A Manifesto

I’d loaned out to a student my copy of Edward Carrick’s Designing for Moving Pictures, a beautifully illustrated text on the role of the production designer/art director, without any real certainty of getting it back, but I got it back. And was prompted to finally READ a bit of it. Especially as I’d recently enjoyed FIRES WERE STARTED, which Carrick designed, though his credit is a measly “Set Construction.”

In the intro, Carrick quotes a 1924 manifesto by George Pearson. He doesn’t provide any information about where this appeared or why it was written, but it’s stirring stuff:

“I believe in the CINEMA ; in its claim to be an Art, in its power to speak to the people with equal vigour to that claimed by the stage. and in its ability to stand first in the days to come as INSPIRER of the PEOPLE.

“But I equally deplore all those hideous bonds that now strangle its growth–the many passengers and parasites who feed upon it, the charlatans who exploit it, and above all the THINKERS who will not think about it ; THE CONVENTION RIDDEN workers who would leave to others all discovery, content to get a living of sorts by toiling in narrow grooves till the end.

“If you are to help me, you must be with me in my belief. It is a fervent consuming belief.”

Pearson appears, via archive film, in Kevin Brownlow and Michael Springbottom Summerbottom Autumbottom Winterbottom’s Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood series (in episodes 5 and 6 — it’s all on the YouTube). The major work quoted there, REVEILLE (1924), is now, I believe, considered lost, apart from the extracts that were used in the TV profile Pearson was interviewed for.

Per Wikipedia, Pearson wrote to his cast and crew about the film, “There is no story, as such. I hate the well-made Story with its Exposition, Denouement, Crisis, etc., as material for my elusive Screen. I confess I cannot write one.” So it seems likely that this letter was the manifesto Carrick quotes. More here.

I guess all manifestos must have random caps, and an air of slight pomposity. But their saving grace is their enthusiasm.

I don’t know if Pearson’s artistic vision survived into the quota quickies he made in the thirties (eg MIDNIGHT AT MADAME TUSSAUD’S). It wouldn’t be easy for such passion to thrive in such an environment. But I should watch them and find out.

The Sunday Intertitle: London’s Burning

FIRES WERE STARTED aka I WAS A FIREMAN — is a remarkably successful docudrama by Humphrey Jennings. Apart from some rough sound recording, it’s as polished as many straight dramas, but presents aspects of Britain untouched by the (frequently magnificent) fiction films of the era. Jennings was a great documentarist, but it’s still wondrous to see him adapt his approach so readily.

Using non-actors results in us hearing real voices. Working-class characters in British films before the new wave tend to have a touch of the music hall about them. We also see real people with clothing and hair that haven’t been through the relevant departments. Imperfect versions of those complicated ’40s hairdos, as a friend in our watch party pointed out.

Jennings ought to have been tripped up by having to get performances from firemen and phone operators, but he’d probably learned to guide performances on his docs — the rules were looser in those days, and even without the docudrama tag a lot of reportage films featured reconstructions and people performing rather than living their real lives. He also worked with some of our top actors as voice-over artists, notably Olivier in WORDS FOR BATTLE. But it’s probably his dealing with regular people, in his docs and in his research for the Mass Observation Project that gave him “the common touch.”

Because this IS a propaganda film, it projects an image of universal honesty, stoicism, cooperation and “blitz spirit.” The despair and terror many people felt is excluded. (“They have made me hate the sky,” said one person of the bombers.) But it’s still very moving.

I was also impressed that Jennings could successfully achieve an effective dramatic structure, moving from shorts to features, from doc to drama-doc, having to find ways to shape actuality film of big fires into a fictional firefighting narrative. I never felt any strain or ragged edges. The filming and cutting — long stretches without music, though William Alwyn adds orchestral emotions when required — straddle the fine line between documentary observation and expressive drama.

The Sunday Intertitle: Monologues in front of Burning Cities

From Chaplin’s THE FIREMAN (1916) — I had to pick a short to watch since I was way behind on my silent-movie viewing and wanted something I could see quickly and write about. And then it turned out that this movie had no intertitles whatsoever for practically the first half. Which worked fine, except Chaplin was limited to basic kicking-up-the-arse slapstick by the lack of any verbal content.

Edna Purviance, the most consistently badly-dressed woman in all cinema, with future director Lloyd Bacon, Chaplin, and Big Eric.

Chief enemy in the film is fire chief Eric Campbell, Chaplin’s semi-permanent antagonist in all the Mutual shorts. A colossal, hard-drinking Scotsman from Dunoon, Campbell eventually wiped himself out with his persistent drunk driving. Fellow Scot Kevin MacDonald made a nice little documentary about the big fellow, hampered by the fact that no interviews or real documentary footage exists (just a few home movies on Chaplin’s set, and some deleted scenes and outtakes) and absolutely nobody is alive who met Campbell. Nevertheless, MacDonald tells a decent story, although he erroneously claims Campbell as the first Scottish movie star: several others have been nominated for this position, although Campbell is the best-remembered.

A spectacular miniature, complete with mini-firemen, in THE BELLS GO DOWN.

By what seemed at the time like a coincidence, but probably wasn’t, I also found myself running THE BELLS GO DOWN, directed by Basil Dearden from a screenplay by Roger MacDougall, made at Ealing in 1943. It’s sort of the multi-strand network narrative comedy-drama version of the more celebrated quasi-documentary FIRES WERE STARTED, which disgracefully I still haven’t seen. Both are about volunteer firemen in Blitz-torn London, and have the urgency that comes from being made at the time. And while the contemporaneous war could easily have resulted in propagandistic and dishonest filmmaking, my feeling is that it doesn’t, here. Any jingoistic qualities are mitigated by the fact that the movie deals with civilians trying to survive, not soldiers trying to win, and in common with a lot of British wartime filmmaking, the emphasis is on celebrating the struggle of the little fellow, and the values of British society at the time.

Our Scottish fire chief in this movie is Finlay Currie, and further interest is provided by Mervyn John’s professional thief who uses the fire service as a sort of cover, and by William Hartnell (the first Doctor Who, much later), a veteran of the Spanish Civil War who gets all the words of wisdom MacDougall’s literate script has to offer. When air raids on London seem unlikely, the firemen are laughed at for being useless:

“Our cities are still behind the lines. When someone starts to pin medals on us, it’ll mean they’ve moved right up to the front. It’ll mean… another Rotterdam, another Warsaw. Right here in England. They’ll call us heroes if it comes to that. I’d rather they went on laughing.”

There’s also James Mason, with a not-totally comfortable cockney accent, but a fine, emotive face, especially handsome when smeared with soot and sweat, and cheeky chappie funnyman Tommy Trinder, a very strange piece of casting, since he’s inescapably music-hall in everything he does, a floating slice of theatre adrift amid the spectacular miniature dioramas of flame-engulfed London. Essentially a sort of elongated Ray Davies figure, only with the good cheer turned up to eleven, he nevertheless injects some surprise and pleasure into the movie, even while threatening to punch a hole in it below the credibility waterline. Caught making unauthorized use of fire station phones, he’s told, “You can’t do that!”

“No, I can. Most people can’t. I’m different!”

It’s a given that stirring dramas like this will show its disparate crew of selfish civilians putting their own needs and differences aside for the national good (that aspect IS straight propaganda), but Tommy’s transition from clown to hero is effected with surprising grace and narrative ruthlessness. Impressive stuff, and not just for the model shots.

Charlie Chaplin – The Mutual Films – Vol. 1 [1916] [DVD]

Charlie Chaplin – The Mutual Films – Vol. 2 [DVD]