THE CINEMA
"Now — the Peace." At the London Pavilion. " I Live In "Now — the Peace." At the London Pavilion. " I Live In Grosvenor Square." At Warners and the Empire.
RECENT writing on the documentary film reveals a misconception which happens to be brought out clearly by a comparison of two shorts showing this week in the West End. I reviewed some months ago the British Council film Steel which is showing at. the Gaumont Theatre. Visually it is most beautiful. In colour, the processes of steel-making are as romantic as those impressionistic glimpses of industry which were once the fashion on the more exalted levels of commercial publicity. Yet steel-making is not primarily a matter of visual aesthetics. Ask steel-workers, ask the users of steel, and those poor souls who after the war will be plunging into the scramble for a British share of the world market. It is right that Steel should be praised for the magnificence of its individual scenes, but a good documentary film must surely have something to say as well as something to look at. Such a one is Now—The Peace, which seems to have received little or no critical attention. This film, made by the National Film Board of Canada for its World in Action series, represents the first attempt I have seen made in any medium to explain simply the achievements of Dumbarton Oaks, Bretton Woods and San Francisco. The proposed world organisations are described in simple diagrammatic terms, and the bare facts are clothed with the flesh and blood of their human significance. Rarely have the hard realities of war, of famine, and of civilisation's tendency to self- destruction been brought to the screen with such appalling realism. The film's conclusion, that hope for the future lies in economic planning on a world scale, clearly aroused such a warm and grateful response from the audience with which I saw the film, that there can be little doubt that Now—The Peace will bring stimulation through enlightenment wherever it is shown, and this is surely a primary documentary purpose.
I Live in Grosvenor Square reveals a new and unexpected horror of the future. Here we have a British producer seeking entrée to the American market by producing what is obviously a British imitation of an American film about Britain. Lady Patricia falls in love with an American sergeant ; her father, the Duke, is complete with side-whiskers and other traditional Hollywood symbols of aristocracy, and the film_ in its maudlin pursuit of Anglo-American co-operation, scarcely for a moment leave's the ducal town house or the ducal country seat. It is bad enough that Henry V should be allowed iri American cinemas only after Shakespeare's text has been censored ; it is even worse if America will accept from us only distorted and damaging fantasies of our own British life.
EDGAR ANSTEY.
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