far as I have seen,
has rarely tried to confine himself to the presentation of the one-
planed external. A glance at the published scenario of Que Viva
Mexico! should strengthen this view.

(4) Realistic naturalistic. — Here is the true, the " pure " docu-
mentary, which we find in Ruttmann's Berlin and World Melody, in
Turin's Turksib, in Joris Ivens' Radio, and the rest of their kind.
But is it so pure? Was Ruttmann's suicide incident in Berlin a slice
of reality, and was the woman actually drowned? Did Turin's
geometrical instruments actually, and normally, gyrate for the
delight of the camera? There is, indeed, no hard and fast line of
distinction between the ordering of existent material and the assem-
bling of new material, and for that reason I have insisted on the
" theatrical " classes of documentary. The purpose, as Schrire has
it, is all. Pabst and Turin are together here, as perhaps are Clair
and Eisenstein.

80

A NOVELIST LOOKS
AT THE CINEMA

LEWIS GRASSIC GIBBON

Perhaps, in the interests of truth and alliteration, this should read
A Philistine looks at the Films.

As becomes a good Scots novelist, I live in a pleasant village
near London ; and, in the intervals of writing novels for a livelihood
and writing history for pleasure, I attend of an evening the local
cinema. It is popularly known as the bug house; the jest having long
staled, there is no longer even a suggestion of vocal quotes around
this insulting misnomer. For it is certainly a misnomer. The seats are
comfortably padded, even for ninepence; a girl with trim ankles
and intriguing curls comes round at intervals with a gleaming
apparatus and sprays the air with sweet-smelling savours; the ash-
trays are large and capacious; and it is amusing, in the intervals, to
brood upon one's neighbours and consider the wild growth of hair
which furs the necks of women who neglect the barber.

But at this point the Big Picture comes on. In the first hour we
have witnessed two news reels; a speech by Signor Mussolini, simian
and swarthy (why has Hollywood never offered him adequate
inducements to understudy King Kong?) ; shots of a fire in a London
factory, taken from the roof of a nearby building which was surely a
public-house owned by a pressing philanthropist, so desperately poor
is the photography and so completely moronic the camera-man in
missing every good angle of vision; and No. CVII of Unusual Jobs,
showing the day-to-day life of an Arizonan miner who has turned an
empty gallery into a home for sick and ailing bats. Then has fol-
lowed the Travelogue.

Travelogues in English bug houses (for I'll keep the homely
misnomer) deal with only two portions of this wide and terrible
planet of ours. We are never shown the Iguazu Falls or the heights
of the Andes or the snows on Popocatepetl ; or North Africa and the
white blaze of sunlight across Ghizeh; or S. Sophia brooding over
Constantinople; or Edinburgh clustered reeking about its hill; or
London in summer; or the whores' quarters in Bombay; or the
bleak and terrible tracks that were followed by the Alaskan treks
of '98; or Mohenjo-Daro, the cradle of Indian civilization; or the
Manger in Bethelehem at Christmas time, with the pilgrims swop-

81

ping diseases on the holy stones; or the pygmies of the Wambutti; or
the Punak of Borneo, a quarter of a million of them, naked, culture-
less, happy, the last folk of the Golden Age ; or the dead cities of
Northern England, cities of more dreadful night than that dreamt
by Thomson; or. . . .

We are shown instead, wearyingly, unendingly, ad infinitum and
ad nauseam, the fishers of Iceland and the dancing-girls of Bali. A
strange, unrecorded tabu has smitten the travelogue-makers; the
rest of the earth, those two islands apart, is forbidden their obser-
vation. So, with faith and fortitude, twice a week, we sit in the
bug house and watch Iceland — mostly female Iceland — grin upon
us over the salted cadaver of the unlucky cod ; we gaze upon un-
ending close-ups of gigantic buttocks bent in arduous toil ; we blink
upon geysers and giggling Scandinavian virgins. . . . Or, in Bali,
we watch the Devil Dance. The girls appear in masks; the novice
film-fan deplores these masks till later he sees a group of the girls
without them. Then he understands that even the devil has an
aesthetic eye. . . .

Next, Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy have entertained us with a
desperate vigour. They have sawn themselves in halves, fallen
down chimneys, eaten gold-fish, married their sisters, committed
arson, or slept in insect-infested beds. And gradually, whatever the
pursuit, the grin has faded from our faces. We are filled with aware-
ness of a terrible secret unknown to the lords of the films: that the
dictum on art being long and life short was never intended for in-
judicious application to a single-reel comedy. . . . Mr. Hardy has
discovered fleas in his bed. Excellent! We laugh. The flea has
infested the skirts of the Comic Muse since the days of Akhnaton.
But Mr. Hardy is still horrified or astounded. Yard upon yard of
celluloid flicks past, and we await fresh developments. There are no
fresh developments. The film, we realize, was made for the benefit
of a weak-eyed cretin in whose skull a jest takes at least ten minutes
to mature.

Then we have had Mickey Mouse . . . and remember Felix
the Cat. Rose-flushed and warm from heaven's own heart he came,
and might not bear the cloud that covers earth's wan face with
shame, as Mr. Swinburne wrote. But some day, surely, he will
return and slay for us this tyrant. How long, O Lord, how long?

But now the Big Picture is coming. First, a lion has growled
convincingly or a radio tower has emitted sparks or a cockerel has
crowed in a brazen I-will-deny-thee-thrice manner. The heraldic
beasts disposed of, we come to the names of the producer, the
scenario-writer, the costumier, the sound-effects man; we learn that
Silas K. Guggenheimer made the beds, Mrs. Hunt O'Mara loaned
the baby, and Henryk Sienkiewicz carried round drinks. The fact

82

From

Alexandrov's
"Jazz Comedy"
a Souyoskino
production

From

"Woman from the

Mountains,"

a new Russian film

directed by

Ertogrul Muksin

Courtesy of Marie Seton

*&J f^J^wSi

From

"Three Songs
about Lenin"
directed by
Dziga Vertov

Courtesy of Marie Seton

that we here in the bug house care not a twopenny damn for any of
these facts, that we never remember the names except as outrageous
improbabilities in nomenclature, is unknown to Hollywood or
Elstree. ... It is bad enough to have the printer's name upon
one's novels. But what if he printed page after page in front of the
title, telling how Jim Smith set the type and Rassendyll Snooks read
the proofs and Isobel Jeeves typed the correspondence, and the
printer's boy who had belly-ache was treated with a stomach-pump
in St. Thomas's?

Lists of actors and characters, confusing, and (a noted name or so
apart) quite meaningless. Then, with tremolos, a distant view of
New York — always the same view, film directors gallop madly
round to each other's studios to borrow this shot . . or a distant view
of London; also, always the same view. Then — the picture. . . .

Like most intelligent people I prefer the cinema to the theatre.
Stage drama has always been a bastard art, calling for acute faith
from the audience to supplement its good works. The film suffers
from no such limitations ; it presents (as is the function of art) the
free and undefiled illusion. A minor journalist and playwright of
our time, St. John Ervine, denies this with some passion. His flat-
footed prose style (relieved by a coruscation of angry corns) is em-
ployed week by week in a Sunday sheet to carry bulls of denunciation
against the Whore of Hollywood. (Can it be that Hollywood has
refused to film Mr. Ervine's works as — with a far greater ineptness —
it has refused to film mine?) But Mr. Ervine's poor tired feet are
needlessly outraged. The Whore has righteously our hearts — if only
she would practise the courtezan to the full, not drape her lovely
figure in the drab domestic reach-me-downs of stage drama.

Too often — in fifteen out of twenty of the Big Pictures that reach
our bug house — she is clad not even in reach-me-downs. Instead,
she is tarred and feathered or sprayed with saccharine in the likeness
of a Christmas cake ; and unendingly, instead of walking fearless and
free, she sidles along with her hands disposed in a disgustingly
Rubens-like gesture.

But — we had Le Million, and enjoyed its cackle; we had Gabriel
Over the White House, the courtezan in dust-cap and mop, spring-
cleaning her back-garden as even a Muse must do. We had Man of
Aran which — apart from the fact that the characters never had any
sleep and the sea suffered from elephantiasis, and every gesture and
every action was repeated over and over again till one longed to go
for the projector with a battle-axe — was a righteous film. And a
month ago we had As the Earth Turns, which ought to be crowned in
bay, in spite of some deplorable photography and an occasional
sickly whiff of sugar-icing.

Between whiles our Big Picture is the Muse in tar and feathers.

85

JEAN VIGO

ALBERTO CAVALCANTI

Jean Vigo came from the Basque country. His grandfather was an
important official in the little state of Andorra, and his father was
the famous Almereyda, one of those pre-war figures who have since
become legendary.

Vigo inherited the strength and energy of these men. He belonged
to the vigorous and care-free type of Pyrennean mountaineer.
He had the sense of scale, the feeling for the contrast between great
and small, which belongs to those who come from little isolated
countries.

He also inherited the personal charm of his father, who, according
to those who had known him, was one of the most charming men
in the world. Like his father, Vigo had a great many friends.
Although very reserved, he once confided to one of them that he
had taken his first infant steps in a prison during the Great War.
In this prison his father was "suicided." From this grim childhood
Vigo carried with him for the rest of his life a bitterness which was
to dominate all his work.

Now at the age of twenty-nine he is dead.

He started his career in a photographer's studio, and later became
an assistant camera-man. Then he founded a film society at Nice,
and did his first work as a director in A Propos de Nice, which he
qualified with the phrase point de vue documente. After coming to
Paris he first made Taris the Swimmmig Champion, and next went on
to write a script for a more ambitious film on tennis with H. Cochet;
but the difficulties which surrounded young French directors forced
him to abandon this. It was then that he set to work on what is
perhaps his most complete film, Zero de Conduite {Nought for Behaviour).

The Paris Censors considered this film to be an outrage against
the educational institutions of the nation, and, declaring it to be
harmful to children as well as to the good name of the Schools of
France, forbade its exhibition in public. A Press show followed in
which the film aroused open hostility.

The bourgeois sentiments of the audience were deeply shocked
by the behaviour of the children as shown by Vigo. During the
projection the house-lights had to be switched on several times, and
the show ended almost in a free fight. In Paris, highbrow audiences
have the courage of their convictions.

Zero de Conduite is the only film about children in which no com-

86

promise of any kind is made with the sentimentality of the so-called
commercial cinema. Vigo had courage to show children as seen
by themselves, and better still, grown-ups as seen by children.

The majority of the English critics who saw this film at the Film
Society completely misunderstood it and took it for a comedy.
The poetry which runs through the film escaped them, as did the
truth of the presentation of children in their relations to one another.
Zero de Conduite had the spirit of revolt and the harsh satirical outlook
which is common to all sur-realist work. For although the sur-
realist leaders in France never recognized Vigo as one of the " pure
of heart," nevertheless, the scenes in the headmaster's study, those
of the afternoon walk and of the dormitory can be quoted as per-
fect examples of sur-realism, just as a poem by Eluard or a painting
by Max Ernst, and better, perhaps, than the films of Bunuel.

After %ero de Conduite, Vigo prepared a whole series of scripts and
worked out all kinds of financial schemes ; a film with Blaise Cen-
drars, another with G. de la Fouchardiere, whose La Chienne had
impressed all of us, as well as a film on the convict settlements with
Dieudonne.

Delays and disappointments could not discourage him; he stuck
to his work. At last he managed to get the production of U Atalante
moving. It was an important film, and Vigo might have imagined
that he had passed the period of his worst difficulties.

The work of the film is conceived and carried out with the greatest
enthusiasm. The Hungarian actress, Dita Parlo, who had worked
for Pommer, the great French comedian, Michel Simon, Daste of
the Compagnie des Quinze, who had played already in Zfro de Con-
duite, and Gilles Margaritis, also from Les Quinze, whose work was
to be a revelation, form the cast. The music is composed by Maurice
Jaubert. The subject is vast and simple. Kauffman's camera work
is superb. So U Atalante has every chance of success.

The film is finished. Vigo falls seriously ill. Everyone round him
knows that he is doomed. His wife and his friends do all they can
to lighten his sufferings. Meanwhile, U Atalante is put into the
hands of the distributors. The sur-realism of its story with a barge
for a hero against a severe background of canals frightens the trade
and it insists on making a box-office version.

A theme song is added of which the title is self-explanatory, "Les
Chalands Qui P assent." This title becomes the title of the film,
and as a final insult, close-ups of a popular music-hall artiste are
superimposed more or less throughout. The mutilation of his work
is a torture to Vigo during the last weeks of his illness.

Such was the life of one of the most gifted of young French direc-
tors. He could have made great films. He possessed enormous powers
not only of imagination, but also of action. And above all, he had

87

the gift of finding a true poetry in the world of the camera. This
poetry of reality was his contribution, and it is the chief justification
for films to-day. With the French film industry in its present state
his loss is a serious blow. In the French studios such men as he are
rare.

From a child in prison with his father, Jean Vigo developed into
a man greatly in revolt against the injustices of his generation.
Harassed ceaselessly by the Censors and the trade, he personifies the
progressive film director in his fight against the stupidity and
hypocrisy of the ordinary cinema-world.

CHAPLIN'S NEW FILM

MACK SCHWAB

While Hollywood contemplates deserting black-and-white films for
Technicolour, and continues to stuff its productions with dialogue,
Charlie Chaplin slowly creates his second non-talkie picture since
the advent of sound.

Untitled as yet, his movie is being shot silent. Music and perhaps
rhythmical dialogue similar to the opening shot in City Lights will
be dubbed in afterwards. The story has an industrial background,
and concerns a tramp, who gets a job in a factory, becomes en-
meshed in the machinery, falls in love with a girl, only to have her
leave him in the end. Familiar Chaplin stuff. It should be ready
for release in the spring.

I was on the set during a prison sequence. Chaplin gets there
through a gag appropriate to the present day. He saw a red flag
drop off the back end of a lumber truck. He picked it up, and
waving it, called the driver to stop. A police riot squad with tear
gas and clubs mistook him for a Communist inciting revolution,
and clapped him in jail. Chaplin likes the easy life of jail so much
that he refuses to aid a prison break — in fact he succeeds in spoiling
the prisoner's escape.

It is very exciting watching Chaplin rehearse. The scene is slap-
stick, with guards and some prisoners (one of whom is a hard-boiled

88

From the
factory sequence
in Chaplin's
new film

Chaplin

on the set

during production

of his third

and as yet

untitled

sound-film

From "II Canale Degli Angeli," a Venezia-Film Production
directed by Francesco Pasinetti from a scenario by P. M. Pasinetti

giant whose hobby consists incongruously in composing delicate
needlework). Chaplin acts out the movement of each character,
plays his own part and then the parts of those who come in contact
with him. Over and over for hours the action is rehearsed. There
is talk, but the sense is clear in the pantomime. Chaplin himself
speaks only occasional monosyllables. Quietly, patiently, he moulds
the scene into a rhythmical whole. Cues, pauses, steps, gestures are
exactly learned. "Wait until he's crossed over to there. Then you
come here. No, stall until the cue. That's it. Now we'll try it again,"
he says with a soft mellow good-humoured voice. Again, and again,
and again. Chaplin worries over a movement, considers, paces out
steps. Gags are improvised. Chaplin hands the giant his embroidery
as the latter is led off by the guards. The material at hand is made
use of. Chaplin starts to lean against the bars, only his hand passes
through, and he stumbles. The prison door is used to knock out a
few of the prisoners.

While Chaplin plans out the action, he senses the place and time
for the close-ups. He shoots a long key-shot, and breaks it up into
close-ups for emphasis. His script is completely worked out, key-
shot by key-shot.

Finally he is ready to see the effect he has worked out. His assistant
director acts as his stand-in, and takes his place in the action.
Chaplin watches through the camera. An amusing contrast, his
assistant is plump middle-aged, with glasses. Chaplin laughs at one
of the gags. "That's good! " he says about a comical chorus of hands
reaching through the bars at his assistant who holds a revolver.
Corrections are made. He is satisfied. He asked for a glass of water
and a cigarette. Pause after the long strenuous rehearsal. The huge
prisoner is dripping with sweat. Some one leans over and offers
advice. Chaplin thinks the suggestion good, and incorporates it.

"Now, boys, we're going to take it," Chaplin says. You can hear
the camera motor, as you can't of course in sound movies. A re-
volver, which must be thrown to a certain spot, does not reach it.
Cut. The revolver fails again. Once more. The whole action is
run through. Chaplin is not satisfied. Five times. Finally it is done.

Chaplin shoots from five to twenty-five takes for every one used.
In City Lights three hundred thousand feet of film were shot for
the seventy- five hundred on the screen. Chaplin does his own
cutting. Literally, he cuts it piece by piece in the cutting room.
Last Sunday he was cutting and splicing all day.

He composes his own musical score. In fact, he does everything.
Most of his co-workers have been with him since he began making
independent pictures.

There is only one Chaplin in Hollywood.

91

THE FILM ABROAD

THE AMERICAN YEAR

KIRK BOND

As I write, at the end of the year, the lists of " ten-bests " are being
drawn up and will shortly appear in the papers. They promise to
include some excellent pictures. The Barretts of Wimpole Street, The
House of Rothschild, One Night of Love, Of Human Bondage, Judge Priest,
What Every Woman Knows, Viva Villa — these will be found in most
lists. Most lists, on the other hand, will not include Blood Money,
Fog over 'Frisco, Dubarry, or The Firebird, a quartet which, with the
somewhat more eligible Crime Without Passion, possibly comprehends
the best filmic work done in America this year. There are, of course,
Cleopatra, an admirable antique; The Scarlet Empress, an imitation
of Gance on a drunk; Our Daily Bread* cruelly exposing the limita-
tions of Vidor; and The Merry Widow, Lubitschean only in the title;
as well as Milestone's pot-boiler The Captain Hates the Sea, and the
usual cartoons. But it would be difficult to find five other films
which contain as much good material as the quintet I have men-
tioned.

Some, who will admit the merits of Brown and the Hecht-Mac-
Arthur-Garmes combination, may wronder at the other three. Yet
I doubt if, save Brown, there is another director in America with
the creative ability of William Dieterle. In the old days he was a
UFA star. He played the Poet in Waxworks, and Valentine in
Faust. In Hollywood he began on foreign language versions, turned
to original productions, and achieved his first success in The Last
Flight, some three years ago. The following year he produced Six
Hours to Live. In both films he added to an admirable sense of con-
tinuity an extraordinary atmosphere of ghostly horror and madness.
It was like nothing that had ever been done before. The terror of
lunacy that lurked in the one, the eerie unreality of the other, were
terribly real, not simply fantastic effects. If there was a likeness,
it was to Stroheim. Behind both lay the same curious and frightening
sense of spiritual confusion, the same desperation of a man lost in a
wilderness. Dieterle was yet some way behind the director of Greed,
but the similarity wras apparent.

Last year, for his one important film, Dieterle completely forgot
the deep issues of the two earlier pictures, and produced the utterly
charming Adorable, all cake-icing and Dresden china, and one of
the finest things of its kind since Cinderella and A Waltz Dream.

This year he has made nothing of lasting importance, but each
* Known in Britain as The Miracle of Life . . . Ed.

92

picture has had good things in it that make it filmicly more in-
teresting than many films more entertaining and more satisfying in
the round. Fog over 'Frisco was particularly distinguished by its
breathless speed and constant movement. It is the fastest film-
drama I know. Of the two pictures of the fall and early winter,
Madame du Barry (as we are asked to call it) is the more enjoyable.
I know it will not make the lists, and yet I can hardly see why.
Probably because it is "smart" or "flippant"; for the standard of
American film-critics is unbelievably high, too high to be true.
One could write a small book about their point of view. They, the
critics, were unanimous in praise of the eminently respectable
Berkeley Square, because it was what they thought educated people thought
was genuine "eighteenth century." Dubarry, on the other hand, is
not, yet to me it is the best eighteenth century I remember since
Leni's Man who Laughed, and only inferior to the first Dubarry.

It is just lively enough to be convincing. There is no obvious
effort to go back two hundred years. One is simply there, and not
bothered by a specious solemnity or an equally specious hilarity
injected for the sake of "atmosphere," both of which helped to
spoil Jew Suss. Reginald Owen's "After me, the deluge," is that
miracle of speeches, an historic remark that actually sounds true.
And if Dolores del Rio is no one's idea of the favourite, she is yet a
very satisfactory baggage, and a plausible Dubarry. The only
objection one might have is that the continuity is too fast for a
leisurely age. Yet even this suits well with the intricate imbroglio
which provides the plot, and is evidently meant to be enjoyed rather
than understood.

The Firebird is not such a good picture. It is, for the most part,
smooth but undistinguished. Dieterle introduces, however, in the
little fellow, who could not say whether he had heard a gun-shot
(for "A gun-shot! Ho! A gun-shot is soon over — bang — like that,
but this terrible noise all day, hammering, people shouting, police-
men . . ."), a relative of the mad aviators in The Last Flight and the
trembling secretary in Six Hours, and the shot of his banging on the
door, seen beyond an enormous stuffed pelican which fills half the
screen and nods at each attack, is one to be remembered. It is so
frantic, so desperate, yet so helpless.

Is it fanciful to see in this chaos of Stroheim and now Dieterle
something of more than individual importance, something funda-
mentally American? Is it a coincidence that the close of Greed is
essentially the close of Moby Dick? or that the at times symbolic
unreality of Six Hours echoes Hawthorne? These are deep questions,
but they do not seem wholly unjustified. However, they cannot be
answered here. For the present, it is enough to express the hope that
we shall see still finer Dieterles.

93

ACTIVITY IN GERMANY

German education authorities have decided to introduce the cinema
as a means of instruction wherever films can speak more impres-
sively to the learning child than any other medium. For the
thorough organization of this new method of teaching a special
government bureau has been created. This Reichs-S telle fur den [In-
terne htsfilm will supply some 60,000 schools with 16 mm. projectors.
The production of the necessary films will be entrusted to suitable
directors under the supervision of an expert teacher. The films will
be chiefly silent and will be supplied to schools accompanied by a
textbook containing explanations, short lectures, literature and other
material for the teacher. Every school child throughout Germany
will contribute 20 pfennigs towards the realization of this plan.

Another educational film organization just formed is the Reichs-
vereinigigung Deutscher Lichtspiel-Stellen, which aims to develop the
cinema as a means of cultural and instructional entertainment.
Affiliated to it are over 3000 other bodies, such as educational
associations, scientific organizations, cultural societies, sporting
clubs, religious film societies. Attached is a profit-sharing renting
organization and an information bureau which advises societies
regarding programmes, etc. Foreign as well as German films of
worth are given support. Man of Arran and PaWs Bridal Trip
(Danish) have already drawn record attendances. Besides the
erection and operation of special educational cinemas in the prin-
cipal German cities, the cultivation of the full-length feature educa-
tional film is one of the main objects of this new organization.

Among forthcoming films planned by Ufa is still another version
of the life and death of Joan of Arc, whose part will be played by
Angela Salokker of the Munich State Theatre. A musical film on
the youth of Johan Sebastian Bach is to be produced for the 250th
anniversary of his birth. Another German composer, Weber, will
figure in a new Cicero film, Invitation to the Dance. The central
figure in another film will be Oliver Cromwell, under whose iron
rule England had an early experience of dictatorship.

Emil Jannings, who has recently returned after an absence of
several years, has just finished a Deka film, The Old and the Young
King, dealing with the conflict between Frederic the Great and his
father. Europe Films has announced the production of a film
founded on the life of Rembrandt.

One of the most important events of the present season was
the premiere of the Bavaria-Tofa production, Peer Gynt, at the Berlin
Capitol. Hans Albers plays the principal part. The direction is
by Dr. Wendhausen and the photography by Carl Hoffman.

94

MISCELLANY

I.C.E— A REPLY TO G. F. NOXON

RUDOLF ARNHEIM

If it is true that the film, like other things in this world, needs an
international court of appeal, whose intervention conciliates the
clash of interests and national egotisms, and which applies to every
new production in the sphere of the film an assessment of value un-
coloured by self-love and the patriotic pride of the country of origin,
then G. F. Noxon has done the film, and thereby all of us, an ill
turn. He declared, in the last number of Cinema Quarterly, that the
International Institute of Educational Cinematography in Rome,
the sole international institution concerned with films existing at
the present day, is of absolutely no use, not even for Fascist propa-
ganda, which at Mussolini's behest and under cover of the League
of Nations, it is supposed to carry on. In short, it is a sheer waste of
money.

Noxon is trying by this means to undermine the moral support,
which is as necessary as the financial, to an institute of this kind.
Therefore the readers of Cinema Quarterly may be willing to permit
one whom they know as a friend of the art of cinema, and who has
had an opportunity to form his own opinion about the matter under
dispute, to present a short statement of the position.

What work is the Institute doing? It has made a comprehensive
collection of books and periodicals; it has promoted a number of
congresses, among them the International Congress of Educational
Films last April, at which forty countries were represented; it
organized the International Exhibition of Film Art in August 1934
in Venice; it has published twenty-one pamphlets in five languages,
and it issues a monthly magazine and a bulletin, Les Nouvelles Cine-
matographiques. But it is not on all these things that I wish to lay
stress, since their significance depends obviously on whether they
are well or badly done, and on that point everyone can form his
own opinion. I wish rather to emphasize three aspects of the work
of the Institute, as to whose value there can, in my opinion, be no
dispute.

After working for four years, the Institute has achieved a customs
agreement whereby all films, recognized by the Institute as having
educational value, may be sent from one country to another free
of customs duty. This agreement has, so far, been signed by twenty-
five countries, including France, Italy, America and Great Britain;

95

it has been ratified, so far, by six countries.

At the Baden-Baden and Stresa conferences, in May and June
1934, the Institute brought about a standardization of the sub-
standard film. The new norm under the title " Standard I.G.E. " has
been accepted, up to now, by the British (sic), French, German and
Italian film industries. The consent of the Americans is to be ex-
pected.

In collaboration with outstanding experts in all countries, the
Institute has collected the material for the "Film Encyclopaedia, "
which will make available, in three large volumes, a detailed account
of the technical development, art, history, economics, politics and
legislation of the film. Only by brief indications can I suggest here
what a unique aid will thus be placed at the disposal of all those in-
terested in films. The " Encyclopaedia " covers forty-five subjects, each
of which is further divided into a number of sub-headings. Here are
a few of these topics, chosen at random : history (aesthetic, economic,
technical) ; the film in various countries ; styles ; types of material ;
the documentary film; the scientific film; the educational film; film
production; the shooting of films; apparatus for filming; the moving
camera; position; lighting; photography; film architecture; film
manuscript; acoustics; uncut films; development and copying;
montage; renting; the cinema theatre; projection; legislation; the
state; the public; social aspects; film amateurs, film societies; the
cinema press ; directors ; producers ; actors. . . . The completed work
is to contain about three thousand headings in alphabetical order;
some of them occupy only about five lines, others equal a substantial
volume in themselves. The section on "Film tricks," for example,
contains the description of no tricks under as many sub-headings.
Of the more exhaustive articles one may mention: The History of
the Film (Earl Theisen of the Hollywood Film Museum), The
Technique of Film Photography (Guido Seeber), The Chemistry of
the Film and Electro-acoustics (the scientific experts of "Agfa" and
"Telefunken"), The Art of Make-up (Max Factor), Film Archi-
tecture (Erno Metzner and Hermann Warin), The Silent Film,
The German Film (Andor Kraszna-Kraus), The European Film
(Paul Rotha). If I may be permitted a personal allusion, the head-
ings of the section "^Esthetics" which I myself wrote, including such
topics as: the sound film, montage, lighting, movement, the colour
film, the film author, would, if put together, form a larger volume
than my book on "Film." And I am by no means the only con-
tributor to the aesthetic section of the "Encyclopaedia"!

In conclusion, I should like to draw attention to the fact that the
journal of the Institute has been appearing since 1st January 1935
under the title " Intercine," in an entirely new form. It goes beyond
the narrow limits of the educational film to furnish a monthly survey

96

of everything new that has been done and written in the sphere of
the art, technical achievement, economics and politics of the film.

Noxon calls the Institute a piece of machinery for Italian propa-
ganda. I have been working for over a year in the Institute. I am
a foreigner and believe myself unbiased. In all cases I have been in
a position to observe that it was Luciano de Feo's endeavour to
secure the collaboration of outstanding men in all countries and to
make use of the material supplied by them in the true spirit of inter-
national objectivity. Why, in spite of all this, should the Italian
Government find it to its interest to subsidize the Institute? Well,
in my opinion, because it would enhance Italy's prestige if so
important a factor in modern life as the film had its international
headquarters in Rome. Rome is anxious to become again what it
once was. Is this explanation adequate?

CAMERA MOVEMENT

The first essential of a moving-picture is necessarily movement.
This has two aspects: an objective, that is to say in the material
surveyed; and a subjective, that is to say in the eye of the camera.
The purpose of the latter may be said to be the active interpretation
of the former — working in such a way as to bring out by selection
and emphasis special points of detail or of subjective mood.

No film, it is clear, can be made without an intimate interplay
of the two elements ; but it is also true that it is the second which
chiefly distinguishes the film from other dramatic forms; and it is
therefore with this that we are here concerned.

Subjective movement in a film has two alternative renderings.
It is possible for us actually to follow the progress of the camera
from point to point; or we may cut out the intervening stages and
concern ourselves only with the points of rest. This latter method,
in the use of which movement is achieved by the flashing from one
stationary set-up to another, and which leaves everything to the
cutter, is that favoured by such Russian directors as Pudovkin and
Eisenstein.

The common usage of the Russians, to whom moving-camera
shots are anathema, is completely opposed to that prevalent in the
Western cinema. Here and in America, every other shot taken is a
moving-shot ; and at the same time the potentialities of constructive
editing are to a great extent simply ignored. Somewhere between
the two extremes come the better of the Continental directors:
Clair, Pabst, and, if we may include him among the Continentals,
Lubitsch.

Since the Russians have earned for themselves the reputation of
knowing more about cinema than any others of our time, it will
repay us to consider their reasons, theoretical and otherwise, for
neglecting a method which, it would seem, has nothing but a positive
enlargement of scope to offer us ; which, indeed, to all appearances,
contains something absolutely vital to the film.

Pudovkin, in his book, Film Technique, says: "When we wish
to apprehend anything, we always begin with the general outlines,
and then, by intensifying our examination to the highest degree,
enrich the apprehension by an ever-increasing number of details."
Proceeding from this, he goes on to explain how in the film we have
to eliminate the effort involved in the normal advance from general
to particular, and aim always directly at the emphatic point. This
he refers to as an "elimination of the points of interval."

But such an account of the processes of apprehension and con-
scious observation is surely only partially valid. Perception, even
when it apprehends detail, apprehends it against a background:
the latter only penetrates to a minor degree, perhaps, but it is
definitely there. It is this fact that the hammer-emphasis of the
perpetual cross-cut close-up denies; and that the technique of the
moving-camera, linking up point to point and giving us in the tran-
sition background as well as detail, reaffirms.

We are given to understand that the moving-camera shot is
rejected because it tends too much to remind the spectator of the
camera's presence. In actual fact, however, it only does so when
abused (as, unhappily, it so often is) ; and in any case the argument
is a weak one, for does not a procession of ingeniously strung-
together close-ups equally recall to the spectator the omnipresent
hand of the editor? Either way, thorough-going naturalism is
defeated. Such naturalism, constantly pursued by certain of the
Russians though it be, is a Jack-A-Lantern which can never be
captured.

The camera must make its own pattern, as Pudovkin has said.
The only thing is, that unless we intend to deal with pure abstractions
we must still retain the impression and a good deal of the form of
recognizable reality. That is why I press the claims of the moving
camera, and assert that the eternal unvaried stationary close-shot
inevitably degrades itself, becomes bewildering and meaningless.
Over-emphasis is as bad a fault as under-emphasis. The particular
becomes significant only when thrown up in relief against the
general, the relatively unimportant.

Practical objections to the moving camera are of a different type.
They are based mainly on the great expense of the preparations
frequently required ; and also no doubt partly on the marked misuse
to which the method is subject in the West.

98

Above — Annabella in "Marie/' a Hungarian film directed
by Paul Fejos

Below — One of the lavish sets in "The Dictator/' a forth-
coming Toeplitz Production directed by Victor Saville, with
Madeleine Carroll and Clive Brook in the cast

Elisabeth Bergner in " Escape Me Never/'
a new British and Dominions film directed
by Paul Czinner

On the whole, I regard moving-camera shots and constructive
cutting as inseparable for a completed effect. The ideal is an alter-
nation according to a previously-elaborated scheme of moving and
static shots, the one or other predominating with the trend of mood
and intention. In this connexion it is to be noted that the camera
should hardly ever cease to move in the middle of a shot. It has the
effect of a retardation, a throwing-back of the spectator into his
seat: it does what the Russians deplore, reminds us of the camera.
The only correct way to bring a camera-movement to an end is to
cut the whole shot against a static shot from a different position.

A. Vesselo.

MOSCOW FILM FESTIVAL

Commencing on 20th February there will be held in Moscow a Film
Festival at which a series of the most recent Russian sound-films
will be exhibited, together with a selected number of European and
American productions. Facilities will be offered for a study of the
development of the Russian cinema during the past fifteen years,
and special travel arrangements have been made by Intourist Ltd.,
who will grant a reduction of fifty per cent, on their ordinary fares
to visitors attending the Festival. There will also be a reduction on
the cost of accommodation in Russia.

The Russian films to be exhibited will include The Touth of Maxim
(Kostintseff and Trauberg), Peasants (Ermler), Hot Days (Sarchy
and Henifer), New Gulliver (Ptushko), The Private Life of Peter Vino-
gradojf (Macheret), Love and Hate (Gendelstein), Komsomol (Ivens)
and several Meshrabpom colour shorts.

BOOKS

MAN OF ARAN. By Pat Mullen. (London: Faber, 8s. 6d.)

" Man of Aran " is an excellent tale and to some extent a good record
of film production. Pat Mullen gives Maggie, Mike and King their
share of fineness and bravery. Mr. and Mrs. Flaherty are portrayed
as grand people, but Pat fails to express Flaherty's importance to this
particular film and to films as a whole. To appreciate this im-
portance, the difference between Flaherty and a studio director
must be understood. On ninety-five per cent, of the films made in
studios the director is not an essential. He is merely a financier's
mouthpiece. Flaherty's importance to a production and to the
development of films can be judged by the history ofNanook. Flaherty
landed twenty years ago in a frozen country. His equipment, com-
pared to modern stuff, was crude. He had a wooden Bell Howell —

101

the thirtieth made. In three months with the help of two Eskimos
he had built a lab. and cutting room. His water was got from an
ice hole and carried in gasoline barrels on dog sledges. He printed
with reflected sunlight and turned his acetylene projector by hand.
Eighteen months later Flaherty was thawing out in New York
with the first documentary ever made. Very few critics of the time
realized the size and importance of the foundation Flaherty had
laid. Very few do to-day.

Pat Mullen does not pretend to criticize. He realizes that
Flaherty is a great man and wisely does not pass judgment.

John Taylor.

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII. Story and Dialogue
by Lajos Biro and Arthur Wimperis. (London : Methuen, 3s. 6d.)
At last a complete scenario has been published in book form. While
admitting the excellence of the precedent, however, one must admit
that there is little of technical interest in this little volume. It may be
supposed that the editing by Ernest Betts has resulted in considerable
simplification of the actual working script. Descriptions of scenes
and technical terms are cut down to a minimum and printed in
small italics (like stage-directions in a play) leaving the dialogue as
the reader's main interest. Even under these conditions, however,
some significant facts emerge. There are 239 scenes in the film, as
compared with about 2000 in such films as Jeanne Mey and Storm
over Asia. Of these, seventy-six are silent. Most of these are unim-
portant detail shots. Of the remaining 163 scenes, by far the greater
number have no interest apart from the dialogue. These figures
give some idea of the extent to which the ear has encroached on the
province of the eye. Most of the methods by which the genuine
film gets its effects are here necessarily excluded. One cannot do
quick- cutting with an average scene-length of twenty seconds, and
if there is no quick-cutting, slow-cutting is meaningless. The rela-
tions between scenes are of the most straightforward type imaginable:
effects of juxtaposition are naturally absent. The one faint-hearted
attempt at a crescendo climax is considered mostly in terms of
sound. The scenario, says Ernest Betts in his introduction, "reads
very like a play." G. F. D alton.

THE STREET OF SHADOWS. By Elizabeth Coxhead. (London:
Cassell, 7s. 6d.) A novel of the film trade in Wardour Street and of
the studios in Germany at the end of the silent era and the coming
of sound. Some of the characters are well-known personalities —
directors, actors and critics — but thinly disguised ; others are synthetic
figures with certain clearly recognizable traits belonging to more
than one notable character in the industry. An interesting and at
times amusing, if never deeply illuminating, volume.

102

FILMS OF THE QUARTER

SPIRIT OF EXPERIMENT

FORSYTH HARDY

Three films emerge from the quarter's cinema: because they are
experiments and because, without experiment, no art can make
progress. Under commercial conditions, experiment is expensive and
hazardous, and seldom undertaken, even when the necessary
imaginative ability is present; thus experiment is found most often
in work not inspired only by a desire to amass profit — in the products
of State-aided film units and in pictures made independently as
mediums of personal expression.

The G.P.O. Film Unit has followed Pett and Pott and Weather
Forecast with a more elaborate experiment in the expressive com-
bination of visual and aural images — The Song of Ceylon. The direc-
tion is by Basil Wright, and in shaping the material he worked in
close co-operation with Walter Leigh, Grierson and Cavalcanti.
The special achievement of the film is its complete breakaway from
the conventional narrative form and the substitution of a form of
construction in which sound plays an essential part. If this non-
visual continuity is not sympathetically appreciated, the film may
well appear, as Charles Davy suggests, " meandering instead of
marching." So unconventional is the form of the film that its
peculiar quality is not immediately apparent. Few experiments in
art are completely assimilated at the first contact, though it is the
exception for a film to be, because of its subtlety, incapable of instant
understanding.

A second experiment of the quarter is The Idea, by Berthold
Bartosch, based on a book of wood-cuts by Frans Masereel. This, an
attempt to use the cartoon form with a serious purpose, is probably
the result of an independent artist's desire to obtain complete and
continuous control over the film as a medium of expression — the
sort of control he cannot have under studio conditions. The theme
of the film is the birth of an idea and its reception by, and effect on,
society, and the action is represented by two-dimensional figures
against backgrounds at different levels which give depth to the
scenes. The film does not attempt to define the idea, contenting
itself with illustrating its reception; but its success in this limited
achievement suggests that the cartoon form is capable of adaptation
to a serious purpose, and that the conventional film form is not the
only one available for the artist with something to say.

103

The third film which seems to have the spirit of experiment is
Men and Jobs, one of the new Soviet importations. The title indicates
one of the film's departures from convention, judged from the
standards of the Western cinema, where it is exceptional to find
themes concerned primarily with man and his work. But the film
further reveals that the Soviet directors are fully conscious of the
expressive possibilities inherent in the sound-strip. More often than
not sound is used as a comic commentary, naturally and without
affectation. For example, when a schoolroom is made of a workers5
train, the engine, unseen, is heard puffing and groaning appropriate
comment while an engineer-pupil faced with a knotty problem in
elucidation fumbles and flounders. The sequence on the train is the
most effective piece of sound-film craftsmanship in a picture whose
technical quality, though often high, is not sustained. Its evidence of
enterprise gives the film a refreshing vigour seldom found in the
stereotyped product of the Western studios.

In the commercial cinema there is at present a tendency to avoid
reality and to escape into the colour and romance of the past. Turn
over any production schedule and you will not find a single film
that faces up to a modern problem, though there will be many that
invite us to take comfort in a flattering restatement of the achieve-
ments of our ancestors. Even the war films can no longer be said to
be of this generation. Forgotten Men eloquently displays the horrors
of war, but, of contemporary reference, says nothing more con-
structive than "Never again!" If it is true, as Philip Lindsay has
suggested, that these romantic historical films mirror the mood of
our generation, then our generation cannot want at the cinema
"films which keep our world before us." It is easier, of course, to
turn to the past than to look at the present. It is easier to search out
a romantic story from the history books than to select the essential
story of to-day and bring it to the screen.

CONTINENTAL IMPORTS

The importation of continental films has shown a seasonal increase
this quarter. Although no film with the possible exception of Clair's
Le Dernier Milliardaire which, together with Marie and Les Miserables,
is reviewed elsewhere, has produced any startling technical inno-
vations, the general standard has been unusually high.

The most interesting film of those under review here is Remous.
It is directed by Edmond Greville, an Englishman who played the
part of Louis in Sous les Toits de Paris, and has acted as assistant to
Clair. This is his first essay as a full-blown director of commercial
films. The cardinal virtue of Remous is its refreshing sparsity of

104

' :;"'"v%* ,\

i

" f :JU

Above — Vasa Jalovec as Paul in the Czecho-Slovakian film " Reka "
(Young Love)

Below — From " Le Dernier Milliardaire," Rene Clair's satire on financiers
and dictators

From "The Scarlet Pimpernel," Alexander Korda's latest London Film Production,
adapted from the novel by Baroness Orczy. Leslie Howard takes the part
of Sir Percy

dialogue. This in a French film would seem to be an example of
heroic restraint, but here the restraint is not merely heroic. It is
intelligent and apt. The theme — that of a husband physically in-
capacitated by a motor accident on his honeymoon — invites the
use of symbolism, and symbolism is very deftly introduced. The
film opens well with a clever suggestion of travel, and is continuously
interesting to the end. Look out in particular for the admirably
handled cabaret scene. As a whole the film lacks the consistent
grip of Crime Without Passion, and is rather untidy in its tempo. A
little tightening up in this respect would have made it a first-class
film. Greville has made an auspicious debut, and is a director to be
watched.

Refugees proves that, despite the exodus of so much talent from
the German studios, the UFA company can still produce an entirely
admirable film. Certain aspects of the film may be unpopular —
the remarkable resemblance of the hero (Hans Albers) to Captain
Goering, propaganda for the Nazi regime, and satire on the League
of Nations — but there is no doubt about the quality of the film as a
film. It bears the stamp of the German cinema at its best. The
direction is by Gustav Ucicky, who directed Morgenrot, and the
camera work is by Fritz Arno Wagner, who photographed many of
Pabst's films, notably The Loves of Jeanne Ney.

From Czecho-Slovakia we have had Reka. This is a simple,
wholly charming film, told deliberately, with a wealth of beautifully
photographed scenery. It is a typical example of the sort of film
we are now getting from the Continent — good, pleasant entertain-
ment, with no particular aspect outstanding. It poses no special
problem, introduces no significant devices in the way of sound,
photography, direction or general treatment. But it is all very
agreeable and has not the blatancy of the average Hollywood pro-
duction, or the nullity of the average British production.

The eagerly awaited Maskerade has been presented at the Academy.
Reports state that it has been a great success on the Continent,
particularly in Paris and Berlin. It will deservedly repeat that
success in England wherever foreign films are shown. Outwardly it
is just another frivolous story of amorous intrigue in a Viennese
theatrical-military-artistic setting. A lively lady is sketched clothed
solely in a mask and a muff. The sketch is accidentally published,
and complications follow. In the middle of the film the artist is
shot, and thereafter the characters, previously stereotyped, become
flesh and blood people, excellently observed. The film, moving in
another dramatic plane, loses none of its essential charm, and pro-
ceeds smoothly to an appropriate ending. Perhaps the most attrac-
tive thing about the film is that, although it has a light, superficial
story, the people in it are, on the whole, surprisingly real. Paula

107

Wessely, a Viennese stage actress, gives a remarkable performance,
very cleverly conveying a real depth of character while overtly
playing a precisely opposite part. Olga Tschechowa, who was in
The Student of Prague, gives a beautifully controlled performance.
Willy Forst, who was responsible for the foreign version of Unfinished
Symphony, has made a very smooth job of the direction. There is
some delightful music, and the atmosphere and settings are both
realistic and impressive.

The Rialto announced a season of continental films and began
with Jeanne, directed by Tourjansky. This was scarcely an auspicious
beginning. The story, which is sincerely told, is about a girl who
falls in love with a rather aimless young man whose mother wishes
him to marry money. In order to save him from disgrace she under-
goes an illegal operation and her child dies. Eventually they marry.
The greater part of the film is set in the 'eighties, but it is entirely
ruined by an absurd epilogue set in 1934 in which the couple, now
elderly, having adopted a daughter, bemoan the fact that their own
child (who would have been called Jeanne) died. There is a lot of
dialogue, very well translated by means of superimposed titles, and
it is excellently acted. Gaby Morlay plays the part of the girl, and
her performance should be seen.

J. S. Fairfax-Jones.

MEN AND JOBS

With Men and Jobs we have light in the East again. The Russian
directors, after a long period of what they would call, no doubt,
ideological difficulties, have found material and issues of material
which they can warm up as effectively as they did the material and
issues of the Civil War. Men and Jobs is about workers and, pecu-
liarly for a Russian film, about workers who find their heroism in
work. In the great period of Petersburg and Potemkin they found it
in war. The melodramatic excitement of blood and battle prompted
and formed the bludgeoning power of their cinema.

Peace-time preoccupations followed inevitably. They were more
sober. They, too, involved struggles — but with illiteracy, lack of
skill, lack of organization. They involved, for the first time, a certain
observation of people and affection for them. The Russian cinema,
with its old epileptic technique, wilted visibly. The directors could
not interpret, and the technique could not handle, the new situation.
Experiment, even failure, were necessary. Men and Jobs is significant
of the new approach. It demonstrates how a bunch of workmen set
themselves to achieve the tempo of American technique in building
a dam; and it is not the dam which is the triumph, but the tempo.

108

They do it humanly; not with sweat on their brows in the old
Russian manner, but with sweat at the midriff, in the new. That
is the quality of Men and Jobs, and it is the most pleasant and most
powerful sign in cinema since Pudovkin made a mess of his Simple
Case. That was undoubtedly the most important failure of all in the
period of experiment.

To round off the point, it is well to recall these intermediate
films. The General Line fell back melodramatically on a poisoning
kulak to make drama of co-operative farms. It devoted its intimate
observation — by default — to a milk separator. Earth similarly intro-
duced a murdering kulak. Turksib with drought, desert storm, and
snow-bound winter, fell back on the elemental appeal of epic.
Thunder Over Mexico went, with equal romanticism, to Mexico.
Counterplan used sabotage ; problem enough for the Russians, but still,
in a sense, a secondary problem. No one thought, like Sydney, to
look in his heart and write, or film, the really intimate and there-
fore more dramatic problem of a nation at school. The soldier
had come from the war, the peasant was in the factory, and a sorry
job they were making of their new and bewildering world. In A
Simple Case Pudovkin knew where the matter lay. He knew they
were deserting the home front with their filibustering records of
ancient victories, but did not know what to do about it, except by
imagistic reference to death and resurrection. So conscious, indeed,
was he of the problem that he said it all in Deserter. The home
front was all in all, however difficult. But, in the very act, he himself
deserted, as you will remember, for the machine guns of the Ham-
burg streets. Back, in other words, to blood and battle again. Even
when he described his Russian factory his heart was not really in it,
for he did not take the trouble to observe either his factory or his
factory workers. Men and Jobs is the more important, therefore. It
takes the trouble to observe both. The acting is not yet in the
highest cinematic tradition, for it is not sufficiently integrated in the
action, but that technical plaint is relatively unimportant. The
ideological advance means everything.

John Grierson.

THE SONG OF CEYLON

Production: John Grierson. Direction and Photography: Basil Wright.
Assistant Direction: John Taylor. Music: Walter Leigh.
After twice seeing The Song of Ceylon I still find it hard to criticise.
The first of its four sections I would call the most powerfully
enchanting piece of documentary anyone has yet made. It shows
the annual Buddhist pilgrimage up endless steps to the summit
of Adam's Peak, where the Buddha set his footprint before leaving
the earth. The choice and handling here of realistic detail

109

show a most sensitive economy, and the patient toil of the climbers
is quietly present, without any obvious display of camera tricks, in
the visual rhythm. Throughout, there is an occasional commentary
drawn from an account of the island written by Robert Knox in
the year 1680; the archaic phrases are spoken by Lionel Wendt, of
Ceylon, whose remote, grave voice exactly suits the film's atmosphere.
This commentary is a brilliant idea, but it means that Wright has
had to work within the limits of a very subtle mood not easy to
maintain. He is concerned almost entirely with native life, and
particularly with native dances, where Buddhism has thinly in-
fluenced a much earlier and more primitive religious tradition.
He shows us also the fishermen and the harvesters and the women
fetching water and other aspects of village life ; and as a sound-
background to one section there are fragments of disembodied com-
mercial dialogue which briefly suggest the invasions of Western
enterprise.

This section seems to me the weakest part of the film, for the
voices are ghostly, and the influence of England on Ceylon is not
at all ghostly; it is a forcibly transforming influence, leading to fever
and conflict. Wright might justifiably have dealt solely with the
persistence of native life and custom, away from the ports and
towns ; but those voices ought to mean more if they are to be there
at all. The use of sound and music in other parts of the
film is skilful and original, but the effect is always subdued;
and Wright, I feel, is inclined to become so absorbed in his
material that he forgets his audience. He attempts a symphonic
structure, in four movements, but, if the ordinary logic of docu-
mentary, based on factual narrative, is to be abandoned, some other
kind of logic ought to replace it. A purely imaginative logic, derived
from the suggestive power of related images, is not impossible, but
Wright brings off this subjective continuity only now and then. Too
often there is — so far as I can see — no essential reason why one
particular episode should follow another; and it is this discursive
tendency — meandering instead of marching — that makes the total
effect of the picture not quite satisfying. Too much of the film
belongs to Wright's private world; it is too nearly a meditation, not
quite enough of a communication.

But I must emphasise that I am applying the highest standards
to a film of exceptional quality; a film so full of graphic and ex-
pressive detail — for instance, the fisherman whose body lives in the
casting of his net — that incidental disappointments are the more
evident. The Adam's Peak sequence shows convincingly what can
be done in this reticent, reflective style; and its close, with the
camera following a water-bird flying over a lake in the early morning,
is something I shall always remember. Charles Davy.

110

LES MISERABLES

Production: Pathe-Natan. Direction: Raymond Bernard. Photography:
J. Kruger. Scenario: Andre Lang and Raymond Bernard. Art Direc-
tion: Jean Perrier. Music: Arthur Honegger. With Harry Baur,
Charles Vanel, Henry Krauss, Marthe Mellot, Gaby Triquet. Length:
9080 feet.

Hugo's vast novel has been filmed in two parts; this first instal-
ment takes the plot down to M. Madeleine's escape from prison
after the exposure of his convict past. Even so, there is more than
enough material here for one picture; and the special merit of Ray-
mond Bernard's direction is that he covers a lot of ground without
ever seeming to be in a hurry. Naturally, there must be large
omissions, obvious even to someone who, like myself, has not read
the book. For instance, the transformation of Jean Valjean, the
brutalized convict, into M. Madeleine, the generous, wealthy and
respected Mayor of Montreuil, has to be taken for granted ; and there
are various other rather abrupt transitions. But the main lines of
the story are given; and a solid, deliberate treatment is essential to
the atmosphere.

The central theme is a contrast between human feeling and legal
justice — or between love and revenge — and it is important to avoid
rhetorical over-emphasis. The assize-court scene, when M. Made-
leine reveals his identity in order to save an old peasant from con-
viction as Valjean, might easily have fallen into crude melodrama;
Bernard saves it by insistence on precisely realistic detail. Much of the
film's success, however, is due to the performance of Harry Baur, a
massive figure of a man whose acting has, nevertheless, the delicacy
which often goes with great reserves of strength under assured
control. As Valjean-Madeleine, he stands like a mountain in the
midst of the turbulent action ; and something of the heroic scale of
Hugo's conception receives in him a credible human form. The
supporting parts are all well played — the Bishop and the police
inspector are particularly good — and the photography is forcible
and clear.

Les Miserables is said to be the most expensive picture ever made
in France; it is, nevertheless, the best French production seen here
for many months.

Charles Davy.

Ill

LE DERNIER MILLIARDAIRE

Production: Pathe-Natan. Scenario and Direction: Rene Clair. Photo-
graphy: Rudy Mate and Louis Nee. Art Direction: Lucien Aguettane
and Lucien Carre. Music: Maurice Jaubert. With Max Dearly, Paul
Olivier, Raymond Cordy, Jose Noguero, Marthe Mellot. Length:
8100 feet.

Humour either defends or attacks. If it defends, it needs an
assured base and a plentiful supply of not really very dangerous
enemies. If it attacks, it needs a mood of reckless energy and a solid
target. To-day, typical humour attacks; and it is renouncing the
indirect attack expressed in the comic-pathetic lament of the out-
cast— the gesture of derision of the small boy as he runs away — and
is developing a conscious purpose of destruction. (Transition from
Chaplin to the Marx Brothers.) Rene Clair belongs in this contem-
porary camp of destructive satirists ; but he has never yet been free
to choose a solid target and shoot straight at it.

Le Dernier Milliardaire is nearly a satire on financiers and dictators
butalways, as soon as Clair has let off a few warning shots, someone,
rings the bell for the end of the round. The story is about Casinario,
a Riviera principality faced with ruin through loss of gambling
revenues during the economic depression. M. Banco, a native-born
millionaire, is summoned from America; he promises a huge loan in
return for the hand of the Princess. On arrival he establishes a dic-
tatorship, gets hit on the head during a palace revolution, and in-
augurates a crazy regime of inconsequent autocracy until another
crack on the head restores his wits. By this time the Princess has
eloped with a band leader, so M. Banco marries the Queen.

One sequence is brilliant: the Casinarians, owing to a currency
shortage, resort to barter, and a young man at the Casino, in-
tending to shoot himself, drops his revolver on a winning number
and is passed a pile of revolvers by the croupier. Some further
barter episodes are good, but soon over; other entertaining touches
are numerous but scattered; the music, based on the Casinarian
national anthem, is ingeniously diverting; the acting, with Max
Dearly as Banco, is competent; but the total effect is thin, jerky,
artificial. Clair is like a rebel put into the nursery to play with
puppets; and in a time of real dictatorships and real financial
oligarchies the antics of puppet imitations — who must not be too
realistic — are hardly good enough.

The future of the humour film does not seem to me very bright.
When Fascism is in the air — and it is in the air, more or less, in all
countries nowadays — the satirist has to play a lone hand ; and in the
film industry that means impotence.

Charles Davy.
112

DEUTSCHLAND ZWISCHEN
GESTERN UND HEUTE

Direction and Photography: Wilfried Basse. Music: Wolfgang feller.

More than any other recently shown, this film reveals the dis-
tinctions between the British and Continental understanding of
documentary. Cross-sectioning with laborious detail and some
rather shaky photography almost every aspect of German life
before the Third Reich, it typifies the Continental school of realism
by observing only the pictorial surface of the scene and avoiding
the main social issues. It was said for Basse by Arnheim in an
earlier Cinema Quarterly that he intended to show how the styles of
living in former times are still affecting modern life, that from the
prehistoric forms of a primitive economic system the film leads
historically over the Gothic style to Renaissance, from baroque to
rococo, from the Biedermeierzeit to the complacency of the present
middle-class society, the provincial character of which makes possible
the crescendo of a modern city's activity. But I doubt very much
whether Basse does anything of the sort.

We have all the ingredients of a photographer's album, towns-
people and country folk, pastimes and processions, customs and con-
ventions, industry and agriculture, mediaeval city and modern
metropolis. They are all well shuffled and labelled, arranged in
order like the illustrations of a good picture-book, with the camera
roving here and there and roundabout, albeit unsteadily. But,
as with Ruttmann, so with Basse. Nothing is related socially.
Nothing is said creatively. Nothing really lives, except at twenty-
four pictures a second. The long-winded procession of images
meanders along without drive or purpose. Running to story-feature
length, the film reveals the weakness of a purposeless theme. Un-
related geographically, the images are put together in some form of
contrast from which the mildest of implications might be drawn.
A few fleeting comments on the childishness of official parades,
passing observations on the idiotic behaviourism of the petite bour-
geoisie, but that is all. It lacks, may I say it, a propagandist urge.

But, most important of all, it exposes beyond argument that no
matter how big the subject or how wide the location, documentary
must be short, concise and every foot to the point.

Paul Rotha.

113

THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. (British. London Films.) Alexander Korda's
new film has the wit and sophistication characteristic of the London Films pro-
duct; but, more fortunate than The Private Life of Don Juan, which in some degree
also had those qualities, it has a rounded and smoothly flowing script and a highly
skilled actor as a star attraction. The scenarists — Robert E. Sherwood of Reunion
in Vienna, S. N. Behrman of Queen Christina, and Lajos Biro and Arthur Wimperis
of The Private Life of Henry VIII — have retained the liveliest scenes of the Baroness
Orczy novel and have added something of humour and sophistication. We are in
"the finest age of English taste," and the film always tries to suggest this atmo-
sphere. Were it not for the polished acting, particularly of Leslie Howard, fallow
patches, occasionally apparent, would be more plainly revealed; but Howard is
studied, resourceful and charming, his timing perfect as always; and he is in
skilled company with Nigel Bruce, Raymond Massey and Merle Oberon. It is
significant that a major influence on the film is the art direction of Vincent Korda.
Harold Young (after Rowland Brown's departure) directed, and the camera-work,
which gives the film some picturesque moments, is by Hal Rosson, from M.-G.-M.

F. H.

THE IRON DUKE. (British. G.-B.) "Lives of great men all remind us how like
George Arliss they were." This aspect of the film — it was no surprise — apart, it
may be said in its favour, that it attempts a bigger subject than the average seven-
penny novelette or penny dreadful of the screen. In the course of the spectacular
flirting with history, occasionally sentiments are expressed which are capable of
modern application — talk among the Allies of demanding indemnity and Wel-
lington's reference in the House of Lords to Britain's implication in European
affairs. These, with the superficial account of Wellington's activities during the
years 1815-16, give the film, on paper, a slight significance. But on the screen it
lacks life and form, and Victor Saville's direction is flat and uninspired. For one
moment the film breaks out free from what is probably more the Arliss than the
Saville influence: during the Waterloo episode and, particularly, the vivid and
exciting charge of the Scots Greys. Here, at least, there is opportunity to appre-
ciate the quality of Curt Courant's photography.

F. H.

MARIE (Franco-Hungarian. Osso Films). — This French version of a Hungarian
national legend, directed by Paul Fejos with Annabella as star, illustrates how dis-
astrous is the naturalistic approach to a theme which demands fanciful treatment.
Until near the end, it is a more or less bald account (in the Gaynor tradition) of
the hardships endured by a servant girl in search of work. Then the girl is trans-
lated to heaven (with Folies Bergere backcloth), which results in a disconcerting
clash of styles. We have been invited to believe in a real tragedy — betrayed girl
dismissed by harsh mistress — and without warning comes the intrusion of fantastic
elements. Marie appears to have been deliberately made as an "international"
film; but it is not sufficiently national to achieve its object. Dialogue is sparsely
used to facilitate dubbing, and for no other reason. The problems presented by
the sound-track are evaded rather than solved.

Campbell Nairne.

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. (British. G.-B.) Alfred Hitchcock is
much more comfortable and successful with this melodrama of a plot to assassinate
a foreign statesman in London than he was with the romantic musical comedy of
Waltzes from Vienna. The story by Charles Bennett and D. B. Wyndham Lewis
has at least its implausibilities and is seldom reasonable; and it is a measure of
Hitchcock's melodramatic success that he can still create suspense in these cir-

114

Greta Garbo in "The Painted Veil/' an
adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel
directed by Richard Boleslavski

THE PRESS UNANIMOl

LONDON F I L /

THE SCARL

0 OBSERVER : — " I unhesitatingly give the accolade for the year's best
picture to " The Scarlet Pimpernel," and it is rather comforting to find,
after all the hard things we have had to say from time to time about our
native product, that a British production scrambled into 1934 with a
ten-day margin has proved to be the most moving, sensitive and consis-
tently entertaining of the year's films."

0 SUNDAY TIMES : — " As an adventure, or series of adventures, it is
unsurpassable. In every respect it constitutes a triumph for the British
Film World. It deserves to outrival the popularity of ' Henry VIII.'

1 recommend this film unreservedly to all."

0 MORNING POST : — " An extraordinarily fine film steeped in adven-
ture and gallantry."

0 DAILY MAIL : — " This film is distinguished by the fidelity of the
narrative and the general excellence of the acting by a remarkable cast
headed by Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon. It is likewise adorned by
the magnificent photography of settings of exclusive loveliness. I prophesy
a spectacular success wherever it is seen."

• SUNDAY PICTORIAL:—4' ' The Scarlet Pimpernel ' is a film of sheer
loveliness."

• EVENING STANDARD :— " This is the best film that Korda has
produced. There can be no doubt about that. It is the last word in
historical films, witty, exciting, romantic and beautiful all in one."

0 NEWS CHRONICLE : — " In its glamour, suspense, beauty, wit and
humour, this must certainly be recommended among the leading pictures
of the year."

0 DAILY EXPRESS :— ' It makes you feel young again. Here Leslie
Howard is in his element. You will hear sharp little bursts of applause
on his behalf as many as three times in the film."

• DAILY TELEGRAPH :— " ' The Scarlet Pimpernel ' will undoubtedly
have a very long run at the Leicester Square Theatre. Alexander Korda
should repeat the world-wide success he had with ' Henry VIII.' Indeed,

1 should not be surprised if ' The Scarlet Pimpernel ' does even better."

-.PRODUCED BY

ACCLAIM THE LATEST

PRODUCTION

PIMPERNEL

0 THE TIMES : — " The spirit of the book is in it. It is guileless adven-
ture unspoilt by any of the so-called improvements which a less discreet
studio might have invented."

# SUNDAY EXPRESS :— " It is the best thing I have ever seen Leslie
Howard do, and he has done many good things. I am not sure that it
is not the performance of the year."

# SUNDAY DISPATCH :— " Charged with audience dynamite ! "

# SUNDAY REFEREE :— " ' The Scarlet Pimpernel ' is a great British
film, a thrilling, wonderful entertainment."

# DAILY MIRROR :— " ' The Scarlet Pimpernel,' with its gripping and
deftly constructed story and picturesque settings, is a stirring entertain-
ment which should have a world-wide success."

0 DAILY SKETCH : — " I advise you to make a point of seeing this
famous tale so vividly told on the screen."

# SUNDAY GRAPHIC :— " Superb is the only word for Leslie Howard's
performance."

# SUNDAY CHRONICLE :—" Alexander Korda has done it again.
Not only is this as good a film as we have ever made, but it shows Leslie
Howard as an even better actor than one would have ever suspected. All
this film is good — story, settings, general acting, and production."

0 OBSERVER : — " I should recommend that you make a bee-line for
the Leicester Square Theatre and see ' The Scarlet Pimpernel.' This
film is not only the best entertainment for the holiday season, but, I
would suggest, the most skilful bit of all-round craftsmanship that has
ever been done in a British Studio."

# DAILY HERALD :— " Korda's fresh triumph—' The Scarlet Pimpernel '
is a grand film."

# NEWS OF THE WORLD : — " It is a production which you should
enter into your diary with a note — ' must see this.' "

0 FILM WEEKLY : — " If anyone still doubts that Leslie Howard is one
of the most polished, resourceful and charming actors who have ever
graced the screen, let him see this ! "

AN D ER KORDA ,

Your Booking Difficulties
SOLVED!

• One of the greatest problems which face
organisers of cinema performances in connection
with film societies, clubs, institutes, schools, etc.,
is to know how to obtain the films they want :
where to apply for them : how much they cost.

• To overcome this difficulty CINEMA QUAR-
TERLY has established a central organisation,
with direct Wardour Street connections, which
will not only supply this information but will
carry out the necessary negotiations with the
appropriate renters.

• Enquiries are constantly being received from
all parts of the country, and many societies and
organisations are now using this service regularly
with complete satisfaction.

• CINEMA QUARTERLY makes no charge
for this new service which is intended as a con-
venience both to readers and to the trade,
through whose regular channels all bookings will
be arranged.

The only stipulation is that all enquiries must be accompanied by
a stamped and addressed envelope.

CINEMA QUARTERLY
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cumstances. His method, as Charles Davy has pointed out, is to attempt to make
melodrama realistic by keying it down into a casual, easy-going mood, with
clipped dialogue quietly spoken and a few very obvious displays of emotion ; this
apparently in the belief that melodramatic events will appear more exciting if
they are presented against the background of a normal world. Often, if not
always, his method produces the right result — in the "Tabernacle of the Sun"
sequence, in the dramatic episode of the Albert Hall concert and in the siege of
the gang's barricaded hide-out at Wapping (a reproduction of the Sidney Street
affair) . The excitement of those moments is in contrast to the artificiality of, for
example, the opening scenes in Switzerland. The acting is for the most part
simple and straightforward, but there is real subtlety in the performance of Peter
Lorre, the Dusseldorf murderer of M, as the anarchist leader. With Murder in
mind, the surprise of the film is the absence of any expressive use of sound.

F. H.

FORGOTTEN MEN. {British. B.I.P.) Devised and arranged by Norman Lee.
Unlike most previous war pictures, whose episodes were staged and artificial,
Forgotten Men is real and authentic, being composed of pictures taken between
1 9 14 and 1918 by official photographers from Britain, France, Germany, Italy
and Russia. The material is arranged chronologically, with comment by Sir
John Hammerton and by a number of ex-Servicemen who, in awkward inter-
polations, describe their personal experiences. Detailed documentary is not the
aim. Rather the aim of the film is to persuade those who see it that war is waste —
waste of human life, destruction of the countryside, the squandering of a nation's
resources, a brake on civilization. It is negative peace propaganda: it suggests
that war is a wasteful method of settling international disputes, but does not
point to another. As a revelation of the horror of war, the film depends on per-
sonal reaction. It ought to be shown, not in a super cinema, but in a water-
logged, draughty barn.

F. H.

THE ORIENT CRUISE FILMS: Sea Change, Northern Summer, People and Places,
Sheltered Waters.

Cruising has so much become a part of the nation's vacation that sooner or
later someone was certain to make the first intelligent cruise film. In actual fact,
Alexander Shaw has made a group of four resulting from material gathered by
himself and Evelyn Spice on Orient Line cruises during 1934. For the most part
nicely observed and intelligently shot, the films certainly succeed in their purpose ;
that is to say, they give some definite idea of the places you visit and the people
you meet as guests of this courteous shipping line, at the same time avoiding the
pitfalls of mere plain description. Whether interpreting the drama of a high-dive
or creating the leisurely mood of sun-bathing, Shaw has done his job with imagina-
tion aided by, in the main, some nice photography from George Noble. With the
sound, all is not quite so happy. Some revision might be necessary should the
films be eventually put out to the theatres. It is possible that Shaw may have
got into his head preconceived ideas of "orchestrated" and "imagistic" uses
of sound and, because of his anxiety to keep up with the times, introduced experi-
ments which were not justified by the screen material. This, as well as the fact that
two of the films lack construction and do not progress to any dramatic issue,
prompts the suggestion that, after the films have had their initial road-showing
to restricted audiences, Shaw be given the opportunity to condense his material
into a dramatically conceived two-reel documentary for theatre audiences where
it would be assured of wide success.

Paul Rotha.
119

POST HASTE. (British. G.P.O. Films. John Grierson.) An effective method of
putting history on the screen has proved elusive and the reconstruction of the
past has seldom been done with much satisfaction. In the romantic historical
films it has become a matter of fanciful, if not completely irrelevant, detail.
Henry's wives and Bruce's spider have taken the place of more significant ele-
ments. In recent years, history books have somewhat altered in character, and
students have been encouraged to probe into the documents of the past instead
of accepting someone's imaginative reconstruction. This new G.P.O. experiment,
Post Haste, may have interesting repercussions in this connection. It tells of some
three hundred years of Post Office history in this country, and is composed almost
entirely of period illustrations from the British Museum collection. They are mostly
prints and embody a contemporary comment on current affairs. They are care-
fully photographed and effectively edited by Humphrey Jennings. The result is
an intimate, exact and informative account. Occasional sound effects give life
to the old prints and a three-part commentary is humorous and instructive. The
film effectively points to one successful method of reconstructing the past.

Thomas Baird.

SCOTS AMATEUR FESTIVAL

Andrew Buchanan was the adjudicator at the second Scottish Amateur Film
Festival, held under the auspices of the Meteor Film Producing Society in Glas-
gow. This year the scope was widened and the competitions, divided into four
classes, were opened to English as well as Scottish clubs. The prize-winning film
was Seven Till Five, produced by the Glasgow School of Art Kinecraft Society.
This film, which gave an impression of a day in the College, Mr. Buchanan
described as a piece of real cinema. Its director, Norman McLaren, revealed an
intelligent understanding of film technique. In the class for story films, the award
was given to the Meteor Film Society's Situations Vacant, a consequence tale of the
dismissal of employees from a Glasgow office, directed by Stanley L. Russell.
The award in the class for interest films was divided between Seven Till Five and
The Outer Isles, W. H. George's film of the Hebrides. In the class for interest films
confined to Scottish entrants, the successful picture was Edge 0' Winter, a grouping
of shots in colour by Ian S. Ross. In the class for sound films was an ambitious
news-reel impression of the work of the Glasgow police. The Meteor Society,
organisers of the Festival, are to be congratulated on their efforts to encourage
amateur film-making and to guide the activities of societies along the most profit-
able channels.

RECORD OF SUBSTANDARD FILMS

In response to numerous enquiries Cinema Quarterly is compiling a
record of substandard films of a documentary, educational, or
experimental nature. Both amateur and commercial producers are
invited to submit details of sucn films, including contents, size,
length, and also rates and conditions of hiring.

We regret to announce the untimely death of Lewis Grassic Gibbon, following an
operation for peritonitis. Only thirty-three years of age, his interest in cinema was
very real, and he had hoped that his novel " Sunset Song " would be adapted for
the screen. He was about to commence the scenario when he became ill. The article
printed in this issue was one of the last things he wrote. — N.W.

120

CUTTINGS

As the art of the people, the screen must be allowed to reflect life truthfully,
and our job is to keep it so instead of allowing it to be forced into vulgarity or
saccharine side-channels. — Cecil B. de Mille, The Cinema.

Hollywood has never paid British traditions a finer compliment than in the
film shown here to-day for the first time, of Major Yeats-Brown's best seller,
Bengal Lancer. Of the original story nothing has been kept but the title, and there
is not a Yogi or a line of mysticism in the whole film. — Daily Telegraph.

Blessed events are jealously guarded secrets in Hollywood. . . . The Mervyn le
Roys managed to keep their Coming Event a secret for five months. — Motion
Picture.

The nation-wide church campaign to "clean-up" pictures has obtained such
good results that the West End Citizens' Association Censorship Committee has
decided further work will be unnecessary. — Washington Star.

There was a young American actress, called Claudette Colbert, of whom I
formed a very favourable opinion when I was in New York, but, alas, the poor
girl has gone to Hollywood — abandoned the stage for the bloody screen. Imagine
anyone preferring tinned salmon to fresh salmon. . . . Will Rogers and Eddie
Cantor are among the immortals. — St. John Ervine, The Era.

Hollywood actors can generally be relied upon in cases of emergency, but . . .
you can't get them to act crazy!

Walter Wagner, who is making Private Worlds — a story with the background of
an asylum — for Paramount, wanted five or six players who could act "slightly
nuts," as he put it. He had given tests to over 200 when he finished for the day,
but he is still wanting his five or six players. None of the 200 had the faintest ideas
of how to act "a trifle cuckoo." — Paramount Picture News.

What the Picture Did for Me. 365 Nights in Hollywood. Two nights was too long
for this one. Jimmy Dunn miscast again, and this Mitchell and Durant are another
pair of radio stars that when seen on the screen are very unfunny. In fact, they are
worse than that. They are an acute pain in the neck to every part of the anatomy
that I know of. — A. E. Hancock, Showman's Review in Motion Picture Herald.

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS NUMBER

RUDOLF ARNHEIM. Author of " Film." Now preparing a book on Television-

KIRK BOND. Baltimore film critic.

ALBERTO CAVALCANTI. Director of En Rade, Pett and Pott, etc.

CHARLES DAVY. Film critic of " The Spectator " and " The Yorkshire Post."

LEWIS GRASSIC GIBBON. Author of " Sunset Song," " Cloud Howe," etc.
Has written numerous novels and works on mythology under the name
J. Leslie Mitchell.

JOHN GRIERSON. Producer of G.P.O. Films.

J. S. FAIRFAX-JONES. Director of Everyman Cinema, Hampstead.

CLIFFORD LEECH. Lecturer at University College, Swansea.

WALTER LEIGH. Studied under Hindemith. Composer of several comic
operas, including "Jolly Roger" and "Pride of the Regiment." Arranged
and composed the music for The Song of Ceylon.

PAUL ROTHA. At present directing documentaries for Gaumont-British In-
structional. His new book, " Documentary Films," will be published in the
spring.

121

FILM SOCIETIES

MORE NEW SOCIETIES. Several new groups are in course of formation.
In Wolverhampton, E. L. Packer, 119 Lord Street, and in Swansea, Clifford
Leech, University College, will be pleased to hear from anyone interested in
plans for these centres. In Scotland, a Federation of Scottish Film Societies has
been formed. Membership of the Federation, which it is intended should work
in co-operation with the Federation of British Film Societies, is open to organiza-
tions in Scotland existing chiefly for the propagation of an interest in the artistic
! nd cultural values of the film. Its main objects are the consolidation of the
interests of such societies and the development of the movement in areas where no
societies at present exist. The chairman is George Martin Gray, of Aberdeen,
and the Hon. Secretary is Forsyth Hardy, 17 S. St. Andrew Street, Edinburgh, 2.
HAMPSTEAD FILM SOCIETY. A Film Society has been organized by
Hampstead residents with the Everyman Cinema Theatre as its headquarters.
J. S. Fairfax-Jones is acting as secretary. The objects of the society are to show
films not normally given public exhibition, to revive classic films of the past, and
to form a centre for discussion of technical and artistic matters relating to the
cinema. Among those on the Council are C. E. M. Joad, Clough Williams-Ellis,
Paul Rotha, Lawrence Hanray and Maxwell Ayrton.

CHILDREN'S FILM SOCIETY. The Children's Film Society, which also has
the Everyman Cinema Theatre, Hampstead, as its headquarters, is now entering
the second half of its first season with a large subscribing membership. The society
not only exhibits specially selected films, but makes a point of having a short talk
on some aspect of film-making at each performance. Among those who have
spoken at performances are Arthur Elton, Mary Field, Stuart Legg and Paul
Rotha. The Secretary is Miss C. W. Harley, and among those on the Council
are Mrs. Naomi Mitchison, Miss H. B. Tudor Hart, W. T. R. Rawson and Mrs.
Amabel Williams-Ellis. The Directors are G. F. Noxon, C. Lawson Reece and
J. S. Fairfax-Jones.

THE FILM SOCIETY, 56 Manchester Street, London, W.i. 28th Oct. Joie de
Vivre, Der £erbrochene Krug, Weather Forecast, Deutschland zwischen gestern und heute.
25th Nov. Beyond this Open Road, Cathode Ray Oscillograph, Gasparcolor, Das Rollende
Rad, Night on the Bare Mountain, Zero de Conduite. 16th Dec. A Trip to Davy Jones"
Locker, Three Minute diagrams, All Quiet in the East, Oil Symphony, Song of Ceylon,
The Idea. 13th Jan. Rhapsody in Steel, Three early fragments, How Talkies Talk,
Der Tonjilm, Nachtliche Ruhestorung, Sabra.

ABERDEEN FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, A. L. Stephen Mitchell, 15 Golden
Square. 18th Nov. In der Nacht, Harlequin, Liebelei. 9th Dec. Uberfall, Ces Messieurs
de la Sante.

BILLINGHAM FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sees., H. S. Coles and Mrs. E. H. Sale,
3 Cambridge Terrace, Norton-on-Tees. 21st Nov. Bronx Morning, Disney's The
Picnic, Prenez Garde a la Peinture. 19th Dec. Mail, Disney's Springtime, Sous les
Toits de Paris.

CROYDON FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, G. R. Bailey, 51 High Street. 16th
Dec Harlequin, Weather Forecast, Road to Life.

EDINBURGH FILM GUILD, 17 S. St. Andrew Street. 28th Oct. Spring on the
Farm, Weather Forecast, Rett and Pott, Charlemagne. 18th Nov. Symphony of the Streets,
Contact, Mail, Prenez Garde a la Peinture. 16th Dec. G.-B. Magazine, The Right

122

to Write, New Europe, Nature Secret Roots, How Talkies Talk, Upstream, Mickey's
Gala Premiere, Rapt. 20th Jan. Beyond this Open Road, Rhapsody in Steel, Post Haste,
The Idea, Men and Jobs.

Lectures have been given by John Grierson on "Sound," Forsyth Hardy on
"Production," and Andrew Buchanan on "Direction." Sub-standard versions of
Metropolis and The Spy have also been shown.

FILM SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. Hon. Sec, D. Paterson Walker, 127 St.
Vincent Street. 4th Nov. Mail, Lot in Sodom, Liebes Kommando. 25th Nov. Joyless
Street, Weather Forecast, UOrdonnance. 16th Dec. Royal Windsor, Disney's Frolicking
Fish, Marie. 13th Jan. Upstream, Pett and Pott, Charlemagne.

Lectures have been given by C. A. Oakley on "The German Cinema," and Clif-
ford Strain on "Amateur Production." At both meetings sub-standard films
were shown.

HAMPSTEAD FILM SOCIETY. Sec, J. S. Fairfax-Jones, Everyman Cinema,
Hampstead, London, N.W.3. 23rd Dec. What the Newsreel Shows, Gasparcolor,
Pett and Pott, Pred Maturitou.

LEICESTER FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, E. Irving Richards, Vaughan
College. 1 7th Nov. Ballet Aida, La Vie d'un Fleuve, Reiniger's Carmen, Charlemagne.
15th Dec. Oberon Overture, Early Every Morning, Night on the Bare Mountain, Thunder
over Mexico, Plants of the Underworld.

Lectures have been given by Mary Field on "Nature Films" and Prof. T. H.
Pear on "Psychological Aspects of the Film."

MANCHESTER AND SALFORD WORKERS' FILM SOCIETY, 69 Liverpool
Street, Salford. 20th Oct. Industrial Britain, La Maternelle. 17th Nov. Ombres sur
L Europe, The Living Corpse. 15th Dec. Hand Drawn Sound, Pacific 231, New Europe,
The Ghost that Never Returns.

MERSEYSIDE FILM INSTITUTE SOCIETY, Bluecoat Chambers, School
Lane, Liverpool, nth Oct. Grass (Sub-st.). Talk by John Grierson. 18th Oct.
Waxworks (Sub-st.). 25th Oct. Peter le Neve Foster on "Film-making in Russia,"
illustrated by films. 29th Oct. Reception to Paul Rotha. 6th Nov. Exhibition
of amateur films. 29th Nov. Crazy Ray (Sub-st.). 10th, nth, 12th Dec. Storm
over Asia (Sub-st.). 20th Dec. Warning Shadows (Sub-st.). The following films
have also been shown: Pett and Pott, New Europe, Tour de Chant, Un Monasterey
Harlequin, Pacific 231. The Society organizes support for outstanding films shown
locally.

NORTH LONDON FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, H. A. Green, 6 Carysfort
Road, Stoke Newington, London, N.16. 4th Nov. Canal Barge, Bluebottles, Carmen,
Road to Life. 9th Dec. Poster Films, Cinemagzine, Schufftan Shots, Pett and Pott,
Joan of Arc. 6th Jan. Eyes of Science, Lichtertanz, Under the City, Eternal Triangle,
Fall of the House of Usher, War is Hell.

Lectures have been given by Andrew Buchanan, A. Vesselo, and Paul Rotha.
Other film exhibitions have included Grass, G.P.O. films, and an experimental
film by H. A. Green, Secretary of the Society.

NORTHWICH FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec. W. Baldwin Fletcher, ICI (Alkali)
Ltd., Northwich. 30th Oct. Wheat Fields of East Anglia, The Mascot, Fischinger's
Hungarian Dance, Black Magic. 4th Dec. Japan in Four Seasons, Cinemagazine,
Silly Symphony, Emperor Jones. 22nd Jan. Mail, What the Newsreel Shows, Four-
teenth of July.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY FILM SOCIETY. 21st Oct. Disney's Giantland and
Lullaby Land, Ces Messieurs de la Sante. 4th Nov. Cable Ship, Les Pirates du Rhone,
Poil de Carotte. 18th Nov. 6.30 Collection, The Pawnshop, Disney's Pioneer Days,
Diary of a Revolutionist. 25th Nov. Hallefs Comet, Lot in Sodom, Motor Magnate,
Marie. 2nd Dec. Their First Mistake, Disney's Moose Hunt, Der £erbrochene Krug,
Silly Symphony French version, Zero de Conduite.

123

SOUTHAMPTON FILM SOCIETY, 21 Ethelburt Avenue, Bassett Green, 12
St. Swithun Street, Winchester. Nov. Cinemagazine, Crazy Ray, Sous les Toits de
Paris, gth Dec. What the Newsreel Shows, Mor gemot, Gaspar color.

TYNESIDE FILM SOCIETY, c/o Literary and Philosophical Society, New-
castle. 1 1 th Nov. Orpheous in the Underworld, Zuts' Cartoon, Fishinger's Hungarian
Dance, Surprise Item, Road to Life. 9th Dec. La Maternelle.

Discussions are held in the Society's clubroom, where periodical exhibitions of
films are also given.

WEST OF SCOTLAND WORKERS' FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, James
Hough, 16 Balerno Drive, Glasgow, S.W.2. 4th Nov. Turksib, Blue Angel. 18th
Nov. Fifteenth October, The Mighty World, Kameradschaft. 2nd Dec. Power, O'er
Hill and Dale, Seal Hunters, Blue Express. 23rd Dec. Disney's Merry Dwarfs, Rutt-
man's Wonder of the World, War is Hell. 6th Jan. Cartoon, Battle of Life, Virtuous
Isidore. 20th Jan. Disney's Springtime, King Log, Storm over Asia.

Members are now entitled to introduce not more than two guests to each per-
formance at a fee of is. 6d. each.

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY FILM SOCIETY, 7 North Terrace, Cambridge,
in conjunction with the National Council of Civil Liberties, has convened a
meeting to discuss the question of film censorship and the threat to the educational
and sub-standard cinema implied in certain proposed new regulations for non-
flam films.

SIGHT

AND

SOUND

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PRICE SIXPENCE
From All Booksellers

Special Features in the Winter Issue Now Ready :

H. W. BISHOP— Newsreel in the Making
GEORGES CLARRIERE— The Western Peril
A. VESSELO — Stereoscopy: An Answer to Arnheim
G. T. HANKIN — Mechanical Aids to Learning in

South Africa
WM.cFARR— Films for Children: Another Vicious

Circle
ALISTAIR COOKE — Entertainment Films of the

Quarter

Book Reviews
Documentary Films
News from Societies
FILMS & THE SCHOOL

TECHNICAL AND TRADE—

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This Year's Technical Progress

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124

THE INDEPENDENT FILM-MAKER

Official Organ of the Independent Film-Makers Association
DOCUMENTARY EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL

ADVISERS: ANTHONY ASQUITH, ANDREW BUCHANAN, JOHN GRIERSON, ALAN HARPER,
STUART LEGG, PAUL ROTHA, BASIL WRIGHT.

HON. SECY. : THOMAS H. BAIRD. HON. TREAS. : J. C. H. DUNLOP. EDITOR: LESLIE BEISIEGEL.
32 SHAFTESBURY AVENUE, LONDON, W.I.

HARD WORDS TO AMATEURS

Increasing thousands of feet of film are exposed by amateurs every
year. The percentage worth preserving for exhibition to intelligent
audiences cannot be more than 10 per cent. — the remaining 90 per
cent, being, to put it bluntly, drivel. The animated family album
type of exposure can be dismissed at once with giggles and groans ;
but any amateur who attempts editing deserves enlightenment upon
the use of films. There are many so-called film clubs where cine-
cameras are used by amateurs to perpetrate meandering efforts
meant to emulate the film industry in slickness, glitter, gaudiness
and empty-headedness. Of what do these film clubs generally con-
sist? Social club (with an eye to match-making), amateur dramatic
society, picnic club and gossip shop. These clubs spend most of their
time in producing the very worst kind of stage play, boring to dis-
traction. When finished they are shown to relations, friends and
other clubs of a similar nature; and there, useless, they finish.
Nothing is said of even superficial import, nobody a tittle the better
for making the things and everybody already squabbling about the
casting of the next abortion.

Why, then, are these things so? The urge to appear as star; the
urge to boast "I direct"; the urge to strut before relations and
colleagues at the office — these are some of the reasons. Again, who
are prouder or more pleased than they when the neighbours are
found hanging on the garden fence, with mouths agape, eyeing the
self-conscious simperings of the amateur film club? It seems that the
film is merely a vehicle for the appeasement of vanity and suppressed
egoisms.

Are there, then, any amateurs doing worth-while jobs? Yes! Let

125

us be thankful that there are amateur film-makers with something
to say, who are more interested in cinema than in themselves. Un-
fortunately these film-makers are either lone workers, handicapped
by lack of capital, or else small groups of semi-professionals who are
soon absorbed by the film industry proper. From these people
come unpretentious films, simple accounts of honest ordinary affairs,
revealing insight into commonplace occurrences happening every
day, but unperceived by the other 90 per cent, intent on imitation.

Intent on imitation they are waiting for the commercial companies
to begin producing documentary, and then slavishly they will follow
in the wake of mediocrity. Always attempting counterfeits and never
conveying any other impression than that of wasted effort and
complete futility.

Amateurs — some of you 90 per cent. — leave your lights, your
pseudo-studios, your clumsy grease paints and gauche acting — run
right out of doors and look around at life. Trees, clouds, smoke,
birds, everything that moves. Children playing, women washing
clothes, men sawing wood, actuality. This is the stuff for your
films. Take this material and with heart, mind and imagination
weld it into an expression of your view of life.

It isn't the grand things that matter so much as the smaller, un-
noticed incidentals. Only from understanding in small things can
come that knowledge that enables creation from a vaster and more
comprehensive apprehension of things. Come to grips with life.
No escaping into tawdry romantics and pseudo-aesthetics.

Do not imagine that these films can be made from combined
spiritual experiences. There can be only one director, one who has
written and re-written; raved in passion and frustration over the
building of the script. This is the director to whom all amateur
film-makers must swear loyalty, unquestionable obeyance. Only
then will amateurs produce films that will make the punjabs in
Wardour Street sit up and tremble.

It can be done — it will be done — but I am impatient to see it done
now.

LESLIE BEISIEGEL

LONDON IFMA GROUP.

Meetings have been taking place every Monday evening in members' flats.
Several films have been projected and rushes of Markets, being the result of Heino
Held's Billingsgate expeditions, which resulted in some first-class shooting consider-
ing the bad conditions under which he had to work. Shooting on Markets has had
to be abandoned owing to bad weather and insufficient light. Some experimental
shooting done on Armistice Day round Westminster raised mirth.

Discussions have generally centred on scripts. The first to be submitted was a
satire on marching, in which use is made of an experimental form of shooting.
This, however, was rejected owing to the majority of the members disagreeing

126

about the form and dictator-director notions of the script-writer. The second
scenario was written by D. J. C. Beck who showed the deceit and duplicity of the
armament manufacturs on Armistice Day, and the power of music and uniform in
raising the militant spirit.

EXHIBITION OF KINEMATOGRAPHY.

This exhibition was held by the Royal Photographic Society at their Galleries
in Russell Square, London, during the month of November. The exhibition con-
sisted of a large collection of stills from British films of recent date, many of them
still in production, a selection of film personalities and stills from amateur pro-
ducing societies. Various models of sub-standard projectors both silent and sound,
models of the latest cine-cameras, and a 35 mm. super-speed camera. A section of
the stills showed the technics of set building, model work, and trick photography
used in studio productions. Some stills showed the ingenious faking in the larger
scenes of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

In the film competition open to workers on sub-standard, the plaque for Glass
One was awarded to John Chear for his Bird Studies on 9.5. The plaque for Class
Two went to G. H. F. Higginson for a 16 mm. film entitled Pond Life. Several
types of film were projected and some amateur productions. In the ten meetings
held, the many new technical processes of colour, trick photography and timing
apparatus were demonstrated. Mary Field, Basil Wright, F. Watts and Oliver
G. Pike gave lectures on certain aspects of the cinema.

KINO.

Kino (86 Gray's Inn Road, London, W.C. 1) is an organisation of amateur film-
workers using the film as a medium of propagating Communist philosophy. It
has an active news-reel group operating much the same as the commercial com-
panies. Two news-reels have been produced dealing with several demonstrations,
including the one at Olympia, Air Display, Gresford Colliery Disaster, Inter-
national Workers' Sports in Paris, etc. Another group is engaged in producing an
Anti-Fascist film, and yet another group in the production of features. The last
group has made the film Bread, described as a drama of the Means Test. Two
of their cameramen are to give lessons in cine-camera craft to about six pupils at a
time, the fees being low. Kino intend organizing an exhibition of photographs
from the Workers' Film and Photo League, in which prizes will be given for the best
social as well as technical photographs submitted. A film hire service is now in
operation for the distribution of Soviet films.

SON OF A SOLDIER. Direction: LEBEDIEV. Reduced from silent 35 mm.
copy to 16 mm. Distributors: KINO FILM HIRE SERVICE.

The narrative centres on the life of a boy in the Russia of 1905. The typical
school of that period, with its tyrannical old priest and his teaching of Gabriel
and the fiery chariot, is done extremely well, but is apt to grow wearisome owing to
its length. However, when the boy is (literally) chucked out of school, the real film
begins. This delightful rascal gets employment at the local factory, illegally using
child labour. The lodger at the boy's home is employed there as an engineer, and
together they are absorbed by the then revolutionary ideas of Communism.

When one of the boys is injured by a truck which should have been fitted with
brakes, there is a disturbance amongst the workers in the factory which breaks
out anew when the Factory Inspector is hurried away by the owner without having
seen the exploitation and dangerous practices going on. The Cossacks are called
in to quell the disturbance, and on finding a crowd of factory hands assembled,
tear down on them with bared sabres.

lc27

The boy saves the lodger from being struck down by the Cossack captain by
hurling a bolt into the Cossack's eye. He in turn is struck down. Back again in
his home, wounded and lying on a couch, he sees his father just returned from the
battle with Japan. But before much is said the Cossack captain arrives and
threatens the boy, striking him and insulting the father standing stiffly at a salute.
The father kills the Cossack by striking him on the head. The film is at an end.

All the factory sets are excellent; the direction is notable for the complete
absence of camera-consciousness on the part of the children. Humour, sometimes
riotous, runs all through the film.

IFMA SUMMER SCHOOL. Peter le Neve Foster.

Here are all the events that happened at Welwyn. Basil Wright and Stuart
Legg are seen, and there is some cross-cutting of members dining and pigs wallow-
about in sties. As is evident, the weather was ideal for filming, obliging clouds
waiting for Foster to fit his filters and shoot them, posed gracefully above the charm-
ing Conference House. Copies can be obtained from the Hon. Secretary at 12s. 6d.

GLASGOW INDEPENDENT FILM-MAKERS' GROUP is to be reorganized.
Experiments with Dufay colour film are to be made, and a documentary dealing
with the working of a modern super-cinema is under consideration. The group
would welcome new members who are both enthusiasts and workers. The annual
subscription is one guinea, and meetings are held at the Neo-film Studio, 42 High
Street, Paisley.

All who are responsible for the design, purchase, or maintenance of sound-film
apparatus should obtain a copy of ''British Standard Specification for Photo-
electric Cells of the Emission Type for Sound-Film Apparatus." (London: British
Standards Institution, 2s.) There should now no longer be any excuse for mis-
understanding between manufacturer and purchaser as to the meaning of such
terms as "sensitivity" and "variation of frequency response." An important
feature of the specification is the standardization of dimensions.

^The Workers' Film and Photo League, 86 Gray's Inn Road, London, W'.C. 1,
has been formed to produce its own films recording the industrial and living con-
ditions of British workers and the struggle of the employed and unemployed to
improve these conditions; to popularize Russian films; to criticize current com-
mercial films in the press and in its own literature; and to arrange lectures to
working-class organizations.

Independent cine-workers should be interested in a new activity of the Film
Editorial Service of 130 Wardour Street, W. 1, which is opening an Advisory and a
Service Bureau under the direction of Fred Pullin.

The former offers constructive criticism on scenarios or completed films, while
the latter attends to such technical matters as cutting, titling, fades, dissolves,
wipes, or is prepared if necessary to take the uncut film as it leaves the camera, and
produce a properly edited copy ready for presentation.

THE CINEMATOGRAPHER'S BOOK OF TABLES helps the professional and amateur
cameraman to save time, avoid mistakes, and increase efficiency. It fits the vest pocket,
and costs 5 - post free from Cinema Quarterly, 24 N.W. Thistle St. Lane, Edinburgh, 2.

If you are interested in documentary, experimental
and educational production, write for a prospectus
to the Hon. Secretary, THOMAS BAIRD, 32 Shaftes-
bury Avenue, London, W.l.

128

FMA

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SIGHT

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Rt. Hon. L. HORE-BELISHA— A. Message

C. A. LEJEUNE— Alexander Korda: A Sketch

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H. DOUGLAS THOMSON— Detective Films

J. R. LEATHEART— Cinema Facade

J. WATSON GRICE— Teaching Children "Road Sense"

ALISTAIR COOKE— Reviews of Films of the Quarter

FILMS AND THE SCHOOL: A

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CINEMA
QUARTERLY

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

THE WRITER'S APPROACH TO CINEMA

Campbell Nairne

THE FUNCTION OF THE ACTOR. Richard
Griffith

THE ARTIST AND THE FILM. A rthur Shearsby

NEW TRENDS IN SOVIET CINEMA
Marie Seton ....

THE FILM ABROAD. Ragnar Allberg
Herman G. Weinberg.

MISCELLANY. Ernest Belts, R. J. Minney
ArtJiur Shearsby

FILMS OF THE QUARTER.

Forsyth Hardy, Campbell Nairne

Paid Roth a, Basil Wright,

J . S. Fairfax -J ones, Kirk Bond

FILM SOCIETIES .
INDEPENDENT FILM MAKER.

Leslie Beisiegel

13T

134

139
143

149

155

160

168
183
186

Published by CINEMA CONTACT LIMITED
24 N.W. THISTLE ST. LANE, EDINBURGH, 2

'Phone: 20425. - Telegrams: 20425 Edinburgh

London Advertising Agents:

GREGORY & MCCARTHY, 32 Shaftesbury Ave., W.l

'Phone : Gerrard 6456

DISTRIBUTORS ABROAD : New York, Gotham Book Mart,
51 W. 47th Street. Hollywood, Stanley Rose Book Shop,
1625 N. Vine Street. Paris, Au Pont de I'Europe, 17 rue
Vignon. Melbourne, Leonardo Art Shop, 166 Little Collins
Street: McGill's News Agency, 183 Elizabeth Street.

Vol. 3. No. 3.

SPRING 1935

ACADEMY CINEMA

16 5, OXFORD STREET, W.l.

(Organiser Miss ELSIE COHEN]

Gerrard 2981

Now Showing

ANNA STEN AND FRITZ KORTNER IN

" THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV "

•
Future Presentations include:

YVONNE PRINTEMPS IN "LA DAME AUX CAMELIAS
D. ROSHAL'S "ST. PETERSBURG (Russian)
"DER SCHIMMELREITER" (u) A Frisian Legend

"PETTERSSON AND BENDEL" (Swedish)

OSWALD'S "UNHEIMLICHE GESCHICHTEN " [a]

ROBERT LYNEN IN "SANS FAMILLE " <aj

(A)

Notices of New Presentations will be sent free on receipt of Name and Address

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Arrangements for the Second

IFMA SUMMER SCHOOL
OF FILM PRODUCTION

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Write now for full particulars of a pleasant and
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JEW SDSS

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THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII

3s. 66. net

Scenario-writers would be well advised to study closely the way in which the scripts of these
two famous British films are set out. They are the first film scenarios ever to appear in print.

Edited by ERNEST BETTS, film critic of the Sunday Express.
^ptniipki & CO. LTD., irmnrm-

CINEMA QUARTERLY

Volume 3, Number 3

SPRING

1935

SUBTLETY ON THE SCREEN. "The film," says Campbell
Nairne in an article in this issue of Cinema Quarterly, "is, by its very
nature, a medium incapable of being at once subtle and intelligible."
We must either accept this statement at its face value, and reluc-
tantly place the film as a means of expression at a lower level than
most of its protagonists would admit it to be, or else reconsider our
idea of what is meant by subtlety and intelligibility, along with
what we understand as cinema.

To be intelligible, in its broadest sense, implies surely that the
ideas expressed by their creator may be readily comprehended by
the spectator. In this respect, by creating its illusions by means of
naturalistic material, the film can be as simple as a child's first
picture book. Subtlety, on the other hand, is a more cerebral accom-
plishment, demanding a delicate apprehension of the finer shades of
thought and expression.

On considerations apart from even the grossly commercial one
of requiring to address the largest possible audience, what Nairne
calls the " moment ariness" of the film would seem to limit expression
to a studied simplicity. " Momentariness " means that unless the
image and its accompanying aurals are immediately understandable
the spectator will have failed to grasp their significance before other
images and other sounds will be engrossing his attention. Thus it
would appear that the film-maker's powers of expression are re-
stricted not to the compass of his own abilities but to the physiologi-
cal limitations of the spectator — hence the well-worn but readily
understood symbolism of the average Hollywood production. The
use of the cliche in journalism recently was defended on the grounds
that the familiar phrase ought to be regarded as an ideograph, or
omnibus expression, and accepted as any single word in common
use is accepted. But journalism is not literature, and while the
cliche and picture-book simplicity may be necessary in the average
feature film, which must tell its tale with precision and speed, it
does not follow that the medium, as a whole, is incapable of subtlety.

Campbell Nairne is a novelist, and his view of the film is justified

131

by his experience as an imaginative craftsman. The full-length
dramatic film must rely on a rapid progressiveness and a rigid
economy of means for its effect. It cannot afford to be discursive,
to elaborate detail, or to indulge in subjective analysis — all of which
are prerogatives of the novelist's art. But the dramatic feature
film is not all cinema, and it is not without significance that certain
modern poets such as W. H. Auden and C. Day Lewis are coming
to regard the film as a medium worth consideration. When they
get to grips with it in their experiments they may discover that its
technique is not greatly different from that of their own poetry. It
may even transpire that what they have been attempting to do in
verse will achieve finality in film.

SCOPE FOR THE SHORT FILM. The truth is, there are many
kinds of film — not just "film." Actually the technique of the long
film has more in common with that of the short story than of the
novel. Was it not Tchekov who gave a sane piece of cinematic
advice to a young writer when he said, "You must make them feel
the moonlight as it glints from a fragment of bottle in the garden"?
The cinema has long been accustomed to borrow from literature,
but generally from the wrong sources. If it must learn from another
medium, let it consider the short stories of Tchekov, Coppard,
Powys, even Katherine Mansfield; the poetry of the imagists;
the experiments of sur-realism. Paradoxical as it may seem, the
short film has more time at its disposal than the long film, and
without having to concern itself with the dramatics of rapid action
and constructed situation, can indulge in subjective speculation
and the analysis of mental and emotional processes. Only the
documentary schools, however, in which the greater part of the
intelligence in cinema seems at present to be concentrated, is experi-
menting boldly along newT lines. The only shorts which the
commercial studios appear to be capable of making are so-called
comedies, which exasperate even star-infatuated audiences who
suffer them only to see the glamorous feature they accompany.

True, there have been such excursions in novelty as Pett and Pott,
Dawn to Dawn and Lot in Sodom, but these have been independently
inspired. The studios are still blind not only to the entertainment
value of the short film but to its usefulness as a breeding ground for
new ideas and new talent. On the score of risk and expense, experi-
ment in feature -film production is made almost impossible. (A
coloured Becky Sharp is risked for the prize, not of developing a new
technique, but of popularising a technical process of immense
potential monetary value.) This bar to experiment is one of the
main factors which retard the artistic development of the film.
There is, however, little or no financial risk attached to the making

132

of shorts ; and even if there were, even if every foot of celluloid thus
used lost hard cash, it would be worth every penny for the ultimate
good of cinema, both artistically and commercially.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SCENARIO.— Ernest Betts, who
introduced the admirable idea of publishing film scenarios in book
form, evidently imagines from an editorial in our last issue that
Cinema Quarterly underestimates the importance of the scenario.
That is not so. A poor script has ruined many a potentially fine
film; that in itself is sufficient gauge of the scenario's place in
cinema. Triumphantly, Betts flourishes the fact that even Chaplin
uses a scenario. Of course he does. His films would be the poorer
if he did not. But they are his own scripts. And that is exactly
the point we made, and still make — that scenario and direction
should not be divorced from each other, but should be undertaken
by the same person, or persons.

Undoubtedly, under present conditions, the scenarist is entitled
to greater credit than he now receives, and the director probably less.
Conversely, much of the criticism delivered against direction should
be levelled against the scenario.

We are asked to hazard a guess as to when films will be the
single, individual creation of one person, and to consider whether
criticism would be "worth a rap which totally ignored present
conditions, namely the organized regimentation of many talents."
But would criticism which complacently accepted conditions as
they are be worth anything at all? The "regimentation of talents"
must be organized in the best possible way, and any criticism
which matters must be concerned not only with what is but with
what should be. To answer one question by asking another, does
anyone seriously believe that the exact images, movement, rhythm,
light and sounds of a film can be reduced to words and sentences so
that "a director can read a script as a musician reads a score"?

NON-FLAM FILM TEST CASE. Some months ago the County
Durham Police prosecuted the proprietors of a hall in Boldon for
allowing the film Potemkin to be shown, on the grounds that the 1 6 mm.
stock used was inflammable and therefore came under the Cine-
matograph Act, 1909. A Home Office expert was called in to prove
that the film used was inflammable. However, the summonses were
dismissed by the Jarrow Bench, with costs against the police, who
subsequently appealed. W. H. Thompson, the London solicitor
defending the case, was recently informed by the solicitor to the
County Durham Police that the appeal is not to be proceeded with.
It would seem, therefore, that the authorities now accept the
fact that the 16 mm. safety film is non-inflammable and therefore
can be shown in public without special precautions.

133 Norman Wilson.

THE WRITER'S APPROACH
TO CINEMA

CAMPBELL NAIRNE

The film student is not unnaturally contemptuous when he hears
that Mr. X, the darling of the book guilds, has been engaged to
prepare the "film transcript" or " screen treatment" of a novel.
He suspects that in return for his sizeable cheque the distinguished
man of letters will do no more than draft out a precis, cast in im-
peccably rounded sentences, or contribute the "additional dia-
logue" required to fill gaps left by condensation of the original.
Scornfully he points out (remembering his Pudovkin) that the
imagination of the literary artist is not trained to express its con-
cepts in terms of plastic images ; that the literary artist is not con-
cerned with visuals — nor, it may be added, with sounds. The
detailed preparation of the script, which is virtually the creative
process, will of course be left to the professional scenarist and direc-
tor, who are technically equipped (as the man of letters is not) for
the job of translating words into sounds and images.

"The appeal to authors by which film producers every now and
then try to curry favour with the intelligentsia is utterly absurd,"
writes Arnheim, and that is the attitude one expects to find among
those who have convinced themselves that cinema can and must
stand on its own legs. But there is a danger in this righteous scorn.
It is apt to be inferred that the novelist, because he is a novelist and
because words are his stock-in-trade, cannot, ipso facto, be a good
scenarist or director.

That is probably a valid objection in the case of novelists who
learned their craft at a time when the progenitor of the film fan was
glueing his eye to the slot of Edison's kinetoscope. But does it hold
in the case of younger novelists, those of the post-war generation?
We had our rag picture-books, our illustrated primers in big type,
and our bedtime stories, just like the children of an earlier genera-
tion, but we had also our Saturday matinees, and the "rainy"
films we cheered wildly at the local picture palace opened a new
door upon the world of adventure and make-believe. It was much
better fun to watch these movies (though we deplored the close-up
kisses) than to decipher the hyphenated words of a story book,

134

which was probably concerned anyhow with unreal characters,
witches and ogres and so forth. Thus it came about that our juvenile
appetite for fiction was satisfied to a very considerable extent by
what we saw on the screen. And, unknown to us, the medium used
to tell these stories — a succession of moving images broken now
and then by titles which we either skipped or chanted in unison —
was doing much to heighten our pictorial sense and develop our
visual faculties.

The effect of this involuntarily acquired training is evident
to-day in a large number of modern novels, and perhaps it could
also be traced in work done in other media by artists whose child-
hood belongs to the period of the cinema's growth. G. W. Stonier
notes* that writers have now a greater sense of the visual property of
images, and that the film close-up, with its substitution of the part
for the whole, has led to a rediscovery by writers of the pars pro toto
device in fiction. Being film-minded, whether they like it or not,
they are obviously more disposed to think in terms of plastic images
when they turn to scenario writing than those veteran fiction writers
whose names are at present most sought after to garnish credit
titles.

The next generation of novelists is almost bound to bring an
even more highly developed visual sense to the business of novel-
writing. The school cinema is already established, and one fore-
sees that within a few years the use of film for instructional purposes
will no longer arouse controversy; it will be taken for granted, and
film lessons will be part of all curricula. That is bound to have its
effect. Nor is there likely to be any relaxation of the hold which the
commercial cinema has on its child public. It is realized now that
children's cinemas and programmes designed for children can be
made paying propositions, so that the formative influence of the
purely entertainment film will probably grow more and not less
potent. Walt Disney is said to have usurped the place so long held
by Hans Andersen, and it is a safe prediction that the boy who
learns his fairy tales from the Silly Symphonies instead of from the
printed page will have in maturity a feeling for line and colour which
his less fortunate predecessors either did not possess or had to acquire
by conscious effort.

It is still rare to find a novelist who can speak the scenarist's
language, and in most cases, like the traditional Englishman in a
foreign country, he makes no attempt to understand it. He con-
tinues to use his own language and is gratified by the readiness with
which the complaisant scenarist meets him half-way. When, how-
ever, there is a measure of bi-lingualism — if I may carry the meta-
phor a stage further — the cineaste will no longer be contemptuous

* "Gog Magog" Dent, 1933.
135

when he hears that Mr. X, the best-selling novelist, has been given
a film contract. It is conceivable that the artist who understands
both idioms may be faced with the problem of deciding in which to
express himself.

Novel or film? Words or sounds and images? The choice of the
novel is indicated at present by factors which have little to do with
the validity of film as an art medium — the collectivism which makes
it impossible for the artist to remain in full control of his material
from first to last, the high cost of production, and so forth. Suppose,
however, that such factors are ruled out. Is the film potentially a
richer medium of expression than the novel? Is it subtle enough
to express intellectual ideas? Could it stand the strain put upon
the more flexible structure of the novel ?

Two limitations deriving from the nature of the medium at once
present themselves — the physical inability of the spectator to keep his
receptive faculties unblunted for longer than (say) two hours; and
the momentariness of film, which makes it essential that the signi-
ficance of the moving image (reinforced it may be, by sound) should
be instantaneously apprehended by the spectator.

Pudovkin, writing of the silent films, holds that a film more than
7000 feet long "already creates an unnecessary exhaustion." With
the introduction of sound-film demands have been made on the
spectator's ears as well as on his eyes, and there has been an intensi-
fication of the strain, with the natural result that films tend to be
shorter. It is, of course, possible to issue a film in parts, as was done
in the case of Fritz Lang's Nibelungs and (recently) in the case of
Raymond Bernard's Les Miser ables \ but I am inclined to agree with
Pudovkin that "the film of deeper content, the value of which lies
always in the impression it creates as a whole, can certainly not be
thus divided into parts for the spectator to see separately one each
week."

He is, however, surely unduly pessimistic when he maintains
that "the influence of this limitation of film length is yet increased
by the fact that the film technician, for the effective representation
of a concept, requires considerably more material than, let us say,
the novelist or playwright." Words which contain a whole complex
of images are not so easy to come by as Pudovkin imagines. The evoca-
tion of atmosphere in the first chapter of "The Return of the
Native" is not achieved by the use of a few significant phrases.
Hardy, major artist though he is, requires pages to get his effect.
An artist of similar stature using film as his medium could evoke the
desired atmosphere more economically and with no diminution of
effect by his arrangement of half a dozen sensitively chosen images.
If he had sound at his command he could describe Egdon Heath
and bring home its significance by an even sparser use of his material.

136

Large numbers of words, it should be remembered, have got
rubbed down, and the writer is driven to seek fresh metal in workings
which grow ever deeper and deeper, so that he is in no small danger
of losing himself altogether in the subterranean labyrinth — the fate
that appears to have overtaken Joyce. Chaucer could write gaily
that the grass was green, and leave it at that, sure of his effect; the
modern writer must search after adjectives to express the degree of
its viridity. Filmic images, on the other hand, are not yet old
enough to have lost their virtue, and film, despite its unnaturally
rapid growth, has still about it much of that morning freshness which
the novel had when Chaucer was writing the Prologue to the Can-
terbury Tales — rightly regarded as the first English novel. Film
is new and untried; in filmic images one can still say that the grass
is green and get away with it. So much for Pudovkin's contention.

Limitations imposed by physical factors must, of course, be
reckoned with in other media. Film is not uniquely disadvantaged.
The composer, for example, must bear in mind that after a certain
period of concentration the interest of the audience will flag because
its receptive faculties are tired and can no longer respond with the
same alertness. More serious is the limitation that arises from the
basic quality of the film — its momentariness. Everything depends on
the immediacy of the contact between the moving patterns and the
spectator's receptive equipment. If something is missed he cannot
go back and pick it up as he could if he were reading a novel. More-
over, if he feels that he has missed something he is left with a vague
sense of irritation which tends to mar his enjoyment. It will also
affect the intensity of his concentration, for his mind cannot respond
fully to the stimuli of new impressions if it is partly engaged in
searching back to discover what it was that the director intended to
convey by such-and-such an image or sound.

The film artist who wishes to preserve unimpaired the spectator's
responsiveness to his film is thus placed in a difficult position. If he
uses an ideological idiom which is easily understood but somewhat
banal — the spray of blossom, the bird on the bough, the moon
breaking through clouds — he lays himself open to the criticism that
he lacks imagination and is deficient in filmic ideas. But, on the
other hand, it is useless to introduce images which even the trained
film-goer will probably not understand without a longer period of
concentration than can be afforded by the interval between their
appearance and disappearance on the screen.

The quality of momentariness is not essential to literature
(nor to sculpture and painting), and it is therefore possible to
express in writing subtleties which the film artist must regretfully
eliminate from his work. The first reading of a page of Joyce or
Proust may not suffice to put the reader in touch with the writer's

137

mind, but subsequent readings should resolve most of the obscurities.
If one has the proper equipment, the time to spare, and determination,
one is bound sooner or later to force a way through the entangle-
ments that defend the citadel, and once that is captured one finds that
the spoil within is adequate compensation for the ardours of the
attack. And so it is with painting and sculpture. (Music and the
ballet suffer, though to a less extent, from the same disability as
film.) One may look at Genesis and not immediately understand
Epstein's intention. A Picasso still-life may at first glance appear a
grotesque blob of colour. But after a period of concentration — and
artistic enjoyment, as Arnheim reminds us, is not mere receptiveness
— one begins to understand the particular approach of these artists,
the peculiar quality of their vision.

The difficulty with film is that it allows no period of concentra-
tion. Nor is it often practicable to see a film more than once or twice.
We can read a page of print fifty times, or pay fifty visits to an art
gallery, but facilities for viewing a film over and over again are
denied to all but a privileged minority.

Inevitably the conclusion is forced upon the novelist who would
wish to express his concepts in film that it is by its very nature a
medium incapable of being at once subtle and intelligible. That
conclusion would be modified if one could feel that the human
brain is likely in the process of evolution to develop further. How-
ever well disposed he may be to film, the novelist will continue to
use the written word when he wishes to express the more subtle
workings of his mind, unless in the course of time there is an accelera-
tion of the process by which the brain decodes, co-ordinates and
transmutes into emotional and intellectual responses the messages
flashed to it via the telegraphy of the senses. Film would, among a
race of supermen, be the ideal medium of artistic expression. But
unfortunately we are not supermen.

A copy of The Great Train Robbery, generally regarded as the first story film to be
produced, has been discovered in Glasgow. In the course of a lecture on the
history of the cinema to the Scottish Educational Cinema Society, G. A. Oakley
made a passing reference to the film and, at the close, a teacher in the audience
remarked that he had in his possession a film dealing with a train robbery. Further
investigation revealed that it was a copy of the early film which had been purchased
many years previously from a photographic dealer in Cork and had lain undis-
turbed in a garret. The film has been handed over to the British Film Institute
through the Scottish Film Council and it is understood that the intention is to
have copies made which may be available to film societies. The film, a super in
length in its time, is about 800 feet long. The present condition of the copy will
not permit of its being projected without frequent breakages occurring.

138

THE FUNCTION
OF THE ACTOR

RICHARD GRIFFITH

Although a decade has passed since the promulgation of the
theory of montage, film critics still bow down before that revelation
as to the final word on the technique of a medium not half a century
old. The theory of creative editing of sound and picture, indis-
putably the basis of cinematic construction, has become enshrined
in a holy remoteness where it cannot be reached by dialectic.
Montage and montage alone, we have been told ever since the days
of Kuleshov, is the significant act in the production of a film, and
compared with it every other technical device is either unimportant
or irrelevant to the purposes of cinema.

Because of the regrettable supremacy of the star system, acting
has long been the target for the most rancorous attacks of the film
theorists. Acting is for them the symbol of the cinema's extended
bondage to the theatre, its use a confession of inadequate knowledge
of film resources. One can understand this dislike, since acting
once so far usurped the function of other methods as to threaten to
make the camera a means for the mere reproduction of stage plays.
When the raison d'etre of a film is the glorification of its star's person-
ality, montage becomes superfluous and the picture loses all signifi-
cance as an example of cinema. But to attribute this distortion to
acting itself rather than to the star system is to judge a device by
its systematic misuse. This obvious fallacy, however, has entrapped
most of the critics with whose work I am acquainted. There are
only a few who have considered deeply this problem of acting.

Of these few I shall take Paul Rotha as representative. In "The
Film till Now," Rotha has argued the question so persistently and
thoughtfully as to convince a large number of cineastes. He con-
tends, first, that acting is unnecessary in the montage film, and,
second, that when employed it destroys filmic reality. He would
have the director use, in place of professionals, type actors who
happen to be physically suitable to the characters they impersonate,
but who are wholly under the control of the director in the charac-
terization of their roles.

139

Rotha's plan is no doubt the best for the documentary films he
now directs. In them he deals with the problems of masses of people.
But if a film is to be concentrated upon the behaviour of one or
two individuals, it seems to me that the employment of type actors
cannot be considered adequate. Rotha thinks that "the inner
reality of the characters, their thoughts, desires, lusts, and emotions,
is revealed by their outward actions. . . . The camera itself is unable
to penetrate the world before it, but the creative mind of the director
can reveal in his selection of the visual images this intrinsic essence
of life by using the basic resources of the cinema, viz., editing, angle,
pictorial composition, suggestion, symbolism, etc. " (vide "The Film
till Now," p. 270). It will be seen that Rotha thinks that it is the
relationship of images, and not so much the images themselves,
which carries the content of a filmic theme, and I agree. But the
fact of relationship does not depend wholly upon the juxtaposition
of images; it surely lies somewhat in the meaning of the images
themselves? If, then, the director presents an image whose meaning
is conveyed by the gesture, movement, or facial expression of a
character, is it not necessary that these be reproduced by an actor
whose technical training and creative ability have taught him to
understand the expression of human personality? No, says Rotha,
for ' 'the so-called symptomatic actions of Freud, the small, almost
unnoticed and insignificant actions of behaviour on the part of a
person, are highly indicative of the state of his mind, and are of the
utmost value, when magnified on the screen, for establishing an
understanding of that state of mind in the audience. For this reason
alone, it will be seen how essential it is for a film player to be his
natural self, and how detrimental theatrical acting is to film pur-
poses. It is the duty of the director to reveal the natural character-
istics of his players and to build these, by means of editing, into a
filmic exposition of personality . . ." ("The Film till Now," pp. 270-
271). I think that here Rotha is setting the director a superhuman
task. He is saying that human beings reveal themselves by their
unconscious actions, and that the director must by editing synthesize
them into personality. So he must, but where is he to get the images
he is to edit? We are told they cannot be reproduced by acting,
so the director must then, in the manner of Dziga-Vertov, wait until
a member of his cast happens to betray himself by a ' 'symptomatic
action" and quickly photograph it, if the subject happens to be
within camera range. With such methods, every film would be as
long in production as those of Abel Gance. It seems to me that,
unless they are acted, these unconscious actions could never be
caught by the camera unless by chance. And why can they not be
acted? If they are observable at all they are also capable of being
reproduced. Nor is it important that the reproduction is artificial.

140

It is with the symbolic meaning of an action, rather than with its
actuality in life, that the film is concerned.

If it be granted that a director must employ a professional actor
to reproduce gesture, facial expression, and movement when they
are important to the meaning of the individual image, let us pass
to Rotha's second objection. In making a distinction between the
realities of stage and screen he quotes Pudovkin: "The film assembles
the elements of reality to build from them a new reality proper to
itself; and the laws of time and space that, in the sets and footage
of the stage are fixed and fast, are in the film entirely altered."
On the stage, that is, an event seems to occur in the same length of
time it would occupy in life. The camera, however, only records
the significant parts of the event, and so the filmic time is shorter
than the real time of the event — or, if cross-reference or repetition
for emphasis is necessary, it is longer. The introduction of the
theatrical device of acting, says Rotha, brings real time into the
film, and so destroys filmic reality. In saying this, he is assuming
that if acting is employed the screen time of a particular image
will be prolonged so that the acting of an incident may have its
full effect. That is an underestimation of acting, which can be
instantaneous or prolonged, depending upon the particular effect
toward which it is directed. Acting does not vitiate montage. It is
only where there is no creative editing that acting, deprived of the
meaningful interrelation of images, must compensate for the defici-
ency by literal representation of the relationships which it is the
function of montage to indicate. Rotha's criticism springs from his
mistaken belief that all acting must be like that of the stage, where
it carries the entire burden of visual representation. Cinematic
acting is relieved of that burden, and can concentrate upon contri-
buting to the effect of a particular image, which effect montage
relates to the images that come before and after.

Indeed, I have yet to see a film in which untrained type actors
have been used with any success in the portrayal of character.
Storm Over Asia and Tabu have been upheld as examples of the
triumph of montage, but I scarcely think anyone will contend that
the characters in these otherwise excellent films were well set forth.
To me they seemed bare of all personality, stripped down to the
essential characteristics which all human beings possess in common.
Pudovkin's Mother, an attempted study of a particular human
relationship, created two formless, contradictory personalities whom
it is difficult to remember a few months after seeing the film.
Pudovkin apparently tried to make up for the deficiencies of his
actors by expressing their characters through inanimate objects as
much as possible. If it were feasible to build a personality by photo-
graphing symbolically all those objects which are intimately and

141

meaningfully connected with him, then the problem of acting
would be somewhat sensationally solved. But once let the director
include a shot in which the character himself appears and it becomes
necessary to represent the mannerisms of that character with careful
attention to detail. The screen magnifies details. The representation
of them cannot be left to an unskilled actor.

There remains one practical objection to cinematic acting with
which we have not dealt. Granting that in a subordinate position
acting legitimately contributes to the film, say its opponents, will
any actor worthy of employment consent to such a subordination?
Will he agree to give up his pre-eminent position to become the
mere tool of the director — a tool whose sole use is to realize indivi-
dual effects in scattered shots? I think that he will, if he has any
understanding of cinematic mechanism. I have already distin-
guished between the film which deals with humanity in mass and
that which portrays the personality of an individual. In the first
there is no need for trained acting. In the second, however, an
actor of experience and ability must be employed. And naturally
the director will not call upon him to act out a single scene without
explaining its relation to those which precede and follow. No, the
director and the player will work out a harmonious conception of
the character, embody it in the scenario, and the actor will realize
his portion of the concept under the director's supervision. This is
Pabst's method, and I cannot see why the conjunction of two creators,
one supreme and one subordinate, should present any insuperable
difficulty.

FRENCH EPIC-MAKING SATIRISED. Under cover of satire,
Paul Morand protestingly reviews contemporary conditions in the
French film industry in "The Epic-Makers" (7s. 6d. Lovat Dickson) .
He suggests in an introduction that in revealing "the wild-cat
finance, the fantastic hotch-potch of nationalities, the preposterous
sentiments and ridicule of every French institution," he is under-
stating rather than enlarging the truth; and if we take him at his
word, all cannot be well in the French film industry. Financial
irresponsibility and a motley of nationalities are, of course, conditions
not peculiar to the film colony of any one country; but it appears
from M. Morand's account that in France at present the industry
is largely in the hands of Central Europeans, Levantines and other
foreign sharks, characterised in general by illiteracy. And M.
Morand anxiously asks that "Frenchmen may be given a place, be
it a small one, in the 'national' film industry." His satire is brisk
and bristling and, like that in Once in a Lifetime, will not appear at
all fantastic to those who know even a little of movie methods.

142

THE ARTIST
AND THE FILM

ARTHUR SHEARSBY

Up to the present, the contribution which modern art has
made to the cinema has been practically negligible. With the
exception of the Walt Disney cartoons, and all the trivial accessories
of modernity in the shape of decoration and furnishing, the film,
from the purely pictorial point of view, is very much in the
position of the art of some seventy years ago. Neither modern
clothes nor modern gags, helped out by the feeble imitations of
Gauguin or the emasculated examples of Archipenko which adorn
film interiors, can hide the essential poverty and deprivation which
the cinema has suffered in its ruthless exclusion of the artist from
its making.

With it all, this rigorous concentration of the film in the hands
of commercially minded business men, it still remains a truism that
the artist, and the artist alone, is the one person capable of trans-
forming the howling, lusty incontinences of present-day cinema
into the terms of a real art. The film is so peculiarly his medium,
from the visual point of view. It offers him the means of bringing
to life those special qualities of plastic form and conception, that
sensibility to design, which are outwith the scope of stage
presentation.

There are undisputed angles of the cinema from which the artist
should be properly excluded, except in his photographic capacity.
Drama, in its essential meaning of the presentation of human destiny
by means of the individual, will always stand or fall by the funda-
mental purpose which gives it life, but there are still many, and
much-neglected ways, in which the artist can bring an almost
wholly-original offering to the screen.

Something of what may ultimately be accomplished can be
glimpsed from the Disney cartoons, and, more recently, the French
production, Joie de Vivre. Here we see the imagination of the painter
at work in his own particular medium, the creation of significant
form, divorced from the actual world of reality.

It would be rather futile to dispute at this date, in view of the
vast popularity of Mickey Mouse, the immense influence which a

143

mere pictorial symbol can have on the imagination of the people.
Mickey is a star of the first magnitude, a creature of fantasy, who
can yet exercise an appeal denied to all but the greatest of actors.
The Joie de Vivre cartoon, unsatisfactory as it is in many ways, is a
still more cogent illustration of the effect which an abstract symbol
can have on the imagination. A purely pictorial production,
divorced from any attribute of the human, it yet manages to convey
a wealth of strange and fundamental meaning.

A new approach, of course, would be needed on the part
of directors if the modern experiments in the visual arts were to be
properly incorporated into the film. The commercial Caliph, with
his florid imagination, and entire lack of visual perception, would
have to give way to the man who could weave the tragi-comedy of
life out of the inter-relationship of masses and planes, of form,
and eventually, colour.

A good deal of substantial support may be advanced for the
belief that abstract cinematic art, when it comes, will be able to
exert quite as catholic an appeal as the realistic drama of the
present day. There is as vast a scope, within its symbolic bounds,
as has been shown to exist between the blood-and-thunder crudities
of melodrama and the more rare and subtle revelations of the higher
drama. The intelligence of the film-going public is not the negligible
factor which directors would have us believe. The average film
at the present time is definitely created for the rapturous attentions
of the adolescent, but there is no basis for the belief that the whole
of the cinema-loving public is in a state of juvenility.

Certainly to the more mature in mind, abstract art, if allowed
free access to the cinema, would have a tremendous appeal, and it
is here that the fallacy of technique must be exposed. Technique
is not, and never will be, art. Technique is applied thought, not
creative thought, and it is creative thought which is so badly needed
in the cinema of the present day. Technique can use the machine
for all it is worth, but it cannot supply it with the life-giving material
which is its real source of vitality.

The technical resources are all at hand, however. Only the
necessary imagination is lacking, coupled with the type of mind
which knows what it wants, and is determined to get it. It must,
again, be the kind of imagination which can work in masses and
planes, and visualize in the new medium.

Let us, for the sake of illustration, try to demonstrate how
modern experimental art may help the cinema by the use of human
material. Suppose we begin with a two-reel drama of the Edgar
Allan Poe type, or the creation of a film round the story of
H. G. Wells' "Invisible Man"?

The essential charm of such stories lies in their element of

144

pure fantasy. They have little relationship to flesh-and-blood
realities, but are definite creations of the imagination. If an
actor appeared (as inevitably he would) in such a grotesque or
imaginative film, with an ordinary make-up, and surrounded by
the paraphernalia of the star system, all sense of fantasy would
be dispelled, for the essence of fantasy lies, as has been said, in its
separation from the everyday world, and actors (being what they
are) are very much of the world of every day. The illusion would
have vanished, and it is here that modern art can come to the aid
of naturalism.

Masks are the finest symbols obtainable for the elimination of
the human, and the deeper conveyance of a sense of the unreal, and
should be used extensively in experimental films. Light and shadow
must also play a very important part, and an intelligent use of
symbolic backgrounds, such as those of Miro, would be of invaluable
help. Gesture and movement are of primary artistic importance,
and only the actor who could express himself throughout the
medium of his whole body could be utilized. The significance
achieved by such mime has already been seen at its best in the
Ballets Russes productions of "Choreartium" and "Les Presages."

The entire film need not be pure mime, but all talk would have
to be incorporated into the movement, and not allowed to escape
as an individual aberration from the complete design. Music and
sound effects could be made by illusion to emanate from various
points of the action. The endeavour would be, in other words, to
generalize speech effects, and localize music and sound effects,
using all such as definite accent notes, but not obtrusive attractions.
Tremendous use could be made of the revolving light and
wheel, and it would be expedient to employ an inclined stage of
perhaps one in eight or one in ten. The essential purpose behind
all such abstraction of the human would not be the elimination of
the flesh-and-blood actor, as such, but the attempted intensification
of symbolic effect.

The Greek play is perhaps a convincing illustration of the whole
theme. We all know how the orthodox cinema would tackle such a
play, and yet the essential quality in a Greek play is precisely this
absence from naturalism. Its beauty is an elusive one of the spirit
and the mind, and it is in this world of inner significances that the
experimental cinema, with a developed capacity for fantasy, will
perhaps find its widest scope.

The naturalistic play has its unquestionable place in the life of
cinematic art. It presents the human problem in a comprehensible
form to the mass of the people. Its appeal rests primarily on the
personality of the actor, and the authenticity of the emotions he is
interpreting, but the experimental cinema has the unique oppor-

145

tunity, if it so wills, of wandering into the rarer atmosphere of
intensified life and thought, by means of abstract symbols. In such
a world the actors themselves would be transformed into works of
art, fitting as an integral part into the whole design. The abilities of
the modern scenic painter, and not those of the mere property man,
would be utilized, and the composer and writer would all bring
their indispensable talents to the creation of such a real work of art. In
the realm of painting, Surrealism could be employed for cinematic
backgrounds, with its strange rendering of the things of the sub-
conscious mind, its visualised thought.

The actors, in such a setting, would take on some of the mysterious,
dream-like quality of the creations of Miro, Chirico, Fritz Van Den
Berghe, Tchelitchew, or Edouard Goerg. They could move to
the rhythm of such music as inspired the symphonic ballet,
4 'Choreartium/' The spoken word, when employed, should be
free from definite accent, and used with tonal understanding and
sympathy.

In the use of masks, it should be realized that they are not the
funny things habitually used for the mediocre interpretation of
comedy and tragedy, or, more commonly, on the fifth of November,
but symbols of great artistic and aesthetic power, having been used
in all ages and by all peoples to intensify the inner meaning of life.

To the inevitable complaint of the impossibility of such a cinema,
there can be pointed, at the present time, the slender actualities of
Disney and the Hoppin and Gross cartoon. Disney, although as
yet in the illustrative stage, has pointed the way. If he could
contrive to emerge from the comic-paper attitude to things, charming
as it undoubtedly is, into the interpretation of ideas, he could be
the greatest force on the screen. Certainly he has the necessary
sense of the macabre and fantastic.

If it be advanced that the pictorially experimental cinema
would have no public beyond the hysterical vapourings of the clique
or the coterie, it can be replied that this possibility would all
depend on the method of approach and the genuineness of the
final effect. Certainly, at the present day, there is a growing unrest
with the orthodox cinema, largely amongst its "middle-brow"
patrons. It neither affords them the solid, three-dimensional
satisfactions of the theatre, nor the unreal, imaginative appeal
which modern pictorial art could bring to the screen. It is
a half-way house, in which both mediums effect a sterile com-
promise. If it is to live at all as an integral part of the cultural life
of the people it must, on the one hand, raise the naturalistic film
into a real association with life, and, on the other, employ the
resources of pictorial art, with its peculiar aptitude for the medium,
to intensify the life of the imagination.

146

Heinrich George in a new Ufa
film, "Joan the Maid."
Direction: Gustav Ucicky.
Photography: Gunther Krampf.

From

Alexandrov's
"Jazz Comedy,"
a Souyoskino
production.

From "Chapayev,"
a Lenfilm production
based on authentic
material of the
Civil War in
Turkistan in 1919.
Scenario and
direction :
the Brothers Vassilev.

Courtesy of Marie Seton.

NEW TRENDS IN
SOVIET CINEMA

MARIE SETON

The recent Moscow Cinema Conference and the subsequent dis-
cussion made it quite obvious that the Soviet cinema has entered
upon a new phase of its development. For four years there has
been a crisis among the cinema artists, brought about by the transi-
tional conditions of the Soviet Union itself. They failed time and
again to find and reveal the spirit of the time before that spirit had
evolved into something different. They were frightened of contra-
dictions. More often than not the problems raised in the films were
out of date before the pictures were released, or the theme of the
pictures muddled because the scenarios had been given a fresh twist
half-way through. For example, the last sequence of Pudovkin's
Deserter — the unemployed's encounter with the police — was origin-
ally in the second reel. During 1934, however, coinciding with the
increased stability of Soviet life, the film industry got "out of the
wood" and produced several pictures with interesting new trends,
and one, Chapeyev, which can rank beside Potemkin and Mother as
characteristic of its period.

The three days conference served to clear the air by giving public
expression, not to say official status, to a number of thoughts which
were in the process of turning into facts. It also gave the second
generation of directors and the less known cinema artists an oppor-
tunity to formulate their theories, which were more often than not
in opposition to those of Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Dovzhenko.
They in turn modified or threw out a number of their theories,
essential in their day, which had been hitherto generally accepted as
characteristic of Soviet film. For example, the subordinate position
of the professional actor which characterized the work of Pudovkin,
and the subordination of the individual character to the mass which
was a corner stone of Eisenstein's scenarios.

The most constructive element of the conference was the frank-
ness with which all expressed themselves. Directors from the national
minority republics like Georgia did not hesitate to say that they
were too often considered as provincials by the Moscow artists;

149

actors to assert that their suggestions and opinions were arrogantly
swept aside by directors ; and Leningrad artists to maintain that the
Moscow studios were badly organized, supercilious in tone and
blandly indifferent to the welfare of the students graduating from the
State Institute of Cinematography. For three days criticism raged
fast and furious.

The most destructive element of the conference was that under
the guise of criticism there was a deal of backbiting, particularly on
the part of the second generation of directors, who often showed
themselves intolerant, arrogant and ungrateful towards the pioneer
directors who, during an epoch of ruined economy, had raised a
number of basically important theoretical signposts. That the new-
comers should criticise and revise the early theories of Eisenstein,
Pudovkin and Dovzhenko, shows the virility with which they come
to the cinema; but when several young directors of talent unlit by
genius began to belittle Eisenstein and Pudovkin with personally
rude quotations from Gogol and Georges Sand, and set themselves
up as inquisitors, then they showed themselves to be suffering from
a disease known in revolutionary circles as Marxian measles. By
contrast the Communist Party representative, Dinamov, belittled
no one and showed a much more profound understanding of the
creative artist's psychology than some of the budding geniuses
showed towards each other. His speech can be summarized in the
words of Marx, "that all emancipation leads back to the human
world, to relationships, to men themselves." Therefore, the main
tasks of the Soviet cinema artists in 1935 are: —

(1) To reinstate Beauty.

The beauty which emerges from ideas and not from single
sequences, beautiful in themselves but related only as illustrations
to the theme or as symbols of ideas.

(2) For artists to feel the epoch in their blood — as Eisenstein and
Pudovkin felt it when they made Potemkin and Mother, for "the voice
of the epoch must ring in the voice of the hero."

(3) The hero to be unafraid of burning passions.

In order that the Soviet cinema may have this passion the
directors (as has not always been the case) must only take those
subjects with which they are in love. They must take root in the
subject as trees take root in the soil.

(4) To create individual characters.

People with real and often contradictory natures, not puppets
in black-and-white pulled by the string of ideas stated but not
analysed. Contradictions in life and in people must be seen and
understood ; and above all the enemy, like the hero, must be shown in
the round.

(5) To create actors with great passions, to portray such

150

characters so that they live; for, said Dinamov, "you cannot base
your cinema entirely on the use of natural types, any more than it
can be wholly a documentary cinema."

(6) To have a subject in every picture, for the mass has its
subjects and its leaders. Mother, Storm Over Asia and Chapeyev are
the main line of the Soviet film ; in them there are heroes through
whom the action as thought and the thought as action is manifested.

(7) To create heroes who must think so that their thoughts reach
the public.

(8) To create heroes who must feel, otherwise the subject will
remain incomplete. Moreover, characters must have main emo-
tions, for "an eagle could not fly with a host of little wings."

None of these problems can be solved without

(9) a clear style and a perfect technique.

It is not quantity, but quality that counts. "In the Golden Age
of Greece the statues were of normal size; only in an age of decay did
quantity replace quality. Style is the artist's hand- wri ting " — and
the Soviet cinema has many styles and theories: Eisenstein's the
intellectual, Dovzhenko's the poetic, Pudovkin's the passionate and
emotional.

(10) The final problem of the film workers is to remake cinema
consciousness. The struggle is not so much a fight against different
theories as to create a definite and positive new style. In fact, an
ever-evolving and developing style.

The only film which has shown a mature development of many
of these new trends is Chapeyev, the first sound picture of two brothers
Vassilev. They adapted the scenario from the book by Furmanov
with the use of historical records.

Chapeyev is the only recent Soviet film with any large compre-
hension of men as they are in life. Its beauty will last because
it is not "fashionable" in its thought or its treatment. It is full
of the spirit by which an epoch can be seriously judged. It is
not like Nights of St. Petersburg or Storm, pictures which show a
revival of interest in the classical and the beautiful; or The Jolly
Boys (Jazz Comedy) , which is full of formal beauty that degenerates
often into the pretty-pretty. Though the theme of Chapeyev, the
struggle of a small detachment of revolutionary soldiers under the
command of Chapeyev, is a page from early Soviet history recorded
in a novel by Chapeyev's actual commissar, Furmanov, the charac-
ters and events are essentially seen through the eyes of 1934-35. Had
Eisenstein or Pudovkin taken this theme in 1925, instead of Potemkin
and Mother, they would in their separate methods have treated it as
an heroic mass drama of civil war, ending in the death of all con-
cerned. Made to-day it is an analysis of character, the political

151

character of the battle and the psychological character of a small
group of soldiers who, because of their thoughts and emotions,
represent the masses.

Chapeyev is a more personally passionate film than any made
before. Tenderness and love and humour, a really delicious humour,
are as integral elements of the story as its courage and heroism;
they are the form through which life is expressed as opposed to
certain and oncoming death. The theme depends entirely upon
character. There is nothing symbolic about the six or eight leading
characters, soldiers, peasants and a woman talking backchat,
singing, loving and fighting to the death. There is nothing con-
ventionally heroic about the hero, Chapeyev, cursing, throwing chairs
about, puzzled; at first politically illiterate. Some peasants ask him
whether he is a Communist or a Bolshevik; he scratches his head,
not knowing what they mean, and answers, " I'm an internationalist."
Even the White officer is human; he loves Chopin, he is never
grotesque, he is an enemy to respect.

Chapeyev is undoubtedly as much the actors' as it is the directors'
picture; and that is a new development in the history of Soviet films.
Babotchkin's portrayal of Chapeyev is an amazing piece of work,
a beautiful performance. He has through intensive research wormed
his way into the commander's skin. Without such a performance
Chapeyev would be nothing, for the main subject is how Chapeyev
and his men think and feel and accordingly act in a number of
historical events. Theirs is an optimistic tragedy.

The style of the picture is synthetic. The synthesis of the great
early films tempered with the more personal elements which were
first manifested in 1932 in Ermler's and Utkevitche's Counterplan.
It is much quieter in rhythm than the early pictures; it has few
tricks either of photography or montage. There is a certain amount
of symbolism all through the film, introduced through several well-
known folk songs; for example, towards the end Chapeyev sings the
eighteenth-century song of the Decemberists, "Ermerk," which tells
the tale of the conqueror of Siberia, who is drowned as he tries to
swim the river. It suggests and anticipates Chapeyev's own fate.
But on the whole the subject is more revolutionary than the form,
or rather, the treatment of the subject is more important than the
technique employed when estimating the value of Chapeyev in the
historical development of the Soviet cinema.

THE COVER ILLUSTRATION is from the new Ufa film Abel mil der
Muttdharmonika, directed by Max Pfeiffer and featuring Karl Ludwig Schreiber.

152

Rene Deltgen in Germany's
new version of the life
of Joan of Arc.
Scenario: Gerhard MenzeL

Paul Robeson and Nina Mae McKinney
in "Sanders of the River/' a London Films
production based on the Edgar Wallace
stories of Commissioner Sanders.
Direction : Zoltan Korda.

THE FILM ABROAD

SWEDEN

During 1934 the Swedish film industry entered upon a new phase
of production activity and a determined effort is being made to meet
the competition of foreign produced films in the home market. There
is, on the one hand, an endeavour to produce fine films comparable
to those of the great days of the Swedish cinema, and on the other
an attempt to shut out all inferior foreign pictures. Sweden has no
quota system, and the proportion of Swedish to foreign pictures
shown depends entirely on the power of the former to compete in
the home market.

Sweden is a country with a reputation for quality in industry,
and just as other Swedish industries owe the high standard of their
products to the skill of their craftsmen, so the film industry has at its
disposal a company of highly skilled technicians. In addition to the
experienced producers, there is growing up a generation of younger
artists who, untrained in routine, have imagination and enthusiasm
in abundance.

During 1934 Sweden for the first time took part in international
film contests, being represented at both Vienna and Venice. At
Vienna the Swedish film En Stilla Flirt {A Mild Flirt) won a first
prize. Gustav Molander, its producer, is one of the oldest and
most reliable artists in the Swedish cinema. He received his early
schooling in the glorious epoch of Sweden's silent films when he
worked as assistant to, among others, Victor Sjostrom. In particular
the technique of his film is notable. The photography is by Ake
Dahlquist, foremost among Swedish cameramen, who will be re-
membered for his work in En JVatt, also produced by Molander.

A Mild Flirt has been a great success in Sweden. In spite of the
fact that Sweden is the native country of Greta Garbo, a good
Swedish film is generally a greater commercial success than a
Garbo film. In A Mild Flirt the principal part was taken by Tutta
Rolf, who, early this year, left for Hollywood, where she is under
contract with Fox.

The Swedish Film Association, Svenska Filmsamfundet, was
founded in 1933, and last year had the task of awarding its prize
medal for the first time. It was given to one of the year's greatest
commercial successes, Karl Fredrik Regerar. This is the story of a
Swedish agricultural workman who attains a high position in the
Government, and it has a recognisable parallel in modern Swedish

155

politics. A medal was awarded to Sigurd Wallen for his rendering
of the role of Karl Fredrik.

In addition to his strenuous work as director of his theatre and
as an actor, Gosta Ekman has found time for three film perform-
ances. The chief of these is the title role in Swedenhielm, from the
play by the Swedish author, Hjalmar Bergman. It is a story of a
scientist who, after many disappointments, at last wins the Nobel
Prize; and it gives illuminating expression to the characteristic national
qualities of the Swede — honesty, simplicity, faithfulness and stub-
bornness. The other two films in which Gosta Ekman has appeared
are farcical comedies and, chiefly because of his contribution, have
become great successes.

Swedish cinema has three young producers who, during the
past year, have made good with original- films. The youngest of
them is Lorens Narmstedt, who made The Atlantic Adventure. Per-
Axel Branner, the second of the young directors, suddenly broke
off a stage career in order to make films. His Young Hearts is the
story of a group of girls of about sixteen years of age brought together
from different parts of the country to spend the summer in a country
rectory for their confirmation — young people with sensitive minds,
susceptible to trifles, but with growing spirit and developing initia-
tive. Branner has made a few other films, including a new version
of The Song of the Flame Red Flower, from the novel of the Finnish
author, Johannes Linnankoski. About ten years ago Mauritz
Stiller made a picture on the same theme which was an international
success. The new version may not have the same success, but it
has much of the quality which made Stiller' s film outstanding.
Branner is a versatile director of great promise. The third of these
promising new directors is Ivar Johansson. He prefers to produce
his films in surroundings full of strength and grandeur : the wild
rivers and sweeping valleys of the north of Sweden, as in Hdlsingar ;
or the outmost barren islands of the archipelago, swept by wind
and wave, as in Surfs. His characters live, and are one with their
surroundings, and the conflicts grow up out of the milieu in a way
that is not common in films. He sketches in the landscape and its
people with broad powerful strokes, and his characters have space
and horizon behind them.

These are the most important of the thirty pictures which Sweden
has produced during the past eighteen months. Other films have
been comedies intended for popular consumption. Serious work
in other spheres has not been lacking, however. Prince Wilhelm,
author of a number of plays and travel books, has produced a full-
length film about the lighthouse people of the west coast, and also
several short films for which he has supplied the commentary. An
increasing interest is being taken in short films, and the leading

156

producing company has a special department for them, with four
directors. Sweden is beginning to understand the value and im-
portance of the documentary film.

Ragnar Allberg.

AMERICA

The sheen of the surface photography gets slicker, light glances off
the edge of polished surfaces like star-bursts, there is a steel-edged
sharpness to the black-and-white magic of what a ten-thousand-dollar
Mitchell sound camera can do — and ground noises have been
eliminated from the sound so that technically one might say that
the American movie is flawless.

But one does not say that because the emotional content remains
as sterile as ever. One cannot forgive this vacuity of ideas for the
devastating sleekness of the mechanics of photography and sound.
The critics have sung the praises of Vidor's The Wedding Night,
which had the novelty of the Connecticut tobacco fields as a setting
but little else. Otherwise it is the old triangle, with a primitive
base and a sharp apex lifted by the gargantuan stature of Gary
Cooper, a good actor. Anna Sten hasn't done anything in Holly-
wood to approach her performance in Brothers Karamazov. The last
"touch" in The Wedding Night is true Vidor and good Vidor. In
Our Daily Bread the intention is more laudable than the execution
of it. For one thing, Vidor must have looked too long at Turksib.
What good is a social document if you are going to drag in such well-
worn dramatic cliches as the tough guy who gives himself up so that
the reward money can be used to further the co-operative farm?
And why the fuzzy-haired blonde to vamp the husband away from
the faithful and serving wife and thereby jeopardize the success of
the co-operative by luring away the farm's organizer? A co-opera-
tive farm has real problems to meet — they concern Government or
State subsidies, united front of workers and farmers, soil, seed, irriga-
tion and the economic system which will or will not allow it to
function. What is this nonsense about blondes and mock-heroics?
The one fine shot of a little globe of water spurting up from the
earth around the tender shoot — as lyrical as Pudovkin at his best —
should have shown Vidor the true forte of the film. Yet Our Daily
Bread made my companion cry, and was awarded a gold medal by
I.C.E. Maybe it doesn't take much (along such a "daring" line of
thought, i.e. that the soil is the mother of man, and that man should
return to it to reclaim his living and his self-respect) to touch a world
sated with artificialities. But the picture is a failure at the box-
office in America. The mass of people prefer to be numbed with the
narcotic of the trivial average Hollywood film. A film like Our Daily

157

Bread brings them too close to the harsh reality of their own lives.
That's not what movies are for, for them.

Movies are for Jean Harlow and William Powell in Reckless.
Based on a recent newspaper scandal of a Broadway torch-singer
who married a millionaire playboy, who died soon after the marriage,
mysteriously, too, they say. She was never accepted by his snooty
family, and when her child was born there was a long battle in the
courts for the custody of the child, and finally she repudiated a
million-dollar settlement so she could have the child, and went back
to Broadway. The film version of this delightful pastiche is as brittle
as a pane of glass, and as transparent. Also, as emotional. Harlow
finally sets her critics right that she can't act. The dialogue is pom-
pous and recited, and one longs for a time-out period when the
director would have allowed at least some of the notorious Harlow
sex appeal to creep in, even if it meant discarding the story into the
ash-can where it belongs. But it will make a fortune.

The sputtering of Frank Morgan in Naughty Marietta makes that
film tolerable for the few comic moments when he is on — otherwise it
is a beautiful bore. Star at Midnight is a third carbon copy of The
Thin Man (a good mystery film — but lamentably destined to be the
first of a new series of wisecracking whodunit pictures) . Sequoia has
a few good animal shots but much too much insupportable poutings
by Jean Parker, who plays a wild, untamed girl of America's great
outdoors. Slopping up Nature with a lot of S.P.G.A. goo. Only
when the proximity of the actors to the animals has been removed
does something of the nobility of the deer and the puma seep through.
Otherwise it's a film for Boy Scouts.

The foreign film situation in America is all Britain. One Soviet
film, Chapayev, was a success in New York. (The new Kozintsev-
Trauberg picture, Youth of Maxim, has just opened.) Among French
films, only Yvonne Printemps' lavender and old lace version of
Camille was successful, and that only in New York. La Maternelle and
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse are fighting with the ubiquitous censors
for their lives. Fritz Lang's Liliom was a failure here. But Gaumont-
British and London Films are spreading all over the country, and
two films of Gaumont's, The Iron Duke and Unfinished Symphony, and
London Films' Scarlet Pimpernel have been very successful. So were
Chu Chin Chow and Power {Jew Suss). And others. It's an "invasion
by the red-coats" all over again, the American distributors are saying.
Britain retaliating for 1776 and 181 2. G.-B. and London Films may
yet do it. Their forthcoming schedules will give Hollywood no little
competition, and Hollywood is blithely stepping right into it by
loaning out its players, writers, etc., for G.-B. and London Films.

Britain is more favourably situated, with regard to America and
the world market, than ever before. If she makes the most of it, not

158

only will she have usurped Germany's former first place as a labora-
tory of the cinema, but she will split up the world monopoly no longer
so impregnably held by the moguls of Hollywood.

Herman G. Weinberg.

GERMANY

"At last the moment has arrived when the Reichs Government
is in a position to play a vigorous part in assisting the development
of the German film industry, by making definite contributions of an
intellectual, economic and material nature." This was the message
Dr. Goebbels delivered at the inauguration of the Reichs Film
Archives, which has been formed for the preservation of specimens
of all the great films ever produced in Germany.

"Before the end of this year," said Dr. Goebbels, "five films of
undeniable classical status, representative of German film art at its
best, will be on display. They are now in preparation. And the
Government will see to it that the producers will be spared undue
worry concerning the expenditure of time and money.

"Already the Government has gone a long way to prepare a
better future for the film industry, and has provided a material
basis to work from, as, for instance, through the establishment of
the Film Bank, the relaxation of the censorship, the creation of the
Reichs Institute of Film Drama, and finally through the award of
the Reichs Film prize to stimulate and encourage creative and
artistic achievement."

Dr. Goebbels assured his hearers that he had "not the slightest
intention" of tutoring the producers nor of hampering their freedom
in any direction. "No artist," he said, "can work under the lash of a
taskmaster."

Robert Herlth and Walter Rohrig, famous for the creation of the
architectural splendour of many early German films, will be respon-
sible for the settings of Amphitryon, now being produced by Ufa at
Neubabelsberg. Reinhold Schunzel will direct, from his own
scenario. Fritz Arno Wagner is camera-man, and the music has been
written by Franz Doelle.

Gustav Ucicky has directed Joan of Arc, from a scenario by the
poet Gerhard Menzel. The photography is by Gunther Krampf, and
Rohrig and Herlth are again responsible for the settings, which are
conceived on a vast scale. *

German and French versions are to be made of the musical feature,
Make Me Happy, which Arthur Robison is directing. The music is
by Theo Mackeben.

Pola Negri takes the principal part in Mazurka, a Cine-Allianz
production directed by Willi Forst.

159

MISCELLANY

THE SCENARIO

May I be allowed to comment on your editorial in the last issue
dealing with the scenario of The Private Life of Henry VIII ? This
gives me an opportunity to hit out at your brave Quarterly in a
manner befitting its policy, which is belligerent and stimulating.

My cardinal sin, according to your gospel, is that I deny any
knowledge of the meaning of "true cinema." But in the intro-
duction to Henry VIII I took the precaution of adding "whatever
that is," and I regret to say that your editorial does not take us any
further in the way of a definition. Indeed, no. It merely tells us
that film form is a pattern laid up in Heaven, like Plato's "Re-
public," and that we are as far from it to-day, with perhaps two
exceptions — Chaplin and Clair — as ever we were.

You say that if the scenarist produces something on paper which
is afterwards re-created in celluloid, he is being denied his "rightful
recognition as progenitor of the production," or that the director,
alternatively, is being given credit for creative gifts to which he is
not entitled. I contend that, in the present state of cinema, that is
the most abysmal nonsense. This is not a question of credits —
and Heaven knows enough people gain credit for doing nothing at
all — but of the first principle of film form. Not many principles,
but one principle, which is this: that the content and pattern of the
film are determined by the idea, and that the originator of that
idea is, ipso facto, the creator of the film.

In our muddled and unformed cinema, for which no one has
yet succeeded in establishing any principles, as Aristotle did for the
drama, the idea is at present contained in the scenario. I do not
claim any special eminence for the scenario, and as a basis for a
non-literary affair like a picture I stated plainly enough in my
introduction that it was suspect. And so it is, and will be for many
years to come, till a director can read a script as a musician reads
a score.

But can you hazard a guess when films will be the single, in-
dividual creation of one person? Would criticism be worth a rap
which totally ignored present conditions, namely, the organised
regimentation of many talents, and proceeded on the assumption
that, unless one artist were the only begetter, the film was a failure,
was not worthy of serious attention?

160

Shakespeare is regarded as no less an artist because he borrowed
from Plutarch, and Sterne is no less a wit because he stole from
Burton. In fact, you are hopelessly old-fashioned if you suppose
that a work of art is only perfect if it is conceived and carried out
by one individual mind. Of course, it may be. Negro and Aztec
art shows that it was, and how perfect it was.

But in the cinema we are still primitives, when one man is as
good as another in practice or criticism. And in your passion for
technical rectitude you seem to have missed the point of my scenario
series altogether, just as a critic can go on talking till he is blue
in the face about filmic form or "expressive sound" and still tell
you nothing whatever about the film, what happened in the film,
what was its intention, what beauties it presented, what knowledge
it showed, and so forth. (And parenthetically, can you tell me of
any sound which is not "expressive"?)

You say that without an architect to inspire the draughtsmen
and instruct the builders, a building would lack aesthetic harmony.
That is true. But who is the architect of a film if he is not the
scenarist, and that being so, why should he not be given his rightful
importance in the filmic scheme?

I come to the rescue of this neglected species and a damaging
lump of Edinburgh rock is flung at me by Cinema Quarterly. I deal
with what is instead of what will be, and I am a traitor to the best
in cinema. You say it is "idle to talk of the scenario as having signi-
ficance," and yet, in Mack Schwab's interesting article on Chaplin,
in the same issue, he writes: "His (Chaplin's) script is completely
worked out, key-shot by key-shot."

Inevitably. It is sheer academicism to suppose that Chaplin,
any more than Beethoven, carries everything in his head on the
score that, all being visual, or all being harmonics, no scheme of
notation is necessary. On the contrary, that is the significant thing,
the ground-plan, the foundation, the idea rising in imagination
from the page.

However, this must be intensely boring to your readers, and I
must not inflict myself on them. But are you sure that in the severe
cold of actual practice your many theories would stand the test?
I myself have had a long apprenticeship in critical theory of films,
and have stated them in papers not unworthy to be placed side by
side with Cinema Quarterly, and yet I distrust a great deal of what I
said, and marvel that I was so distant from reality. And I question
profoundly whether the "full creative control" you demand of
directors is not just a pattern laid up in Edinburgh, for students,
scholars and watchers in the skies, and not for the striving mortal
in the studio fighting the devils of light, sound and mischance.

Ernest Betts.
161

INDIA ON THE SCREEN

India having taken the place of gunmen on the screen, the inevitable
question is being asked. The word Art is being whispered, though
God forbade that it should ever be applied to the gunmen sequence.
But India . . . atmosphere . . . Flaherty has gone out to spend a year
or two photographing large chunks of atmosphere.

It is unfair to generalize. Films that strive to be instructive
ought not to be compared with those that are made solely for
diversion. Both Lives of a Bengal Lancer and Clive of India are in the
latter category, though they mark an advance from the crude Son
of India of Ramon Novarro and the terrible early Kiplings.

If you attempt to make an analysis, you will find that Bengal
Lancer is really a Wild West picture in an Indian setting — a minimum
of Indian setting, for the North-West Frontier is nothing more
than the hills of Hollywood with Gary Cooper and Aubrey Smith
capering about them. It forms superb entertainment.

Clive of India is essentially domestic — a love story — though,
coming after Bengal Lancer, it was expected that the conqueror of
India should never leave his elephant unless it were to blow up
half India. Not one second of that picture was made in India. It
was purely diversional. The atmosphere was an effect.

Flaherty's methods are different. He gives you the real thing.
Generally in immense slabs. As an instruction, it is of value. He
contrives also to make of it a work of art. But to attempt to combine
it with a story would be to court disaster. I prefer the simple devices
of a Chaplin. Thirteen years ago, when he made A Woman of Paris,
Charlie Chaplin showed us a girl waiting for a train. The train came
in. He did not show us the charging, tearing express; but only the
flicker of lights from the carriage windows on the girl's anxious face
— firstly rapidly, then slowly, until the train stopped. "I did that
with a piece of cardboard," he told me.

This will have to be borne in mind when Kim comes to be made.
Irving Thalberg discussed it with me when I was in Hollywood.
He wanted me to stay on and tackle it ; but, alas ! my other engage-
ments did not permit this. When, however, it is undertaken, it will
have to be decided whether the atmosphere or the story is of greater
consequence on the screen : the two cannot be combined as effectively
in this new medium as they are in the book. Essentially, it is an
atmosphere book. But there is a story, and if a diversional film is
to be made, the atmosphere will have to be relegated to effects.

There is happily a public — a very large public — for both types of
film, as the astounding and deserved success of such a production as
Forgotten Men shows. There we had a neatly assembled jig-saw of

162

Fritz Kortner as
Abdul Hamid in
"Abdul the Damned."
Production: B.I. P.
Direction: Karl'Grune.

Fred Barnard's illustration of
Mr Micawber in an early
edition of

"David Copperfield,"
with a still of W. C. Fields
as the same character from
the M.-G.-M. film.
The character studies suggest
an animation of the original
magazine engravings" —
Campbell Nairne.

Cicely Courtneidge in
"Me and Marlborough/'
a new historical film
being completed by
Gaumont-British at
Shepherd's Bush.
Direction : Victor Saville,

war atmosphere, cemented together by the reminiscent voice of Sir
John Hammerton. Greta Garbo in The Painted Veil ran for two
weeks at the Empire; Forgotten Men for twelve weeks at the Rialto.

R. J. MlNNEY.

DISNEY EXHIBITION

Technically, the recent Disney Exhibition at the Leicester Galleries,
London, was a success. It was arranged in a simple and straight-
forward manner, and with such a wealth of detail that the spec-
tator (with the exception of the young person) was given a complete
idea of the manner in which Disney and his staff of three hundred
workers manage to produce thirteen Mickey Mouse cartoons and
thirteen Silly Symphonies annually. It was so comprehensive, in
fact, that one was immediately struck with a sense of the ease and
simplicity with which it could all be copied, given, of course, a cer-
tain standard of ability and the essential capital.

Artistically, however, the show was second-rate. In an adjoining
room a number of modern French paintings were on view, and the
contrast was illuminating and compelling. The paintings were alive
and vivid and expressive of their age. They contained those qualities
of form and rhythm, of colour and design with which the contem-
porary artist captures his meaning. They impinged on one's con-
sciousness, so to speak, and challenged one's acceptances. Disney,
with his clever box of conjuring tricks, could produce nothing with
half so much vitality. His language is the language of another plane
of thought and imagination.

Pictorially speaking, the whole point of the Disney show lay in
this very opportune experiment in comparison. The animated car-
toon, without a doubt, is still only in its rudimentary stages, although
it is capable of developing into a vital branch of cinematic art, given
the necessary will and power of direction. It is a first-rate medium for
the special qualities of the painter, apart from the mere dexterous
handling of mechanism.

We all recognize and appreciate the humanity and life of Mickey
Mouse. It must be borne in upon the inelastic brains of our film
producers that the animated cartoon, as a special branch of cinema,
has come to stay, that the people, as a whole, are enthusiastic about
it, and that, given the necessary stimulus, it can yet reach unimagined
heights of artistry and meaning.

Disney's technique has almost reached the apex of its power. He
continues to give us something which is clever and funny, decorative,

165

and, on occasion, sinister ; but he is not nearly within reach of his
maturity as an artist. His imagination will have to expand, and his
mind to grow, before he can yet produce an all-round, satisfying
work of art.

It may be contended, with reason, that the majority of people
prefer Mickey as he is, devoid of the artistic trappings which might
detract from his naturalism. There is no earthly reason, apart from
priggish presumption, why they should be deprived of the antics
of the little fellow. He is cute and very winning, full of unexpected
tricks, and able to play with the stabilities of life in a manner which
pleases their careworn sense of responsibility.

We hope, however, that there is nothing carping or superior, or
savouring of boards and baggy trousers, in the suggestion that there
is still tremendous delight and meaning to be had from the animated
cartoon, when developed from its purely pictorical angle. We have,
we think, a right to these adult artistic satisfactions so sadly catered
for. Must it be inevitable that financial considerations should obtain
a stranglehold on this, as on every other, branch of cinema?

In this country, of course, the animated cartoon has not even
reached the lusty, infantile stage of Micky Mouse, but there is no
lack of artistic material in the country. With the co-operation of a
few artists and art-schools, under the imaginative control of someone
with an understanding of the medium, and, of course, the indis-
pensable technical advisers, something could be built up which would
be a definite challenge to the artistic timidities of the commercial
cinema. Mickey and his playful eccentricities would not be smothered
under the stifling mantle of Highbrowism. From this specialized
angle of the film, there is room for Mickey as for the wider visions
and more imaginative conceptions of the painter and poet.

Arthur Shearsby.

NEW BOOKS

JEW SUSS (London, Methuen, 5s.) is the second of a series of
scenarios which Ernest Betts is editing. It fulfils a useful purpose
in showing the student what part the scenario actually plays in
production, and by comparison with the original novel, what
incidents in the book the adaptors considered most suitable for
treatment on the screen. It is illustrated (though we could wish
more fully) with stills and with sketches prepared by Alfred Junge
for the decor.

MY OWN STORY. By Marie Dressier (London, Hurst & Blackett,
15s.) is the record of a fine actress with a great spirit and a sane
philosophy. Much of the book is mere gossip, but there is also a
great deal of shrewd wisdom, as, for instance, an old trouper's appeal

166

to the producers to give the public credit for ten times as much native
intelligence as they do.

CINE-PHOTOGRAPHY FOR AMATEURS. By J. H. Reyner
(London, Chapman & Hall, ios. 6d.) appears in a new and revised
edition, and with its many illustrations and technical hints should
assist the amateur to get the best results out of the efficient apparatus
now at his disposal.

PRACTICAL SET STRUCTURE. By D. Charles Ottley (London,
Pitman, 5s.) is another useful book for the amateur, telling how
studio sets, flats, and lighting units may be made economically and
with a minimum of material resources. As a practical guide it will
be welcomed by all amateur cine societies who possess a studio.
THE KINE YEAR BOOK (London, Kinematograph Publications,
1 os.) contains as usual a vast amount of information about film
production, distribution, and the organization of the trade at home
and abroad. Its 600 odd pages are a valuable encyclopaedia of
the screen and an essential work of reference for everyone intimately
connected with the cinema.

"MOVING PICTURE MONTHLY" 1935 ANNUAL (Bombay,
Re. 1. 4.) is a trade-fan illustrated survey of Indian cinema affairs,
which shows that, whatever may be the quality of native production,
there exists in India a stupendous enthusiasm for the new art.

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS NUMBER

CAMPBELL NAIRNE. Film critic of the Glasgow "Bulletin" and author of "One Stair

Up" and '* Stony Ground."
RICHARD GRIFFITH. American film student and journalist.

ARTHUR SHEARSBY. Notable British artist, at present planning experiment in cartoon films.
MARIE SETON. Well-known writer on cinema and drama, particularly Russian.
RAGNAR ALLBERG. Swedish film journalist.

HERMAN G. WEINBERG. Conducts the Little Cinema Theatre in Baltimore, U.S.A.
ERNEST BETTS. Film critic of the "Sunday Express."
R. J. MINNEY. Anglo-Indian journalist and author of the play " Clive of India" from which

the film of the same name is adapted.
PAUL ROTH A. At present directing The Face of Britain for G.-B. Instructional.
BASIL WRIGHT. Director of The Song of Ceylon and numerous other documentaries.
J. S. FAIRFAX-JONES. Director of the Everyman Cinema, Hampstead.

KINO FILMS have recently released several more Russian films on 16mm.
stock, including the two Pudovkin masterpieces, Mother and Storm Over Asia,
Trauberg's New Babylon, as well as two good shorts — Oil Symphony and a cartoon,
The Little Screw. All these, as well as their other releases (Potemkin, General Line,
Son of a Soldier, etc.), are complete and uncut versions, and all are on non-flam
stock, which makes it possible to show them anywhere without restrictions.
KINO also handle the productions of the Workers' Film and Photo League,
which include one or two short documentaries, a short story film, and three news-
reels. Particulars may be obtained from KINO FILMS (1935) LTD., 84 Gray's
Inn Road, W.C. 1.

167

films of the quarter

HOME— FROM ABROAD

FORSYTH HARDY

The major British films for the quarter have been British in subject,
if not all British in origin. America's movie regard for this country,
of which preliminary intimation was given by the faithful and rever-
ential Cavalcade, has apparently steadily swollen, and we have since
had Treasure Island, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, The Key, Vanessa, the
Barrie films, the Dickens films, and now the films of the British in
India. There is, of course, a commercial explanation for this un-
natural display of devotion, as there is a commercial explanation
for most of the apparently inexplicable enthusiams of film produc-
tion. The revenue which an American picture derives from the
British market is a bulky weight in the profit and loss scales. The
flattering of the British film-goer is thus a simple commercial necessity.
With the limitation of the foreign market through language barriers,
Hollywood is obliged to regard Britain and the English-speaking
possessions as its main source of revenue outside America. No longer
can it afford to think only of the American film-goer in planning its
productions. Thus we have the handsome and meticulously respect-
ful David Copperfield and the discreet and dignified Lives of a Bengal
Lancer. "It pays to be polite," the producers murmur, surveying the
balance-sheets.

This material motive perceived, it would be idle to search for special
significance in this latest movie tendency ; yet from the point of view
of the film as a vehicle for national expression, the development
is interesting. The impression of British life which these American-
made films create abroad is important for this country. They
are going to be shown all over the world, and a large percentage of
the audience, untravelled, illiterate, is going to accept this Britain as
the real thing. Is it? So far, Hollywood has been cautious and there
has been flattery rather than defamation. But Hollywood has not
forgotten the firmly established maxim that trade follows the film,
and has been careful not to show British methods and institutions
and commerce in a more favourable light than American. Generally
in those American-British films, there is the suggestion that Britain
is just a little backward, that it is an old-world country of Tudor
mansions and tottering taxi-cabs, of dull-witted policemen and gruff,
grumpy generals, of antique plumbing systems and venerable
timbered houses, out of which it would be no surprise to see Mr.

168

From the new American version
of "Les Miserables," produced
by Twentieth Century.
Fredric March is Valjean, and
Charles Laughton, Javert.
Director: Richard Boleslavsky.
Scenario- W. P. Lipscomb.

From "For All Eternity/'

Marion Grierson's film

of the Cathedrals of

England.

Production : Strand Films.

From Paul Rotha's "Shipyard/'
describing the building of an
Orient liner at Barrow-in-
Furness.

Production: Gaumont-British
Instructional.

Micawber step. Following this line of suspicious supposition, we
wonder if it is entirely by chance that Victorian themes are those
most in demand in Hollywood?

Of the authenticity of the Indian films I cannot speak; but R. J.
Minney, who comments on this development in the Miscellany,
has observed elsewhere of Bengal Lancer that it "has caught the spirit
of the British in India, which is essentially a noble blend of valour
and discipline and manliness of a type that the Western world of this
generation, with its new mincing ways, has lost entirely. . . . We
see in Bengal Lancer how India is really governed. There is on the
surface the hard-playing, polo-loving, be-all and end-all of existence.
Below it is the stern thoroughness, shot with a keen sense of justice
and fair play, not the sadistic fury of tryanny." It is good to have
this assurance from one qualified to pass judgment. Certainly the
film gives a stalwart exposition of the ideals behind British military
service in India; and Hollywood, with an easy confidence which
producers in this country seem unable to achieve, gives vigorous
expression to a fervent brand of British patriotism. This element
apart, Bengal Lancer is an exciting adventure story, not without its
violently melodramatic moments and its blots of bathos, but handled
compellingly by Henry Hathaway, and, in form, essentially of the
cinema. In the last respect particularly, Clive of India does not stand
well beside the Paramount film. One can always sense that it has
been conceived as a play; that the action has been cut to suit the
limitations of back-cloth and footlights; and that the emphasis is
primarily on characterisation rather than on the relation of a man to
a mighty background. The film dwells but lightly on the effect of
Clive's manoeuvres in India. Indeed, it is quite timorous about
India, and seems to be visibly relieved when the scene shifts back to
London again. Clive of India throws off its literary harness and breaks
away clean into movie only during the Plassey episode, where the
armoured battle elephants claim for Suraj ud Dowlah the honour of
inventing the tank. Skilled acting might yet have made this an
impressive version of a fine play; but Ronald Colman and Loretta
Young are out of their dramatic depth.

I can write with more knowledge of Hollywood's Barrie films as
expressions of national life. It has been part of Barrie's achievement
that he has introduced to a large audience Scottish types with which,
from a purely music-hall or caricature conception, they were un-
familiar. Provided that they are made as carefully as What Every
Woman Knows and The Little Minister, the filmed plays are likely to do
the same for a very much larger audience in the cinema. They may
not announce, as Scotsmen would like to see Scottish films announce
to the world, that Scotland is a country of modern intentions rather
than of ancient sentiments; but they will broaden and deepen a

171

certain conception of the Scots people. Both films contain allusions
to aspects of Scots character seldom reflected on the screen. For
example, in What Every Woman Knows, the railway porter's passionate
enthusiasm for education is typical of a characteristic Scottish quality;
and in The Little Minister we are shown something of the religious
sectarianism characteristic of many Scots. What Every Woman
Knows is the more faithful play transcription, some of Barrie's whim-
sicality having been transmuted to whining sentimentality in The
Little Minister. Compensatory virtues in the latter film are its con-
vincing Scottish atmosphere; the freedom given to an agile camera;
and Katherine Hepburn's spirited and original reading of the part of
Lady Babbie.

Britain also has been looking beyond her shores for film material.
The Dictator, Toeplitz de Grand Ry's film of eighteenth-century
Copenhagen, describing the romance of an ambitious but public-
spirited Hamburg doctor and the young Queen of Denmark,
Caroline Matilda, is sumptuous but hardly spirited, decorative but
hardly deep. There is more flirting with history in Abdul the Damned.
This is based on events in Turkey during and after the year 1908,
and depicts Abdul Hamid, the autocratic but fear-ridden Sultan,
being compelled by the Young Turks to sign a democratic constitu-
tion, and later, when he has temporarily brought the Old Turks
back to power by branding their opponents with a political murder
committed by his orders, being swept from the throne following a
popular rising. There is good film material here; but the producers
have confused this theme by introducing a conventionally melo-
dramatic story of a threatened romance between a Viennese actress
and a young Turkish officer, and the continual shifting of interest
affects the suspense of the film, so that we are seldom gripped by its
drama. Our interest is retained, however, by Fritz Kortner's study
of a mind continually tormented by fear and suspicion ; and by Karl
Grune's vitalising direction. Sanders of the River is also a film of life
outside Britain. I cannot, like Paul Rotha, who reviews the film
elsewhere, write from first-hand knowledge of its African authen-
ticity or otherwise. But I find it something new and engaging in
film entertainment, vigorous if naive in conception; and a remarkably
effective exercise in editing and continuity, when the varied sources
of the material are taken into consideration. It has life and move-
ment and provokes some definite response, though these may all be
lesser cinematic things than the achievement of representing the life
of a people.

Meanwhile no one in this country makes films of Britain to-day.
We have instead Drake, Me and Marlborough and Peg of Old Drury.
And, of course, the Jubilee films.

172

DAVID COPPERFIELD

Production: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Direction: George Cukor. Adapta-
tion: Hugh Walpole. Screen play: Howard Estabrook. Photography:
Oliver T. Marsh. With W. C. Fields, Freddie Bartholomew, Frank Lawton
and others. Length: 11,726 feet.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Production: Universal. Direction: Stuart Walker. Scenario: Gladys linger.
Photography: George Robinson. With Phillips Holmes, Henry Hull, Jane
Wyatt. Length: 8,788 feet.
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

Production: Universal. Direction: Stuart Walker. Scenario: John L.
Balderston and Gladys Unger. Photography: George Robinson. With Claude
Rains, Heather Angel. Length: 7,670 feet.
THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP

Production: British International Pictures. Direction: Thomas Bentley.
Adaptation: Margaret Kennedy. Photography: Claude Friese-Greene . Art
Direction: Cedric Dawe. With Hay Petrie, Elaine Benson, Reginald Pur dell.
Length: 9,500 feet.

It is interesting to speculate on the motives which induced the movie-
makers of Hollywood and Elstree to embark almost simultaneously
on screen versions of Dickens novels. Dickens would appear to exer-
cise a fatal fascination over the minds of production executives.
Perhaps it is that they share with him the delusion that he could write
strong stories.

The impetus which set the latest cycle in motion may be ascribed
to the popularity of films with an English background ; and to the
demand, stimulated by what Viertel amusingly calls the "chastity
campaign," for films to which Poppa can take Momma and Junior.
When one examines the Dickensian philosophy, deriving as much
from the innate goodness of the man as from the Victorian disposi-
tion to set God above the Devil, it is not really surprising that pro-
ducers should so often have gone back to Dickens for their screen
material. In Dickens the Steerforths and Heeps come to a bad end,
the Doras and the Little Nells are translated from this sad world to a
better, the Pickwicks and the Pips, whatever their temporary em-
barrassments, earn their just meed of happiness in the final chapter.
Virtue is rewarded and vice punished — which is exactly the comfort-
able code that has informed picture-making since the earliest days
of the movies. Whether it squares with the facts or not is no matter;
it suits the vested interests of filmdom that the public which lines up
at the box office should be put to sleep with that opiate and persuaded
to accept a false standard of values. That is not to suggest that
Dickens was dishonest. He had the good fortune to see the world
as a place so arranged that the Quilps reap what they sow. Nor must

173

one rashly impute dishonesty to the film producers, though abundant
evidence of a coldly calculating outlook makes it much harder to
believe in their good faith.

Obvious difficulties complicate the task of transcribing a Dickens
novel into film form. Phillips Holmes, who plays the grown-up Pip
in Universal's Great Expectations, is reported in an interview to have
described Dickens as a born script writer. This is nonsensical. His
long, rambling stories, framed to meet the exigencies of serial publica-
tion, are clearly unfitted to survive foreshortening on the Pro-
crustean bed of a .shooting-script. It is significant that the produc-
tions which capitalize the story — Universal's Great Expectations and
The Mystery of Edwin Drood—zxz much less successful than those
which make characterisation their strong point — B.I.P.'s The Old
Curiosity Shop and M.-G.-M.'s David Copperfield. By partially divesting
Edwin Drood of its caricatured characters, Universal pull it down to
the level of a second-rate thriller.

Recognition that the strength of Dickens lies in his phenomenal
gift for comic characterisation is the first essential, but it leaves
unsolved the problem of how to present the characters. They must
seem convincing and yet square with the popular conception of
them, which is pretty generally founded on the Cruikshank illustra-
tions. All four films very wisely evade the pitfall of trying to tone
down their oddity. They are larger than life; they have intense
reality so long as they are not pitchforked into a realistic setting.
Thus it seems to me that criticism of the theatricality of Hay Petrie's
Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop is ill-advised. His vivid, electric
portrait is in itself justification of his defiance of the canons of screen
acting. The conventional approach would have yielded much less
satisfying results. So with the sharply defined character studies in
Copperfield, some of which, notably W. C. Fields' Micawber, Edna
May Oliver's Betsey Trotwood, and Lennox Pawle's Mr. Dick,
suggest nothing so much as an animation of the original magazine
engravings. The whole of Copperfield indeed is peculiarly reminiscent
of old prints, and the final shot of the roguishly smiling Mr. Dick
left at least one critic with the impression of having turned over
the last page of an album.

Much has been made of Hollywood's skill in evoking the authentic
English atmosphere, but that is perhaps the slightest of the producer's
difficulties, and it is worth noting that in all four films under review,
the period background has been convincingly suggested. It is, after
all, not a formidable task to reproduce half-timbered houses and inn
courtyards. And a Hugh Walpole can always be brought from
England as an insurance against the hypercriticism of Dickensians.
It is at least arguable that if the eccentricities of the characters are
well preserved, they create the correct atmosphere of themselves.

174

In Copperfield it is the quality of the characterisation almost as much
as the carefully elaborated period detail which recreates the spirit
of coaching England as Dickens embalmed it in the novel. One
can almost smell the aroma of harness and cold mutton.

Two interesting results of the Dickensian cycle may be noted.
The Dickens films have imposed on producers a modification of
their policy of considering the star first and the " vehicle" afterwards.
Once cannot tailor a Dickensian role to fit a particular star. The
search for suitable types has brought fresh talent to the cinema —
Henry Hull, Elaine Benson, Hay Petrie, and Freddie Bartholomew.
The second result has been the realisation that sex is not the only
box-office magnet : that a good warm feeling of happiness, such as
pervades Copperfield, can always be relied on to pack 'em in. It will
be reckoned one of the main achievements of the producers of
Dickensian films that, accidentally or not, they proved the cash
value of happiness. Campbell Nairne.

SANDERS OF THE RIVER.

Production: London Films. Direction: %pltan Korda. Photography:
Osmond Borrodaile, Georges Perinal, Bernard Browne. With Paul Robeson,
Leslie Banks, Nina Mae McKinney.

Sanders follows the movie tradition set by Trader Horn. Here are
the same old Murchison Falls as a background to palaver and war-
dance (those Murchison Falls to which conducted tours from nearby
Kampala and En Tebbe are weekly affairs), the same eagerly
snatched chances for black nudity, almost the same old friendly
faces of the local tribes. What else did you expect? A unit in
Uganda with, I suspect, no script that mattered. A bright idea:
Robeson. Corollary: Nina Mae. Weeks and weeks of Africa built
at Shepperton and Elstree (they forgot the clouds were different)
and negros dug from agents' files and cafe-bars. Later, much later,
some hints thrown out by Bengal Lancer. It's Jubilee Year as well.
So this is Africa, ladies and gentlemen, wild, untamed Africa before
your very eyes, where the white man rules by kindness and the
Union Jack means peace.

You may, like me, feel embarrassed for Robeson. To portray on
the public screen your own race as a smiling but cunning rogue, as
clay in a woman's hands (especially when she is of the sophisticated
American brand), as toady to the white man, is no small feat. With
Wimperis' lyrics of stabbing and killing, with a little son to hoist
around, with a hearthrug round his loins, a medallion on his navel,
and a plaster fo est through which to stalk, what more could Robeson
do, save not a pear at all? For the others, they do not matter.
Just one mon nt in this film lives. Those aeroplane scenes of

175

galloping herds across the Attic Plains.

It is important to remember that the multitudes of this country
who see Africa in this film, are being encouraged to believe this
fudge is real. It is a disturbing thought. To exploit the past is the
historian's loss. To exploit the present means, in this case, the
disgrace of a Continent. What reception will it get in Africa?
Similar, perhaps, to that of Bengal Lancer in India, The Scarlet
Pimpernel in France, Red Ensign on the Clyde. Who cares? It is
only entertainment, after all.

Paul Rotha.

ESCAPE ME NEVER

Production: British and Dominions. Direction: Paul Czinner. Scenario:
Margaret Kennedy and Carl ^uckmeyer. Photography: Georges Perinal and
Sepp Allgeier. Art Direction: L. P. Williams and Andre Andrejew. With
Elisabeth Bergner, Hugh Sinclair, Griffith Jones, Penelope Dudley Ward.
Length: g,i^8feet.

St John Ervine and James Agate have recently been playing
pitch and toss in the Sunday newspapers over the degree of greatness
of Elisabeth Bergner's acting, judged from the evidence of the stage
version of "Escape Me Never." For once I find myself in agreement
with the former who states that the critic who could not instantly
tell that the Bergner is a great actress after seeing her in Margaret
Kennedy's play is incapable of pronouncing an opinion on acting.
The latter argues weakly that if she had filled out the part of the
perky little baggage, Gemma, with all the sweeping grandeur and
essential nobility of mien, gesture and declamation, "lacking
possession of which a tragic actress cannot be called great,'" she would
have been false to the character and so betrayed her author. And
St John Ervine properly retorts that the very fact that she did not
betray her author by making hay of "Escape Me Never" with
exhibitions of sweeping grandeur, etc., is in itself proof of her artistry.
As a show-piece for the revelation of the Bergner's virtuosity as
an actress, I prefer the film Escape Me Never to Catherine the Great
and to any of the German pictures, with the possible exception of
Der Traumende Mund. The play doubtless exists only in her perform-
ance; but this "sentimental little solo in vagabondage" is perfectly
fashioned to display every aspect of her technique as an actress.
Everything calculated to secure our sympathy happens to Gemma,
the wistful little waif, impudent, loyal, intuitive, whom Sebastian
Sanger picks up in Vienna and marries in London, where she later
loses her baby in the service of musical genius. But the demands
on our sympathy, if unwavering, are skilfully made and Bergner
chooses the precise moment to slip from laughter to tears, knows

176

exactly when to be majestic and when mischievous. She shows
what acting can be, expressing volumes with the shrug of a shoulder,
the drag of a limb; and, using dialogue brilliantly, she yet expresses
much without words.

We are left with the impression of an essentially solo performance.
The camera does its work of photographing Bergner smoothly,
sensitively and unobtrusively and Paul Czinner in his direction
reveals that mastery over mood which made Der Traumende Mund
memorable. F.H.

SHIPYARD

Production: Gaumont-British Instructional. Direction: Paul Rotha. Photo-
graphy: Pocknall, Bundy, Goodliffe, Rignold. Length: 2,250 feet.

The growing pains of documentary are shared in full measure
by the documentary director. He is anguished by the perpetual
conflict between the claims of form and content. The constructive
use of sound introduces further complications; working to coalesce
two independent mediums into an interdependent whole, he finds
himself at frequent cross-purposes with all the theories he holds
most dear. In point of fact, the documentarist probably suffers
from a perverse kind of conservatism which urges him to cling
pathetically to the technique of the last masterpiece but one. It is
only in books and criticism that films like Turksib and Drifters fall
into their rightful place as milestones necessarily past.

There are signs, however, that documentary is about to pass
from this indeterminate conservatism to a crazier and more dangerous
world. To experimentation we can now add continuity of purpose
and plan, on the basis of reportage plus lyricism, plus a strong
sociological consciousness. On top of this let the director be as
lunatic as he likes and plunge into that unexplored area where
Marx and the Marx Brothers play nuts in May with Dostoievski.
He will emerge rumpled, but with a masterpiece, and naturally he
must be free to ignore the box-office (or rather the things behind it).

This leads us to Rotha who, tied as he has been by influences
beyond his immediate control, signals, nevertheless, in Shipyard, his
emergence from the period of agonies and indecision. He tells of
the building of the Orion — crack vessel for the Orient Line — not so
much in terms of shipbuilding as in terms of Barrow and its people.
Each stage of the ship's construction is put across in flesh and blood,
and for all the steel-plates and girders and turbines and riveting
and hammering, it is very much the men who stand up most in one's
mind. Yet the emphasis is not pressed. Visually, the growing ship
engrosses the screen. The sound is permeated with the clangour of
the yard. But by cunning punctuation (in terms chiefly of dissolve

177

and soliloquy) the sociological mood is stressed.

These remarks are, I think, enough to show that in this film
Rotha has made an immense step forward, and is now finally in
control of his medium.

His technique is, however, still somewhat tentative. Some of the
best ideas are not developed more than half-way (hence my plea for
the director to stick to his craziness). A good example is a very
striking sequence with a riveter at work soliloquising on the future
life of the Orion, which puts the general feeling very beautifully,
but does not, as it might so effectively have done, similarly pursue
(quite briefly) the more intimate problems of the workers' lives
(especially in reference to that ultra-civilized bogey, unemployment).

The basis of the sound-score is the shipyards' terrifying row. The
Doric voice of the announcer-commentator reverberates with
immense effect from the echoing caverns of the incomplete hull.
Sound is also overlapped for continuity with considerable skill.

But where Rotha pushes himself well up on the directorial
roster is in his final sequence — a smooth and impressive treatment
of the launch (the camera restraint is most gratifying) , followed by
a really moving anti-climax as the workers move uncertainly away
from the empty stocks. The pathetic indecision of the worker in
the final fade-out is masterly.

Photography is, as usual, excellent, but also unobtrusive — another
sign of progress. Cutting is very good, although I still cannot
reconcile myself to the deliberate alterations of long shot and
close-up which Rotha delights in. This objection, however, may be
too personal. Basil Wright.

FOR ALL ETERNITY

Production: Strand Films. Direction: Marion Grierson. Length: two reels.
In documentary, as in all cinema, technique must always come
second to subject, but equally technique must be sufficiently good for
the subject to have adequate expression. The trouble with so many
of our documentalists is their over-emphasis of technique and their
underestimate of subject. But here, in this two-reeler of the cathe-
drals of England, is firstly a dignified respect for subject, and secondly
an intelligent although not brilliant use of camera and microphone,
and, above all, a moving interpretation of that curious phenomenon —
the spirit of the church. My congratulations go out unreservedly to
Marion Grierson for this film. Not only has she made, so modestly,
a picture that will reach the emotions of any audience, but she has
in this era of social unrest and mental disorder, put on the screen
something which even the godless must admit has roots deeply em-
bedded in what we call the traditions of the country. Her film will,
I believe, be tremendously successful because it transmits something

178

solid. It has the power not just of technical creation or good looks,
but of facts — hard, indisputable facts — instead of the publicity fudge
which so often goes for subject in current documentary. And when,
throwing open the doors of her church, she cross-sections the com-
munity in town and country, industry and street, underneath the
chant of choir and the richness of anthem, your hardest materialist
will be disturbed at this manifestation of faith. Again, here is no
fixed moment of time hung suspended on the screen, but a feeling
of continuance, a feeling of something started in dim ages that lives
not just to-day but for all time. Miss Grierson has achieved something
which, I think, no other documentary has done and which, I am
sure, most other documentalists would be unable to do, because
they lack both her simplicity of approach and that disregard of
personal advancement which is reflected so strongly in her work.
And, lastly, I am impressed by the skilful way in which instruction
and knowledge have been mixed with emotional appeal so that both
theatre audience and school class will benefit by the film, an accom-
plishment that makes some of these purely educational pictures look
rather like waste of time and effort. Paul Rotha

THE CONTINENTALS

This quarter's continentals have been a mixed bag: one or two very
good, others passable, and others negligible.

The most interesting, although one of the least commercially
successful of the new films, was Hey-Rupl, a Czecho-Slovakian
comedy with an undercurrent, perhaps unintentional, of sociological
comment. It is loosely constructed, and the leading parts are played
by two popular Czech comedians, Jiri Voskovec and Jan Werich.
Their wanderings before establishing a co-operative milk factory are
often extremely diverting, but there is too much of this, and the
high spots are separated by long intervals when nothing seems to
happen at all. Some episodes smack of Chaplin, others of Clair.
The sound is good and the exteriors and interiors are well photo-
graphed. Technically, the film confirms the favourable impressions
made by Fred Maturitou and Exstase, but as a whole it lacks any
marked public appeal. It is a film for the student.

Some gorgeous fooling was seen in Skylark. The story is of two
apprentices who go up in an aeroplane, each being under the
impression that the other is an instructor. Having ascended, they
are afraid to come down. They stay up for a considerable time and
break every conceivable record for endurance, distance, and so on.
Eventually they land, to be acclaimed national heroes. It is a
comparatively short film, and even so takes rather a long time to get
into its stride; but once the aeroplane goes up the fun is immense.

179

Noel-Noel and Fernandel are the aviators. Noel-Noel is a newcomer
here. He is short, stocky, and specialises in button-eyed innocence.
Those who saw Le Rosier de Madame Husson will not have forgotten
the inspired lunacy of Fernandel, and he is exceedingly effective in
Skylark. The denizens of Mayfair were also entertained by another
arm-chair film in Farewell, an elegant and admittedly inaccurate
story of Chopin's life. It is a polished piece of work with some
pleasant music, and a number of Chopin's illustrious contemporaries
are more or less convincingly represented. Entertaining, engaging
and slick, but no landmark.

Those who read Vicki Baum's "Martin's Summer" must have
been struck by its filmic possibilities. It has been filmed under the
title Lac aux Dames, and duly shown in London. But it never
properly gets to grips with the story, and a great deal more might
have been made of the scenic background. Nevertheless, it succeeds
in being reasonably entertaining, and Simone Simon, who plays
the part of Puck, is most enchanting. For her sake alone the film
should be seen. The faults lie in the scenario and direction, both of
which are ponderous and out of tune with the basic story.

The London Film Society showed an interesting Polish film,
Sabra, in which all the players are members of the Habima, the
national theatre of Palestine. The theme is the colonisation of
Palestine, and the film shows a group of pioneers fighting against
the difficulty of obtaining water for the fertilisation of the land.
The acting, as one might expect, is exceptionally good without
being markedly theatrical, and the direction is firm and convincing.
Much of the photography is excellent, and although the film runs
to length and some of the episodes appear to be obscurely related
to the context, as a whole it is a vigorous and refreshing piece of
work.

The Old King and the Young King is magnificent. Jannings makes
a triumphant and convincing return to the screen in a film after his
own heart. It is the traditional, authentic Jannings, and how pleasant
it is to find that he has lost none of his fire — and none of his manner-
isms— during a long absence from the screen. The story is of the
conflict between Frederick I of Prussia, the great soldier and states-
man, and his son the Crown Prince, who is bored by soldiering and
diplomacy, preferring his flute and the card-table. Frederick loves
his Prussia, and is afraid lest his son should undo all his good work
when he becomes king. So he determines to change his son's charac-
ter, and the conflict which ensues is brilliantly depicted. Jannings
dominates the film from beginning to end, without blurring the
individuality of any of the other players. Werner Hinz, as the
Crown Prince, is particularly effective, and the first great quarrel
between him and his father is one of the most exciting things seen

180

in cinema for a long time. Other well-known actors in the film are
Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Emilia Unda, Claus Clausen and Theodor
Loos. The scenario is by Thea von Harbou and Rudolf Luckner
with music by Wolfgang Zeller. Hans Steinhoff directed.

I prefer merely to record that three other films, The Eternal
Wanderer, Mireille and Son Autre Amour have also been seen in London.
But not by many people. J. S. Fairfax-Jones.

RUGGLES OF RED GAP (American. Paramount). Charles Laughton has said
that he enjoyed playing the part of Ruggles more than any other on stage or
screen; and his performance definitely has that fine, rich, sustained quality which
results when an artist has delighted in expression. Ruggles is an English valet of
1908, who, descendant of a long line of servants, accepts his destiny without
question — a gentleman's gentleman who is inevitably fundamentally disturbed
when circumstances compel him to go, as man-servant to a rancher, to the little
Mid-Western town of Red Gap, a democratic whirlpool in which he can nowhere
find a safe, familiar footing. But gradually he recovers from the shattering ex-
perience, discovers his manhood and his independence and finds fresh refuge and
reassurance in the democratic principles expressed by Lincoln at Gettysburg.
The scene in which he recites Lincoln's speech to a bar-room audience at Red
Gap — an audacious experiment — is brilliantly handled by Laughton and his
director, Leo McCarey. Admirably the film contrives to combine the liveliest
clowning with an imaginative study of the atmosphere of American democracy
and its emancipating influence on an Englishman, complacent product of genera-
tions of servitude. If it tilts wickedly at the English aristocracy, the film makes
fun also of American snobbery and its picture of Anglo-American relations is
always agreeable. Every film in which Laughton appears seems to give fresh
evidence of his virtuosity. It is good to know that Hollywood has discovered his
potentialities as a comedian. Ruggles of Red Gap has been described as pure Chaplin
and the comparison is not entirely without foundation. F.H.

THE WEDDING NIGHT (American. United Artists. King Vidor). This is an
excellent illustration of the rule that Art will not come when you do call for it.
Just previously, I saw It Happened One Night as it was being revived. I daresay
no one concerned thought of the word "art" throughout its production. Yet this
little comedy, unimportant and careless as it is, has ten times the creative strength
and honesty of any part of The Wedding Night — of anything by Vidor, I am
tempted to say, since The Big Parade. In his latest picture, Vidor has tried to tell
a tragedy of love between a metropolitan novelist, married, and a Polish immigrant
on a tobacco farm in Connecticut, engaged. It is a possible thesis, but Vidor has
reduced it to the least common denominator, to squeeze the last drop of "human
interest" from it. The result is a completely impossible sob-story. No one is
believable, nothing that happens is convincing, save in terms of Bertha M. Clay.
Something might have been saved had the players been even remotely in part.
But Anna Sten, Gary Cooper, and Helen Vinson are all hopelessly at odds with
their roles, though perhaps that was only a natural consequence. To add that
the direction itself is generally undistinguished if not mediocre completes the sad
story. Nevertheless, the film is Art, and the critics have praised it to the skies.

Kirk Bond.

181

WORKERS AND JOBS (British). A straightforward description in one reel of
the working of a Labour Exchange showing, without frills or fuss, how men get
or do not get work, and what advantages the employer would enjoy if he made
greater use of the machinery organised by the Ministry of Labour. With the slender
resources at his disposal, I do not see that Elton could have done any other than
he has, save perhaps have selected a commentator whose voice would have been
more suited to the atmosphere of the Exchange. Photography is adequate, but
sound might have been more carefully synchronised. P.R.

DOOD WASSER (Dutch). An attempt, sincere but naive, from a new quarter
to relate the human being to his surroundings in bringing a social problem to the
screen. The theme is the resistance of the Zuyder Zee fishermen to the appeal to
give up their old calling and settle on the reclaimed land, with an elaborate
prologue of maps and news-reel excerpts to put across the history of the event.
Treatment is silent in style, uneconomic and laboured, but the types are well
chosen and the climaxes well contrived. As a whole, the film is too long by half.

P.R.

ITTO (French). Another attempt to superimpose a fictional story on natural
material, again suffering from over-statement and over-length. Benoit-Levy and
Marie Epstein (of La Maternelle) have secured lovely scenery and types of North
Africa, but the infusion of the maternal instinct is embarrassingly handled without
much result. Yet, despite its unimaginative use of sound and poor construction,
Itto offers a more than welcome change from the ordinary release story-films.

P.R.

PRIVATE LIFE OF THEGANNETS (British. United Artists). Charming,
instructive, but too long, this first of a series of nature pictures put out beneath
the chime of London Films makes a healthy bid for game. Gannets, as Professor
Huxley admits, are easy birds to film, but that is no alibi for the lovely use of slow
motion and the beautifully shot sequence of diving. In the past, these nature
films in England have been almost the monopoly of a single group. With this
first effort, London Films and Huxley have forced the pace and shot ahead. They
have brought beauty of photography and a certain skill of editing to bear upon
the subject. P. R.

ARE WE CIVILISED? (American. Edwin Carewe). The naivety of this story of
modern censorship and suppression of personal freedom is offset by the timeliness
of its theme and its obvious sincerity and earnestness. A newspaper proprietor
who returns from America to an unspecified European country, finds a rigorous
censorship of news and books in force and, by recounting the story of man's pro-
gress from early days of cave life to modern times, seeks to convince the country's
rulers of the error and danger of their ways. The film's treatment and approach
are hardly imaginative, but it is significant of the present concern with thoughtful
themes in Hollywood that such a subject should have been attempted. F.H.

WHARVES AND STRAYS (British. London Films). An independent short by
Bernard Browne which claims praise for its courage and photography. The
adventures of a mongrel dog, Scruffy, in exploring the activities of the London
docks supply the theme and the camera for the most part concentrates its attention
on the loading and unloading of ships, the work of the men on board ship and on
the dockside, the low linked barges and the fussy movements of the tugs. There is
no commentary, but music is used effectively to establish mood and make witty
comment. And the camerawork suggests the work of a man with a feeling for
mass and line.

182

FILM SOCIETIES

Still the movement grows. New bodies have been formed, or are in course of
formation, at Wolverhampton, Bristol, Southport, Romford, Swansea, Maidenhead,
and Ipswich.

Apart from the regular film societies, numerous other organisations are now
including the showing of films among their activities. The Colne Literary and
Scientific Society, for instance, is co-operating with one of the local cinemas in a
scheme for exhibiting films "of exceptional merit" which would not otherwise
be shown in this corner of Lancashire.

The idea behind the Colne experiment was to hold a "Club Night" once a
month, at which the Society would choose the films to be included in the pro-
gramme and induce its members and the public generally to attend. For the
first performance iooo circulars were issued and as a result every seat was filled,
834 persons being present. The demand for admission to the second performance
was even greater. Charles Hargeaves, the hon. secretary, believes "that they
have discovered that there is a large untapped reservoir of people who would go
to the cinema regularly if they could be assured of a decent programme and if
they knew beforehand what they would see."

Colne, with a population of 24,000, has shown what can be done in a town of
almost any size. Here is a way in which "Literary" societies, now rapidly dying
out, can achieve a new lease of life and at the same time help to develop a wider
appreciation of intelligent films.

Leeds is still without its long-projected exhibiting society, the Watch Committee
having again refused an application by the Leeds Film Group to hold performances
on a Sunday. Fortunately Leeds has an excellently conducted repertory cinema,
the Academy, which shows Continentals, revivals, and a good selection of shorts.

WOLVERHAMPTON FILM SOCIETY will commence its first season in
October, with a subscription of 10s. 6d. The Director of Education, T. A. Warren
is chairman, and Leslie B. Duckworth, film critic of the "Express and Star," is
vice-chairman. The programme secretary is E. L. Packer and the membership
secretary W. P. Hyde, 78 Belmont Road.

The secretary of the Ipswich Film Society is Gordon C. Hales, 36 Constable
Road, and A. South, 1 Mashsieters Walk, Romford, is the secretary of the Romford
Film Circle. Clifford Leech, University College, Swansea; F. G. Searle, 21 Cairns
Road, Bristol, 6; and Graham Morrison, 31 Grange Road, Southport, will be
pleased to receive enquiries in their respective districts.

THE FILM SOCIETY, 56 Manchester Street, London, W.i. Feb. 10. Ave Maria,
Three Trailers, Chapayev. Mar. 10. Workers and Jobs, Das Gestohlene Herz, Ship of
the Ether, Dood Wasser. April 7. Pecheurs D'Oiseaux, Two Publicity films, Itto.

ABERDEEN FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, A. L. Stephen Mitchell, 15 Golden
Square. Jan. 13. Rain, Derby Day, La Maternelle. Feb 10. Lichtertanz, Lot in Sodom,
Liebes Kommando. Mar. 10. Pacific 231, We Take off our Hats, Der Traumende Mund.

BILLINGHAM FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sees., H. S. Coles and Mrs. E. H. Sale,
3 Cambridge Terrace, Norton-on-Tees. Jan. 23. Europe To-day, Astronomy, Weather
Forecast, Silly Symphony, Liebes Kommando. Feb. 20. Bathtime at the £00, Silly
Symphony, Ces Messieurs de la Sante. Mar. 20. Song of the Ski, Pett and Pott, Mickey
Mouse, Liebelei. April 17. Pacific Problem, War Debts, Spring on the Farm, Cathode Ray,
Silly Symphony, Reka.

183

COLNE LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, C. Hargeaves,

Greystones, Colne. Feb. 20. Newsreel, Silly Symphony, Everest 1924, Kameradschaft.
Mar. 27. Newsreel, O'er Hill and Dale, Mickey Mouse, Carmen, Le Million.

The Society hopes to arrange an extended season next winter and to include
lectures on various aspects of the cinema.

CROYDON FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, G. R. Bailey, 51 High Street. Jan. 20.
Mickey Mouse, Spring on the Farm, Poil de Carotte. Feb. 17. Crazy Ray, Le Dernier
Milliardaire. Mar. 1 7. The Battle of Arras, Blow Bugles Blow.

Talks have been given by H. Ewan on the French Cinema, and by Sir Philip
Gibbs on The Battle of Arras. Ivor Montagu and Paul Rotha were guests at the
Society luncheon on March 1 7, when they addressed the members.

EDINBURGH FILM GUILD, 17 S. St. Andrew Street. Feb. 24. Dawn to Dawn,
Joie de Vivre, Ces Messieurs de la Sante. Mar. 24. Two Gasparcolor shorts, All Quiet
in the East, Fischinger abstract, The Song of Ceylon, Refugees.

Campbell Nairne addressed the Guild on "A Novelist's View of the Scenario,"
and D. Cleghorn Thomson took the chair at a discussion on "The Relations
Between Cinema and Stage." On Feb. 6 there was a special show of G.P.O.
films in the Studio.

FILM SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. Hon. Sec, D. Paterson Walker, 127 St.
Vincent Street. Feb. 3. Football Daft, All Quiet in the East, Nachtliche Ruhestrung,
Ces Messieurs de la Sante. Feb. 24. 6.30 Collection, The Idea, Lie blei. Mar. 17. Le
Million, Joie de Vivre, Refugees.

The membership of the Society has grown to such an extent that it has been
necessary to hold afternoon as well as evening performances. Glasgow, as well
as being the oldest society outside of London, is now probably the largest — and
certainly not the least enthusiastic or efficient.

HAMPSTEAD FILM SOCIETY. Everyman Cinema Theatre, London, N.W.3.
Jan. 20. Un Monaster e, Warning Shadows. Feb. 17. Beyond This Open Road, Blow,
Bugles, Blow. Mar. Der Gestolene Herz, Domesday England, Zer0 de Conduite. April.
The Birth of a Nation.

LEICESTER FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, E. Irving Richards, Vaughan College.
Jan. 19. What the Newsreel Shows, Oil Symphony, All Quiet in the East, A Trip to Davy
Jones' Locker (colour primitive), Rapt. Feb. 9. Beyond this Open Road, Oil Symphony,
The Doomed Battalion, Nachtliche Ruhesturung. Feb. 16. The Sundew, Un Monastere,
Le Dernier Milliardaire. Mar. 16. Three Early Fragments, Droitwich, Anna und
Elisabeth, Joie de Vivre. April 13.

The Society arranged a special exhibition of sketches by Stella Burford, illus-
trating work inside a British film studio.

MANCHESTER AND SALFORD WORKERS' FILM SOCIETY, 86 Hulton
Street, Salford. Jan. 19. Power, Mail, Charlemagne. Feb. 16. Russia To-day,
Gamla Stan, Pett and Pott, Fischinger abstract, Oil Symphony. Mar. 16. Vienna the
Wonderful, The Amoeba, Contact, Zero de Conduite.

MERSEYSIDE FILM INSTITUTE SOCIETY, Bluecoat Chambers, School
Lane, Liverpool. Feb. 15. Zuts Cartoon, Oil Symphony, Poil de Carotte. April 12.
Night on the Bare Mountain, Joie de Vivre, Dawn to Dawn, Men and Jobs.

On Feb. 26 there was a special exhibition of educational films arranged by
Gaumont-British, and on April 25 there was a show of G.P.O. films. On Mar. 14
Dorothy Knowles spoke on "Censorship," and on Mar. 24 C. J. Graham on
"Acting for Films in 1912." Cinderella was shown on sub-standard.
NORTH LONDON FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, H. A. Green, 6 Carysfort
Road, Stoke Newington, London, N.16. Feb. 3. Crossing the Great Sagrada,
Gasparcolor, Lot in Sodom, The Living Corpse.

184

NORTHWIGH FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, W. Baldwin Fletcher, I.G.I.
(Alkali) Ltd., Northwich. Mar. 8. Night on the Bare Mountain, Weather Forecast,
The Blue Exbress .

OXFORD UNIVERSITY FILM SOCIETY. Feb. 10. Weather Forecast, Silly
Symphony, Mickey Mouse, Le Dernier Milliardaire. Feb. 24. Night on the Bare
Mountain, The Pacific Problem, Silly Symphony, The Birth of a Nation. Mar. 10.
. Joie de Vivre, Pett and Pott, Silly Symphony, Men and Jobs.

F. Serpell has been elected President and F. L. Harley Secretary.
SOUTHAMPTON FILM SOCIETY, 21 Ethelburt Avenue, Bassett Green,
12 St. Swithun Street, Winchester. Jan. 27. Un Monastere, La Maternelle. Feb. 17.
A Trip to Davy Jones* Locker, Industrial Britain. Ces Messieurs de la Sante. Mar. 3.
Night on the Bare Mountain, Joie de Vivre, Poil de Carotte. Mar. 17. Turksib, The
Slump is Over.

TYNESIDE FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, M. C. Pottinger, Literary and
Philosophical Society, Newcastle. Jan. 27. Fischinger abstract, Pett and Pott,
Trailer, Reka. Feb. 24. Pacific 231, Crazy Ray, Poil de Carotte. Mar. 24. Fischinger
abstract, Granton Trawler, Night on the Bare Mountain, Thunder Over Mexico. April 14.
Weather Forecast, Gasparcolor, Surprise Item, Ces Messieurs de la Sante.

The White Hell o/Pitz Palu and Storm over Asia have been shown on sub-standard
and there has been a special Young People's Performance. Discussions are held
after each show.

WEST OF SCOTLAND WORKERS' FILM SOCIETY. Hon. Sec, James
Hough, 16 Balerno Drive, Glasgow, S.W.2. Feb. 10. The Mascot, The Idea,
Avalanche. Mar. 3. The Home of the Wasp, Granton Trawler, Men and Jobs. Mar. 31.
Deserter.

THE CINEMA GUILD OF DETROIT is a new organisation similar to the film
societies operating in Britain, founded on a belief that "the standards of American
motion pictures underestimate public taste," and that "the rulings of institutional-
ised censorship constitute a reflection on public taste." The subscription for six
performances is four dollars, and the films shown have included Poil de Carotte,
Madame Bovary, Le Million, The Blue Light, The Blue Express, Dawn to Dawn, Lot in
Sodom, and Romance Sentimentale .

THE NATIONAL FILM AND PHOTO LEAGUE, 31 E. 21st Street, New York,
shows films of strong left wing character. Among recent presentations have been
The Man I Killed, The Patriot, Three Songs about Lenin, Deserter, Arsenal, Road to Life,
Storm Over Asia, End of St. Petersburg, Mother, and Ivan. The League publishes
"Filmfront," a fortnightly periodical which "trains the burning spotlight on the
Hollywood jungle and shows the black thread that links the producers with the
forces of re-action."

THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CINEMATOGRAPHY, University Park,
Los Angeles, is a new organisation founded on lines similar to the British Film
Institute, co-operating with the University of Southern California, which has a
special faculty in cinematography.

SCOTTISH EDUCATIONAL CINEMA SOCIETY, Education Offices, Bath
Street, Glasgow, organised an Exhibition of Screen Aids to Education, similar
to that held last year. Sir Charles Cleland, acting chairman of the British Film
Institute, in opening the exhibition, said that early in 1935 there were approxi-
mately 650 projectors in use in schools in Great Britain. In France in 1932 there
were between 16,000 and 18,000. In Germany provision had recently been made
for the introduction of 60,000 projectors into schools, 10,000 of those to be installed
in 1935. Demonstrations of projection equipment and of educational films were
given at the exhibition, which was largely attended by teachers in the West of
Scotland.

185

THE INDEPENDENT FILM-MAKER

Official Organ of the Independent Film-Makers Association
DOCUMENTARY EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL

ADVISERS: ANTHONY ASQUITH, ANDREW BUCHANAN, JOHN GRIERSON, ALAN HARPER,
STUART LEGG, PAUL ROTHA, BASIL WRIGHT.

HON. SECY.: THOMAS H. BAIRD. HON. TREAS. : J. C. H. DUNLOP. EDITOR: LESLIE BEISIEGEL-
32 SHAFTESBURY AVENUE, LONDON, W.I.

SCOPE FOR THE SILENT FILM

From schools, technical colleges, institutions, mobile units, training
centres and other sources there comes an increasing demand for
documentary and educational films. All of these films are on sub-
standard and, most important for the amateur, they are wanted
mainly silent.

We can assume then that the future of the silent documentary
film on sub-standard is assured, and that it will be used extensively
in the near future. This is where the independent producer appears.
He has been making films for schools and colleges ; he has been mak-
ing documentary; he has made educational films; and for the enter-
tainment side, which seems to be growing larger, he has made enter-
tainment films. But something has been missing from nearly every
one of them, something that constitutes the basis of cinema: move-
ment. These silent films have lost sight of the fact that they are
unhampered by sound or commentary and therefore capable of more
dynamic and kinetic treatment.

All films, and most educational films, are not suited for quick
rhythmical development, but those which are have not attained the
movement even of an early Fairbanks. They merely follow the
technique of sound-film. There is still opportunity for the amateur
to continue the art of silent film, which is capable of development
as a separate medium, as the colour film is being developed. All
recent developments of cinema have made it harder and harder
for the producer to introduce essential and rapid movement into his
films. The wealth of movement which was to be found in rushing
crowds; the movement in the camera itself, which the Germans
perfected; the movement of the film-strips which the Soviets dis-

186

covered — has been thrown overboard. Amateurs with enthusiasm
must fish it out again and explore its further possibilities.

Movement dominates people's lives. The panorama outside a
railway carriage, however depressing, has most of the people in the
train looking at it. The sea with its constant movement claims its
millions. The moving figure or living person in the shop window
always has a crowd. When lying in bed, the fly gets more attention
than the Rembrandt on the wall. A quickly changing face showing
all its emotions is generally loved more than a poker face that moves
but little. Movement is in everything, and only the film has the
power of showing it pictorially, and perhaps the silent film has the
power of showing it most successfully. The amateur need not bewail
the fact that he does not have sound at his disposal; in the silent
film he still has a vast field in which to develop his technique and
explore the possibilities of a medium still far from extinction.

Leslie Beisiegel.

AMATEUR FILMS

GRETCHEN HAT AUSGANG {Ellen Rosenberg, i6mm.). This
little film with a simple theme has been excellently treated. A
lonely servant girl on her afternoon out nearly has an affair with
a nice young man, but the budding romance never happens because
the poor girl suddenly discovers that it is time for her to return to
her duties. Ellen Rosenberg has made this awkward girl, who
gazes stupidly at statues of Cupid and hopelessly plucks the petals
of flowers one by one, something wistful and even slightly tragic.
Delicate touches have given the right emphasis to the theme and a
completeness of atmosphere that is seldom seen in an amateur film.
Many lessons can be taken from this film; briefly, that it is not
necessary to have studios, that the best themes are the simple ones,
the best actors are those who don't act but behave naturally, and
lastly that one frame of sincerity is worth a reel of sophistication.
The camera angles are good and the cutting is good inasmuch that
one does not notice it.

HEITERER TAG AUS RUGEX (Ellen Rosenberg, 16mm.). This
symphonic film of a pleasant sojourn on the Isle of Riigen has perhaps
the most beautiful photography that I have seen on 16mm. There
are three main motifs, a mechanical swing, a group of horses and the
sea on the sand. It is through movement that Ellen Rosenberg
gets her effects — movement of material and rhythm in her cutting.
Though the camera angles are well chosen the cutting is not so good.
Quicker cutting could have been used at the climax of the film,,
coming as a natural development of the mood of growing hilarity.

187

PONT DES ARTS {Horacio Coppola, 16mm.). This is another
symphonic film, but different in mood. Down-and-outs, the Seine,
huge gaunt trees, mud, dirt and despair. Here is hopelessness,
devastating bleakness; here men thrown on the scrap-heap become
little more than parcels of rags. Do we know what they are thinking?
Coppola's film does not tell us this, but shows us how they live.
There is no entreaty, no personal argument, but a revelation
through impassionate eyes. Is this attitude correct? Whether an
artist must also be a political or a social reformer is for the artist to
decide.

Technically the photography is good and several shots are perfect
in composition and texture; but there is too much movement in the
camera and not enough in the material. The continuity has to
rely upon pictorial cohesion and not upon development of content —
the look of the picture as against the meaning of the picture. This is
a good attempt.

DER TRAUM {Horacio Coppola, 16mm.). The influence of the
sur-realists has made Coppola produce an intriguing and amusing
film. A young man is shown asleep with his head on the table amid
egg-shells and knife and fork. There are some pleasing patterns here,
but what is their Freudian or symbolic significance? The young
man sees his "Sunday self" mocking him by stealing his pocket book,
with much money therein, and insinuating that he also intends
doing likewise with the young man's lover. The week-day man and
the same man on Sundays are symbolised by a topper and bowler
hat. This is good symbolism and when one man chases the other
there is an excellent atmosphere in the slow-motion scenes of the
chase. The kinetics of the falling hat and ball are excellent; the
movements of such commonplace things carry that strange kind of
personality they have in dreams.

HAMPSTEAD HEATH {Horacio Coppola, 16mm.). Here is an
account of a Sunday at Hampstead, showing the types of people who
frequent the Heath. It has several short sequences that are good
both in continuity and cutting. I remember the chairs and their
attendant, the fair in the evening, the impressive scene of all the people
walking in one direction towards their homes. There is a subtle
streak of engaging drollery running through the film. Why very fat
women posed straight up in front of the camera should look so funny
only Coppola with his artful angles knows. The various moods have
been established, sometimes with success, but cutting down would
greatly improve the film. The photography is good and some pic-
torial arrangements very exciting. There are some filtered clouds
and reflecting lakes that are very beautiful, and the whole film is well
exposed.

THE GREAT RARZO {Rudolf Sieb, 9.5mm.). Here is an example
of a branch of film-making, with puppets and models, which might be
adopted by many amateurs. The models are ordinary toy motors
and tin men. The animation is remarkably even and there are some
amusing camera angles that are only possible with a small camera.
The plot is simple; the daring young man on the flying trapeze
seems to have inspired the actions of the Great Rarzo, who flys most
filmically backwards, upside down, in reverse, top to bottom and
vice versa. It is remarkable what the ingenious can do with some
sheets of paper, indian ink and a few toys. A couple, I believe, of
small lamps give all the necessary lighting and incidentally some
very amusing shadowgraphs. The cutting is something of a satire on
Russian technique. Imagine dogs' heads, Bonzos, Dismal Desmonds,.
Fidos, in a Trauberg sequence !

THE METEOR FILM PRODUCING SOCIETY is planning an ambitious
production schedule for the summer. Three competitions are being run for its-
members: (1) for beginners, the subject being a holiday film; (2; any item on
16 mm. suitable for a newsreel; (3) an abstract subject, on any size of stock,
limited to one reel in length. Miniature cups have been presented for the winners
of these competitions by the treasurer, Jack Robertson, Jr. The Society as a group'
will produce one interest film and one story film, while a 9.5 section has been
inaugurated. Work on 35 mm. is also carried out by the Society. The Scottish
Amateur Film Festival, inaugurated by the Meteor Film Society two years ago,
is to be still further expanded this autumn. There is a proposal that in future
it should be run under the auspices of the Scottish Film Council. Secretary:
Stanley L. Russell, 14 Kelvin Drive, Glasgow, N.W.

At a film show held in aid of the Kensington Housing Association's Benevolent

Fund the performance consisted of films by Matthew L. Nathan. Documentary

predominated and included a housing film, Pomp and Circumstance, and one of the

Founding Estate entitled Xursery School.

London Ifma Group Meetings are now held regularly every Monday at eight

o'clock at Chequers, 6 Park Road, Upper Baker Street. Any members interested

are invited to step along.

The North St. Pancras Group of the St. Pancras House Improvement Society

has filmed its housing conditions on 16 mm. Particulars can be obtained from

1 1 8a Euston Road, London, N.W. 1.

Brian Salt has made an animated diagram illustrating some trigonometrical

laws. This is on 9.5 mm. and the animation is excellent.

Robert Alexandre's film of Trappist life, Un Alonastere, recently shown at the

London Film Society, has been added to the Pathescope 9.5 library.

The Scottish Photographic Federation offers the Brewster Trophy for the best

amateur film submitted to the annual Salon, which, so far as still photography is-

concerned, is one of the most important events of the season. There is no restriction

as to subject, but all films must have a maximum length of 50 feet, 8 mm.; 120-

feet, 9.5 mm.; 200 feet, 16 mm. Full particulars may be obtained from the Cine

Secretary, R. Steedman, 14 Viewfield Terrace, Dunfermline. Alan Harper.

IFMA adviser, will be in charge of the competition.

THE CINEMATOGRAPHER'S BOOK OF TABLES helps the professional and amateur
cameraman to save time, avoid mistakes, and increase efficiency. It fits the vest pocket,
and costs 5 - post free from Cinema Contact Ltd., 24 N.W. Thistle Street Lane,
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A Quarterly Review

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Special Features in the Summer Issue Now Ready:

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M. D. CALVOCORESSI -Music and the Film

The Right Rev. E. S. WOODS, Bishop of Croydon—

Religious Films
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Book Reviews
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CINEMA
QUARTERLY

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL .

TWO PATHS TO POETRY.

John Grierson

THE NEW DEAL AND THE AMERICAN FILM
F. D. Klingender

THE FILM CRITIC OF TO-DAY AND TO
MORROW. Rudolf Arnheim .

NEW TRENDS IN SOVIET CINEMA — II
Marie Seton ....

DR GOEBBELS' SEVEN PRINCIPLES. .

THE AMERICAN SCREEN. Norman G. Wein-
berg ......

NATIONAL PRODUCTION IN BELGIUM
Ludo Patris ....

FILM ARCHIVES.

MISCELLANY.

Brown

Rouben Mamoulian, Jenny

FILMS OF THE QUARTER. Forsyth Hardy
J. S. Fairfax -J ones, Campbell Nairne

FILM SOCIETIES

191
194

197

203

210
213

216

219

220

225

231
242

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Vol. 3. No. 4. SUMMER 1935

HAVE YOU A COMPLETE SET?

CINEMA QUARTERLY

is a valuable record of the theories,
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THE
SCOTTISH BOOKMAN

A New Scottish Monthly Magazine of
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The first number will appear on September 2,
price 6d., and will contain, among other inter-
esting features, articles, poems and short stories
by Naomi Mitchison, Compton Mackenzie,
James Bridie, Halliday Sutherland, Dr
Chalmers Watson, and Laurence Whistler.

Scotland's literary and artistic renascence
has not yet found a worthy chronicler — un-
biased and non-party — and it is to fill this
need that "The Scottish Bookman" — has
been called into being.

Future numbers will contain articles, stories
and poems by Eric Linklater, F. A. E. Crew,
Ernest Dimnet, John Grierson, Cyril Ramsay
Jones, Joseph Stanley, and others.

"The Scottish Bookman"" is obtainable from

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CINEMA QUARTERLY

Volume 3, Number 4

SUMMER

1935

The news that George Cukor, director of David Copperfield, Little
Women, and other box-office successes, has been given a new contract
for three years, with a salary of approximately £50,000 a year, is
being widely interpreted as an indication that the director is coming
into his own and at last receiving the recognition that is his due.
And, coupled with the fact that stars' salaries are steadily declining,
the inference is that the studios are beginning to think that the
picture matters more than the personality of the star, and that the
man who makes the picture matters most of all.

The champions of the script writers, who believe that a good
scenario — the theme, the idea, the purpose behind the film — is
the most important creative force in production, will stoutly contest
this argument. Others, with perhaps greater perception, will deplore
the whole situation as farcical.

A good director is of immense value in interpreting the scenario
in terms of plastic image, composition, movement, sound — always
dependent, however, on the expert assistance of camera-man, art
director, recordist, and the host of other specialist collaborators.
The results of his labours we admire on the screen in proportion
to the physical reaction of our senses. But the argument of the
film, the deeeper significance of its thematic qualities, its approach
to reality, its philosophy, are the outgrowth of studio conferences
and company policy. If the director has little claim to creative
achievement, the scenarist, surveying the final form of his script,
changed and distorted at the hands of numerous executives, has
even less.

Are we, then, giving the director greater credit than he deserves?
The answer — a frequent one in cinema — is yes and no. Actually the
work of a capable director and the technical experts under his
command is the only quality of value in the average commercial
film. But so long as his efforts are based on present methods of
scenario construction and producer interference it is foolish to
magnify his importance beyond the limits of his power. The fact
remains that no one at present is directly and finally responsible
for a film as an artistic whole.

191

Unless the director can be given full control of production, with
responsibility for the scenario, it would be wiser, instead of increasing
his apparent but ineffective importance, to limit his scope to that
of strict interpretation. With sound, music and colour playing
increasingly important parts in production it is well-nigh impossible
for the director to be master in every sphere, and the specialist,
who must be artist as well as technician, is acquiring growing
responsibility. Some one, necessarily, must take control of all these
elements, weld them into a harmonious whole, fitting the director
into his specialized niche alongside the musician, the colour artist,
the camera-man, and so on. The obvious person for this task is
the producer, whose apparently nebulous function has always
been something of a mystery to the filmgoer and a recurring source
of irritation to the serious film-maker. But to take charge of the
artistic unity of a film the producer must be a very different person
from the average studio executive concerned primarily with the
financial returns of commercial investment. He must be himself
an artist, able to visualise the film as a whole. He must be the heart,
the soul of the film. Whoever else constructs the scenario, he it is
who must conceive it, give it life. He must be able to play on the
talents of his specialists as a musician plays on the keys of a piano.

When a director is elevated to such a position only then can he
claim to be the creative genius of the film.

Yet would the appearance in the studios of this new type of
creative producer materially alter the character of production?
If we believe with Arnheim that the artist has already been reduced
to absolute subservience to the grossest of commerical ends, it is
obvious that the film, instead of developing in artistic significance,
will remain as a social phenomenon of greater danger than value
to mankind. But though the abject dependence of the craftsman is
obvious and deplorable, it need not be concluded that the basis of
production will not alter nor that the means and methods of film-
making will not undergo vital changes. Only so long as no one has
the final responsibility for the measure of a film's worth — only so
long as the director is sufficiently swollen with pride and salary to
accept a puppet position of authority — will the present tendency
continue.

In the independent documentary field the producer has aready
proved the artistic necessity of his presence. Without question it is
even more necessary in the studios. But how is the new role to be
created ? As a result of the increasing complexity of production the
studios, either unwillingly or blindly, may themselves create the
opening. Or the new movement to increase the importance of the
director's position may give such artists as have the necessary
abilities and strength of character the opportunity of seizing

192

power. True, the present financial reward of subservience is so
great that all but the strongest minds are tempted to accept the
situation with luxurious complacence. But with the growing recog-
nition of the potentialities of the film new men will enter cinema,
not in quest of lucre but to satisfy their artistic urge or their social
conscience. A change in the character of studio personnel might
readily pave the way for revolutionary changes.

To accept the present structure of cinema as inevitable and
final is a defeatist attitude. To pretend that it is other than it is,
or that it is not inimical to worth-while achievement is either
hypocrisy or stupidity. Whether we are interested in the aesthetics
of the cinema or in its social implications we must face the situation
free of cant or illusions. The constructive criticism of laymen and
the forward iEsopean tactics of film-makers must all be directed
courageously towards moulding a freer, a more rational system of
production which will enable the artist to be honest with himself
and sincere in his aims. Norman Wilson.

CQ. AND WORLD FILM NEWS

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

A FURTHER advance in the development of "Cinema Quarterly"
will take effect in the Autumn, when the paper will appear in
an entirely new form.

Arrangements are being made for a well organised INTER-
NATIONAL NEWS SERVICE from the world's principal centres of
production.

The new publication, which will appear MONTHLY, will be a
clearing-house for all the latest information on the films and
film people that matter, and will be in general a forum for
theory and criticism.

Hans Feld, formerly editor of the Berlin " Film Kurier," the most
famous film paper in Europe, has joined the editorial board.

The management of "Cinema Quarterly" have adopted this
progressive policy in deference to the needs expressed by both
film workers and film societies throughout the country.

WORLD FILM NEWS AND CINEMA QUARTERLY will supply an
essential service of international importance. It will be something
new in film journalism and will be supported by authoritative
contributions from leading film-makers and critics throughout the
world.

193

TWO PATHS
TO POETRY

JOHN GRIERSON

The most interesting event in recent months was, for many of us,
the arrival of Paul Rotha's Shipyard. I shall not pretend to review it,
for I am too close to these films to worry about the particular value
of this or that. What concerns me, and I hope some others, is where
they are leading. In documentary we are in course of making not
individual films or individual reputations, but new ways of looking
at the life about us. We are bringing new material to the imagina-
tion. Movements, and schools of approach, are everything. And
there is something sufficiently distinct in Rotha's work to mark it
as a separate tendency: distinct at once from the romanticism of
Flaherty, which all the young men have now respectfully discarded,
and from the hard-boiled and certainly more academic realism of
the G.P.O. group. I shall try to analyse this Rotha quality and
estimate it.

Forget all about Rotha's writing when you consider him as a
film-maker. He is, as every student of film appreciates, our film
historian; and he is the keeper of our conscience as much as the
keeper of our records. On questions of film movements and film
influences of the past he is an analyst of quality.

As a creator of film he happens to be none of these things. The
history of his subject matter does not concern him nearly so deeply
as its good looks in still and tempo. Analysis of his subject matter
— of the influences which affect it and the perspectives of social and
other importance which attend it — is not so important to him as the
general impression it gives. For lack of a better title I should call
him an impressionist.

The other day Clive Gardiner, the artist, was asked to do a paint-
ing of that grand machine which twists wires and makes cables.
He told me afterwards that what he went for was the feeling of
electricity and that in fact he " painted the shimmer of the thing."
So did Monet; so did all the other impressionists; and brilliantly,
as anyone who has seen the new Monet rooms in Paris will testify.
Great mural stretches there are, four to the immense oval of each
room, pouring into the subdued light the deep shimmer of trees and
pools and waterlilies. This was impressionism, till the old tough
Cezanne broke into the shimmer, teased out the forms again and
gave them solid structure. No one, however, in noting the change

194

of attitude, could deny the separate and authoritative inspiration
which impressionism represented.

Many of us, brought up in the post-impressionist revolt, have
made structure our god. "Observe and analyse," "know and
build," "out of research poetry comes," were the slogans we set
before us. They suited the academic and the radical in our minds.
They brought us more readily to the new material of our times.

I have watched with some closeness the working of these influ-
ences in the films of Wright, Elton and Legg. All are painstakingly
and rather proudly academic. When they shoot a factory, say, they
learn how to ask the right questions. Elton, for example, knows
more than a little about railways and mechanics; Wright has
mastered the history of every subject he has touched; and I will
swear that Legg knows more about the organisation of the B.B.C.
than any outsider decently should.

Critics have not failed to notice the tendency. " Close Up," that
ancient citadel of the aesthetes, spotted it from the first. In aesthetic
righteousness they deplored this concentration on the didactic.
They sniffed a long and authoritative sniff , at the pedagogic in art.
With equal sniff but less authority the boys and girls of " film art "
followed them. I, for one, always liked the criticism for, so far as
it goes, it means well and means rightly. The only point at which
art is concerned with information is the point at which "the flame
shoots up and the light kindles and it enters into the soul and feeds
itself there." Flash-point there must be. Information indeed can
be a dangerous business if the kindling process is not there. Most
professors are a dreary warning of what happens when the
informationist fails to become a poet.

But note the reverse of the argument. Information there must
be or there is nothing to kindle. New information there must be
or we are kindling to no purpose. And that is the task and the
danger these others have set themselves.

If they have not always found an aesthetic flash-point in their
researches into the social and economic structure, they have at
least been looking for it. I remember when Elton's Aero Engine
came out, how these very critics lit on the last reel of flight. It was
a poem, they said, but why all the laborious business before about
aero engines? They missed the point and missed it twice. In the
first place any fathead could make a poem of flight, but it was a more
difficult and more necessary thing to make a poem as Elton did of
the making of the mould. For many of us, there is no depth to the
poetry of flight unless the making and the moulding are realised
behind. The smoke at the chimney stack is one thing and a fit
vision for children. The smoke above the furnace is something else.

And again a point. Analysis itself, if it be fine enough and

195

affectionate enough, will sometimes achieve a flash-point by its
very affection. The making of a mould is as fair an example as any.
There have been more ambitious sequences of furnace work, rhythmi-
cised and tempo'd to beat the band. They are all — Ruttman's,
Flaherty's, Iven's, Rotha's and my own — vulgar in comparison.

So much for the informationists and what they represent. Rotha's
Shipyard brings us back with something like full measure to the old
position — for impressionism and against analysis, for art and against
information, and no one will say his case is not finely made. The
other people were critical and had no creative power to back them,
though they very plaintively tried. Rotha is certainly creative.
He comes equipped with a great splendour of camera work. He
has a force and fervour of tempo'd description better than anything
before him, for he has known how to use sound to intensify his
impressions. He joins with the other school in his industrial back-
ground and sociological implication and, if he had freedom, his
sociological implication would be even plainer than was permitted in
Shipyard. In these matters Rotha is certainly on the side of the gods.

Yet, when the splendid flurry is done, are the bones of the ship
in the film — are the wash and the width of the sea it will sail ? Is
the man who planned her there? — are the orders he gave? — is the
shaping of the ship to the blue print of his knowledge and purpose ?
Does the fo'c'sle head rise high with purpose willed and form made
to a purpose? Is it enough to make a poem of men hammering and
building and forget the precision of a rivet?

The energies are certainly there, caught, indeed shimmering,
among the rising ribs of the colossus. The voices are there, in
broken scraps of calls and conversation. The tools are there in hot
bursts of riveting and beating and turning. Something of the town
behind them is there and the houses they came from, and the
unemployment they will go back to when the job is done, and
something, too, of their thoughts. A great deal is there: shimmering
all of it as the sunlight of fine photography flashes across plate and
hammer and screw. But — and I ask this detachedly that the case
may be understood — is it really a ship that goes down to the sea or
only a hunk of art? The case of the others is that the art is better
if it is also a ship.

In any case it is of the greatest value that Rotha should reach
out separately in this way, and of the greatest importance that his
growing point should prosper. It may be that two separate arts
are involved and that we must look to the development of both.
The one is cold and, with power, may yet be classical ; the other is
rhetorical and may yet, with power, be romantic. But this is
certain: in our realistic cinema, all roads lead by one hill or another
to poetry. Poets they must all be — or stay forever journalists.

196

THE NEW DEAL AND
THE AMERICAN FILM

F. D. KLINGENDER

The frightened bourgeois retires to a dream world in his leisure
moments to escape from the terrors of a reality filled with the battle-
cries of contending classes. He is left to speculate on the abstract
attributes of that fictitious shadow "man in general." This shadow
without substance moves in a phantom world of abstract emotions
and passions, hopes, ambitions, disappointments and successes.

The films produced in Hollywood up to the end of the Hoover
presidency played all the possible variations of this seductive tune.
We can understand the shock to a public for whom this type of sub-
ject appeared as the only possible one for a film, when the basic
class reality of modern existence was for the first time unmasked in
the post-revolutionary Russian film.

Before 1932 the occasions when American producers discarded
the Hollywood wish dream sphere in favour of a subject even
remotely connected with social reality were exceedingly rare. Films
such as Five Star Final, and especially I am a Fugitive from the Chain-
Gang, exposing some particular example of social injustice with
passionate sincerity, were altogether exceptional.

All this, however, rapidly changed with the advent to power of
the Roosevelt regime, the function of which was the extraction of
American capitalism from the extreme depths of the crisis. To
understand the changes that have occurred in the American film
since that time it is necessary first to appreciate the significance of
their economic and political background.

The crisis had hit America with full force after a protracted
period of illusionary prosperity which appeared to vindicate the
claims of super-capitalism to have within itself the possibility of
providing a prosperous existence for all.

The first phase of the crisis, before Roosevelt was elected, rudely
scattered this illusion and brought unparalleled distress to an
immense number of people who had previously accepted it for
gospel truth.

The first task of the Roosevelt administration was, therefore,
the deflection of mass indignation, then at its highest, from a criti-

197

cism of the capitalist system as such to that of particular aspects of
that system, such as banking, market speculation, etc.

N.R.A., the great campaign embodying this policy, achieved its
initial popularity through the wide measure of apparent social
criticism which it contained. Having succeeded in its primary
aim of converting mass opposition into support for the new ad-
ministration and its head, the Roosevelt campaign gradually
changed its character in subsequent years. As ever larger numbers
of workers were disillusioned, as an unprecedented strike wave
began to sweep the country, the demagogic mask ceased to serve its
purpose, and the true class character of the regime appeared un-
disguised.

I shall attempt to show that this basic reality is reflected with
astonishing clarity in the American film of the last few years. It
appears very doubtful whether the changes that have occurred in
the character of these films can be explained otherwise than by
reference to this reality.

The first thing to note is the sudden and most surprising in-
trusion of the social problem into the fantastic realm of the Hollywood
film that occurred shortly after Roosevelt was elected to the presi-
dency. This intrusion was not confined to the sphere of one or two
highbrow films, but, on the contrary, was most pronounced just in
those films that were destined to appeal to the masses.

I shall select a few examples at random to illustrate this point.

The "Wild Western" was, almost from the inception of the film,
one of its most popular subjects. In the Massacre this well-worn
cliche suddenly assumed a startling new form. The Indians of this
film are no longer the romantic warriors of the schoolboy adventure
story, but the wretched, universally exploited survivors of a once
vital race found in the Indian reservation areas of the United States
of to-day. The hero is no longer the scalp-hunting chief, but a young
Indian earning his livelihood as a trick rider at the Chicago World
Fair.

This hero returns to his native home, and the astonished spectator
is, from that moment, presented with a hair-raising series of actions
showing the most callous, brutal, and hypocritical exploitation of
the Indians by the government administrator who cheats them of
their property rights, the doctor who utterly neglects them, and the
undertaker who forges their wills and rapes their daughters, while
the priest conducts a farcical burial ceremony for their fathers.

Needless to say, the bravery and valour of the hero is now dis-
played in fighting this racket. In the course of this struggle he
assaults the undertaker, who has raped his sister, and is placed under
arrest by the government official. He contrives, however, to escape
with the help of the heroine, who, of course, is a beautiful Indian

198

girl, and after various adventures reaches Washington. The first
shot of his arrival shows him jumping off a freight car and facing
a N.R.A. poster on the wall of a station shed, over which the dome
of the capitol is visible.

In Washington he finds a true friend and the future saviour of
his down-trodden people : the supreme official for all Indian reserva-
tions, whose self-sacrificing struggle for the rights of his exploited
wards has so far been frustrated on every side by the graft and
iniquity of the powerful interests who are opposed to his aims.

The case of our hero provides this official, for the first time, with
tangible proof on the basis of which he can proceed to clear up this
morass of graft and iniquity.

The description so far given of this film would suffice to indicate
its character, were it not that one exceedingly important point of
the Roosevelt campaign is put across in a highly effective manner
in the subsequent section of the story. For, while the senate inquiry
initiated by our hero's friend is in progress, the assaulted undertaker
dies of the wounds inflicted by the hero, who is thus taken back to
the reservation area in order to face a murder trial. Everything
depends on the production of his sister as a material witness, and, of
course, this girl is kidnapped by the racketeers. Once this becomes
known, the Indians, who have been roused from their previous
lethargy by the fight put up on their behalf by their countryman,
gather their forces and storm the gaol. But at this point the hero,
once he is released, uses his entire influence to persuade them of
the folly of mass action, arguing that, by taking this course, they
merely expose themselves to the machine-guns of the authorities.
He then proceeds, with the help of his faithful attorney, to look for
his kidnapped sister.

Naturally she is found in the end. The corrupt officials and
racketeers are duly punished and the hero is installed as the new,
honest, administrator for the reservation area — after which it is
clearly his duty to marry the heroine.

This most exciting film, built up with all the speed and tension
of the Hollywood thriller, thus put a number of very important
points of Roosevelt's propaganda campaign across wide masses of
cinema-goers. By selecting the economically entirely insignificant
group of exploited people represented by the Red Indians, it could
safely go to extreme limits in showing the full degree of their exploita-
tion. Imagine the results if its subject had been the American
Negro — not to mention the white working class. . . .

The suffering of these people is shown to be due, not to any
inherent feature of the social system in which they are forced to live,
but to corruption and graft on the part of influential racketeers.
The solution of their ills can be brought about by a strong man

199

who places honesty and love for his country above private gain; at
the same time it is folly for the exploited to fight for their freedom.
Patience and trust in official leadership are the only safe means
open to them.

I have described this film at some length, because it is a first-rate
example of a highly skilful propaganda film. While not all the films
of the first Roosevelt era were as skilful and effective in their pro-
paganda technique, the basic propaganda character of their over-
whelming number was, nevertheless, patent for all to see.

It is sufficient to mention films such as Dangerous Age, dealing
with the problem of America's "wild boys" tramping through the
length and breadth of the American continent in a vain search for
work. Again the subject is treated with astonishing frankness,
though, of course, not with the same brutality as in the case of
Massacre. But from the propaganda point of view Dangerous Age is
a much less skilful film than Massacre, since the end, in which the
heroes of the story are rescued by a benevolent magistrate who finds
jobs for them, is so obviously out of tune with the picture drawn by
the remainder of the film that it can scarcely be convincing even for
the most unsuspecting.

On a different level the spectacular Fox chorus girl show, Stand
Up and Cheer, belongs to the same category of Roosevelt propaganda
films. The story, which provides the skeleton for the series of Holly-
wood parties and revue scenes characteristic of the "musical comedy"
type of film,is in this case that of a new official who has been entrusted
with the organisation of a big "Joy Trust," in order to dispel the
gloom of the crisis with lavishly organised entertainments. The
story of the film is the story of the fight between this official and the
powerful vested interests in the entertainments rackets who, of
course, employ every means to frustrate the fulfilment of his task.
Needless to say, he defeats these sinister influences after many
adventures, puts over a grand show, turns the universal gloom into
optimism, and thus enables the country to turn the corner towards
prosperity.

Altogether incomparable with any of these pictures wrere a
number of exceedingly interesting films also produced during the
first phase of the Roosevelt presidency films, the obvious aim of
which was a scarcely veiled criticism of capitalist society. I am
referring to a number of James Cagney and William Powell films,
in which these actors represent racketeering business men with
astonishing cynicism.

The first Mae West film, with its glorious demolition of the last
fragments of bourgeois morality, belongs to the same group. All
these films are objectively an expression of a genuine left wing
criticism of present day society. They were allowed to pass by the

200

American censorship authorities in view of the concessions necessary
to left wing feelings in those years.

No one who has seen American films, even if only occasionally,
can have failed to notice the decisive change in their character that
has taken place during the last eighteen months or so, and that has
completely altered the picture so far described. The first and most
striking change is the abrupt disappearance of the genuine social
criticism film. Could there be a more striking contrast than that
between the first and the second Mae West films? You will remem-
ber the sheer delight of the scene in Pm no Angel in which Mae West
in full war paint swaggers in syncopated jazz step across her room
accompanied by her gargantuan negro maids. In Belle of the Nineties
the negro maid has become the saviour of her mistress's soul, for
she is asked by the star to pray for her at a revivalist meeting !

Those who see in this change merely the result of the so-called
purity campaign, will find it difficult to account for the no less
striking change which has come over the Cagney pictures released
during 1934. If in the earlier films the gangster racketeer was
assuming the unmistakable features of the capitalist business man as
such, this clarity and precision of outline has entirely vanished in
the later films (e.g. He was her Man). With it has vanished, as in
the case of Mae West, all the vitality and tempo of the earlier
productions.

If we turn from the left wing to the centre and right, the changes
found are equally significant. They can be characterised as changes
from extreme social demagogy over an intermediate stage of mystical
hero-worship back into the sphere of bourgeois " entertainment "
proper, the sphere of love, hate, adventure, success, etc., in the
abstract, without any trace of social reality.

The intermediate stage is characterised by films, the objective
basis of which is the problem of fascism. It is highly significant that
the attitude of the producers to this problem as presented in these
films imperceptibly changes from that of criticism to more or less
open support. The series Duck Soup, Viva Villa and Cat's Paw
illustrates this transition.

Characteristically enough the present phase, in which the social
problem has entirely vanished, as far as the intention of the producers
is concerned, commenced with a rage for so-called costume pictures.
The flight from social reality was thus initiated by an escape from
the conditions of to-day into those of the past.

In the films released during the last few months the return to
the realm of pure fancy is complete ; but instead of its former de-
lights that realm to-day spreads the ennui of a conjuring trick
endlessly repeated after its secret has been exposed.

201

Note. — I attach without comment the following extracts from a
review of the American film, Night Life of the Gods, taken from the
London " Cinema '

" NIGHT LIFE OF THE GODS.— Once upon a time a famous
author named Thorne Smith wrote a book, conceived in a moment
of delicious delirium and written in a cuckoo clock. The first chapters
convinced us he was crazy. The ensuing left doubt that possibly we
were. . . . Night Life of the Gods brings a brand new type of humour
to the screen, completely inconsequential in nature and as far
removed from everyday life as the craziest nightmare. It has always
been claimed for films that their chief function should be to take
people out of themselves and to provide entertainment as different
from the everyday routine as possible. I think that, to a great extent,
this view is correct, and therefore I say without hesitation that,
bearing this in mind, Night Life of the Gods is magnificent screen
entertainment. To describe the film in a few words is impossible.
As one American critic wrote, 'It is a picture that is completely
but pleasantly goofy, with cast and director seemingly purposely
insane, but with no one caring, as fun percolates from their antics.'
That just about sums the picture up. It has an irresponsibly crazy
air about it that is disarmingly delightful. It transports audiences
to the wildest realms of fantasy where nothing at all matters. "

Kinofilms have now reduced to sub-standard size, Alexander
Room's famous film of the South American oilfields, The Ghost that
Never Returns. This will be given a London premiere in the early
part of September and will be available for booking from September
15. There will also be available shortly October, Eisenstein's famous
film of the October revolution, Dovjenko's Earth and Arsenal,
Ermler's Fragrance of an Empire, Turksib and The End of St. Petersburg,
on 1 6mm. non-flam stock. Prices are now standardised at the rate
of 4s. per reel per day, which brings the hire charge for these
famous films to the same level as the ordinary films distributed by
sub-standard libraries.

Q02

THE FILM CRITIC OF TO-DAY
AND TO-MORROW

RUDOLF ARNHEIM

It has taken a long time for film criticism to develop into something
other than the second string of the local reporter, or the dramatic or
literary critic. What was lacking was expert knowledge, an aesthetic
theory of the film and, in the case of the newspaper editor, the idea
that film criticism might be something more than an editorial
return for cinema advertisements. Then, when at last film criticism
did get to work with its own ideas, i.e. ideas appropriate to the film,
when it had reached a satisfactory intellectual level, and conquered
a place in the newspapers equivalent to that occupied by dramatic
and artistic criticism, the art of the cinema, after a brief period of
blossoming, had begun once more to wither away, and to-day
the chief error of the film critic is precisely that he judges films in
the same way as his colleagues do pictures, novels and plays.

It is true that in the fifteen years or so during which the art of
the cinema developed, it was unusual to find a true work of art,
even in conception, but the film critic would, at that time, have
had the opportunity of observing, of noting and of commenting on
so rare, so exciting a process in its separate stages, so that his col-
leagues must have envied him that opportunity, even though in their
own spheres long-standing artistic tradition ensured the production
of works purer in aim and higher in standard. Here was a form of
art in process of development. Here, from what was originally a
purely mechanical method of photography, means gradually emerged
of presenting the artistic quality of reality. And this experiment,
the first of its kind, was so valuable for aesthetics that, at least to
begin with, the experiment itself was far more important than the
question, vital for the final judgment of the phenomenon, to what
height the new art might be developed (whereby it seems to us that
the question whether or not the cinema can be an art at all is
wrongly framed and should be rather to what degree it can become
an art).

Even if, in former days, there seldom appeared a pure work of art,
whether as regards aim or achievement, at that time almost every
new film meant, in a scenario motiv, cutting or in lighting effect,
an advance in the development of the new visual language, and to
take note of this should have been the task of the film critic. But

203

film criticism in general was not ready for this, and so the oppor-
tunity passed by almost entirely neglected.

Artistic form is not a luxury, not an ornament nor an accessory,
but serves to express the subject, the action; and so, because of
the limitations imposed by the absence of speech, there had
developed, in the film, artistic means of making plot, characterisation
and background comprehensible through the eye. In this way
they had arrived at a special kind of mute pantomime, at the
transformation of inner motives of action into visible ones, at the
creative resources of the film-camera, and at montage. With the
advent of the talking film the need for the use of all these vanished.

And not merely the need, but, to a great extent, the possibility.
Certainly there was now available, from the purely external, practical
point of view, a more convenient and direct means of conveying
information regarding plot, character, background; but word and
picture was each in itself so comprehensive a means of representation
that, used simultaneously, they could not supplement, but could
only prejudice and mutilate one another.

The resulting development, the decline of the film as a means of
artistic expression, is not yet complete. It, too, is exceedingly
interesting from an aesthetic point of view, and is, therefore, worthy
of closer attention from film critics. Points worth considering
would be, how, under the influence of dialogue, movement loses
its importance, individual scenes are drawn out and so montage
falls into disuse; how the travelling camera tends to predominate,
the actor usurps the scene, external action declines in favour of the
spoken word. What the talking film has begun, the colour, the
plastic, the supersize film and direct transmission of actual scenes
by television will complete.

Unfortunately the majority of critics are unaware of this state
of affairs. They realise that the cinema is artistically unproductive,
but not that this is inevitable. They lay the blame on individual
producers and directors as if the possibility of good talking-films
really existed.

One of the tasks of the film critic of to-morrow — perhaps he will
be called the television critic — will be to destroy the ridiculous
figure cut by the average film critic and film theorist of to-day ; he,
like a seventy-year-old court actress, lives on the glamour of his
memories; like her, he rummages among faded photographs, speaks
of names that have long since vanished. With others like himself
he argues about films which, for ten years or more, no one has
been able to see, and about which, therefore, anything, or nothing,
may be said; he discusses montage, as medieval scholars discussed
the existence of God, and believes that all these things could exist
to-day. In the evening he sits, reverently attentive, in the cinema,

204

From " B.B.C. — The Voice of Britain/' a John Grierson Production.
Above — In the effects room at Broadcasting House.
vBelow — The control room.

Courtesy G.P.O.
Films and H.M.
Stationery Office

From " Amphitryon " a Ufa film directed
by Reinhold Schunzel.
The settings are by Herlth and Rohrig.
Camera : Fritz Arno Wagner.

playing the critical friend of art, as though we were still living in
the time of Griffith, Stroheim, Murnau and Eisenstein. He thinks
he is seeing bad films, instead of realising that what he sees is no longer
a film at all.

All such theoretical studies would be splendid if they were
consciously carried on as theoretical, or purely historical, research.
They are ridiculous whenever, as usually happens, they are presented
as models for modern film production. We know perfectly well that
sometimes even now, and to-morrow the same will be true, in the
hands of an advanced worker, of a seeker after documentary,
a real film does come into existence. But the newspaper critic has
to do not with such exceptions, but with the ordinary production
of the day, and this can be subjected to aesthetic criticism only
when, whether bad or good, it may, in principle, be included in
the realm of aesthetics; i.e., when it has the possibility of creating
works of art. Formerly good films differed from mediocre ones only
in quality, to-day they are outsiders, relics, things essentially different
in nature from what normally passes through the cinemas.

Many a critic, since write he must, takes refuge in irony, contents
himself with a few jokes more or less good, and with detailed criticism
of the acting. Is there nothing better for him to do? Undoubtedly
there is ! The film critic of to-day ought to bear in mind his second
great task, a task laid upon him from the beginning, but for neglecting
which he had, once at least, the excuse that aesthetic criticism
could justly claim most of his space and interest. We mean the
consideration of the film as an economic product, and as the expres-
sion of political and moral opinions.

Films are made by manufacturers as goods intended to bring in
as large a profit as possible on what they cost; i.e., they must be so
made that they find as many consumers as possible. Nevertheless,
formerly one found frequent cases where the manufacturer allowed
the artist, commissioned by him, a certain freedom in the choice of
material and in the execution of the work, hoping that, because of,
or in spite of this, the film would achieve financial success. But
every business organisation aims at perfecting itself, at excluding
uncontrolled factors, and so the film industry has, in course of time,
reduced the artist more and more to a mere machine for supplying
what the "producer" with his keen flair for "what the public
wants " tells him to construct.

In all this we have in mind the most highly developed type of
modern commercial film production, especially the American, and
we are leaving aside, for the present, those cases where authorities,
governments, organisations, etc., attempt to impose some other
impulse on the commercial one. In industrialised production it is
far more enlightening to know what company has made a film rather

207

than what director. Modern directors are less and less distinguish-
able from one another, and modern actors likewise.

The average film critic of to-day knows this state of affairs quite
well in theory, but in practice he criticises the style of George
Cukor, and becomes absorbed in the psychological peculiarities of
Joan Crawford, without realising that these figures, even if nature
should have endowed them with some degree of artistic originality,
are condemned, at least in their practical activity, to absolute
dependence. The director is reproached with having failed to
bring out, in "his" scenario, the characteristic elements of the
background. The combination of a particular director and a
particular actor is considered as an artistically motivated event
whose causes ought to be investigated and judged. In an essay,
which appeared recently in a review and which certainly con-
tained hints of the real connection between cause and effect,
Mamoulian was blamed for having allowed himself to be influenced
by the "innocent vanity" of Greta Garbo. Almost simultaneously
there appeared, in a German newspaper, an interview in which
Greta Garbo said: "You ask whether I am satisfied with the Christina
film? No, not at all. How could you think that? If I had had any
say in the matter it would have been quite different. But what one
would like oneself is never realised. I shall never act the part of
which I have dreamed." We are concerned here not with a defence
of Garbo, but with the fact that such a film could not be made by
director and actress, whether they consented and were enthusiastic
about it, or whether they were repelled by it, and forced into it, in
any but the way in which it was made. The only general reproach
which might be made against an artist is that of binding himself
to such methods of production. To judge a film as the free work
of artists, like a novel or a painting, when nowadays even a queen
among actresses may not settle at what angle her eyebrows are to be
placed, conceals, in a harmful manner, the true state of affairs.

Equally inadequate is, for example, the fashion, widespread at
present, of criticising historical films. Variations from historical
truth are pointed out, and the author of the script, director or pro-
ducer is judged as if he had failed to study his sources properly, or
as if, whether from pure caprice, from misunderstanding, from lack
of objectivity, or possibly from the wish to further some special
artistic or scientific idea, he had departed from the truth, he is
criticised just as the author of an historical novel or play, or of a
scientific historical work would be criticised. In reality the pro-
ducer, advised by experts and supplied with excellent documents,
probably knows the historical circumstances better than the critic,
and has not the slightest intention, in the construction of his film,
of giving rein to his whims, his lack of understanding or his personal

208

views. A factory is no place for such passions. Every alteration of
history is, rather, exactly like every alteration in the film version of
a novel or play, a carefully calculated economic measure intended
to make the film more suitable, more attractive, more interesting,
more magnificent, more exciting for the public. In these films there
is far less caprice than in the works of many an artist or man of
science. They are made according to well-tried rules, and, from the
outline of the plot to the gestures of the hero, everything is sub-
servient to the same end.

As long as the critic is ignorant of this, or remains silent on the
subject, his criticism is worthless. It is worthless as long as he con-
tinues to distribute praise and blame in individual instances and to
individual persons, without realising that films become what they
are because of certain general laws.

First law : The talking-film as a means of representation, excludes
the possibility of artistic form.

Second law: Films are made as a commercial proposition, in
such a way that they may sell as well as possible.

Third law : The film is less the expression of individual opinion
than of general political and moral views.

In connection with this third point, we must add that, in those
countries which are governed according to a definite doctrine,
the governments of to-day emphasise, in a most useful manner, the
political and moral content of the film. Unhappily the film critic
does not yet adequately support them in this. He fails to see, for
example, that the average American film, which appears to him
merely artistically negligible and silly, becomes extremely interesting
as soon as one regards it as characteristic of what appeals to the
masses.

Whether a film is intended by the producer to appeal to the
mind of the people, or whether, under the influence of the authorities,
it is employed as a means of propaganda or of education, it must
always be the task of the film critic, to-day as well as to-morrow,
to analyse its content, and to assess, positively or negatively, its value.

The film is one of the most characteristic means of expression
and one of the most potent influences of our age. In it not only
individuals but nations, classes, forms of government play an active
part. The critic of to-day, unfortunately, continues, all too frequently,
to act as if the cinema were a small luxury theatre in which a few
independent artists are acting for a limited number of people
interested in art. Such a critic of to-day belongs, alas, to yesterday.

£09

NEW TRENDS IN
SOVIET CINEMA— II

MARIE SETON

The optimistic and liberal vein of Dinamov's speech, which repre-
sented the official Communist view at the Moscow Cinema Confer-
ence in January, was a signal that the cinema workers could and
even should express some frivolity in their films. With the improved
material conditions Soviet audiences have developed a desire to be
entertained as well as educated by the cinema. Romance is no longer
bourgeois, love is an eligible theme in place of being an occasional
decoration to the one of socialist construction. Handsome actors
playing romantic Red soldiers and attractive blondes are replac-
ing natural types; characters are individual rather than typical.
Humour is an important component of story pictures.

The first director to speak at the conference was Eisenstein; he
was stating his position publicly for the first time since his return
from Mexico.

He divided the history of the Soviet cinema into three periods :

1917-22. — The few films made were under the influence of
the theatre. 1922-29. — The period of the epic films which were
based on montage and the use of natural types. Since 1929

Eisenstein considered that during the second period movement
sometimes became the content of the picture. Technical virtuosity
was characteristic of the period. The use of natural types — typage —
was developed because the cinema was in the hands of the technical
intelligentsia who became infatuated with the masses and, therefore,
thought that typage was the most actual way to represent a class
from whom they were apart. "We may criticise all the tendencies,' '
said Eisenstein, "but every tendency is the tendency of the period
itself."

He analysed various pictures and stories, including The American
Tragedy, which he conceived as a study of the negative twentieth-
century man. He showed how ideas profitable to capitalism could
be embodied in exotic stories and the nineteenth century thrillers of
Fennimore Cooper. He spoke of form and content, citing the film
Counterplan in which the white nights had been effectively used to
heighten the tension of the love scenes and how inseparable form

210

and content were among primitive people, illustrating that by the
Polynesian tradition of opening all the doors and gates during a
confinement in order that the surroundings should assist the action.

"Our knowledge of composition is very poor," he continued.
"Some people think it is sufficient to make pictures; but we must
find expressive things. In the intellectual cinema there was form
and content, though we had too many isms and these isms wanted
the monopoly of art. My art is dedicated to no particular tendency,
but to the analysis of certain phenomena and ways of thinking."

Eisenstein concluded by saying that he felt that at present Soviet
art and architecture shows an inclination to return to the classical
while everywhere there are signs of synthesis and a demand for
greater artistic value.

Trauberg, co-director with Kusnetsov of the films Alone, New
Babylon, and The Youth of Maxim, was the next to speak. He de-
manded that Eisenstein should put his theories into practice, declar-
ing that cinema theory is not a matter of scholastic articles, but the
struggle between one group of cinema directors and another. He
considered that the film magazines were not serious enough, and
that some of the articles appearing in them were a museum of
fantastic illusions. He attacked formalism, saying that the only
way to be rid of that bugbear was to produce pictures.

In Trauberg's opinion, Eisenstein's division of the Soviet cinema
into three periods was too conventional, and though he agreed that
1924-29 was the great period of the Soviet cinema, he considered
that during those years many mistakes had been made. He criticised
the lack of character in Pudovkin's hero of his St. Petersburg film,
and Dovzhenko's unconvincing hero in Arsenal. He condemned
what he called "the stupid poetry" of the period — Eisenstein's
"side-lines" in October, the palaces and statues, the obviousness of
General Line and Pudovkin's shots of moulded ceilings and statues
at the end of St. Petersburg.

And of the cinema since 1929, Trauberg discussed a number of
interesting but imperfect pictures which are unlikely to be seen
abroad. Of his own work with Kusnetsov, Trauberg said that,
during the making of their last film, The Youth of Maxim, they had
solved many problems in spite of the fact that they were obliged to
alter the script during production. He felt they had rid themselves
of formalism, and thought the method of setting the individual against
the social background of the period quite satisfactory. He deplored
the attitude of people who consider all historical pictures as bad and
those with contemporary themes as good; though most discussions
centred on films with contemporary subjects, the Soviet cinema had
in actual fact mainly utilised historical material. In the future
Trauberg felt that he and Kusnetsov must deepen the meaning of

211

their work and pay more attention to detail. He said they were
averse to obvious technique. The greatest tribute paid to The
Youth of Maxim (an historical picture) was Pudovkin's when he said
he felt that the fields would soon belong to the collective farm, and
his opinion was echoed by a group of young workers. "That," said
Trauberg, "is the emotion we wanted to create."

Another young director who spoke was Utekevitch, collaborator
with Ermler on the film Counterplan. He belonged, he said, to the
second generation and came to represent the great army of cinema
workers. "I don't think," he said, "that the Soviet cinema is
only made up of heroes like Eisenstein and Dovzhenko." Like others,
in the early days, he had found it difficult to get into contact with
his audience; he had thought them stupid and in need of being
raised to Flaubert's "ivory towers." The intelligentsia had failed
to understand the political aim of the cinema and that all art is
fighting. He liked American pictures because they appealed to a
great public, for in the best meaning of the word the cinema is a
popular branch of art.

Utekevitch, being one of the first directors to see the importance
of cinema actors as opposed to natural types {Counterplan is largely
an actor's picture) analysed Pudovkin as a delineator of character,
saying that Mother was comprehensible to everyone because it was a
picture about people. In St. Petersburg Pudovkin's style changed
and real people became symbols, then he denied the necessity of
the scenario and later actors gave way more and more to natural
types ; finally, in The Simple Case, Pudovkin created a new theory, the
importance of the cadre. In Deserter, Utekevitch felt that Pudovkin
only expressed human emotions for one moment — the scene in
which the German widow cries when she is elected as a worker
delegate.

Because he is mainly concerned with the making of films requiring
professional actors, Utekevitch spoke of the training of special
film actors. He felt that the role of the actor is most important,
for if they lack understanding and experience they can change the
whole idea of the film. Though every Soviet director has an
individual method of working with actors (and it is one of the
most difficult branches of their work) there is actually very little
theory in regard to cinema acting itself. There is also the relation
of camera-men to actors ; Utekevitch found that in his experience
very few Soviet camera-men could shoot men's behaviour, which
he felt to be more dynamic than inanimate things.

Utekevitch ended his speech by estimating the value of
Pudovkin, Dovzhenko and Eisenstein to the second generation of
directors. Of Pudovkin he said that when he and his generation
criticised him they were struggling for and not against him. He

212

felt that there was danger in making Dovzhenko a model, for his
particular way of creating films was peculiar, while his ideas were
sometimes better than his work. He wished to fight for the genius
expressed in Eisenstein's pictures, but he felt that Eisenstein, the
teacher and theoretician, was often at fault. His speech was full
of unproved theories and his work lay only in the laboratory ; and
lastly practical Utekevitch considered that Eisenstein was not close
enough to reality. Turning to him he said something to the effect
that i;You are richer than all of us, but you are sitting on your
own gold." Eisenstein, who was acting as chairman, merely smiled.
The most important speech of the conference because it combined
theory with practice was Dovzhenko's, which will be summarised on
a later occasion.

THE FILM ABROAD

DR GOEBBELS'
SEVEN PRINCIPLES

At the closing session of the International Film Congress, 1935,
Dr. Goebbels, the German Minister for Public Information and
Propaganda, delivered an address on the specific laws of film art,
in which he enumerated the following seven principles ruling German
cinematography :

1. The film, like every other form of art, has its own laws. It
is only by obeying these laws of its own that it will be able to preserve
its true character. These laws are not derived from the stage. The
primacy of the stage over the film must be broken. Stage and film
each speaks its own language. What is still tolerable in the dim
light of stage scenery is completely unmasked in the glaring light
of the Jupiter lamps. It is an artistically vital question for the film
to break away from stage tradition and stand on its own feet.

2. The film must shake off the vulgar insipidity of a mere form
of amusement for the masses, but in doing so it must not lose its
strong inner connection with the people.

3. This does not mean that it is the function of the film to serve
the purposes of a colourless aestheticism. On the contrary, it is just
because of its unprecedentedly far-reaching range that it, more
than all other forms of art, must be popular art in the best sense of
the word. But, popular art must present in artistic form the joys
and sorrows that affect the great masses. Hence the film must not

213

stand aloof from the hard realities of the day, nor lose itself in a
dreamland only existing in the imaginations of unpractical pro-
ducers and scenario writers living in a non-existing world.

4. There is no art that is self-supporting; material sacrifices
made to art are repaid by it ideally. For every government it is
a matter of course to finance great state buildings in which the
architectural creative will of a period is immortalized in stone; it
is a matter of course to subsidize theatres in which the tragic and
comic passions of this period are represented ; it is a matter of course
to establish galleries in which the pictorial cultural possessions of a
people are housed. It must be just as much a matter of course for
every government to secure the artistic existence of the film by
material sacrifices, unless it gives up all idea of treating the film as
art or of giving it a position as such.

5. The film must remain contemporary, in order to have a con-
temporary appeal. Although it may take and obtain its subjects
for treatment from other countries and distant historical epochs,
its problems must be adapted to the spirit of the period, in order to
be able to address the spirit of the period.

6. The film, developed on these rules, will not separate but
form a bond between the nations who, proud of their individuality,
express this individuality in the film. It is a cultural bridge between
the nations; it promotes understanding among them because it
assists them to learn to know each other.

7. It is the function of the film to achieve its effects by its own
inherent honesty and naturalness. Empty pathos is just as alien
to it as the trashy theatre tricks with which it was heavily burdened
by its stepmother, the stage, on its life's road, but which merely
represent irksome baggage that does not belong to it. The honest
and natural film which gives animated and plastic expression to
our period can become a valuable means for the building up of a
better, purer and more realistic world of artistic possibilities.

If these fundamental principles are observed in the film, it will
conquer the world as a new artistic manifestation. It will then be
the strongest pioneer and the most modern spokesman of our age.

In the light of Dr. Goebbels' manifesto it is interesting to consider
Ufa's 1935-36 production schedule, since issued. Of the twenty-six
feature films — planned to " relax, fascinate and entertain filmgoers"
— at least eight are musicals or light comedies, seven are conventional
love romances or dramas, one is a detective thriller, and one is a
musical biography of Chopin. Five may or may not have a strong
social content.

But whatever may be the value of the themes chosen under the
new German film regime, there can be no doubt that the techinical

214

quality and surface polish of current production is of a remarkably
high standard. Amphitryon, a Stapenhorst picture directed by
Reinhold Schunzel and featuring Willy Fritsch and Kathe Gold,
is one of the most ambitious of recent films. It is a comedy and the
action takes place in classical antiquity. In addition to everyday
men and women of the period the cast includes gods and goddesses
such as Jupiter, Mercury and Juno. It is particularly notable for
the grandeur of the architectural settings designed by Robert Herlth
and Walter Rohrig, and for the photography of Fritz Arno Wagner.
The musical director is Franz Doelle, one of the best-known of the
younger German composers. He has attempted something new in
film operetta, and has made the characters use a sort of rhythmic
speech-song. He adapts his music not only to the action but to the
camera. Musical undertones and overtones are used to harmonise
with and complement every shot without interrupting the rhythm
of the musical score as a whole.

Wonders of Flying, a new Terra film featuring Ernest Udet, the
famous German flying ace, contains an abundance of beautiful
and thrilling shots. The film was photographed simultaneously
from several angles — from the towering tops of ice-covered moun-
tains and from a plane. In addition an automatic camera was
mounted on Udet's machine. Weather conditions made production
specially difficult. Round Zugspitzo high winds were encountered,
with changes of temperature up to 30 degrees. Both cameras and
camera-men were at times unable to work. In addition, scenery
photographed one day would be ten feet under snow the next.
Udet's dare-devil flying creates a thrilling spectacle on the screen.

One of Germany's most famous camera-men, Karl Hoffman,
who photographed The Mbelungs, Faust and many of the early
classics, has been made a director. At the Jofa studio he is at present
at work on a new Minerva-Europa musical production, The Primary
Rules of Love.

An important item of information is the news that Bernard Shaw
has consented to the production of a German film version of
Pygmalion. Jenny Jugo will take the part of Eliza, the flower girl,
and Gustaf Gruendgens, of the Berlin Staats Theater, will play
Professor Higgins.

215

THE AMERICAN SCREEN

HERMAN G. WEINBERG

The summer of 1935 will have been memorable in the cinema
world, as such things go, for the introduction of colour in the feature
film. Becky Sharp, from Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," with Miriam
Hopkins, directed by Mamoulian, was the vehicle used to intro-
duce colour to the screen in the same significant proportions that
marked The Jazz Singer as the first talking picture. Whether the
relative success of Becky Sharp (of course, we have already had no
less significant colour in the short La Cucaracha, also devised by
Robert Edmond Jones) strikes the death-knell of the black-and-
white film, the next six months or so will tell. I think colour will
supersede black-and-white — not because the present development
of colour adds materially to a picture (in stories of to-day, with the
characters in everyday street attire, there would be little difference,
after a reasonable while, between colour and black-and-white to the
spectator), but because after five or six years of the talking picture,
the movie moguls of Hollywood will probably feel the time is ripe
to introduce another novelty on the screen to inject new life-blood
to the film. The colour film will, no doubt, give the movies a new
impetus, whose momentum will carry it along for another five or
six years until that novelty wears off — then, three dimensional
films and television.

When Mamoulian allows for some movement in an otherwise
static picture (such as in the whirling dancers at the Duchess of
Richmond's ball, on the eve of Waterloo), the screen goes riotous
with flaming scarlets, bright splashes of yellow and blue, soft greens
and deep blacks with voluptuous visual beauty. Otherwise the
colour tends to the chromo picture postcard variety, and in the long
shots is actually blurred. Close-ups darken the faces to such an extent
that the players (especially Miriam Hopkins) look like mulattoes.
The intense light (twice as much as for the black-and-white film)
playing on the heavy make-up (necessary for players in colour films)
probably accounts for this. The screen has not by a far cry reached
natural colour. Becky Sharp is still a coloured film, smacking of tinting.
But for those moments when the primary colours smite the eye in
bold splashes, the film is very much worth while seeing. As a film,
it is better than The Iron Duke (which covers the same period), and
if this is damning it with faint praise, let us hasten to add that
Miriam Hopkins is always more enticing to the eye than George

216

Arliss — and she works ten times as hard as he does to help put a
picture over.

I'm afraid, after all the expense and research made in colour for
Becky Sharp, I still prefer Lee Garmes' lovely black-and-white photo-
graphy in The Scoundrel. This is the latest Hecht-Mac Arthur
picture which has set the critical boys on their ears in awe of so
devastatingly sleek a picture. Here again the film's chief virtue is
the novelty of Noel Coward's screen debut. The picture was written
for him, and he lets Hecht and Mac Arthur's jewelled quips drop all
about him in splendid and tantalizing confusion. Hence it has been
called a "sparkling picture." It pretends to be a highly unmoral
film until the end, when it goes moral (in a mystical epilogue) with
all the passion of a negro revivalist meeting. In a film completely
devoid of irony, it is indeed ironic to contemplate that the only
warmth in the picture is in the touching performance of Julie
Haydon, as the "good girl." The best line in the picture, when the
young poetess (Julie Haydon) confesses her love of Keats and
Proust and Shakespeare, is answered by the cynical publisher
(Coward): "They lied every one of them. They lied first for fame
or notoriety, then kept it up for royalties " — this, I think, is the best
criticism of the picture. The Scoundrel substitutes the sophisticated
quip for the banal wise-crack, balances unmorality with conventional
morality. I am harsh with it only because it aims so high; even so,
it rises disdainfully above the everyday run of movies and, at least,
has been done with intelligence and impeccable taste. But with all
its surface brilliance, it is a distinct let down for the creators of the
ironic and superb Crime Without Passion.

Once in a Blue Moon, produced by Hecht and MacArthur between
Crime Without Passion and The Scoundrel, is notable chiefly for the
presence of Jimmy Savo, the inimitable Italian clown. The story
is bad and direction surprisingly tepid. One hilarious sequence,
concerning Savo's struggling conscience when confronted by a
counterfeiting machine, is worthy of Chaplin at his best; but this,
I think, is due more to Savo than Hecht and MacArthur. Some of
the dialogue is charming, and often it is the tenderest thing imagin-
able. So completely devoid of guile and worldliness is it, that it
folds its innocent props from underneath it and goes right to sleep
in front of you. It will be remade in an attempt to salvage the fine
performance of Jimmy Savo.

We have had colour, sophistication, charm; now, with tragedy
and sex, the summer cycle is complete. The two outstanding examples
have been The Informer for tragedy and The Devil is a Woman for sex.
The former is by far the better film. Directed by John Ford from
Liam O'Flaherty's story of that name, dealing with the Black and
Tan period of Ireland's abortive rebellion, it starts slowly and

217

ominously in a pea-soup fog on a night in Dublin, when Gypo
Nolan informed on his best friend to collect a twenty pound reward,
so he could take his girl to America. Then follows a nightmarish
sequence of Gypo's carousing about the town with his blood money
(reminiscent in quality, in a minor way, to Joyce's famous night-
town sequence in "Ulysses"), which ends up in Gypo's apprehension
by his comrades and his extinction by a bullet as he attempts to
escape from the monkey-court that tries him for his infamous be-
trayal. Victor MacLaglan performs mightily as Gypo Nolan. It
is regrettable that Gypo's girl-friend was whitewashed in the film,
because even a prostitute has no use for an informer in the story's
milieu. Likewise the time of the incident was materially changed
from the civil war period to that of the international guerrilla
warfare.

The Devil is a Woman is either very subtle or just a very bad film.
I haven't been able to make up my mind which. The last of the
memorable Dietrich — von Sternberg cycle (which will go down in
history as the twentieth-century Svengali-Trilby combination), it is
visually the most beautiful and occasionally the dullest. Adapted
from Pierre Louys' ironic comedy of Seville during carnival time,
"Woman and Puppet," with a theme that is as ageless as it is pointed,
notably that the "male of the species invariably comes back for
more " (punishment) in the comedy of love, its thesis is the direct
antithesis of The Scoundrel, for instance. Dietrich is incredibly
lovely in the film, and von Sternberg has imparted to her a devasta-
ting sexual allure. Lionel Atwill and Caesar Romero are puppets
in a film which is all Dietrich. But you will remember the photo-
graphy of Sternberg (he did the camera work himself), and Dietrich.

And, as proof that you can't keep a good man down, von Stern-
berg, having been given the sack by Paramount for The Devil is a
Woman, is about to embark on a production (for another company)
of no less an undertaking than Dostoievski's tortuous novel, " Crime
and Punishment," with Peter Lorre as Raskolnikow.

As for the rest, perhaps the censorial activities contain most
interest. Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse has been banned for
its alleged anarchistic tendencies, and La Maternelle has had some two
thousand feet cut — a stupid and impudent action, which is now
being appealed. Paul Fejo's beautiful film, Marie, was also banned
because "it makes a mockery of religion, the administration of justice
and the action of respectable society, generally."

218

NATIONAL PRODUCTION
IN BELGIUM

The Belgian cinema has just had its first success with the film
De IVitte, produced by Jean Vanderheyden and Willem Benoy, and
acted by a troupe of Flemish actors. Amongst the latter little Jefke
Bruynincks has turned out a revelation and earned the nickname of
the " Flemish Jackie Coogan." He plays the part of a mischievous
and turbulent youngster imagined by the novelist Ernest Claes.

The interiors were shot in German studios, but there are also
very beautiful landscapes taken in the Campine district of Belgium.
Much of the plot, which is very simple, takes place in the open air.

It must be admitted that the direction is not quite perfect, but
a popular success has been achieved and the public interested
in a healthy and simple country story. The dialogue has a local
colour which is greatly appreciated in Holland and Belgium.

The same producers have turned out Alleen voor u {For You Alone),
the quality of which is not so good, being inspired by the international
formula of the operetta, whereas the future of the Belgian production
at the present time resides in a well-defined nationalism, such as
allowed the Scandinavian cinema to assert itself after the war. At
any rate this is the opinion of most of the critics.

Consequently a new attempt has just been made in this direction,
also by Jules Vanderheyden. With the aid of the writer Ernest
Claes, he has produced a kind of sequel to the famous novel of
Charles De Coster, "The Legend of Thyl Uylenspiegel." This film
is entitled Thyl Uylenspiegel leeft nog {Thyl Uylenspiegel lives still), and
shows how the spirit of the famous hero continues and inspires
imitators on Flemish soil.

Many of the pictures were shot at Damme, near Bruges, on the
same site described in the book as being the birthplace of Uylen-
spiegel. This city has kept its middle age character. There is a
beautiful church, town hall, and some houses which are artistic
gems. It is to be hoped that the director of Thyl Uylenspiegel leeft nog
has taken advantage of this picturesque element as well as of the
local folk-lore. The post-synchronisation operations and interiors
were done in Amsterdam.

As regards the French-speaking population, no efforts have yet
been made, but it is hoped that Jacques Feyder, who is of Belgian
origin, will come and turn several scenes of La Kermesse Heroique in
Flanders, and that it will prove the starting-point for the further
development of a national production of French expression in Bel-
gium. Ludo Patris.

219

FILM ARCHIVES

In view of the efforts now being made by the British Film Institute
to establish a library of films of historical, cultural or educational
value, it is interesting to learn what is being done in a similar direc-
tion by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It has received
a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for the purpose of establish-
ing a Department of Motion Pictures to be known as the Museum
of Modern Art Film Library Corporation, with the following
officers: John Hay Whitney, President; John E. Abbott, Vice-
President and General Manager; and Edward M. M. Warburg,
Treasurer. Iris Barry, formerly Librarian of the Museum, will be
Curator of the Film Library. Because of lack of space in the building
now occupied by the Museum, the Film Library will be located at
485 Madison Avenue.

The Film Library will undertake a number of activities, chief
of which will be to assemble, catalogue and preserve as complete
a record as possible, in the actual films, of all types of motion pictures
made in America or elsewhere from 1889 to the present day; to
exhibit and circulate these films, singly or in programme groups,
to museums and colleges in the same manner in which other depart-
ments of the Museum now assemble, catalogue, exhibit and circulate
paintings, sculpture, models and photographs of architecture, and
reproductions of works of art. In addition, the Film Library will
assemble a collection of books and periodicals on the film and
gather other historical and critical material, including the vast
amount of unrecorded data in the minds of the men who were
either active participants or close observers of the development of
the motion picture from its beginning. The Film Library also
hopes to assemble a collection of film stills and a collection of old
music scores originally issued to accompany the silent films. All
the activities of the Film Library will be strictly non-commercial.
There will be no charge for many of its services and the fee for its
circulating exhibitions of films will be less than the cost of assembling
and distributing the programmes to the colleges and museums.
It will in no way compete with the film industry.

In announcing the newly organized Film Library, A. Conger
Goodyear, President of the Museum, said: "The expansion of the
Museum to include a department of motion pictures has long been
contemplated. As our Charter states, the Museum is 'established
and maintained for the purpose of encouraging and developing a

220

study of modern art.' The art of the motion picture is the only art
peculiar to the twentieth century. As an art it is practically un-
known and unstudied. Many who are well acquainted with modern
painting, literature, drama and architecture, are almost wholly
ignorant of the work of such great directors as Pabst, Pudovkin, or
Seastrom, and of the creative stages in the development of men
like Griffith and Chaplin, yet the films which these and other
men made have had an immeasurably great influence on the life
and thought of the present generation.

"This new and living form of expression, a vital force in our
time, is such a young art that it can be studied from its beginnings;
the 'primitives' among the movies are only forty years old. Yet
the bulk of all films that are important historically or aesthetically,
whether foreign or domestic, old or new, are invisible under existing
conditions. To preserve these films and make them available to the
public for study and research is the aim of the new Film Library."

John Hay Whitney, who is a Trustee of the Museum as well as
President of the Film Library, has been very active in the preliminary
survey made by the Museum during the past year to ascertain the
possible response from the museums and colleges throughout America
to the activities contemplated for the Film Library. This work was
undertaken by John E. Abbott, who found that hundreds of colleges
and museums were eager to avail themselves of the services proposed.

In commenting on the co-ordination of the work of the Film
Library with colleges and museums, Whitney said: "It is estimated
that seventy million people attend the movies every week in the
United States. The very great influence of the motion picture in
forming the taste and affecting the lives of the greater part of our
population is well known. Despite the efforts the industry itself
has made in this field, much remains to be done in arousing a
critical, selective attitude toward the films in that part of the public
most responsive to the arts — students, visitors to museums and art
galleries, and the active group in each community which takes the
leadership in cultural matters. The situation is as though no novels
were available to the public except the current year's output or as
though no paintings could ever be seen except those painted during
the previous twelve months. As a consequence, whenever artistic
standards and creative vitality have been achieved in individual
movies they are soon lost to view. From time to time attempts
have been made to remedy the lack of means for the study and
preservation of the film. Efforts have been made in many com-
munities both here and abroad to show new films of artistic merit
which are not exhibited commercially, and to revive old films of
interest. In most cases success has been only partial and the activity
of short duration, as it has been almost impossible for any single

231

group to obtain the necessary films. To remedy this situation the
Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art has been established."

Among the first films to be acquired by the Museum is The
Great Train Robbery, one of the earliest of the entertainment films,
made in 1903 by an Edison camera-man, Edwin S. Porter. (Inci-
dentally, another copy of this same film, discovered by C. A. Oakley
of the Film Society of Glasgow, is also one of the first films to be
included in the Film Institute library.) Another interesting acquisi-
tion is interesting as a record of the scientific curiosity and experi-
ment that preceded the actual development of pictures that move.
In 1872 Governor Stanford of California wanted to settle a bet as
to whether or not a horse took all four feet off the ground at once
when racing. He hired an ingenious photographer, Edward Muy-
bridge, who had an engineer set up forty cameras along a race
track. Wires operated the camera shutters, and as the horse passed
each camera a separate picture was taken. These were not motion
pictures, of course, in the true sense; they were simply a series of
still pictures that analysed motion. Years later, in Paris, trans-
parencies were made of these photographs and projected on a toy
screen to refute criticism regarding the postures of horses painted
by the French artist Meissonier.

Muybridge continued his photographic studies at the University
of Pennsylvania, where the majority of his models were students or
instructors; most of the women he photographed were artists'
models. He used approximately the same method he had employed
in photographing the racing horse for Governor Stanford, except
that in his later work he operated only twenty-four cameras. The
Museum of Modern Art Film Library has acquired a large portfolio
of ninety of his photographic studies entitled "Animal Locomotion,"
which was published in 1887. Each study is composed of twenty-
four individual photographs which record a segment each of con-
tinuous movement.

Also to be included in the Library is the famous "kiss" movie
made by May Irwin and John C. Rice in 1896, when they were
appearing on the Broadway stage in a play called "The Widow
Jones." The play was famed for an osculatory scene of great length.
An independent producer conceived the brilliant idea of turning
that single scene into a motion picture. His studio was the roof of
an office building on 28th Street, New York, where he had made
a number of pictures. Edison sent a camera-man to take the picture,
which consisted solely of the kiss and its two participants. Over
the protests of whatever league was operating in the nineties to
keep the world pure and proper, the picture was shown all over
the country. The Museum of Modern Art Film Library copy of
the "kiss" reel was found in a trash can in the Bronx.

222

From

Paul Rotha's

new film

"Face of Britain"

(Gaumont-British

Instructional).

Above — Harry Bauer in "Moscow Nights/' directed by Anthony Asquith.
Below — A scene from Rene Clair's first English film "The Ghost Goes
West." Both London Film productions.

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MISCELLANY

COLOUR AND EMOTION

ROUBEN MAMOULIAN

Love of colour and susceptibility to colour is one of the strongest
instincts in human beings. If you want to discover the most organic,
basic elements of the sophisticated human being of to-day, go to
children and go to savages. You will find that next to food, they
love things of vivid colour and sparkle. That instinct is alive and
strong in every one of us.

Once colour comes to the screen, we will be unhappy without it.
It brings a new terrific power to motion pictures. So far, visually,
we have been dealing with light and shade and compositions on
the screen. Now the additional element of colour will serve not
merely to superficially adorn the images in motion, but to increase
the dramatic and emotional effectiveness of the story which is being
unfolded to the spectator.

Apart from pure pictorial beauty and the entertainment value
of colour, there is also a definite emotional content and meaning
in most colours and shades. The artist should take advantage of the
mental and emotional implications of colour and use them on the
screen to increase the power and effectiveness of a scene, situation
or character.

I have tried to do as much of this in Becky Sharp as the story
allowed. As one example, I would refer to the sequence of the
panic which occurs at the Duchess of Richmond's ball when the
first shots of Napoleon's cannons are heard. You will see (at least
I hope that you will) how inconspicuously, but with telling effect,
this sequence builds to a climax through a series of intercut shots
which progress from the coolness and sobriety of colours like grey,
blue, green and pale yellow, to the exciting danger and threat of
deep orange and flaming red. The effect is achieved by the selection
of dresses and uniforms worn by the characters and the colour of
backgrounds and lights.

There is a little of home-coming feeling in this for me as the use
of colour and coloured lights was one of my main joys and excite-
ment in the theatre. Surely, the effectiveness of productions like
"Porgy," " Marco's Millions" and "Congai" which I have done in
the theatre would have been sadly decreased if I were forced not to
use colour in sets, costumes and lights on the stage.

225

Of course, in each art, different subjects are expressed best
through different forms. Undoubtedly, there are some stories which
beg for colour on the screen more than others. Off-hand, a story
of a historical period of the past, when life and clothing were much
more colourful, or stories with the backgrounds of countries like
Spain and Italy, even of to-day, would ask for colour more than
some stories of our modern age and civilization. The black and white
films will still have their place on the screen, but most assuredly, as
time goes by, there will be less of them and more of colour pictures.

Everything that is beautiful to the eye is a great gift to humanity.
Colour on the screen is such a gift. The only danger of it that I
can see during the first stages of the colour picture, would be the
danger of excess. Talking pictures did not avoid it during the
first months of their existence. There was too much talk and too
much noise on the screen. The cinema must not fall into a trap and
must not go about colour as a newly-rich. Colour should not mean
gaudiness. Restraint and selectiveness is the essence of art.

FILM LECTURING IN CANADA

The Canadian National Council of Education had an Italian and
British week in 1933-34, but since the "British" week turned out
to be English, and the Canadian Scots disapproved of this one-
sided idea of Britain, they asked us this season to bring along a
Scottish lecture and our films of crofter life, including The Rugged
Island, and several shorts.

We started out in the Maritimes, visiting four university centres,
Sackville, Halifax, Wolfville and Fredericton, and then were in
every city by turn from Montreal west to Vancouver. We had
taken our own projector to ensure a good picture every time, but
it arrived smashed, so we had to depend on what was provided.

Time and again I was warned how sophisticated Canadian
children are from five years old and up. I began to suspect I was
being warned that I might expect noisy and unruly behaviour from
schools. But I never found that. I had audiences ranging in size
from 50 to 1250, and ages from seven to eighteen. Sophisticated
they may seem in some ways, but not over animals and birds and
the simple natural life of country people. I found all the school
audiences enthusiastic.

Quite a number of schools and universities we visited were
equipped with some kind of apparatus, from 16 mm to hand-

226

turned 35 mm. projectors. Teachers are becoming more and more
keen on films in schools — but have difficulty in finding them, of
course.

Our lecture tour ended in Vancouver in January. And after
being held there ten days by a snowstorm such as had not been
experienced for years, we managed to come East again on the
first train that could get through.

On the prairies of Saskatchewan we joined Evelyn Spice, and
there, in the few weeks we had left, we linked up and made a two-
reeler, Prairie Winter.

It was often 20 degrees below zero, and we had to wear all we
possessed, for we rode around the country in an open sleigh to get
our subjects. But it was the camera that needed the most tender
treatment, for without its hot-water bottle and several rugs, it
would freeze up, run slow, and produce most ludicrous effects.

The film is simple. The prairie farmer loads up his sleigh with
wheat and takes it to the elevator. On the way he passes the life of
the countryside. His neighbours chop down bush for firewood,
girls have to go off into a drift to let his load pass safely on the
beaten down track, the school children are harnessing up ponies
to their toboggans, or climbing on to their ponies to gallop home.
The sleigh reaches the elevator in the small town, the load is emptied,
and the farmer starts for home. A blizzard comes up quickly, and
by the time the farmer reaches home he is hardly able to see fifty
yards ahead of him.

Most of the sound was added, the talking and commentary
by real honest-to-God Canadians, in the studio in London.

Jenny Brown.

NEW BOOKS

HOLLYWOOD BY STARLIGHT. By R. J. Minney. (London:
Chapman and Hall, 7s. 6d.) We may all be familiar with most of
the facts in this amusing, sometimes ruthless, but mostly good-
natured "revelation" of life within and without the studios, but
Minney's analysis of the Hollywood mind is something rare and
pungent. In retelling the apparently superficial encounters and
incidents experienced during his sojourn in California for the
filming of his play, Clive in India, he shows in many a succinct phrase
that he has seen beneath the surface. His admiration for Chaplin —
"the only real genius in the film world" — is unconcealed, and so,
too, is his regard, on a different plane, for Darryl Zanuck, comet
among producers. Some Goldwynisms which Minney recalls are

227

worth repeating. "The fella's a liar. All he says you gotta take

with a dose of salts " "You can include me out of it.'5 "It was a

complete carriage of misjustice." Amusing as they may be they are
not untypical of the mentality that controls the American film
industry.

HOW TO ENTER THE FILM WORLD. By E. G. Cousins.
(London: Allen and Unwin, 2s.) A cautionary guide to the snags,
disappointments, compensations and prizes attached to "being in
films" in any capacity from boilerman or clerk to director or star.
For the purpose of this guide " the film w7orld " does not include
documentary or non-theatrical cinema — but perhaps the author
feels he has been sufficiently discouraging without adding to his
strictures. Anyone with sufficient hardihood to enter films after
E. G. Cousins' warnings deserves all the plums he can secure. A
most helpful handbook.

PLAYTIME IN RUSSIA. Edited by Hubert Griffeth. (London:
Methuen, 6s.) Nine contributors, mostly well-known journalists,
none of whom is a Communist, survey the means and scope of
entertainment and recreation in Russia to-day. The general tone
is one of admiration, sometimes reluctant, mostly spontaneously
enthusiastic. Huntly Carter deals with the cinema. In somewhat
abstract terms, which may be slightly bewildering to the general
reader, he concludes that the cinema in Russia is "a basic human
need," "an inner necessity," "an organic part of human society."
He describes at some length Three Songs about Lenin, which H. G.
Wells saw at the same time and was going home to dream about,
and The Miracle, which provided "evidence of recent aesthetic and
technical advance."

PHOTOGRAPHY YEAR BOOK, 1935. Edited by T. Korda.
(London: Cosmopolitan Press, 21s.) Though entirely devoted to
still photography this collection of 464 pages containing over 1,700
photographs from 522 international contributors, arranged in sec-
tions including pictorial, trick, scientific and applied photography,
has a considerable interest for film students. If it is sometimes
difficult to decide w\hat principle has governed the choice of prints
and regrettable that some of the plates have been trimmed for no
apparent reason, the diversity of technique as displayed by leading
craftsmen of all countries, in lighting, composition and expressiveness,
contains a wealth of suggestion for the movie camera-man. Among
the full-page reproductions those of Man Ray, Jean Moral, Hoy-
niugen-Hueue and Shaw Wildman, as usual, are outstanding for
their imagination and originality.

228

From " Pescados," a Mexican dramatic documentary
film of the revolt of the Vera Cruz fishermen
against enslaving economic conditions.

From the London Film production "Things to Come" adapted
from H. G. Wells. Direction : Cameron Menzies.

FILMS OF THE QUARTER

THE COLOUR QUESTION

FORSYTH HARDY

It has been a comparatively quiet quarter, despite the excitement
over Becky Sharp, the puzzle of the Hecht-McArthur film, The
Scoundrel, the reappearance of the American gangster film in a new
form with G.-Men, and the intermittent news of progress on the
Chaplin film. There is, of course, the fine, firm achievement of
B.B.C. — the Voice of Britain, and the G.P.O. Unit's film is enough
to make any quarter memorable; but, this apart, the immediate
future promises to be more attractive than the immediate past has
been (a situation not unfamiliar in a cinema which ever murmurs
manana over unfulfilled promises). The Wells film, The Masses (or
whatever title Chaplin finally decides upon), Max Reinhardt's
version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the new Cabinet of Dr Caligari
by Karl Dreyer and Robert Weine, perhaps London Films' Conquest
of the Air, and Rene Clair's The Ghost Goes West — if these meet
reasonable expectations, the film year ought to go out with a flourish.

Colour has been the predominating topic of the quarter. There
was very little constructive thinking about sound in the cinema
before the production of the first talkie. Equally the appearance
of the first major colour film has been preceded by very little serious
consideration of the effect, application, and possibilities of colour.
It is as well to recognize that we are to have colour not because
the movie audience has felt the lack of it and asked for it; not because
the craftsmen have mastered the use of sound and are anxious to
experiment further; and not because colour has been proved essential
to the developing art of the cinema; but because the producers
have decided that the entertainment film requires a fresh infusion
of novelty. Sound. Now colour. Later some adaptation or exploita-
tion of television. Always the developments have their basis in
commercialism. The producers who make them think in terms of
box-office appeal, not of aesthetic concepts.

Arguments about the superfluitv of sound in the cinema did not
silence the talkie. ^Esthetic opposition to the coming of colour will
not keep films in black-and-white if Becky Sharp and its immediate
successors succeed at the box-office. Intelligent opposition to
colour has been on the expected lines. It is suggested that colour

231

is an additional temptation for the film merely to copy reality and
that the less opportunity there is for divergence from nature, the
less justified the film will be in claiming to be an art. To reproduce
the apprehension of one critic: "If the cinema is diverted by colour
into the mere photography of the pageantry of life or of the costume
play, and neglects that significant use of the camera which is its
chief title to artistic standing, the new marvel will be as much of a
curse as a blessing." But the colour film is not to be condemned
after so cursory a trial. There are sufficient occasions in Becky Sharp
when colour is used dramatically, making a peculiar and otherwise
unobtainable contribution to the production, to demonstrate that
colour need not be used merely to make film reproduction more
accurate and complete.

Becky Sharp was chosen as the first major colour subject, plainly
not because of the producer's interest in Thackeray, but because it
was admirably suited to show off the new Technicolor palette's
range and brilliance. The gay dress of both the men and women
of the period, the deep rich tones of the military uniforms, the
delicate shades of tapestry and furnishings, and the general love of
brightness characteristic of a pre-industrial age — these combined to
make a version, however distant, of "Vanity Fair" an attractive
proposition for the producer anxious to startle the filmgoer into
enthusiasm for colour. Robert Edmund Jones and Rouben
Mamoulian, two men with stage and therefore colour experience,
have not overlooked their opportunities, and for most of the film they
are engaged in decorating the screen in colour that is an almost
constant pleasure and a recurring delight. The Duchess of Rich-
mond's ball, however, allows them to do something more. There is
a lyrical shot of dancers which improves even on Lubitsch's memor-
able sequence in The Merry Widow. Later, in a scene which is pure
fantasy from the historical point of view, the dancers are driven
into a panic by the sound of distant guns, and we see as the screen
transforms into cold greys and dark blues, that colour can be used
most effectively to create atmosphere. The shot of officers, speeding
out on their way to battle, their great scarlet cloaks flapping in the
wind, has already become something of a classic example of the
dramatic use of colour.

It is difficult to give a confident answer to the colour question.
Now that colour cinematography of this quality and consistency is
scientifically practical, however, its wider adoption is only a question
of time. If none of the colour films were worse than Becky Sharp we
would not need to have any qualms about the new revolution; but
less efficient processes and less expert artists will inevitably produce
less excellent results. It is a little frightening to imagine what may
happen when second-rate art directors are let loose with colour.

232

Their indiscretions will be literally glaring. In the meantime there
is room for much more imaginative experimentation with colour
than there is in Becky Sharp.

Of all the quarter's films The Scoundrel is the most tantalizing.
It has the impudent independence, the freedom from the conven-
tionalities and cliches of Hollywood expression which we expect
from the Hecht-McArthur-Garmes team; yet it is not content to
be merely more sophisticated than the everyday rubber-stamp
movie: we are left with the impression that the authors are deliber-
ately, if subtly and cynically, laughing at the vast movie audience.
There is no reason why the filmgoer should not go into the pillory
when the film-maker has himself gone there (cf. Once in a Lifetime) .
But Hecht and Mc Arthur do not do a straightforward job in satire.
If there is a sneer, there is something sly and behindhand about it.

Their film is constructed in two parts. The first is occupied with
a young New York publisher, amorous, hard-hearted, cynical, who,
with the unconventional and sophisticated writers and artists who
are gathered about him, the film invites us to admire. Into the
midst of this setting, like a rabbit among foxes, comes a fresh young
poetess whose mind is free from the acid of cynicism. The publisher
is attracted for a time, but becomes bored and there is tearful
separation, during which the poetess curses him, praying that the
'plane in which he is pursuing a lady to Bermuda will crash and
that he will die, knowing not a single soul will regret his death.
As it is ordered so it is; and at this point comes the sudden change
of emphasis in a film in which cynicism and ultra-sophistication
have been placed on a pedestal.

A Voice speaks, and orders that he shall spend a month on
earth, searching for one person who will weep for him and bring
rest to his troubled soul. He moves among his former acquaintances
and, in contrast to earlier sneers at simple, moral folk "who are
afraid to enjoy life," he now rails at his friends for the smug content-
ment of their little souls. Eventually, on the last day of his month
of grace, he wins salvation through the tears of the young poetess
he deserted. What are we to make of this piece of primitive allegory?
Are the authors, as Lejeune has suggested, left laughing themselves
hoarse at the ethically impregnable solution to their tale? If so,
why is the second section played with such intense sincerity? In
the first part Noel Coward utters his cynicisms with an easy elegance ;
but in the second his acting is compelling and the final shot in which,
looking reverently upward, he gives thanks for his deliverance, has
immense emotional force. Yet earlier, the film, with cynicism as
mortar, has been steadily building up in our minds a barrier which
stands firm against this metaphysical onslaught.

The Scoundrel has too much wit and ingenuity, however, for it

L233

to be any less than welcomed, despite dubiety over the motive of
the producers. Coward, fitting perfectly into the Hecht-McArthur
scheme of things, has an important influence on the film (though
he claims only one line of dialogue: "H'm! H'm! H'm! That
sounds like an epigram"); and Julie Haydon, of Dawn to Dawn, is
vivid and appealing. The photography is skilful and sensitive, and
the dialogue a continued stimulus.

While watching from a distance, and critically, the activities of
its rebels, Hollywood has been returning to familiar material with
a new cycle of crime pictures. Someone has been suggesting that
if all its films could be gangster films, Hollywood's troubles would
be over; and certainly most of them are made with a superb bravura.
Hollywood appears to understand the gangster, and there is nothing
hazy or hesitating about the films devoted to him. In the new
cycle the aim is the same as before: to secure for the films excite-
ment, suspense, and violence from the conflict between the forces
of law and lawlessness. Gangsters are now less popular than they
were, and the new films are designed to glorify the Federal detectives
who, under a new Roosevelt law, are allowed to carry guns and use
against the gangster his own weapons.

G.-Men (Warner Brothers), the first of the cycle, is a swift and
exciting film, describing a pitched battle between two organizations,
the one working for the preservation and the other for the destruc-
tion of society. Violence is the main ingredient of the film, but
there are also a skilfully managed and maintained suspense and a
feeling of respect for men devoting their lives to hazardous but
necessary work. There have also been Public Hero No. i (Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer) , a further illustration of a whole nation's warfare
against gangsters; False Faces (United Artists), a demonstration of
the ingenuity of the Federal agents as detectives; and Car gg (Para-
mount), an inside picture of the efficiency of the radio police-car
service. Speed, force, vigour, and clarity are qualities common to
most of the new crime films which may do something to transfer to
the policemen some of the glamour formerly reserved for the
gangsters.

As an incidental to the main movie stream, there may be noted
briefly in conclusion the steady improvement in the range and
make-up of the news-reels which, if they still place unnecessary
emphasis on sport and militarism, make more arresting and attrac-
tive use of the ten minutes at their disposal than most of the feature
films they accompany.

234

THE CONTINENTALS

If you remember the early Russian films of the General Line- Turksib
vintage with pleasure and admiration, forget about them when you
go to see a modern Russian sound film. This question of right
approach to a film is most important. Le Dernier Milliardaire, for
example, was damned by the critics, because they expected another
Le Million or an A Nous la Liberie', and didn't get it. Had they
judged the film on its own merits, they would have given its quality
proper recognition. In the same way, on going to see Nights of St.
Petersburg, all memories of Eisenstein, Turin, Pudovkin and their
contemporaries should be dismissed. The Russian directors of
to-day have discarded the technique, the tricks, the philosophy
even, of their celebrated predecessors. The modern directors are,
of course, working in a new medium, and the impact of sound
evidently paralysed them for some time. The Road to Life, despite
photography and sound of the poorest quality, created a tremendous
impression because of its virility. After The Road to Life there was
a long silence, and now we have Nights of St. Petersburg, or, in its
abbreviated title, St. Petersburg.

The film is based on two stories by Dostoievsky, "White Nights"
and "Netotchka," and the setting is the Russia of i860. Igor
Efimov, an impoverished musician, is a brilliant violinist and
composer. But because his music is "revolutionary" both his
playing and his composing are rejected by the conventional public,
who award their favours to less gifted musicians whose orthodoxy is
more acceptable. Unwilling (unlike most "geniuses") to do a
little hack work to feed his family, he becomes poorer and poorer
and glummer and glummer until, at the end, he meets, in some
unspecified slum quarter, a group of convicts who are singing one
of his songs. Then, according to the programme, "he finds recogni-
tion with the masses, who understand the symbolism of his music
and the message he has written for them."

Inevitably, this is an interesting film, and actually it is not as
dull as a bare outline of the plot might lead you to believe. The
continuity is good, the photography moderate, and there is no
attempt at juggling with sound or cutting. It at least illustrates that
technically the Russians have now found their feet in a world of
sound and speech, and leads us to hope that having done so, their
former virtuosity will return in the course of time. In case it should
mean anything in future, it is to be noted that the film was directed
by G. Rochal and C. Stroeva. Despite the cumbrous and not
conspicuously logical story, the film is definitely worth seeing.

Barcarolle — a Romance in Venice is pleasant enough and has some

235

good moments in it, as befits a Ufa film. Edwige Feuillere, who
will be remembered in Ces Messieurs de la Sante, plays the wife, and
Pierre Richard-Willm, a remarkably handsome young man, takes
the part of the gay adventurer who seduces the wife for a bet and
falls in love in the process. There are no pyrotechnics, but it is a
competent piece of work and few people would walk out on it.

Of the same genre, but infinitely more charming than Reka, is
Der Schimmelreiter, recently seen at the Academy. The title means
literally "The Rider on the White Horse," and indeed an element
of magic enters the film as soon as the hero buys the white horse
from a strange gypsy. There is an old legend that, when Der
Schimmelreiter appears, death, flood and destruction follow.

The action takes place in a little village on the north coast of
Holland, and tells of the hero's struggles to convince the villagers
of the advantages, the necessity even, of the construction of a new
dyke. The opposition is led by Ole Peters, who coveted both the
position of Dyke Master and the girl who became the hero's wife.
After plot and counter-plot, the splendid new dyke is erected.
Hauke Haien, the hero, directs the work on horseback — that, in
fact, of the great white horse he bought when the work began.
When the work is finished there is much revelling. Suddenly the
celebrations are interrupted. It is raining heavily and floods threaten.
The old dyke collapses, and Hauke can only save the village from
destruction by cutting a hole in the new dyke and directing the
flood in such a manner that it must inevitably overwhelm his own
home. This he does, and he and his wife are swept away to destruc-
tion. The white horse which Hauke had bought then trots away
and vanishes into thin air on the skyline. Thus the legend came true
— death, flood and destruction followed Der Schimmelreiter.

Despite the tragedy which overwhelms the hero and his wife at
the end, this is a very delightful and refreshingly simple story.
Many delightful shots of the countryside and of the peasants dancing
in their gay costumes are introduced. Matthias Wieman, who will
be remembered with pleasure as the traveller in The Blue Light,
takes the leading part with equal charm and success in this film.
Photography and sound are both good and the film deserves to be
seen for its beauty and simplicity.

Looking back on the season's Continental films, it must be
admitted that, with the exception of Refugees, Remous, Hey-Rup,
Maskerade, Le Dernier Milliardaire and Der Schimmelreiter, they have
been on the whole an uninspired batch. Few of them have been
positively bad, nearly all of them have at least been good entertain-
ment. Yet it cannot be said that any one of them has embodied
any significant contribution to cinema. Why is this ? The exodus
from the German studios does not wholly explain it. Russia's

236

silence has not caused the studios of the world to stagnate. Is it
not that Hollywood and Elstree are now technically on a par with
France, Germany and Russia ? I think this factor is the one which
makes the Continental film seem less remarkable than it did three
years ago. Technically the scores are level. The battle is won on
content. And it now appears that novelettes are written in France
and Germany, just as they are in America and England.

J. S. Fairfax-Jones.

B.B.C.— THE VOICE OF BRITAIN

Production: G.P.O. Film Unit. Direction: John Grierson, Stuart Legg.

It would have been easy for a film of the B.B.C. to be a joyless
jumble of dull mechanical explanation, self-conscious programme
picturization, and solemn sermon on policy. The G.P.O. film is
admittedly diverse ; but not only is there a plan behind the diversity
but an individual approach which is established and maintained.
The film dramatizes its material but humanizes it as well, so that
its different compartments have vitality and the whole has unity.

Its content may be described as a chronicle of a day's broad-
casting in Britain, although it is hardly as naive as that might
suggest. Certainly it starts with an early morning service conducted
by the Rev. Dick Sheppard, but its independent character is im-
mediately established as the camera is released to build up with a
few quick strokes the placid picture of a listening countryside. The
film is always more of an illumination than a summary, and as it
reviews the activities at Broadcasting House — routine, preparation,
rehearsal, performance — we are not aware of the time-table as the
only link but feel drawn into the drama. There is, for example, the
S.O.S. message for the mate of a Scottish drifter informing him
that his mother is lying dangerously ill at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary,
which we hear broadcast in the impersonal detached voice of the
announcer, and then watch being picked up by the vessel at sea,
the message meanwhile rippling on in gently echoed fragments.
Again, there is the episode of the two-minute delay in the regional
link-up, caused by a Highland village concert running late — an
episode which a lively camera and a sensitive microphone, quickly
establishing the character of the regional centres, make dramatic
and moving. It is this seeing eye of the film which is its outstanding
virtue. It operates everywhere, inside Broadcasting House as well
as outside, ranging the panorama of a listening Britain. Only in
the children's hour sequence is it oddly clouded with artificiality.
Towards the end of the film come the faces of the representative
great men — the politicians, kept silent; Wells, Chesterton, Shaw,
Low, and Priestley heard in characteristic phrase.

237

The complete forum of the G.P.O. directors worked on the
film and, while the influence of John Grierson is always apparent
in its penetrating approach and perceptive treatment, it is possible
occasionally to detect individual styles. Camera and microphone
are used with masterly freedom and the regional station sequence,
attributed to Evelyn Spice, is a notable example of the unself-
conscious union of sight and sound. A special credit goes to Stuart
Legg, who organized, unified, and did much to weld together the
mass of semi-related fragments.

The Voice of Britain, the most ambitious of the G.P.O. Unit's
films, is a solid and successful achievement, the product of insight,
initiative, and enthusiasm. F. H.

BLACK FURY

Production: Warner. Direction: Michael Curtiz with Paul Muni and
Karen Morley. Length: 7591 feet.

Why Warner Brothers, profitably engaged in the manufacture of
melodramas and leg-shows, should turn and grapple on a plane
of high seriousness with a social evil, as they did once before in
/ Am a Fugitive, is one of the minor mysteries of American film-
making. Whatever prompted it, we must be grateful for this gallant
flight from unreality to Coaltown and salute an honesty that makes
no attempt to disguise the dreariness of the miners' row.

The setting is Pennsylvania, but the atmosphere of industrial
squalor created by the faithful documenting of pit shafts, strikers'
processions, groups of haggard women and children on doorsteps,
cheap pubs, and protest meetings in smoky halls differs little from
that of British and Continental black countries. One element
localizes it — the diversity of the miners' racial origin. Joe Radek,
a part which Paul Muni with his peasant's physiognomy is ideally
fitted to interpret, stands for that pathetic mass of semi-illiterates,
a generation or so removed from the soil of Continental fields,
who support the complex fabric of American civilization by their
labour in Uncle Sam's mines and factories. It is a type worth
representing on the screen, and Muni's portrait has a stark verisimili-
tude beside which most of the others appear artificial and shadowy.
The strike-bearing racketeers and mine-owners are, for example,
mere puppets conveniently introduced to assist the development of
the plot.

Most mining films (among them such a notable contribution to
peace propaganda as Kameradschaft) take the line of least resis-
tance and make their highlight a pit disaster. Black Fury digs
its drama from material which at first sight looks as intractable as

238

From "B.B.C.— The Voice
of Britain/' a John Grierson
Production.

Courtesy G.P.O. Films and H.M.
Stationery Office.

From "Wonders of Flying/' a
Terra film featuring Ernest Udet,
remarkable for its thrills and photography

the rock from which its miners quarry their coal — the long-drawn
misery of a lockout. True, there is a concession to melodrama in
the last reel, when the hero brings men and masters to terms by
barricading himself in the mine with enough dynamite to blow it
sky high ; but the film does make a devious attempt to express what
is above all characteristic of a mine strike — the flat monotony of
days passed in futile negotiation.

Upon the larger drama of the lockout is superimposed the
personal tragedy of Radek's desertion by the girl he had expected to
marry. Except in so far as it reveals his character it hardly matters,
and both her penitent return to him in the interests of a happy
ending and his ready forgiveness of her lapse do violence to psycho-
logical probability. Though not, on the whole, up to the standard
of / Am a Fugitive, this film has definite importance as an index of
America's increasing absorption with her sociological problems.

Campbell Nairne.

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS {British. G.-B.). The main plot of John Buchan's
novel remains, with many of the individual situations, the Scottish setting and
the hero, Richard Hannay; but the story has been thoroughly modernized and a
light romantic element introduced. Alfred Hitchcock, with Ian Hay and Wyndham
Lewis, have done much to translate speech into action, and the film from the
first foot is action. He tells the story clearly and convincingly and the wildly
melodramatic moments are in part offset by such well observed sequences as the
Scottish political meeting, the Forth Bridge episode, and the discreetly managed
scene in the inn bedroom. Robert Donat plays Hannay with an attractive spirit
and humour. A blot on the film for Scotsmen is the unconvincing charge of
meanness directed at a Scottish crofter. F. H.

THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN {American. Paramount). Josef von Sternberg's new
film demonstrates most clearly that the director has died and become a photo-
grapher. It is at once a most beautiful and an empty film. To Sternberg every
shot is something to fondle and caress, a composition to linger over and tirelessly
titivate. Even the shot of a letter must have a shadowy pattern across it. If only
it were possible to close the mind the eye could gorge itself on this surface splendour;
but the inanities of the cheap charade in the background continually interrupt.
The film stars Marlene Dietrich, and, like that exotic lady, is a masterpiece of the
toilette; but it is lacking in every virtue which made Sternberg a director of
promise. F. H.

LES MISERABLES {American. Twentieth Century). Two aspects of this fifth or
sixth version of Hugo's novel call for comment : W. P. Lipscomb's masterly com-
pression of the theme and Laughton's performance as Javert. Lipscomb has
selected most of the essentials and assembled them skilfully, so that while the
film has little time to linger for fine effects, it gets over the narrative ground
briskly and satisfactorily. And the scenario seems to have suited the directorial
style of Richard Boleslavsky who brings the story to the screen in broad, sweeping
strokes. The strength of Laughton's performance makes this film more than
other versions a conflict between Javert and Jean Valjean. With studied power,
he brings this inhuman bully, obsessed with the sacredness of the law, to life and
the final moment of his struggle and submission is the most moving in the film.
Frederic Marsh's Valjean is competent, but scarcely inspired, and Cedric Hard-
wicke's restrained performance as the Bishop Bienvenu is over too soon. F.H.

Q41

FILM SOCIETIES

During the summer months the film societies movement is in a state of suspended
activity. Councils and officials, however, are busy preparing programmes for the
coming season, and many new groups are planning campaigns to establish
societies in untapped areas.

Among the districts which will have new societies commencing operations in
the autumn are Torquay, Wolverhampton, Ayrshire, Ipswich, Dundee, St.
Andrews, Plymouth, and Maidenhead.

The secretary of the MAIDENHEAD FILM SOCIETY is P. J. Chippingdale
Watsham, 31 High Street, Maidenhead. Ten performances will be given on
Sunday afternoons in the Rialto. The subscription will be 20s., and a membership
of 600 is aimed at. It is also hoped to form a similar society in Reading.

The headquarters of the PLYMOUTH FILM SOCIETY will be at Virginia
House, where standard sound apparatus has been installed. The objects are to
give performances of outstanding films from all countries, to support the exhibition
of worth-while entertainment and educational pictures, and to support special
exhibitions for children. The chairman is John Case, and the secretary is Martin
Atkinson.

Gordon C. Hales, 36 Constable Road, Ipswich, is secretary of the IPSWICH
FILM SOCIETY, which in addition to giving private performances intends to
organize lectures, to produce experimental and documentary films, and to estab-
lish a library of film books.

The secretary of the TORQUAY FILM SOCIETY is C. M. Rowe, Warbro
Way, Brixham Road, Paignton, and of the DUNDEE FILM SOCIETY, G. E.
Geddes, Scotswood, Wormit, Dundee.

The annual report of the TYNESIDE FILM SOCIETY (hon. sec, M. C.
Pottinger, Literary and Philosophical Society, Newcastle-upon-Tyne) shows
that a membership if 771 has been achieved. With a programme of seven Sunday
evening performances, three displays of 16 mm. films, and two children's matinees,
and a financial balance of over £10, the society may compliment itself on a very
successful season.

The report of the LEICESTER FILM SOCIETY (hon. sec, E. Irving Richards,
Vaughan College, Leicester) shows that this progressive society, founded in 193 1,
was in a strong enough financial position to give an extra seventh performance
without additional charge to members.

A proposal to institute a special membership fee of one guinea in order to hold
private performances similar to those of other film societies was not favoured by
the members of the MERSEYSIDE FILM INSTITUTE SOCIETY, and it
has been decided to retain the former subscription of 2s. 6d., which includes receipt
of a monthly bulletin and the right to purchase tickets for special performances
from time to time. A series of lectures on individual directors and producing
units is being prepared and a junior society for school-children is being formed.
The hon. sec. is J. A. Parker, Bluecoat Chambers, Liverpool 1.

The EDINBURGH FILM GUILD has removed to new premises at 1 1 N. St.
Andrew Street, Edinburgh 2. The following office-bearers have been appointed
for the ensuing season : Hon. President, Professor Talbot Rice ; Hon. Vice-Presidents,
Edwin Muir and Ian Whyte; Chairman, Norman Wilson; Hon. sec, Sheila A. C.
Smith; Hon-Films sec, J. C. H. Dunlop; Hon. treas., F. C. P. Maclauchlan.

News of the film societies will be fully reported in forthcoming issues of the new
World Film News and Cinema Quarterly. Programmes, announcements and
reports should be addressed to Cinema Contact Ltd., 24 N.W. Thistle Street
Lane, Edinburgh 2.

c242

INDEX TO VOLUME 3

Alcxeieff, A., Claire Parker and

New Abstract Process . . 34

Allberg, Ragnar. Film Abroad . 155
American Screen

Herman G. Weinberg . . 216

American Year. Kirk Bond . 92

Are We Civilised ? . . .182
Arnheim, Rudolf

Film Critic of To-day and To

morrow . . . .203

LC.E. .... .95

Artist and the Film

Arthur Shearsby . . .143

Atalante . .... 46

B.B.C 237

Beisiegel, Leslie

Independent Film-maker 59, 125, 186
Betts, Ernest. Scenario . . 160

Black Fury . . . .238

Blossom Time . . . . 54

Bond, Kirk. American Year . 92

Bower, Dallas. Wagner and Film 27

Brown, Jenny

Film Lecturing in Canada . 226
Bruce Woolfe, Rotha and Rising

Tide. John Grierson . . 37

Camera Movement. A. Vesselo . 97

Cavalcanti, Alberto

Function of the Art Director . 75

Jean Vigo .... 86

Ces Messieurs de la Sante . . 54

Chaplin's New Film

Mack Schwab
Colour and Emotion

Rouben Mamoulian . . 225

Continental Imports

J. S. Fairfax-Jones . . 104, 179

Courant, Curt

Function of the Camera-man . 22

Crime without Passion ... 50

David Copperfield . . .173

Dawn to Dawn .... 54

Definitions in Cinema

Clifford Leech 79

Dernier Milliardaire, Le . . 112

Deutschland ^wischen Gestern und

Heute . . . . .113

Devil is a Woman . . . 241

Disney Exhibition

Arthur Shearsby
Dr. Mabuse
Dood Wasser
Dyer, Ernest

Function of the Camera-man

Griffith, Richard

Function of the Actor

165

49
182

22

Editorial. Norman Wilson 3, 67, 1

31.

l9l

Escape Me Never .

176

Evasive Documentary

David Schrire

7

John Grierson

10

Experiments in Counterpoint

Herbert Read

17

Fairfax-Jones, J. S.

Continental Imports . 1

04,

179

Film Abroad . . -30,

92,

J55

Film Archives

220

Film Critic of To-day and To

morrow. Rudolf Arnheim

203

Film Lecturing in Canada

Jenny Brown

226

Film Societies . . 55, 122, 1

83,

242

Films in Paris. Alexander Werth

3°

Films of the Quarter . 39, 103, ]

68,

231

For All Eternity .

178

Forgotten Men

119

Function of the Actor

Richard Griffith .

139

Function of the Art Director

Alberto Cavalcanti

75

Function of the Camera-man

Curt Courant, Ernest Dyer

22

Gibbon, Lewis Grassic

Novelist Looks at Cinema

81

Great Expectations

173

Grierson, John

Bruce Woolfe, Rotha and RisinK

a

Tide

37

Evasive Documentary

10

Two Paths to Poetry

194

139

Hardy, Forsyth

Films of the Quarter 39, 103, 168, 23:

LC.E. Rudolf Arnheim
Independent Film-maker

95
59, 125, 186

I N D E X — continued

India on the Screen .

Parker, Claire, and A. Alexeieff

R. J. Minney

162

New Abstract Process

34

Iron Duke .....

114

Pasinetti, P. M.

Italy's "International" Institute

Sixty-six Films in a Lido Hotel

14

G. F. Noxon ....

12

Patris, Ludo

Itto . . ...

182

National Production in Belgium

219

Post Haste .

120

Jew Suss .....

44

Private Life of Don Juan

53

Private Life of the Gannets

182

Klingender, F. D.

New Deal and the American

Film .....

197

Read, Herbert

Experiments in Counterpoint .

i7

Leech, Clifford

Ruggles of Red Gap

181

Definitions in Cinema

79

Leigh, Walter

Sanders of the River

175

Musician and the Film .

70

Scarlet Pimpernel . . . .

114

Little Friend ....

51

Scenario. Ernest Betts

160

Little Man, What Now?

54

Schwab, Mack. Film Abroad

31

Lot in Sodom ....

52

Seton, Marie

New Trends in Soviet Cinema-

I i49

Mamoulian, Rouben

New Trends in Soviet Cinema—

■II 210

Colour and Emotion

225

Shearsby, Arthur

Man Who Knew Too Much

114

Artist and the Film

i43

Marie .....

114

Disney Exhibition .

165

Men and Jobs

108

Shipyard .

i77

Minney, R. J.

Schrire, David

India on the Screen

162

Evasive Documentary

7

Miserables, Les

in

Sixty-six Films in a Lido Hotel

Musician and the Film

P. M. Pasinetti

14

Walter Leigh

70

Song of Ceylon

109

Mystery of Edwin Drood

i73

Nairne, Campbell

Writer's Approach to Cinema .

J34

Thirty-nine Steps .
Treasure Island

241
54

National Production in Belgium

Two Paths to Poetry

Ludo Patris ....

219

John Grierson

i94

Nell Gwyn .....

46

New Abstract Process

Vesselo, A. Camera Movement

97

Claire Parker and A. Alexeieff

34

Viafo. Alberto Cavalcanti .

86

New Deal and the American Film.

0

F. D. Klingender .

J97

New Trends in Soviet Cinema — I .

Wasrner and Film. Dallas Bower

0

27

Marie Seton ....

i49

Wedding Night

181

New Trends in Soviet Cinema— II

210

Weinberg, Herman G.

Night on the Bare Mountain

53

American Screen .

216

Novelist Looks at Cinema

Film Abroad

■ i57

Lewis Grassic Gibbon

81

Werth, Alexander. Films in Paris

30

Noxon, G. F.

Wharves and Strays

182

Italy's "International" Institute

12

Wilson, Norman. Editorial 3, 67,

131. l9*

Workers and Jobs .

182

Old Curiosity Shop

173

Writer's Approach to Cinema

Orient Cruise Films

119

Campbell Nairne .

i34

WORLD FILM NEWS

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//

Sanders of the River "

SUNDAY TIMES:— " Korda has produced a
picture which merits him ranking as a K.B.E.
It is an epic of Empire."

THE TIMES:— '"Sanders of the River' is
extremely good. Brilliant pictures of river
and forest and native ceremonial."

DAILY TELEGRAPH :—"' Sanders of the

River ' is a British film triumph. The picture
is magnificently acted."

THE OBSERVER: -'"Sanders' will provide a
topic of conversation for every dinner-table in
London. People will talk about it till the
cows come home."

MORNING POST:— "Seldom has the screen
provided such a feast of adventure."

DAILY MAIL:— '"Sanders of the River' is
breaking every record known at the Leicester
Square Theatre, and there is no reason why
it should not continue to do so for many
weeks to come. A vigorous and marvellous
entertainment."

DAILY EXPRESS:— "An amazing achieve-
ment. A remarkable film. At times it rises
to the emotion of an epic of Empire."

DAILY HERALD : — " In some respects ' Sanders
of the River' is the most notable British
film yet made. It is a landmark for British
studios. Indescribably thrilling."

THE PEOPLE: -" Easily the best film made
this side of the Atlantic."

NEWS CHRONICLE:— "A splendid achieve-
ment."

DAILY SKETCH:— "A film that may be seen
many times with enjoyment."

SUNDAY PICTORIAL:— "(4 STARS) Per-
haps the success of Sanders ' ma}" encourage
our producers to turn their eyes towards the
many striking themes with which life in the
Empire abounds. Leslie Banks was so real
that he made me forget I was looking at a
film drama. I think his performance one of
the best I have ever seen in films."

SUNDAY GRAPHIC:— "(4 STARS) A mag-
nificent achievement. Leslie Banks gives a
superb performance. This is a magnificent

film."

SUNDAY CHRONICLE:—" A mammoth pro-
duction. Casting sheer inspiration. I am
sure that if Edgar Wallace were alive to-day,
he would step right up to Leslie Banks and
say ' Hullo, Sanders ! ' Paul Robeson is
magnificent in more ways than one."

EVENING STANDARD:—" London Film Pro-
ductions have undoubtedly started another
film cycle '."

THE STAR : — " Alexander Korda, of London
Films, has produced another winner with
' Sanders of the River.' One cannot imagine

how it could have been done better."

A LONDON FILM PRODUCTION

The Company that gave you Private Life of Henry VIM

Catherine the Great • Scarlet Pimpernel •

■■■■II

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