Prvi nadrealistički film nije Buñuel/Dalíjev Andaluzijski pas nego La Coquille et le Clergyman Germaine Dulac, napravljen prema scenariju Antonina Artauda.
Cijeli film (32 minute):
The Seashell and the Clergyman: The World’s First Surrealist Film
A few weeks ago, we posted New York Times critic A.O.Scott’s thoughtful three-minute look back at the surrealist classic Un Chien Andalou. The 1929 Buñuel/Dalí production may well be the world’s most famous bit of early surrealist cinema, but it was not the first. That honor goes to another very strange (and indubitably surreal) short film screened in Paris in 1928, prompting the now infamous condemnation from the British Board of Film Censors. It insisted that the 31-minute film was “apparently meaningless.” They then added, “If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable.”
The Seashell and the Clergyman, based on Antonin Artaud’s screenplay about a priest who lusts after a General’s wife, was directed by the cinema theorist, journalist, and critic Germaine Dulac (1882-1942). Dulac was also a groundbreaking feminist filmmaker — she is best known today for The Smiling Mrs. Beudet (1923), a seminal silent film about a woman trapped in a loveless marriage. - www.openculture.com
na UbuWebu:
La coquille et le clergyman (1926) L'invitation au voyage (1927)
La Souriante Madame Beudet (1922, Germanie Dulac)
(zovu ga i prvim feminističkim filmom)
Cijeli film:
Siân
Reynolds, 'Germaine Dulac and newsreel: 3 articles[1], Introduction', Screening
the past 12,
Born
Germaine Saisset-Schneider in 1882, the film director we know as Germaine Dulac
came to prominence in the 1920s, alongside Louis Delluc, as director of a
series of feature films, the best-known of which is La souriante Madame
Beudet (The Smiling Mme Beudet, 1923). Her controversial
collaboration with Antonin Artaud, La Coquille et le Clergyman (The
Seashell and the Clergyman, 1928) led to a row with the Surrealists.
Towards the end of the 1920s, she turned to abstract and theoretical subjects,
and much of her known writing is about film theory. Dulac was an influential
film critic, an energetic promoter of the cine-club movement in France, a
prolific lecturer and speaker, and author of hundreds of reviews and articles.
After the coming of sound, she made no further fiction features, and in the
1930s, formed a small company France-Actualités, associated with Gaumont but
editorially independent, to make newsreels and documentaries (1932-5). After
suffering a stroke in the mid-1930s, she did little active directing, but was
closely involved with Popular Front cultural groups in 1936, acting as an
adviser on several films. Having become increasingly immobile, she died in 1942
in obscurity, during the German Occupation.
Well-known
in her time, both as creator and enabler, always well-regarded by film
specialists, she was however in need of rediscovery when feminist film
historians in recent years began to explore the work of the very few women
directors active before 1939. The most extensive work from this perspective has
been done by Sandy Flitterman-Lewis (To desire differently, Urbana,
1990), an essential source on the feature films. A collection of Dulac's
writings was also recently issued in France (P. Hillairet, ed., Ecrits sur
le cinéma, Paris, 1994). Marie-Anne Malleville, her constant companion from
the time of her divorce from Albert Dulac in 1920, donated all Germaine Dulac's
papers to BiFi, and it is from these papers that her less well-known work on
newsreels can be reconstructed.
The
team she headed at France-Actualités made and sold to distributors, including
its patron Gaumont, a weekly compilation of about twenty minutes made up of
short news items. In the 1930s, cinema programmes usually consisted of a short
film, and a newsreel, before the "big film". News theatres offering
non-stop newsreels and cartoons were just opening. About five companies,
including Pathé, Eclair etc., competed for contracts. A typical newsreel
programme from the archives of France-Actualités, for 2 March 1934, ran for
20-30 minutes as follows :
1. Belgium: accession of King Leopold
2. Lake Placid bobsleigh competition
3. 'Paris-humour': a taxi-driver's
strike, using a puppet
4. Maiden voyage of the Normandie
5. The mysterious death of local
councillor in Dijon*
6. General review of the army garrison
in Algiers
7. Children's string band in
Montmartre
8. Police work: how laboratories help
trace criminals
9. Film awards at Harry's Bar, Venice
10. Two air force planes collide in
mid-air
11. Funeral of victims after a street
riot
12. Saint-Malo fisherman's religious procession
*(This
item, an early piece of investigative journalism, ended in a lawsuit from a
local notable whose house was recognizably filmed in the item.)4
One
could construct a cultural history of 1930s France using these iconographical
clues, but this kind of compilation was not "the news" as we would
understand it today. Since it was designed to be shown around France over a
period of weeks, there would be no point in "warming up" the main
political events of the day. It concentrated on ceremonies, features, and what
are known in France as faits divers, those small news items which
project ordinary people into the headlines. Nevertheless one can discern in
this apparent compilation of trivia a deliberately contructed orchestration,
moving from the light-hearted through to the more serious items, with the
thought-provoking juxtapositions which became the trademark of Dulac's
newsreels. It was a technical challenge to make something significant from this
genre: each item consisted of about 30 or 40 metres of film, about one and a
half minutes on screen. Sound, commentary and image had to combine to make a
point quickly (cf. M. Huret, Ciné-Actualités, Paris, 1984, for the
history of the French newsreel).
Dulac
wrote several articles about newsreels. She set out from a minimalist position,
arguing that even the blandest of them captured the authentic flavour of
contemporary reality -- a boring official occasion from a few years ago would
enable you to notice that hairstyles had changed for instance. Because they
were free from commercial pressures they could bring out "the universally
human social and authentic visual features of cinema". She acknowledged
that newsreels, including her own, while not subject to official censorship,
were to some extent self-censored; that they were often bland, not sharply
angled politically; and that they were as a rule trivial. But within the
confines of the genre, she tried to do something different, as critics (alerted
by her name on the credits) were quick to notice, if not always seeing the
point : "She seems to want to give her newsreel a musical and 'visualist'
tendency, which we cannot fully appreciate... It is far from boring" (Cinématographie
française, 1 October 1932). "This company is curious: it has
intelligent cameramen and editors, who have a sure touch. But it seems to
concentrate on tiny events, never the great ones -- why?"
Some
critics appreciated what she was trying to do. Pointing out that most newsreels
had truly awful commentaries, hectoring and bland at once, one reviewer
remarked:
it
is a pleasure to announce the real effort made by a young company
France-Actualité, run by Germaine Dulac: the camerawork, the sound and the
commentary all show that at France-Actualité [sic], everyone knows his trade...
[Her work is ] characterized by variety... sometimes humorous, sometimes with a
bitter note, or touched with emotion. [She] juxtaposes complementary images.
Here is a tea party thrown for children of higher civil servants by the
President, and here is one given by the Salvation Army for homeless children.
No superfluous commentary: the spectator has to work out the philosophy from
what he sees on screen. ... In one item, the unveiling of a plaque in memory of
a writer, she stayed after the official opening and asked local residents about
him, getting very funny answers [nobody had ever heard of him]. On other
occasions she filmed two lovers after a suicide pact and a body being pulled
out of the Seine.
Dulac
herself referred to her newsreels in what one might describe as classic
humanist mode. They were obviously a departure both from her psychological
full-length features of the early 1920s and from the formal and theoretical
shorts she had made later: "If only you knew how much constant contact
with ordinary people, living their lives, suffering, working, loving normally
can change the perspective of a film director used to facing more or less
fictional characters. In a filmed report, all is real, not deformed by the
imagination or theoretical reasoning." She clearly saw this work as
enabling her to escape from the constraints of the plot, even when doing
"stories". As a marginal art form, newsreels could paradoxically be
seen to have a degree of artistic freedom. Ironically however (see article on
budget below), financial pressure put an end to this phase of her production.
Employing several people, she was going over budget while the parent company
was facing serious financial crisis. France-Actualités was wound up and at
about the same time, perhaps not coincidentally, Dulac suffered a stroke.
The
articles here may surprise those familiar with Dulac's other work. There is a
direct simplicity of approach which seems almost naive to us now, used as we
are to the distortions and biases which have marked filming the news for
television. It helps to remember that Dulac was above all a visual film-maker,
whose best work was in the silent era. When she insists the camera cannot lie,
she is thinking of the images on the screen, and specifically remarks that
"of course" commentaries can be superimposed to give misleading
information. She was also writing in the somewhat optimistic atmosphere of the
Popular Front, and with a clearly pedagogical and historical approach. One can
hardly argue with her point that if only cinema had been invented a hundred
years earlier, even the most naively-filmed images of the French Revolution
would give us invaluable historical evidence.
[1] Germaine Dulac, 'Germaine Dulac and newsreel: 3
articles', Screening the past 12, http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/screeningthepast/classics/cl0301/gdcl12a.htm,
uploaded 31 March 2001.
The
articles translated here come from Germaine Dulac's personal archives,
preserved in the Fonds Colson Malleville in the Bibliothèque du film (BiFi) in
Paris, with the kind permission of M. Yann Beauvais, representing the copyright
holders.
I
The educational and social effects of newsreels[2]
The
cinema is only forty years old. For a human being, to reach forty means
achieving maturity, but for inventions, it is still the bloom of youth: their
development depends on the speed at which intelligence is brought to bear on
them to make successive improvements.
When
the cinema was first discovered and given mechanical and technical form by the
Lumière brothers, it took by surprise a world by no means ready for it.
If
we compare cinema with the invention of printing, that too had brought
upheaval, by finding a completely new means of spreading the written word, but
it did not create any new form of expression: on the contrary, it appeared in
response to a need. By making literary works available, replacing the slow
handwriting of the scribes by a faster means of reproduction, printing put a
world of thought and feeling within general reach, but it did not make that world
visible for the first time. The cinema on the other hand came as a complete
surprise. When it appeared, no one had been calling for it. After all, for
everyday news there was the printed press. For entertainment, there was the
theatre. What could moving pictures possibly contribute to knowledge or to art?
The world was hardly interested at all in their artistic, scientific or social
value, being unaware of the rich and varied treasures they contained. Still,
once the first movie camera had been manufactured, it had to be replicated. The
age of engineers, optical experts and technicians had begun. The camera needed
long rolls of film, so means had to be found of manufacturing and processing
them, and of making multiple copies of the images they had registered: chemists
entered the picture. New trades were created to handle the cameras:
photographers started to "crank the film". Projectionists too had to
learn their trade, followed in "literary" order, so to speak, by
authors who wrote scripts, producers who composed and linked together the
images on the screen, and performers who interpreted the films.
Various
interests or intellectual groups came together therefore in a haphazard way to
build up the economic, social and artistic tradition of the cinema. Businessmen,
industrialists, scholars, impresarios, artists, craftsmen, all with their
divergent aims, found themselves linked together in a single purpose, whose
importance they did not entirely grasp, except that it was clear that new
activity and a new product was being created.
Too
recent an invention for its first steps to be deemed an expression of serious
thought, the cinema developed intellectually in fits and starts, without any
very clear trajectory, whereas its commercial foundations were very solid from
the start. As a result, it reached its peak of economic and popular development
before its true nature had really been defined. Commercial entrepreneurs had
created a "need" for cinema among popular audiences before artists
had had a chance to reflect on its possibilities.
I
do not intend here to reflect philosophically on the dramatic feature films
which commercial companies and public taste seem to have promoted to being the
acme of cinematic expression. But what I can say is that this conception is
quite mistaken. Filmed dramas certainly offer one application of the art of
cinema, but by no means its essential truth, which is probably much better
served by scientific films and newsreels.
Scientific
films and newsreels, the former on account of their educational importance, the
latter because of their social significance, are perhaps the productions that
have best captured the spirit of cinema, by registering real life without any
commentary, in its various distinctive movements. Being somewhat neglected by
commercial interests, having developed at some remove from the constraints of
film as spectacle, and thus being protected from the censorship of thought,
they have been able to escape the strict, confining and oppressive discipline
which is applied to commercial movies, and to bring out the universally human,
social and true visual features of cinema.
Spectacular
feature films have dominated the market economically, while education films and
newsreels have always been marginal, considered as propaganda, information,
education, but not as money-making concerns. It is still difficult for them to
be distributed. Cinema managers are not greatly interested in them. The
recently created special "news theatres" which show newsreels and
documentaries are starting to give them the importance they deserve.
And
yet... this kind of cinema is the great modern educator of society. It brings
together the most diverse intelligences, the most varied races, and by a
magnetic current, it throws a girdle round the earth. It can show every
cinemagoer the intimate details of the life in foreign countries and the human
beings behind the official face of historical tradition and imagination. Like
the scientific film, the newsreel reveals the kind of truth about life everywhere
which cannot be gained from books, newspapers or guides. Seen this way, the
cinema becomes an individual experience, enabling us all to live something
instead of imagining it. Classes and races meet in the cinema without
intermediaries. Emotions, gestures, joy - humanity rises above its individual
characteristics: as the sight of other human beings brings understanding, it
helps to destroy hostility.
The
newsreel is freshly created every day. It is not premeditated. It captures
events of which it gives a faithful reflection, as well as showing the people
and surroundings that illustrate them. It goes to the heart of their moral and
emotional being. A newreel is the mirror of a nation, of its pleasures, its
endeavours, its preoccupations. Affinities can be created through it, as can
agreements and disagreements, far and wide across the globe. Newsreels show us
the life of the universe, in its beliefs, its struggles, its hopes and fears.
Newsreels
from all over the world are usually shown in the first part of a cinema
programme, linked together to form a kind of magazine, made up of short and
varied elements. They cover every subject because their purpose is to provide
information about national and international events, political, legal,
scientific or artistic. Thanks to them, we know not only what our own national
figures look like but also leaders from abroad. Some politicians, who were at
first given an unfavourable reception when they appeared on screen, have become
popular on the very same screen because we have grown used to seeing them. The
public has learnt to notice any changes in their attitude, their appearance or
their gestures. Familiarity starts to breed sympathy and perhaps understanding
of ideas. Greater familiarity leads to more informed judgment. Walls come down.
The vagueness of speeches can be harmful. The precision of the camera brings
the clarity of truth.
Thanks
to newsreels, we can enter into diplomatic discussions, into quarrels or
alliances between peoples, and we can learn about their society. We see people
in their home surroundings, and through insignificant remarks or actions which
have nothing to do with the big issues, but which can create certain human
contacts, we draw closer to them. Whether intentionally or not, ideas circulate
via newsreels and became more human, less abstract and elitist. By bringing a
greater awareness of the rest of the world, the newsreel makes it possible to
reveal the general characteristics of humanity, and individual feelings.
Newsreels
also reflect industry and the arts. We learn what effort is required to
manufacture an object which comes to us from the other side of the globe, and
we have a context for every object, related both to the idea behind it and the
labour that has gone into it. Brotherhood may be the result. Newreels provide
us with items about hygiene, sport, scientific discoveries, new means of
educatiion, not just from one country but from every country. A newsreel is a
mirror held up to the entire civilization of a generation, reflecting its hopes
and fears, not only in our corner of Europe but throughout the globe. Every
country can reveal its enthusiasm and its misery, its very life, through its
films. Newsreels break through barriers: they should be indiscreet and true,
and give precise information without embroidering it in a literary way.
II
Chapter from projected book on cinema by Germaine Dulac, c. 1936
Cinema
at the service of history: the role of newsreels[3]
Cinematographic
expression is varied and flexible, but with a unity of purpose: it seeks to
catch life unawares, in its true movement and spirit, and to project it, still
palpitating, on to the screen.
The
cinema, with its whirlwind of moving images, delivers what we all dream about,
all the things that escape conscious thought. Making light of frontiers and
distances, it brings the life of the world into the life of every one of us.
The "newsreel films" that all countries exchange with each other
constitute just one of these faces of cinema.
What
is a cinema newsreel? What can it be, other than the exact reflection of events
which a movie camera first captures, without any premeditation, from day to
day, then reproduces true to life in its entirety, after the event is over --
and may even pass on to posterity if the subject is important enough.
Newsreels
are the history of an age, which the film-maker and his or her lens record, day
in, day out. The news item is the irrefutable, lived document that any given
year bequeaths to the next. An event recorded today, the importance of which
has not immediately been grasped, may appear at a later date in the fullness of
its significance, and in all its immediacy of movement, for later generations
who will know how to judge it.
What
lessons could have been learnt if the cinema had been invented a hundred years
earlier, if it could have captured the ancien régime and then the events and
people of the French Revolution!
A
newsreel is a machine for writing history. We may laugh today, as week by week
we watch endless pictures of inaugural ceremonies, of parochial events which
don't interest us in the least; but in later years, these inoffensive scenes
will reveal what our surroundings looked like.
At
one time or another, we see quarrels, massacres, wars and rebellions break out
in every corner of the world. We gasp as we watch them, but these rebellions
and conflicts are transmitted in a haphazard sequence: one day it's China, then
Cuba, next somewhere in Europe. In future, when the face of the world is
radically different from a hundred years ago, will these upheavals not be seen
as links in a chain, and will future generations not draw lessons from them?
New
inventions, ideas, social problems of the day, the preoccupations of every
nation on earth (since a newsreel is international after all!), the political
and social anguish of diplomatic coming and goings, changes of government - it
all adds up to a chaotic sequence of events, in which the trivial follows on
the heels of the momentous, without any sense of priority. The newsreel holds
up a faithful mirror to the true face of the world, a mirror which can not only
bring something educational but a philosophy for those who know how to look for
it. It is truly the touchstone of an age, presenting that spectacle in all its
brutal honesty.
In
future years, historians will unquestionably go to this source rather than to
written documents, because thanks to film, they will be able to reconstitute an
event not merely in the imagination, but with an exact visual image.
It
is through newsreel films, a renewed form of History, that the future
"which we are preparing" will judge us and give us our place in the
development of the world. But does the cinema newsreel as presently constituted
really satisfy us? Since its subject matter is made up of a real-life event, it
ought to be beyond our criticism. One can't criticise an event that happens
whether we like it or not: one can only experience it and react to it.
But
is every event of equal interest to us? No, because what is happening every day
is so intensely living and real that we would always like to see it respond to
every step in our curiosity, We criticize or approve of it to the extent that
it satisfies or fails to satisfy our thirst for knowledge. There are some
important events in which we would like to be a participant; others one would
want to avoid because they are unimportant or tiresome. People often say about
current newsreels, whether in France, China or America: they are so boring, the
same things are repeated over and over. But life itself is repetitive. The
exciting events that come along from time to time are the exception, not the
rule.
Are
there any weeks when nothing of significance happens anywhere in the world?
There is always something happening on the surface of the globe, and a camera
operator is almost certain to catch that "something" on film. The
"image-chasers"are everywhere.
If
we are so often disappointed, the reason is this: events are of two kinds:
there is the blockbuster event -- sudden and important; and then there is the
slow-burn kind of event, which evolves as the days go by and whose true meaning
becomes clear only with time. The striking event and the subtle event. And that
is not to mention the kind of event which one might describe as
"documentary" , which may or may not be destined to last..
So
we might conclude that if newsreels sometimes seem hollow and empty to the
spectators, that is because they do not know how to decipher their future
significance. The other day, out of curiosity, I looked through the weekly
progammes of a newsreel company, taking as my theme political and social change
in France between 1935 and 1936.[4] I would sometimes jump two or three
weekly programmes, then in the fourth I would single out one or two items, and
so on. The result of this little survey was as follows: the items I had
selected from the weekly programmes were actually dependent on each other: one
thing had led to another. When stripped of irrelevancies, their graph told an
inexorable tale. The cinema was truly in the service of history.
Another
question might be asked: can newsreel used as a document be authentic?
A
news item - and this is the great strength of the cinema - cannot be other than
authentic, since it is the faithful reproduction of an event. It can be
inaccurate or misleading only by omission.
The
lens cannot transform an event, because it has to register what passes in front
of it, just as it happens, unadulterated and without any preparation. Where
inauthenticity can set in is when a choice is made or when prejudice
intervenes, but the truth is so powerful that it often triumphs over such a
choice, if the latter is the echo of a particular view, The image itself is
always authentic. It is the added commentary and post-synchronized sound that
might be inauthentic: created by someone's imagination, they may reflect
particular ideas. Obviously if one post-synchronises boos and jeering on to a
soundtrack of a speech or event originally hailed with cheers and applause,
then the event's image may be transported into a context which falsifies it.
Through
the technique of cinematography itself, news unveils the face of the world, but
that authentic face cannot appear in its full authenticity if relevant facts
and views are omitted: so the period of splendid social courage which we are
living through at the moment will reveal all its true force in newsreel films.
Perhaps to us now, it is only showing some glimpses of this aspect of the
world. One has to see the whole picture to appreciate it. What we really need
is for newsreel to be scientifically and sytematically placed at the service of
history. To play this role, it must be objective and relate things accurately;
it should particularly refrain from commenting on news films imported from
other countries.
I
say this because having referred to the technical authenticity of the visual
image of a newsreel, and the possible inauthenticity of post-synchronized
sound, one should note that whereas documentary films are themselves subject to
commercial constraints, and may not reach certain parts of the world which are
closed to this kind of production, newsreels can actually cross frontiers
without being subject to the laws of supply and demand. As information, they
automatically get distributed into the newsreel circuits, and newsreels are
shown all over the world, without much regulation or concern for artistic
preferences. This is another example in which the cinema binds together the
scattered forces of humanity and coordinates them into a single current which
thereby gives them wider distribution. From familiarity to understanding, and
from understanding to friendship, is but a step.
III
The budget for newsreels[5]
Ladies
and Gentlemen, dear comrades
I'm
here tonight to speak to you about the budget for making newsreels. I say
budget, not estimate, because I will not be describing a detailed set of
projected accounts for the making of a single film, but rather the overall
expenses and income of a film department engaged in constant production over a
whole year. Each spectacular feature film has its own career, with an
individual pattern of finance, but newsreels require a constant commitment of
money from a stable company, with its own permanent staff and technical support.
What
exactly is a newsreel? It is a narrative in sight and sound of a series of
items which may vary from week to week, depending on current affairs. To make
up these weekly reels of film requires not so much imagination, ingenuity and
calculation as the ability to capture the unexpected reality of life in the
world which the newsreels must reflect : noteworthy events, disturbances and
happenings of every kind. Newsreel making has perhaps not yet acquired in our
time the flexibility and rapidity of movement needed to provide total and
instantaneous information. But what one can say is that it offers a means of
acquiring knowledge and understanding equal to or better than the written
press. It is a raw, living document.
A
newspaper can record, describe and capture a facial expression by printing a
photograph, but a newsreel is an implacable form of recording, giving the
passing event a life which makes it easier to follow. The press appeals to the
imagination; the newsreel chooses something and presents it with accuracy and
precision in its very movement, so that afterwards all those who see it can
feel they were there and draw their own conclusions. You will already have
concluded that it is the news item to be captured that determines the activity
of the the newsreel maker, and also influences the budget. Over and above a
fixed regular set of costs, there is the unexpected, the cost of which is hard
to predict.
Let's
examine the fixed costs first: a newspaper has a daily quota of say 6 to 8
pages, and the newsreel too has its fixed footage for the week, which can vary
between 400 and 500 metres, depending on the company. That strip of film will
contain certain items, each of them representing variable expense, difficult to
estimate in advance because that may depend on distance, the importance of the
item, and its duration. But the director who puts the newsreel together may
obtain a certain financial balance by dropping minor items too expensive for
what they are worth, in favour of something significant. The secret of the
financial health and interest of a newsreel company lies in offering the public
week by week a compilation of really striking items, as distinct from those
that have only passing interest. Some news items look decidely passé a week
later, while others retain all their quasi-historical interest. The key is not
to spend all your money on "fireman-rescues-kitten" stories, but not
to let anything escape you which might be remembered by the audience. By the
choice of news items and their balance in a given programme, every newsreel can
have a fairly predictable fixed-costs budget. I would add that the analysis and
evaluation of news items is the very basis of the life of a newreel company.
The
general budget of a newsreel company is divided up into weekly tranches. Since
we are going to talk figures now, let's look at the regular expenses. We'll
take a newsreel which makes 150 copies a week of a newsreel made up of 400
metres of film, The number of copies varies according to distribution contracts.
The cost per metre of making the negative of a newsreel is about 140 francs a
metre, which brings the overall bill for the negative to 56,000 francs:
What
does that cover on a weekly basis? [all figures in 1936 francs]
The
weekly wages of the technical staff, editor-in chief, administrator,
cameramen-reporters, sound engineer, film-editors, processors, archivist,
secretary, typist, commentary-writers and presenter: total 19,600
Travel expenses for camera team
(trucks etc) 7,000
Blank film 12,000
Developing the film 2,000
Positives 2,000
Dispatch of "mauves" to
subscribers 2,000
Postage for film and customs on film
received
from regions and overseas 6,500
Making, developing and adding
soundtrack 3,000
Sub-titles, diagrams, alterations
2,000
Total: 56,100
These
figures are not hard and fast. They vary according to the company, but the
headings will always be the same. The number of cameramen, editors and
secretaries might vary. The cost of buying foreign newsreel may fall, depending
on the exchange rate, or increase if you use a lot of foreign material. As a
rule there are fixed agreements between big international companies and every
week they all engage in sale, exchange and purchase of documentary film from
abroad. Almost every country, even if it has no film industry to speak of, will
have newsreel companies. So international links have been established which
make it easier to get news from distant places. It is dispatched by the fastest
available kind of transport. And there are some freelance cameramen who operate
in remote areas for film companies. These links are organised so as to allow
documents to be bought and sold. Around the central nucleus of firms there
gravitates a multitude of freelancers. But sometimes a news company will want
to have a document made by its own team either for technical reasons or because
the event is of special significance. Then reporters from the headquarters will
be sent out into the field. Life in a newsreel company is rather like that in a
newspaper. You have to have the right staff available at any moment to drop
everything and cover a story. The number of cameramen and sound recordists can
vary too. so the budget I have given you is indicative, but fairly normal. You
also have extraordinary expenses from time to time, if a significant event
occurs far away and the firm wants to send an on-the-spot team, or if something
crops up at the last moment.
To
the cost of making the negative, we must add the production costs. 150 copies
of a 400- metre-film comes to 159,000 francs, to which must be added the
publication of our newsreels in foreign-language editions, at 2,500 per
edition.When the newsreel has been shot and edited, it must be distributed to
customers and subscribing cinemas. These commercial costs are estimated at
about 300,000 francs a month, or 75,000 a week.
Totals:
Cost of negative 56,000 francs
Production costs 160,000 francs
Distribution costs 75,000 francs
Total weekly outlay: 291.000 francs
And
we haven't yet mentioned rent, expenditure on technical equipment, trucks, or
the purchase of new materials such as cameras, as the technology changes, not
to speak of tax, insurance, and bonuses.
If
we now multiply our weekly cost by 52: rounding up our 291,000 to 300,000
francs, we reach a grand total of 15,600,000 francs a year, not counting the
headings above. So the working capital of a newsreel company must be at least
something of the order of 16 million francs.
Now
what about the receipts? They come entirely from the subscriptions of cinemas
who take the newsreels. There is also the possibility of advertising revenue.
The newsreel companies do not reject this, but it is not as frequent as you
might expect. And I do not personally believe there are hidden subsidies
available.
So here is what it costs to hire the
copy:
Week 1: 700-1000 francs
Week 2 300-400 francs
Week 3 150 - 200 francs
Week 4 80-100 francs
Week 5 70-100 francs
Week 6 50-6- francs
Week 7: 40-50 francs
Top-price
copies therefor bring in 1,910 francs and lowest priced copies 1,390.
After
Week 7 these 'newsreels' may still be projected but for next to nothing. In
order that a newsreel realises its full value, it must have a booking for every
week. Sometimes it is not even worth taking the first week if the rest of the
bookings are not assured.
Contracts
for newsreels are agreed for one year with the cinema owners. The company is
then assured of a regular income over this period. Before the contract expires,
it has to do its level best to get them renewed. That effort can be translated
as always producing a better class of information, with improved technical
reproduction, and constant editorial attractiveness. But during the summer
(June, July, August) many provincial and suburban cinemas stop showing any
newsreels at all.
We
have already noted that if things go well, bookings for a newsreel will pay
back the costs of making the copy and contribute to the overheads on the
negative, the distributing and general costs. It can only start to make a
profit above a certain number of copies and the margin is never very great.
We
ought also perhaps to add to receipts the sales of contratypes of certain
documents. at about 100 francs a metre. But that adds on very little. As for
advertising, as I have already said, it exists, but there is less of it than
one might think. For instance, when we are shooting a scene, we might happen to
show hoardings on the walls of the street: they are part of the landscape and
people think it means we get income from advertising. It is only rarely the
case and then only on a very small scale. What about documents commissioned
with advertising in view? Firstly they are expensive to make and they also
cause problems. A company which includes them in its newsreel is always afraid
the public will react badly, or that the cinema manager, who ordered news not
advertisement features, will complain. The advertising footage may therefore be
cut. And that leads to disputes. Another aspect of the question is that the
companies paying you a share of their advertising budget are hard to please.
They always think the advertising is not given enough prominence. In the end,
advertising is only acceptable when it can be made informative, providing
knowledge or education for the public. As a resource it is unreliable, subject
to dispute and therefore leading to unpaid bills. A newsreel company can never
count on it as a steady source of revenue.
I
am not well qualified to talk to you about figures and I'm afraid you may have
found all this tedious. But it is difficult to introduce any excitement to
them. The estimates for a feature film may give rise to amusing anecdotes, but
the running budget of a newsreel company is not a subject on which one can
bluff, cheat or exaggerate. I would add that the price of booking newsreels is
high for cinema managers but is coming down. The news theatres ought to send it
up, if they are to remain viable. But cinemas have to face heavy expenses which
don't allow them to pay more. And then there is competition, as some foreign
producers have their negative subsidised by distribution at home, and can drop
the price; other companies lease their newsreels alongside big feature films
and are able to charge less.
Are
there any savings one can make? One can ask the cameraman to economise on film,
But then along comes an important event and he makes it up again. If there is
an uneventful week (the worst-case scenario for a newsreel company) then
another one comes along with too much subject matter - and once again the
expense balances out.
I've
set out the facts as plainly and simply as possible. Our task tonight is not to
look at the moral side of newsreels, either to criticise or praise them -
that's another debate. We know that every night the newsreels offer us the face
of the world and that those willing to turn psychologist can see in this
reduced compass a forecast of the future. Newsreels offer facts, and facts are
more eloquent than writing or speeches. I remember someone said to me one day,
"Why do newsreels always go to town over military parades and armaments
displays?" And I had to reply: "I can't help it, that is what the
world looks like this week". I remember having to bring out a newsreel
when even Switzerland was joining in the military chorus. These events were
obviously significant and heavy with menace. A newsreel is given life by the
breath of the world.
Newsreel
companies do not get the same financial rewards from their films as the
producers of features. But while they may not make much, they do have to try
not to actually lose money and to get sufficient return on their capital.
[1] The articles translated here come
from Germaine Dulac's personal archives, preserved in the Fonds Colson
Malleville in the Bibliothèque du film (BiFi) in Paris, with the kind
permission of M. Yann Beauvais, representing the copyright holders.
[2] This piece was written in 1934, and a
version of it was published in the Revue internationale du cinéma éducateur in
August that year. At this date, fascism was just beginning to be taken as a
serious threat in France. The article is probably more influenced by
Briand-style pacifism than by anti-fascism, but it is possible that some of the
allusions to 'international understanding' refer to the Soviet Union. This
translation is based on the typescript in the BiFi archives, Fonds Malleville,
GD 1298.
[3] Translated from BiFi archives, Fonds
Malleville, GD 1371.
[4] Author's note: NB This text was
written a few years before the war, at a time when newsreels in the cinema were
allowed to circulate freely. Since 1939 things have changed. Newsreels in every
country now mislead their public by omission, since no belligerent power has
any wish to show the public images filmed by the enemy. Cinema newsreels, which
for all the authenticity of their images have rarely been entirely objective
[in presentation], have now become one of the most developed and important
branches of propaganda.
[5] Translated from lecture notes in BiFi
archives, fonds Malleville, GD 1131, c. 1934.
In Abel, Richard, ed. French Film Theory and Criticism. Princeton U P, 1988.
- " Aesthetics, Obstacles, Integral Cinégraphie" [1926] 389-397.
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