Essential media about the arts

Pretty much throughout my thirty-five years of studying film history, the work of what’s known as the British documentary movement of the 1930s has been regarded as over-familiar, reactionary, largely conventional, constrained by the demands of sponsors and, well, just a bit dull. No longer. Thanks to an exceptional restoration programme led by the BFI, to the release of several essential DVD box sets (see below), and to associated scholarship, Brit docs of the 1930s are being recognised as central in a whole range of cultural and social contexts. We can also see that the output of – primarily but not exclusively – the GPO Film Unit was immensely varied, at times truly experimental and often exceptionally enjoyable. And now there’s a truly terrific book to draw together much of the debate about these films and to stimulate further thinking. Can I urge that – if you have the most slender interest in British culture - The Projection of Britain: A History of the GPO Film Unit, edited by Scott Anthony and James G. Mansell and published by Palgrave Macmillan/BFI, goes straight to the top of your Christmas list?

There are relatively few serious film books that make the heart leap a little as you pick them up. But this, I think, is one, largely because it is – for the most part – so beautifully designed and contains such a wonderful range of striking pictures from the 1930s (including Pat Keely’s poster above for Night Mail (1936)). (My cavil with the look of the book is that it probably wasn’t a great idea to print the first page of each chapter on dark beige paper, so that reading the opening paragraphs of each contribution is rather more demanding than it ought to be.) There are gorgeous images throughout, all of them contributing to the arguments about the British film documentary’s negotiation of modernity throughout the 1930s.

The volume’s subject is the films made by the GPO Film Unit and its predecessor the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit during the 1930s, although there’s a good deal of spill across into the war and beyond. These films, their production context and their distribution systems are a focus for discussions about national identity, imperialism, aesthetics, propaganda, technology, class, innovation, modernism and more. And the twenty-two chapters, each by a different historian, plus one or two other visual and textual elements, take on these concerns in an accessible, complementary and pleasingly complex manner.

Chapters are devoted to the debates surrounding the GPO Film Unit documentaries, to a number of the key filmmakers (notably Alberto Cavalcanti and Humphrey Jennings), to questions of form and style, and to individual films. Many of the debates can be extended to questions about documentary today, but one of the book’s strengths is its firm grounding in the history and culture of the 1930s, even as this is interpreted and understood from the perspective of the early twenty-first century. There are reprints of key documents about this history and a number of compelling visual essays, as well as a fascinating essay by Steve Foxon about the restoration of the films.

I was particularly engaged by Leo Enticknap’s discussion of technology and the GPO Film Unit, in which he considers how innovative the unit was in its use of 16mm cameras and projectors, in its engagement with colour film, and in its experiments with sound. In another strong essay, Paul Rennie places the GPO films within the broader visual culture of 1930s Britain. And an extract from film editor Dai Vaughan’s book Portrait of an Invisible Man: The Working Life of Stewart McAllister, Film Editor (first published in 1983) is a reminder of just what an exceptional (and yet largely unsung) critic and practitioner is its author.

Certainly, there are irritations – albeit relatively few. The proof reading hasn’t been as precise as one might have hoped, and it’s not good enough to refer to the Director of the National Gallery in the 1930s and key cultural player as ‘Kenneth Clarke’ (p. 201 – note to the editors, there’s no ‘e’). Also, I was frustrated that Paul Rennie offers no citation for this assertion:

The BBC began, after World War II, to consider the development of television and to look for creative people to work with the new technology and within the new systems of televisual media. Peculiarly, they found that surrealist artists had just the right skills of technical DIY and in the visual potential of kinetic structures. The beginnings of children’s television at the BBC for example, gave opportunity to a number of artists and surrealists.

Say what? Who were these subversives who, perhaps, shaped the editions of Blue Peter and Crackerjack that were so formative in my childhood? I think we should be told – but regrettably we’re not by the footnotes. Such concerns, however, are quibbles – and should most certainly be regarded as such in the face of the richly rewarding achievement of this volume.

Plus…

If you’re intrigued by this review, and by the book, the following exceptional DVD box sets contain almost all of the titles under consideration (although not, frustratingly, BBC – The Voice of Britain (1935), a film I saw many years back and have long wanted to view again):

• Land of Promise: The British Documentary Movement 1930-1950

• Addressing the Nation: The GPO Film Unit Collection, volume 1

• We Live in Two Worlds: The GPO Film Unit Collection, volume 2

• If War Should Come: The GPO Film Unit Collection, volume 3

Prompted by The Projection of Britain, I want to return to some of these films on the blog over the coming weeks, and also to write a little more about the pleasures of the printed text. I’ll also add some more links to this review with suggestions for further reading.