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Germaine
Dulac [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. 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. [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. 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. [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. 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 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. 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: 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. [5]
Translated from lecture notes in BiFi archives, fonds
Malleville, GD 1131, c. 1934.
7894 words
I The
educational and social effects of
newsreels[2]
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