THE CINEMA
Empire Film Week. At the Tatler.—.. Mein Kampf—My Crimes." At the Regal.
THE enterprise of Donald Taylor, of Strand Films, in organising a special Empire Film Week at The Tatter Cinema contrasts sharply with the regrettable lack of film propaganda so far put out by the Films Division of the Ministry of Information. The films shown—all- of them made in times of peace—are not merely apt to the times and admirable entertainment, but also of great value in the realm of public enlightenment. They are also some- thing of a tribute to Alexander Shaw, whose directorial abilities are strikingly revealed in several of them. In Five Faces he presents a study of the races of Malaya which has, despite the great amount of information conveyed, a meditative, as well as a dramatic, quality. There is no forcing of effects and no sensa- tionalism ; but there is a sense of sympathy and understanding implicit in the gentle camera movements and in the soft tones of the photography ; and sympathy and understanding are two factors of vital importance when the relations of British citizens to their Colonial colleagues are being considered. In Men of Africa, on the other hand, he gives us an objective and cogent study of the practical social measures which are in progress in British East Africa.
The other films in the Empire programme include studies of the development and working-methods of the Empire air routes which surely, to the layman, open wide windows on to a world in which space and time are conquered, but in which the results of conquest are not yet decided between good and evil. Both African Skyways and Empire Air Routes reveal, too, the possi- bilities of closer co-operation between Britain and her Colonies which the ease and speed of aerial transport can make possible.
Here, then, is a complete programme which will interest and entertain the ordinary cinema-goer, and which at the very least, because of its vivid quality, will do more to bring alive the Empire to the ordinary man-in-the-street than a hundred news- paper articles. It would have been good indeed if official initia- tive could have encouraged a wide release of balanced pro- grammes such as this right from the beginning of the war. That the initiative has passed to private enterprise is something of an accusation ; but the main factor is that action is being taken. It is to be hoped that the Empire programme will be followed by a War Effort programme, by a Home Front programme, and by a British Democracy programme. Such series would be admirable at home and abroad ; and whatever products finally emerge from the fuliginous purlieus of the Ministry of Information should be distributed, not piecemeal, but on some such coherent plan as is indicated by this encouraging and inspiring experiment.
After constructive propaganda comes destructive propaganda. Mein Kampf—My Crimes follows in the steps of Hitler the Beast of Berlin by revealing, with flourishes of sensationalism, a number of facts of which every literate person has been aware for the past several years. Its shape, such as it is, depends on the alternation of actual newsreel sequences and studio-dramati- sations of actual events such as the Reichstag Fire Trial and the death of Roehm. There are also several dramatisations of " typical " events, such as the work of an agent provocateur, and a Hitler-Jugend leader betraying his parents. In general, the film is not inaccurate in its portrayal, but its interest is enhanced neither by the touches of amateurishness in the staged sequences nor by the Stuermer-like bad taste of a cartoon sequence about Hitler's antecedents. Nor do the dramatised scenes blend well with chillier reporting in the newsreels of actual events. The scenes of the Hitler youth sacking Cardinal Innitzer's palace are, for instance, unconsciously comic, with the refined suburban voices trilling their stilted sentences (" Come on, chaps, let's throw the old man out of the window ").
There are, however, several sincere performances from a cast of anonymous but by no means unrecognisable actors ; and the makers of the film do, on the whole, give some evidence of sincerity in intention. It is a pity that the result is incoherent, inconclusive, and, in a curious way, rather boring. The boredom presumably springs from a satiety of actual violence and evil which has lessened our appetite for its screen representation. No anti-Nazi propaganda in the cinema can compete in impressive- ness with a cargo of real bombs dropped from a Nazi 'plane, and films belatedly proving that Nazism is an evil thing seem to have missed the propaganda bus which left empty many months ago. Another bus may come along, and if it does first places must be reserved, not for anti-Nazi propagandists, but for propa- gandists for democracy.
BASIL WRIGHT.
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