THE CINEMA
News Reels. At various cinemas.
WAR always seems to surprise somebody ; a year after Munich trenches which were begun that autumn are still being dug on the common outside ; even the news-reel companies have
been caught unprepared. They must have expected the tem- porary closing of the cinemas ; they must have been prepared for censorship, and yet, like the newspapers, they have to rely on Germany as their chief source of supply—an admirable picture of the siege of the Westerplatte, and another of the
war in Poland. What have they got ready for us from the home front, and how have their commentators risen to the great occasion? One remembers what Hemingway did for Spanish Earth, and one hopes . . . Even a war of nerves has its heroic angle.
As we fumble for our seats the too familiar voice, edgeless and French-polished, is announcing : " The Queen has never looked prettier." Royalty is inspecting something or other: " Royal interest inspires them to redoubled efforts." Women 'bus conductors climb aboard: " For men passengers it will make going to work almost a pleasure " ; they wave holiday girl hands. Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain walk in the Park ; complete strangers take off their hats—an odd custom. The Duchess of Kent, instead of going to Australia, makes splints: " We never thought we would live to be grateful to Hitler." Very slowly we approach the violent reality ; the Expeditionary Force marches to the coast, whippet tanks move through the woodlands, and the voice remarks something about " shoulder to shoulder in this death struggle for liberty." Surely by now we should realise that art has a place in propaganda ; the flat and worthy sentiment will always sound hypocritical to neutral ears beside the sharp and vivid statement. There was much that Hemingway had to slur over in his com- mentary: his cause was far more dubious than ours, but the language was much more effective. Let us hope that Ger- many is not employing a commentator of his standard, for I cannot believe that neutral opinion—or home opinion if it comes to that—will be impressed by the kind of words we listen to—shoulder to shoulder, liberty, baby-killers. . . .
The siege of the Westerplatte provides the best few minutes in any news cinema. It would have been interesting to hear the German commentary, for the picture seems to make the same odd psychological mistake as the Italian film of the Abyssinian War. The emphasis is all on power directed towards an insignificant object—we cut from the belching guns of the Schleswig-Holstein to the huge bombers taking off, from the calm complacent face on the captain's bridge to the pilot's face at the wheel, sweating, shadowy, intent: it is all smoke, flame, blast, inevitability. Nobody, we feel, can stand against this for an hour, and the mind answers quickly back that two hundred men stood it for a week. It was an astute move to show this film in England.
From Poland come some pathetic scenes of mob enthu- siasm. Col. Beck and the British Ambassador bow from a balcony: the faces of the crowd are excited, enthusiastic, happy. . . . The German film of the advance into Poland is beautifully shot and well staged—so well staged (the cavalry cantering in broken sunlight through the woods, the machine- guns rushed to the edge of the meadow grass) that one suspects old sequences of manoeuvres turned and mounted at leisure. Only the huge smashed bridges—like back-broken worms writhing in water—carry the stamp of real war. The same effect is given by the French films cleverly cut in with shots from the pre-war German film of the Siegfried line: the balloon falling in flames is too tidy.
None the less, fake or not, these war pictures from the Ent and West are impressive, well directed, and edited with imagination, and there is no reason why pictures from the defence front should not be equally effective. A different Conception of news is needed—shadows of gold keys and cut ribbons and beauty queens linger. But news no longer means leading figures ; we want the technique Anstey used in Housing Problems ; America is more likely to listen with sympathy to the rough unprepared words of a Mrs. Jarvis, of Penge, faced with evacuation, black-outs, a broken home, than to the smooth handled phrases of personalities. Above all, we don't want the old commentators, with their timid patronising jokes ; this is a people's war.
GRAHAM GREENE.
Previous page
