THE CINEMA
The New Year
DURING 1946 both the United States and the Soviet Union dropped well behind in the production of first-class films, and the field is now led by France 'and Britain, with several new and hitherto rather dark horses—notably Denmark, Italy, Sweden—beginning to show considerable form. What 1947 will produce is anybody's guess ; but it is interesting to note that the Soviet cinema is, in the throes both of self-questioning and of reorganisation, and that several Hollywood magnates—not least Mr. Samuel Goldwyn—have issued stern warnings against their own industry's policy and complacency. What is quite certain, however, is that all countries must now con- centrate on films in which the story does not entirely depend on the dialogue. The sound track is an easy way out of production problems, and the inflnence of the radio on filth-makers is perhaps underestimated, but with television just: round the corner, and with a paramount need for greater international understanding on the levels both of culture and of good entertainment (if we must separate the two), the universally itrelligible an of the motion picture mus: be revivified.
In this connection it is significant that one of the jobs to be under-
taken by the Mass Media (Films, Radio, Press) Division of Unesco during the coming year is a survey which includes a study of methods for "improving techniques of the sound film to overcome language difficulties." It is, by the way, a great pity that the worx of the recent Paris conference was so little noticed by the Press in this country. As far as mass media are concerned the British delegation, with J. B. Priestley as admirable spokesman, played a very considerable part in drawing up Unesco's programme. The plans agreed by the full conference are a great advance on the vapourings about intellectual co-operation of the Geneva period. Today first things are put first, and Unesco, during 1947, is to embark on a number of urgent and perfectly practical projects. There are to be commissions on immediate technical needs, which will assess the requirements of war-tom European and Far Eastern countries in terms of physical apparatus and of technical training and knowledge. Within six months these commissions, dealing with film, radio and Press respectively, will report specifically the needs of the countries concerned, and it will be Unesco's job to see that they are met. Other immediate tasks, in addition to obvious work on copyright and customs conventions, will be the setting up of an International Film Council, the central pooling of information, the organisation of an International Ideas Bureau and of a World Feature Story Project. The last named will be designed to bring together leading producers in the fields of film, radio and Press- in the production and presentation in all media simultaneously of major themes of world interest, such themes to be "examples of human enterprise and excellence."
In all this the important point is that Unesco is to be a stimulator, not a ptoducer. It will be for the member _countries, each according to its -productive power, to make contributions to the overall-plans. -In this conception lies Unesco's greatest potential strength, and it is here not least that this country, with much achievement and experience already to its credit, has a big con- tribution to make. Unesco's filin plans should certainly be studied carefully by our own film-producers, and should be regarded as priorities in planning for 1947.
A sad postscript to 1946 was the death of W. C. Fields. He was originally a juggler, and his screen career came late in his life. -Battle-nosed and fruity-voiced, imbued with a gorgeously implao- able hatred of all things animate and inanimate, he took as his war- cry, "Never give a sucker an even break." One remembers with toy his early two-reel comedies (in particular those in which he was a dentist and a drug-store keeper) his impeccable Micawber, his may-
hem among the motors- Alison Skipworth in If I Had a Million, and to cut a long list short by adding simply his chef d'oeuvre, the game of billiards in Six of a Kind, during which he told the story of how he came to be known as Honest John.
BASIL WRIGHT.
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