BOOKSHELF

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 715, 27 March 1953, Page 21

BOOKSHELF

DOCUMENTARY FILM, by Paul Rotha, in collaboration with Sinclair Road and Richard Griffith; Faber and Faber. English price, 2/-. MR. RANK, by Alan Wood; Hodder and Stoughton. English price, 20/-. YOU AND THE MOVIES, edited by Rev. F. M. Chamberlin; Young Catholic Student's Movement. Australian price, 2/6. MRE: ROTHA defines his subject as "the use of the film medium to interpret creatively and in social terms the life of the people as it exists in reality." The core of Documentary Film, which last appeared in 1939, is an introduction to the cinema, chapters on the evolution and principles of documentary, and a very full examination of documentary in the making-direction, photography, editing, etc. Sinclair Road and Richard Griffith have added to this almost as much again in a comprehensive survey of documentary film since 1939 (including a glance at the work of our National Film Unit), the big collection of illustrations has been brought up to date, and credits of 100 important films have been listed, As if this were not good enough measure, Mr. Rotha has written a new preface and John Grierson a new (and, says Mr. Rotha, "characteristically aggressive’’) foreword, in which they look at the state of documentary today and discuss the future. This is an authoritative work (the British Film Academy recommends it) and its assessment of the influence of documentary on the feature film make it important even for those whose main interest is outside the documentary field. Mr. Wood has written much more than a life of Mr. Rank. Here, it’s true, is a full and sympathetic picture of the man, the rise of the Rank Organisation and its big crisis; but here also, generally in the greatest detail (who talked to whom in a Mayfair flat till what o'clock in the morning and how much money each put up and who made their first film and what it cost), is the story of British films from the days before Rank to the era of Government intervention. Here are portraits of Korda, Lean, Asquith, Pascal, Powell and Pressburger and a great many others; controversial films are examined; and many excellent anecdotes are told. The author has gathered most of his material from people with a first-hand knowledge of events, and even those who disagree with his opinions will find his book one of the : most interesting of its kind to appear for some time. You and the Movies is a study of the film written mainly from the Roman _ Catholic point of view, though it includes some factual material of more general interest. One chapter-on the influence of the films-is written by J. C. Reid, of | Auckland. |