THREE "SHORTS"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 369, 19 July 1946, Page 33

THREE "SHORTS"

CYPRUS IS AN ISLAND, It Might Be You, and Man-One Family are three new short British films worth hoping thet you will have a chance to see-especially if you are fed up (and who isn’t?) with many of the crooner and dance-band crudities which pad out the average supporting programme. The longest and most ambitious’ of these three film een recently at a preview arranged by the British High Commissioner’s Office-is Cyprus Is An Island. This half-hour documentary gives us a vivid, if rather romanticised, impression of the land and its people; its historic ruins and its villages, its forests and its arid plains, its fight against goats, droughts, erosion, and barren soil, with special emphasis on the clash between shepherds who stick to the old ways of life and agriculturists who favour the new. The benevolent British come in on the side of progress, convert the ignorant shepherd from his reactionary ways, and bring water and new fruitfulness to the soil. It is all just a little over-simplified and over-drama-tised; but the film has at least the virtue of being more interested in people

than in scenery (though it certainly does not neglect that). The commentary by Laurie Lee is sensitive and poetic; the photography is beautiful; and the musical background is provided by the "Greek Suite" of Petridis. An interesting point: the film (I suspect deiiberately) makes no mention at all of the part played by Cyprus in the war. That, you are led to infer, was a passing phase: the fight against burning sun and parched soil continues. ‘ It Might Be You is propaganda for safety and sense on the roads: English roads, of course, but the lesson is applicable here. It is simply and effectively done, piling up the suspense almost unbearably, as the various characters in the drama are drawn implacably towards the climax of a motor-smash which might have been avoided if they all had obeyed a few elementary rules. The tension, in fact, is so strong that you find the audience laughing. now and then: a sign not of amusement but of almost the exact opposite. Man-One Family gives Julian Huxley and J. B. Haldane the opportunity to refute the "race-theories" of the Nazis and proclaim the true brotherhood of man. They de it by means of diagrams, newsreel shots, and commentary. Again the treatment is simple, and again it is effective. Propaganda, of course, but a very positive and worthwhile sort of propaganda.