FILMS & THE FESTIVAL BY SIR GERALD BARRY, DIRECTOR-GENERAL FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN*
*Sight & Sound magazine "Films in 1951: A Special Publication on British Films and Film-Makers" for the Festival of Britain.
see: www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/barry.htm for more detailed information on Sir Gerald Barry (1898 - 1968)
"Specifically, the Festival of Britain is intended to display British contributions to the common human heritage in terms of the Arts, the Sciences and Industry. More generally, it has grown into something even more comprehensive and fundamental, into a nation-wide demonstration of all our inherited traditions and skills, and of our ability to use them to ensure us a future no less creative than our past.
More than this I shall not be expected to say in this specialised publication about the purposes of the Festival, especially now the show is on. But what I have said indicates plainly that in any programme of this scope the British film at once demands an important place. Indeed, it qualifies, uniquely under all three of the Festival's main headings - as an art, a science and an industry, for the film can lay claim claim to a foot in each of these camps. In fact, so far as the Festival is concerned, it occupies a fourth place as well, in being in itself a vehicle for expressing many aspects of the Festival's theme. It can do these things - it is doing them - by means of features, of documentaries, and also of experimental films which demonstrate the latest British advances in cinematographic research and techniques. Let us take a look at them.
To start with feature films, the outstanding example is expected to be the Festival Film "The Magic Box", which aims to do two things at once, or perhaps I should say three: (1) to tell a good story (an indispensable requisite), (2) to be in itself a significant example of contemporary British film production, direction and acting, and (3) to record through the story a telling chapter in this country's technological enterprise, namely Friese-Greene's part in the invention of the motion-picture camera."
"THE MAGIC BOX" produced by Ronald Neame, directed by John Boulting, scripted by Eric Ambler, and photographed in Technicolour by Jack Cardiff, this film biography of Friese-Greene, British pioneer of the motion picture camera, has been made by a company specially formed for the Festival of Britain. Actors and technicians worked on a co-operative basis, and so it was possible to unite many outstanding talents in the British cinema. Robert Donat plays Friese-Greene, the Swiss actress Maria Schell his first wife, and Margaret Johnson his second. Stars making guest appearances in other parts for "The Magic Box" - which will soon be premiered in London soon - include Sir Lawrence Olivier, Sir Ralph Richardson, Michael Redgrave, Eric Portman, Alec Guinness, Douglas Fairbanks, Valerie Hobson, Googie Withers, Kay Walsh and Glynis Johns.
"A wide range of documentary pictures has been made for the Festival, as was hoped for in a field in which the British film has in recent years made a world-wide reputation. Here the motion picture can fill a gap in the Festival story that can be filled in no other way (except in certain respects, by radio): it can find ways of describing directly to the eye and ear all sorts of national activities - industrial, scientific, artistic - that for one reason or another cannot be treated three-dimensionally in exhibitions, or by alternative means. The admirable film made for the Festival on behalf of the Port of London Authority by Basil Wright ("Waters of Time") is a first-class example in this category; the film sponsored by Shell-Mex is another; and there are many more. Certain scientific films are also being made for showing in the special cinema constructed within the Science Exhibition."
"WATERS OF TIME"..a study of the 69-mile stretch of The Thames under Port of London Authority, this new film by Basil Wright combines an account of the daily routine of shipping operations- the turnround of a cargo boat, the loading and unloading of cargoes, the planning of schedules- with a series of personal impressions of the river, the riverside, the lives of dockers and works. "Waters of Time" was presented by the Port of London Authority to the Festival of Britain, and produced by International Realist. Bill Launder collaborated with Basil Wright on the script, direction and editing; the photography is by Reg Hughes, the commentaries by Paul Dehn, and the music by Alan Rawsthorne.
"The Festival Office itself has directly sponsored two documentaries. One of these has become, by tragic chance, the last example the public will be privileged to see of the brilliant documentary art of Humphrey Jennings, who was accidentally killed soon after making it. This film called "Family Portrait", is as it were a screen version of the Festival's central theme - the Land and People of Britain. It is a poet's creation, precise yet elusive. It should be seen two or three times to savour its full quality."
http://www.channel4.com/nextstep/jennings/
"FAMILY PORTRAIT"..the last film made by Humphrey Jennings - director of many outstanding British documentaries, including "Listen to Britain", "Fires were Started" and "A Diary for Timothy" - whose tragic death while filming in Greece last year deprives the British cinema of a brilliant film-maker: "Family Portrait" is a personal impression of Britain past and present, contrasting our associations and traditions with various aspects of life today, and seeking to analyse, in fact the whole spirit of our people. "Family Portrait" is a Wessex Film Production for the Festival of Britain, produced by Ian Dalrymple, photographed by Martin Curtis, commentated by Michael Goodliffe, and with music by John Greenwood.
"The other Festival Office film, "David", was made for the Welsh Commitee by Paul Dickson, director of "The Undefeated", which won the Film Academy Award last year. It, too, is an example of British documentary at its most authentic."
"DAVID"..written and directed by Paul Dickson, who made "The Undefeated", this 35-minute film captures the flavour of life in a Welsh mining town over the last forty years. The central character, played by D.R. Griffiths, becomes a miner as a young boy and ends his life as a caretaker in a school. "David", commissioned by the Welsh Commitee for the Festival of Britain, was made on location in the town of Ammonford, produced by James Carr for Worldwide Pictures, and photographed by Ronald Anscombe.
"Thirdly, we come to the experimental films made for the Festival, stereoscopic and stereophonic. I am in no way qualified to discuss or even describe their technical achievement. I can, however - and I do- say emphatically that there is not a layman alive of any imaginiation who can fail to be excited by them. Here is something quite new which will amuse and stimulate you in itself and set your mind speculating on the cinema of tomorrow. Some fascinating experiments have also been made in using the screen to relate painting, music and language."
"PAINTER AND POET"..a novel experiment, these series of films came about when a number of modern artists were asked to illustrate a poem of their own choosing: the finished films combine the drawings or paintings, a narrator or singer of the poem, and specially composed music. The artists who have contributed to the films are Henry Moore, Ronald Searle, Michael Ayrton, Mervyn Peake, John Minton, Michael Rothenstein, Barbara Jones and Michael Warre. Sponsored by the British Film Institute, "Painter and Poet" was produced by the John Halas company in association with Joan Maude and Michael Warre, who originated the idea and devised the script. The music is by Matyas Seiber.
"Many of these films are to be seen in the Telecinema in the South Bank Exhibition (as well as full-screen television for the first time in Britain). The fact that those who planned the Festival of Britain recognised from the first the need to include a cinema within the small and jealously-sought space of this Exhibition, is perhaps in itself all the proof that could be needed that the motion picture is an essential element in a programme setting out to tell the comprehensive story of British accomplishments."
From "Arts and Cultures: The History of the Arts Council" by Andrew Sinclair, chapter 3: "Few, but Roses" (1995) :
"The contribution of the British cinema to the festival was an accurate prediction of its own suicide. Although it had reached its apogee during the war decade, its achievement was hardly represented. One whole exhibition was devoted to the British invention of television, still unseen in most homes at the time, while the Telecinema was specially designed for the showing of films and television and the latest innovations of the trade, stereophonic sound called 'the borderless screen', cable television, three - dimensional stereoscopic films, and a tribute to the documentary tradition of the island. Television would erode the cinema industry and stereophonics and stereoscopics would not save it. The documentary would desert the big screen in the picture palace for the small box by the fireside; and so it would diminish a great tradition into a common denominator. A film to commemorate the architect of the move camera, William Freise-Green, "The Magic Box" was made, but it failed dismally. Already television was inheriting the invention of the moving pictures. "
Paul Addison's comment on "Family Portrait" from "Now that the war is over":
"In so far as the South Bank had a serious message to convey about the state of the nation, it was best expressed by Humphrey Jennings in his very last documentary film "Family Portrait". A lyrical celebration of Britain, past and present, and steeped in historical romanticism, it is a beautifully made film. The sincerity of the enterprise is impossible to doubt. But viewed in the 1980's it comes as a shock. The tone is one of overwhelming complacency. The celebration of British literary, scientific and industrial triumphs is a cultural equivalent of 'Land of Hope and Glory'. The cosy presentation of British society as a family divided, not by class, but by a rift between the imaginative and practical sides of the national character is sentimental guff. Jennings' film may be taken as a measure of the sublime sense of insular content reflected in various corners of the Festival. In a whimsical fashion the Festival celebrated tradition as much as change."
FILMS IN 1951 (taken from "The Times" Special Supplement on the Festival of Britain, with acknowledgments for its use.)
The Cinema in Britain
from Our Film Critic
"The film which is the centre-piece of the Festival of Britain has as its hero a British eccentric in the true tradition - one who was a bit of a genius, a bit of a saint, and more than a bit of a fool. Friese-Greene (he was born plain Green, acquired the Friese from his first wife and added the final "e" because, as he quite rightly thought, it gave balance and finish to the whole) was the first person to take moving pictures. He should, by all rights, have been as famous as Edison and as rich as he cared to be, but everything in Friese-Greene's life was muddled, unpredictable, contrary, extravagant, and magnificently absurb. he took out patents, but somehow that did not do the good it should have done and, besides Friese-Greene was always in a hurry to get on to the next thing. is life was a whirl of restlessness and experiment - if he was faithful to anything it was to the idea of photography in natural colour - he was by turns reasonably affluent and quite desperately poor; he was a devoted husband and father and yet his loyal and loving second wife was driven to writing sadly of him: "But he never kept his promise". He died with a fine dramatic flourish after making a speech at a meeting of the cinema trade held in the Connaught Rooms on May 5, 1921.
The British film industry has pooled its resources to make "The Magic Box". The producer is Mr. Ronald Neame, the director Mr. John Boulting, and the writer - a person all too frequently under-estimated in the industry as a whole - Mr. Eric Ambler. The part of Friese-Greene himself is played by Robert Donat, Helene (his first wife) by Miss Maria Schell, and Edith (the second) by Miss Margaret Johnston, while the supporting cast consists of names illustrious on the English stage and screen.
Two films - one, "Family Portrait" written and directed by Humphrey Jennings, and the other a documentary on Wales - have been specifically commissioned by the Festival authorities. "Family Portrait" underlines the loss the cinema in general suffered by the death of Jennings. Here he attempts within the space of 25 minutes to explain what village pageants are fond of calling "the spirit of England," to interpret it to foreigners and reveal it to ourselves.
It is all too obvious how sentimental the film could be; it could so easily have all the faults of a false and facile romanticism, but Jennings has grasped the nettle of the danger by insisting that the English are, a poetic race. But running parallel to that poetry, supplementing it, contradicting, and yet not denying it, is a strong streak of robust prose, and so Jennings builds up his portrait of England and the English by a series of contrasts which are yet no contrasts at all. The countryman walks over his fields while the chimneys of Sheffield belch their smoke; cricket is played not on the village green but in the shadow of the Oval gasometer; and this small, moderate, variegated isle is seen sending out its explorers and adventurers to the most fierce and violent corners of the earth. There is emphasis on our inventiveness, our resource, our close kinship with the sea and stars - and Faraday and Newton and Watt find their statues on the screen.
"Family Portrait", however, refuses to spend all its time looking back, and it refuses to turn itself into a eulogy. Radar has ushered in a new era in navigation, and England is as much to the fore in this particular field as she was in the days when the little ships beat the Armada. There are times, however, when the material, ultitarian streak gets the better of its imaginative, creative twin and the results are slums and a disgraceful, degraded standard and view of life - and here the name of Dickens is remembered. But Jennings has no doubts at all about the value of civilization - by means of compromise, of freedom through discipline, of tolerant humour, of respect for law, we work our ways through a world we no longer dominate but which we have still much to offer.
This film will be shown at the Telecinema in the South Bank Exhibition, and another to be shown here is "The Waters of Time", an imaginatively conceived and photographed account of the daily work done by the Port of London Authority, directed by Mr. Basil Wright and Mr. Bill Lander and with a commentary by Mr. Paul Dehn which dares to break into verse and is justified in its daring. The Telecinema promises in itself to be quite as exciting as any film that will be seen there. For a long time there has been talk of the "three-dimensional screen" - in Russia they have long passed from talk to action - and now at last in England we are to have stereoscopic effects; the screen is to have depth and the images on it are no longer to be flat. Nor is that by any means at all, for in addition to stereoscopic vision, there is to be stereophonic sound. His, on first thoughts seems a little alarming. A spectator entering the Telecinema during a performance might, it is suggested, "see a plane plunging right out from the screen, while, as it flashed overhead, the roar of the engines would transfer itself from the screen to the back of the auditorium, just as if it had physically passed through the cinema." Such violent effects are, it is a relief to learn, "to be used with restraint," but for some time to come film audiences will probably instinctively duck their heads at the sound of an approaching plane as once people would cower behind their seats at the sight of an engine seemingly coming straight at them.
The possibilities inherent in these twin inventions are obviously many and interesting, although they will not work such a revolution in the cinema as the advent of the south-track. The important things is to see them in their proper proportion - not as ends in themselves but as means towards helping the cinema to be the art it could so easily become and which it has so often and disatrously failed to be. It could well happen, indeed, that these discoveries failed to be. It could well happen, indeed, that these discoveries could set the film back as an art, just as the spoken word set it back, leading producers on to become obsessed with their toys, to treat them as the essential of the medium rather than as the embroidery. But, that, perhaps, is to be altogether too solemn about these intriguing possibilities, and the Telecinema will assuredly be not the least of the attractions of the South Bank." (1951)
The program notes by Charles Musser on the two Festival of Britain films are as follows: "These three films reflect the possibilties as well as the crises faced by the British Documentary Movement in the post World War II era. With FAMILY PORTRAIT, Humphrey Jennings remains preoccupied with questions of national identity. Now narration explicitly articulates those things which Jennings earlier expressed through the juxaposition of image and sound. He affirms Britain by evoking its great men as well as the average, present-day citizens. He savours the apparent contradictions of British character and in these realizations finds hope for the nation's future...
If FAMILY PORTRAIT uses an illustrated lecture approach, DAVID employs film techniques to affirm Welsh identity. Its subject (coal mining and the loss of identity), story, sentimentalism and narrative structure are endebted to Richard Llewellyn's novel and John Ford's film "How Green was my valley", but offer an alternative vision....
These ..films distill themes and methods embedded in earlier works of the documentary movement, but they also provide an opening for the 'Free Cinema' of Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson, who soon followed." (1992)