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A critical study of the poetic voice in the narratives of selected documentary films of the 1930s

Johnson, Mary Charlotte, Ph.D.

The Ohio State University, 1989

Copyright ©1989 by Johnson, Mary Charlotte. All rights reserved.

UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106

A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE POETIC VOICE IN THE NARRATIVES

OF SELECTED DOCUMENTARY FILMS

OF THE 1930s

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By Mary C. Johnson, B.S., M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University

1989

Dissertation Committee: Approved by

Dr. Maia Pank Mertz

Dr. Mojmir Drvota / Advise^ Dr. Clayton Lowe / College of ^duodtion Copyright by Mary Charlotte Johnson 1989 To Leah and Elizabeth

For patience and understanding

beyond their years

11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I express sincere gratitude to my mentor, Dr. Maia Pank Mertz, for her sustained positive support and active guidance during my graduate studies and throughout this research. Thanks also to the other members of my advisory committee, Drs. Mojmir Drvota and Clayton Lowe for their encouragement and suggestions. Gratitude is expressed to Ann Kipp of the Rural Electric Association and to Ken Keylor of the Belmont Electric Cooperative. Sincere appreciation is expressed to Ruth Parkinson Brannan, Frank Parkinson and Jake Parkinson for graciously permitting me an interview. Additional thanks to Dr. Robert Wagner for igniting my interest in the subject and to Dr. William Stott for his inspirational text on the thirties. Special thanks to Dr. Charles Harpole for his professional guidance, constructive criticism and enduring friendship.

Ill VITA

1 9 7 1 ...... B.S. Kent State University, Kent, Ohio

1974-1985 ...... Secondary English teacher Flood Junior High School Englewood, Colorado, Mt. Gilead High School Mt. Gilead, Ohio

1985 ...... M.A. The Ohio State University

1935-1988 ...... Graduate Teaching Assistant The Ohio State University, Educational Studies

1987-1988 ...... Graduate Research Assistant The Ohio State University, Department of Photography and Cinema

PUBLICATIONS

1987 ...... Inangaro, Logan Elm Press

AWARDS AND HONORS

1987 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate Award, The Ohio State University

1987 ...... $5,000 scholarship from The Women in Film Foundation

FIELD OF STUDY Major field: English education Studies in: Film

IV TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iii

VITA ...... iv

LIST OF FIGURES...... vi

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Initial Research ...... 7 Prior Research...... 9 Definition of Terms ...... 12 De s i g n ...... 17 Methodology...... 19

II. THE THIRTIES AND THE EMERGENT POETIC VOICE . 23

Whitman’s Influence ...... 28 Pare Lorentz...... 36

III. NIGHT M A I L ...... 42

IV. SPANISH E A R T H ...... 66

V. POWER AND THE L A N D ...... 86

VI. CONCLUSION...... 108

APPENDIX

A. FILMOGRAPHY...... 117

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 119 LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURES PAGES

1. Words and Images in St a s i s ...... Ill

2. Words and Images in Fl u x ...... Ill

3. Words and Images in Fusion ...... Ill

VI CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

The need for this dissertation originated in the secondary classroom. After eight years of daily interactions with secondary students, this researcher observed that students were becoming passive learners, relying on visual rather than lexical sources to acquire information and formulate thought. Of particular concern for this researcher was the realization that for many students, passive viewing accounted for a diminished capacity to abstract internal visual images from lexical texts. Preliminary research reiterated this concern:

The fear is that the visual images automatically fed from the new electronic media constitute a passive imaging experience which may diminish our own mental ability to image, just as any physical ability that is not used tends to atrophy.i

Students have become less and less able to actively participate in the making of meaning without relying upon visual cues. This is especially true for the reader.

In relation to reading, stories abound indicating that poor readers can often say words correctly, but they have no sense of the meaning. In other words, no mental image arises in the mind

1 Nancy S. Thompson, "Media and Mind: Imaging as an Active Process," English Journal, 77, No. 7 (1988) , p. 47. '...... 1 to make the reader aware of the meaning of the words .2

Recent resources such as the Visual Dictionary further affirm dependency upon images for meaning. The dictionary features graphic rather than linguistic descriptions and is designed to answer the question: "Do you know what it looks like but not what it’s called?" or

"Do you know what it’s called but you can’t picture it?"®

The need for a Visual Dictionary may in part be attributed to an increasingly pluralistic society, yet the need may also reflect a heightened dependence upon visual stimuli in order for cognition to occur. Clearly the demand for such a reference book indicates an accelerating reliance on images in the process of making meaning.

Today’s classroom communities are populated by image-dependent students. No longer does the term multiculturalism allude only to those students for whom

English is a second language or those students who speak and write non-standard English; it also encompasses those students who are viewers rather than readers and writers.

Foster defines the problem when he says;

2 Thompson , p. 48,

® Visual Dictionary, ed. Jean-Claude Corbeil (New York : Facts on File Publications, 1986) , p. 18. Two different cultures meet in American public schools. Young people who receive most of their information through television and films encounter the book-oriented teacher, who has experienced education as a linear, thoughtful process grounded in the use of written language.*

The gap between these two cultures widens with each successive generation and each respective technological advancement.

Television is a particularly seductive imparter of language and culture, not only because the medium has realistic and multi-sensory properties, but more

importantly, because it is pervasive. In less than forty years, the presence of televisions in U.S. households has risen from 9% in 1950 to 98.2% in 1989. While only 1.0%

of homes had multi-sets in 1950, today 62.6% of all U.S. households have more than one set.® When cable TV was

made available in 1965, only 2.3% of U.S. households took

advantage of this option. By 1989, 52.8% of U.S.

households had cable. Only 0.2% of U.S. households

subscribed to pay cable when it was introduced in 1975;

today's subscribers comprise 28.9%. Perhaps the fastest

growing technology is the video cassette recorder (VCR).

•* Harold M . Foster, The New Literacy: The Language of Film and Television (Urbana, Illinois: National Coucil of Teachers of English, 1979) , p. vii.

* Leonard C. Feldman, Television Bureau o f Advertising Survey Research, Trends in Television (tVB: À Research Trend Report, 1988) , p. 4. In 1978, only 0.3% of U.S. households had VCR’s while 66% of today's households have VCRs.*

The advent of the VCR has made television even more

enticing. Students are growing up in homes where

videotapes rather than books line the bookshelves. As

Postman asserts, "Television does not ban books, it

simply displaces them.

Research indicates that far more students choose to

use their free time watching television than reading

books. A survey entitled "Television Generation" says

that "fifty-five percent of elementary school children

choose to watch television, while only six percent

read."® This is further substantiated by a two year

comprehensive investigation of how fifth-grade students

spent their time out of school.

Fifty percent of the children in the two samples were reading from books 4 minutes a day or less. Thirty percent read 2 minutes a day or less. Almost 10 percent never reported reading any book on any day. For the majority of the children, reading books occupied 1 percent of their free time or less. 9

6 Feldman , p. 5.

^ Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death:__ Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (N.Y. : jPenguin Books, 1986) , p. 141.

® Thompson , as quoted on p. 47.

9 The Contexts of School-Based Literacy, Proc. of the Contexts of Literacy Conference, June Ï984 (New York: Random House, 1984) , p. 150. In contrast, eighty-four percent of the children elected to watch at least two hours of television daily.lo The percentage of time invested in these activities inherently affects the way students learn.

Television viewing is a dominant activity which begins in early childhood and is sustained into adolescence. A dominant activity, a term used in Soviet cognitive psychology, is an activity that is common to most children in a particular culture.

It [dominant activity] is based on the belief that responses, behavioral and cognitive, built over long periods become internalized and used to guide information processing and social behavior.

The content of the activity, through its form or sign system, requires certain kinds of decoding and encoding skills. Though television viewing is a dominant activity in the lives of most students, little or no formal training is provided for this activity.

Educators fail to recognize that the majority of their students are not habitual readers and writers”, they are habitual viewers. Yet these student viewers are not taught to interpret images; that is, viewers do not know how to make meaning when interacting with images. Just

* ° The Contexts of School-Based Literacy , p . 150.

Bruce Watkins, "Television Viewing as a Dominant Activity of Childhood: A Developmental Theory of Television Effects," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 2 (1985) , p. 324. as students are taught to read, they should also be

taught to view.

Viewing, like reading, is an interpretive act. The transaction by which we make sense of a film or television program involves a complex, fascinating series of mental events during which a message is transformed from one code to another, from the language of pictures and sounds into the language of thoughts. Like reading, viewing is a creative process; much as the reader forms new thoughts in response to words on a page, the viewer creates meanings from the symbolic images that flash in quick succession across the screen.12

If viewers are not trained to interpret images, learning

is reduced to a passive task.

Not since the advent of Gutenberg’s movable type has

there been such a dramatic need to reconceptualize and

recontextualize what literacy has come to mean. Just as

preliterate cultures relied on oral language and literate

cultures relied on the printed word, "postliterate"

cultures rely on the visual image as its developmental

instrument of thought. The problem for many students in

the age of visual literacy is how to think in images when

confronted with the literal image. For those students

whose cognitive development has been formed by literal

images, learning to think imagistically is a complex

undertaking for which they receive little or no training.

12 William V. Costanzo, Double Exposure:__ composing through writing and film (Upper Montclair, New jersey: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc., 1984) , p. 189. INITIAL RESEARCH

For this researcher, the aforementioned concerns fostered an interest in media studies and subsequently initiated this interdisciplinary exploration of the interinanimationis between words and images. The initial research began in a documentary film class. The nature of the project was to examine how text and image interfaced in both still photography and documentary filmmaking during the 1930s and 1940s. What became apparent in the initial study was a need to refine the scope of the study, concentrating on the poetic voice in the narratives of selected 1930s documentary films.

Historically, the relationship between film as an emerging art form and film as an evolving technology has been a symbiotic one. When electronic sound recording and reproduction were introduced in 1926, synchronized sound became a feasible option for filmmakers. Though many filmmakers resisted this new technology, early films such as THE JAZZ SINGER (which was released in 1927 and featured A1 Jolson speaking and singing) were box office successes. The "talkies" had arrived, and what began as a novelty was to become a convention. By the end of

^3 I, A. Richards, The Philosophy ofRhetoric (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1936) , pp. 47-66. Though Richards’ term has a linguistic connotation, herein interinanimation alludes to the relationship between words and images. 1929, "8,700 theaters had been wired for sound, at great expense.^ *

The acquisition of this new technology prompted considerable experimentation. Unfortunately, in the majority of feature films, the use of synchronized sound too easily settled into predictable formats. Rather than

integrating theme, orchestrated music merely served as background to the corresponding movement within the

images. Voices and sound effects simply matched the action on the screen. Documentary films, having a weaker

economic base, experimented with the less expensive post-

synchronous sound. Original musical scores and sound

effects were theoretically counterpoised with the images.

Literary artists wrote commentaries which stimulated

conceptual thinking concerning the role of language in a

visual medium.

The advent of sound film demarcates the 1930s as the

beginning of an era, a fertile era which was to marry the

sensibilities of filmmakers with those of literary

artists, a phenomenon evidenced primarily in documentary

films. The important theoretical challenge mandated by

this new technology was how to integrate the visually

1 “* Louis Giannetti and Scott Eyman, Flashback : A Brief Hi_story of__Film (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hail, 19861 ", pi TSST oriented, formerly silent films with the essentially

literary narratives written expressly for these documentary films. Yet the interdisciplinary field of

film and literature studies has produced few substantial studies of the poetic voice in the narratives of 1930s documentaries or theoretical treatises on the dynamics between words and moving images.

PRIOR RESEARCH

The existing research which addresses the advent of

sound and its impact on subsequent narratives tends to

examine only classic Hollywood films, ignoring the large

body of work produced by documentarians. Though

Kozloff’s research does recognize the influence of

documentaries on filmic narrative discourse, the focus of the study is still the Hollywood feature film.is

Hammand’s work, too, focuses on prestige or "A" pictures

and is more concerned with the film industry and its

technology than it is with narrative discourse.i®

Doane's work combines psychoanalytic film theory,

linguisitic narrative theory, Soviet dialectical theory,

and phenomenology in an intertextual approach to

1® Sarah Ruth Kozloff, "The Voice Unseen: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film," DAI, 45 (1984) , 1557A (Stanford University).

1® Martha Carol Hammand, "The Effects of the Adoption of Sound on Narrative and Narration in the American Cinema," DAI, 44 ( 1983) , 1227A (The University of Wisconsin- Madison ) . 10 analyzing filmic narratives and the spectator. Again, the films analyzed are examples of classic Hollywood cinema.17 Smoodin’s research addresses the narration within the narrative, analyzing the differences between the cinematic narrative and the novelistic one. Once more, the examples are drawn from fictional film rather than documentary.18

Though research regarding 1930s documentaries does incorporate the cultural context in which the films were produced, prior research still seems preoccupied with the formalistic aspects of films. The camera’s movement or

the composition of the films are dominant concerns.

Charles Wolfe’s article, "Modes of Discourse in Thirties

Social Documentary: The Shifting ’I’ of Native Land,"

illuminates the social climate which promoted the

creation of such narratives, but discusses the shifting

point of view established by the camera rather than the

spoken word. Again, in Uricchio’s work, the focus of the

17 Mary Ann Doane, The Dialogical Text:__Filmic Irony and the Spectator, Diss. The University of Iowa Ï979 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International , 1984 ) .

18 Eric Loren Smoodin, "Voice-Over: A Study of the Narration Within the Narrative," DAI, 45 ( 1984) , 669A (University of California, Los Angeles). 11 study centers upon the imagery, in this case, the

shifting cinematic representation of reality.i*

Those publications which elucidate the dynamics between words and images tend to concentrate on still

rather than moving images, as is obvious in the title of

Hunter's work. Image and Word, The Interaction of

Twentieth-Century Photographs and Texts .zo Though Assa's "Le Lieu Du Livre: Textes, Figures" concludes that

figure and text create a total effect richer than that of

either component alone, the subject is the pictographic

origins of writing rather than the dynamics between words

and moving images.

Special note should be made of William Stott’s

Documentary Expression in Thirtie s America.z2 Though

this work, too, devotes much of the exposition to those

creative texts which juxtaposed words and still images,

Stott’s text truly embodies the documentary impulse of

the 1930s.

^9 William Charles Uricchio, 'Rottman's "Berlin" and the City Film to 1930,’ DAI, 43 (1982) , 290A (New York University).

2® Jefferson Hunter, Image and Word: The Interaction of Twentieth-Century Photographs and Texts (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987) , pp. 1- 3.

Sonia Sara Assa, "Le Lieu Du Livre: Textes, Figures," DAI, 43 ( 1982) , 2360A (New York University).

22 William Stott, Documentary Expression in Thirties America (London: Oxford University Press, 1973). 12

DEFINITION OF TERMS

To crystallize the meanings intended within this proposed study, it is necessary to define key terms.

These definitions will be considered operational terms for exclusive application within this study. Therefore,

"poetic voice" shall be treated as one term, "narrative" shall be distinguished from narration, and "documentary films" will be broadly defined since this study is less concerned with the semantics of the term "documentary" and more concerned with how documentaries were produced as ideological and aesthetic collaborations by filmmakers and literary artists of the 1930s.

"Poetic voice" is conceived as one term since the individual meanings are diminished when considered separately, and enhanced when united. In this instance, to examine words in isolation is to ignore the mutual dependence of words. As Richards stated:

Often the whole utterance in which the co­ operating meaning of the component words hang on one another is not itself stable in meaning. It utters not one meaning but a movement among meanings.zs

Consider "poetic." If poetic is defined as "having or

showing the sensibility of a poet,"2 * then it becomes

necessary to define "poet."

2 3 Richards , p. 48.

2 4 The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd ed. (Ï987) , p. 1492; hereafter cited as RHDËL. 13

Both the Greek word "poietes" and the Latin word

"poeta" mean "maker," or to the English speaker,

"poet."2 5 Yet the English word "poet" is associated with

"a person" and, as such, has a static connotation, while the word "maker" implies "a doer" and has an active connotation. If this is so, then "having or showing the sensibility of a poet" encompasses a larger meaning. Not only is the poet a person "having great imaginative and expressive gifts and possessing a special sensitivity to language," the poet is also a maker, a "creative artist

(as a composer or painter) whose work is marked by imagination, spontaneity, and lyricism."*®

This poet, who is both reflective and active, has a relationship to the corporeal world in which he*? resides, and as such, his world must also define what the poet is. As Archibald MacLeish, himself a poet of the

1930s, asserted, "He's [the poet’s] alive as a man. With a world to live in . . . , Discovering his time he discovered himself."*®

*5 RHDEL , p. 1493.

* ® Webster's Third New International Dictionary of t_he English Language , ( 1976 ) , p . i748.

* ? The use of the pronoun "he" is a stylistic choice rather than a gender choice.

*® "Archibald MacLeish," Writers at Work: T he Paris Review Interviews, ed. George Plimpton (New York : The Viking Press, 1981) , p. 25. 14

The world of the 1930s was one in which poets were acutely conscious of their social responsibilities.

These social poets thrived in a world which was to them an ideological womb. They understood that the "fact that poetic discourse has expression as its aim does not deprive poetic language of practical import."z* So these practical, social poets became collaborators in spirit and, eventually, in work. Filmmakers, composers, and literary artists alike became co-workers seeking a shared means of expression. This expression was manifest in the

"poetic voice."3 0

The poetic voice of the 1930s was the unification of the literal and figurative voices activated by the collective consciences of the poetic artists. The creative impulse which was the impetus for this voice could not be divorced from the world of its creators.

This personified voice represented a consolidated ideology; "the outward manifestation of the idea of the controlling consciousness . "3i Thus, the term "poetic voice" refers to a representative voice, one which

3 3 Jan Mukarovsky, The W ord and Verbal Art. trans. and ed. John Burbank and Peter Steiner. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977) , p. 6.

3 0 See Chapter II - The Thirties and the Emergent Poetic Voice.

3* John Harrington, The Rhetoric of Film (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 19^73 jT , p. 52. 15 literary and filmic artists made manifest in 1930s documentaries.

In contrast to the complexity of defining "poetic voice," the term "narrative" has a less ambiguous, more direct meaning. "Narrative" herein is "a story or account of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious."32 However, a distinction must be made between "narrative" and "narration." Narration, in this comtext, is "spoken language specifically directed to a

theater audience."3 3 An even finer distinction between a

"narrator" and a "commentator" is made by Harrington:

Technically, a narrating voice takes two forms: a narrator, who is either a character in a film or directly involved in its events, consequently representing a particular point of view; and a commentator, who is an omniscient source of supposedly unbiased information.3<

Generally, feature films use a narrator while

documentaries employ the commentator.

The documentaries of the 1930s predominately used a

voice-over narration which did not come from the images

on screen nor was it synchronized with the accompanying

visual image. Instead, the narration was recorded in a

studio after the actual footage was shot; that is, the narration was recorded post-synchronously.

32 RHDEL , p. 1278.

3 3 Harrington , p. 37.

3 4 Harrington , p. 37. 16

Considerable discourse has been devoted to the term

"documentary," as in "documentary films." Its first usage is credited to John Grierson, who simply described documentary as "the creative treatment of actuality." As the debate about the meaning of documentary continued, elaborately contrived definitions were offered to finally settle the issue. Such was the case when, in 1948, the

World Union of Documentary, meeting in Czechoslovakia, defined documentary film as follows:

. . . all methods of recording on celluloid any aspect of reality interpreted either by factual shooting or by sincere and justifiable reconstruction, so as to appeal either to reason or emotion, for the purpose of stimulating the desire for, and the widening of human knowledge and understanding, and of truthfully posing problems and their solutions in the spheres of economics, culture, and human relations.3s

The purpose of this study is not to issue the definitive answer to the question: What is a documentary film? As

Rotha stated, "What matters basically is the creative approach of the film-maker himself, especially in its human connotations."*®

Perhaps this study should turn to one of the most innovative of the 1930s documentarians for a definition.

Pare Lorentz, who is credited for establishing what

3® Robert L. Snyder, Pare L orentz and the Documentary Film (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968) as quoted by Paul Rotha , p. 3.

3® Paul Rotha, Documentary Diary (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1973) , p. xvi. 17 became the prototypical "look" of the 1930s documentary with his film, The Plow That Broke the Plains,s? offered a simple definition: a documentary film is "a factual

film which is dramatic."3® This definition is appropriate for this study, especially because Lorentz was so much a part of the creative pulse that was the

1930s.

DESIGN

The central focus of the design for this dissertation is documentary films. A preliminary study

included screenings of all the available documentaries

produced in the 1930s which could be obtained for viewing

through rental or library sources. Among these were

Granton Trawler (1934), Man of Aran (1934), Industrial

Britain ( 1935), Song of Ceylon (1935), Co a L..F a 2 e ( 1936), Night Mail (1936), and North Sea (1938) from Britain;

Hands (1934), The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936), The

River (1937), Spanish Earth (1937), The City (1939), Power and the Land (1939/1940) , Valley Town ( 1939/1940), And So They Live (1939/1940), and The Children Must Learn (1939/1940)3 9 from America; Triumph of the Will (1935)

3^ Pare Lorentz, dir.. The Plow That Broke the Plains, Resettlement Administration Film Unit, 1936. 3 8 Snyder , p. 3.

3 9 Though Power and the Land, Valley Town, And So T h ^ Liye and The Children M u s t Learn are generally identified as having been made in the 194Cis, the majority of the 18 and Olympia (1938) from Germany, and Land Without Bread (1932) from Spain.

The results revealed the emergence of three distinct narrative styles: poetic, journalistic, and dramatic.

"Poetic narrative" has as its essence poetry; that is, figurative language, meter and/or rhyme are intrinsic to the narrative. "Journalistic narrative" is essentially a direct presentation of facts or occurrences in a narrative which is primariy informative or persuasive.

"Dramatic narrative" has as its essence the tradition of storytelling where a narrator relates a story of real or imagined events which may be exaggerated to heighten audience interest. The narrator can also be a character within the story. Of course, these categories sometimes

intermingle since few of the films exclusively contained the qualities of any one style.

The criterion for selecting documentaries to be

studied within this research was to include those films

whose narratives were written by literary artists. A

"literary artist," in this case, is a person whose

dominant artistic impulse is as a writer and who is

recognized within his culural horizon as a writer of

literary merit.Thus, the following films and the

footage was shot in 1939. The 1940 date signifies when the films were released.

* 0 It should be noted here that though Pare Lorentz’s film, The River, had a poetic narrative, Lorentz is 19 respective literary artists will constitute the major body of this study: NIGHT MAIL (W. H. Auden), SPANISH

EARTH (Ernest Hemingway), and POWER AND THE LAND (Stephen

Vincent Benet). Each film will be discussed within the historical context of the 1930s.

METHODOLOGY

The primary methodology for studying these films was close analysis; thus, the research is subjective in the same sense that literary interpretation can be viewed as subjective. That is, the analysis is not subject to the rigors of the scientific or experimental mode of analysis. Since the films needed to be seen repeatedly, each film was transferred onto videotape for accessibility. To understand the complex interinanimation between the words and images within each film, this investigator proceeded as follows.

First, the sound track was recorded while the images were blocked. The sound track was then played approximately ten times. Analysis included noting recognizable patterns, stylistic characteristics, and abstract qualities of the narrative.

Second, the sound was eliminated by turning the volume off. The film was then viewed approximately ten treated historically as a filmmaker rather than a literary artist (though he was a film critic). More importantly, Lorentz's ideological and aesthetic contributions to the 1930s were of such importance that he will receive special attention in CHAPTER II. 20 times to analyze the images only. The method for analysis included thick description of shots, notation of the duration of shots, and observations of the semantic congruity of shots.

Third, the film was analyzed as originally produced with images and sound intact. The focus of the final

analysis was to examine the antinomies of the words and

images as they existed alone and together. Central to

this part of the analysis was how meaning was made when

images and words were juxtaposed.

Corroborative data were attained with various

strategies. Library sources provided needed historical

references. Literary reviews and criticisms from the

1930s were consulted. Perceptions of critics from this

period provided unique insights. Autobiographies and

letters of the filmmakers and literary artists provided

additional data. Filmographies furnished pertinent data

regarding personnel who collaborated on each film. All

of these sources helped formulate the names of key

figures who functioned as informants in the initial

stages of research and as provisional member checks in

the latter stages.

Correspondence and interviews with selected

informants incorporated both sequentially devised and

open-ended questions. The major weakness of this

approach was one of reliability. Since the informants 21 were relying heavily on recall from the past, factual accuracy was not always possible. Yet through descriptive language and personal anecdotes, other insights into the filmmakers and literary artists, the socio-political environment, and the collaborative process were attained.

After all the data were acquired, notable educators, film historians and literary critics were consulted to audit the preliminary research. This triangulation of data: analysis of the films, narrative styles and theoretical implications based upon the interinanimation of words and images; collection of corraborative data from reviews, autobiographies, letters and filmographies; data acquired from informants and subsequent member checks from the informants; and audits by recognized experts in education, literature and film history enhanced the trusworthiness of this study.

The goal of this dissertation is to contribute to

the growing body of research which promotes

interdisciplinary studies and nurtures a holistic

approach to learning. The results of this study will provide (1) new theoretical thinking regarding the dynamics between words and images, (2) implications of

these findings for the student as viewer, (3)

applications of these findings to teaching active

viewing, (4) new knowledge of film history and (5) deeper 22 insights into the literary and filmic artists featured within this study. CHAPTER II

THE THIRTIES AND THE EMERGENT POETIC VOICE

With the advent of synchronous sound, film acquired both a literal and a figurative voice. Yet the notion that films made prior to the 1930s were voiceless, as the misnomer "silent" denotes, is a myth.

The story of sound in film begins not, as many historians of film have presumed, with the introduction of the sound film, but with the invention of film itself. At no period in the history of films has it been customary to show them publicly without some sort of sound accompaniment. In other words, the silent film never existed.^

As early as 1671, Athanasius Kircher wrote in his

Ars magna lucis et umbrae of how he urged practitioners

[exhibitors] to accompany the images, projected

[reflected] onto a wall by a "catoptric lamp" in a

darkened room, with an explanation of the actual process.

The practitioner, Kircher suggested, should "demystify"

the apparatus for the spectators. Spectators needed to

understand that the show was a "catoptric, not a magical,

art." Kircher’s motivation was not solely educational;

early imagists were often accused of witchcraft, an

1 Alberto Cavalcanti, "Sound in Films," in Film Sound: Theory and Practice , ed. Elisabeth Weis, and John Belton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) , p. 98. 2 3 24 offense which was potentially punishable by torture and slow death.2

Throughout the evolution of film exhibition, films were accompanied by a variety of acoustic novelties.

Though the lecturer played an important role in early projectionist practices, eventually the lecturer catered more to the upper classes while the barker enticed the masses.3 The arrival of the phonograph created possibilities for musical accompaniment and sound effects, though the phonograph was still dependent upon the exhibitor.

Once movie houses were established, pianos or organs provided musical accompaniments. These accompaniments came into practice for two reasons: "(a) to drown the noise of the projectors; [and] (b) to give emotional atmosphere."'* As movie houses became even more viable commercial enterprises, accompaniment expanded to include symphony orchestras. Pianos and orchestras alike employed "leitmotifs" or themes associated with certain characters and played these themes whenever the

2 Charles Musser, History of American Cinema Series, I., (New York: Scribner, n.d.) , p. 30.

3 The lecturer presented travelogues or educational films in settings such as libraries and lecture halls. The barker was more of a carnival man, using physical films such as boxing matches or comedy features.

* Cavalcanti, p. 100. 25 corresponding characters appeared on the screen. Organs

were equipped with consoles which provided a vast array

of sound effects which would typically include stops

labeled: "train, chains, crockery, horse, siren, side

drum, bass drum, cymbals, piano, airplane, child crying,

and so on. . .

Thus, prior to the 1930s, sound served a utilitarian

function -- to accompany. Because the use of sound was

dependent upon the eccentricities of each exhibitor,

every viewing was a unique experience for the spectator.

Once sound film became a technical reality, filmmakers

had to decide what to do with this newly acquired,

literal voice, a fixed voice by comparison, capable of

reaching a multitude of spectators simultaneously.

For documentarians, decisions were necessarily

governed by economics. Innovative experimentation with

the soundtracks "... was necessitated by the limited

funds provided for the production of the films. Ways had

to be found to produce quality films on budgets below

those of commercial producers."® One of the "ways"

filmmakers discovered was government sponsored agencies.

The success of documentary (nearly all of whose members were, by the way, left wing) was due to the

5 Cavalcanti, p. 101.

® Robert L. Snyder, Pare Lorentz and the DocumentaryFilm (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968) , p . 5 . 26

fact that it hit on a source of finance based on the idea of the use of film as a public service - an idea which could appeal to government and industry alike.’

In Great Britain, for instance, a Film Unit headed originally by John Grierson, was established as part of the Empire Marketing Board, a government agency created to promote the British Empire’s role as producers, preservers and transporters of food supplies. The Film

Unit attracted outstanding cinematic talent who used the agency as a kind of experimental school for documentary.

Though the depression caused the eventual demise of the

Empire Marketing Board, the Film Unit and its film library were soon rescued by a new sponsor, the General

Post Office, in 1933, permitting the Unit to continue their fine work.®

In addition to Great Britain, the Soviet Union,

Germany, Italy, and eventually the United States funded most documentaries through government agencies. Though sponsoring agencies may have imposed the subjects of these documentaries, the filmmakers were relatively free to experiment with their subjects. Ironically, economic constrictions inspired rather than subverted creative activity. Rather than consider postsynchronous sound a

Basil Wright The Long View (New York: Random House, Inc., 197 4 ) , p. ÏÔ9.

® Snyder, p. 5. The work of the General Post Office is discussed more thoroughly in Chapter III. 27 limitation, filmmakers grasped every opportunity to explore the possibilities for employing postsynchronous sound. Musical composers and literary artists were engaged to collaborate with filmmakers to create what was to become the figurative voice of the 1930s.

This voice resonated the ideological milieu of the times, for ultimately, the artist’s utterance must reflect the relationship between the artist's self and his world. In harmony with the ancient Ionian philosophers who said that "all things are full of gods,"9 it was the Things of the world with which the artist of the 1930s was preoccupied. In Russia, filmmakers "discovered the poetry of fact, the magic of collective farms and tractor factories."io In America, where Joseph Freeman quipped, "one could be simultaneously a Communist and a supporter of

F.D.R. . . . ,"11 the social writer had no need to research his subject matter in libraries; "history collaborated with his designs, and every day’s newspapers

furnished him with a thousand themes."i*

9 Jacques Maritain, CreativeIntuition in Art and Poetry (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1953) , p. 10.

19 Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left (New York: Avon Books-Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1961) , p. 171.

11 Aaron, p . 287.

12 Aaron, p . 168. 28

WHITMAN’S INFLUENCE

The most influential writer of the 1930s was, paradoxically, not a thirties writer. Walt Whitman’s voice pervaded the 1930s though he had been dead for thirty-eight years. The Russian filmmaker, Dziga Vertov, expressed his admiration for Whitman, whose influence is evident in Vertov’s 1926 film, ONE SIXTH OF THE WORLD.

Employing Whitman’s catalogue style of Things,&3 the commentary fuses these Things in an incantation-style reminiscent of Whitman. Vertov, too, borrows Whitman’s universal pronoun as the commentator addresses all the people: "You in the small villages" . . . "You in the

tundra" . . . "You on the ocean" you are

the owners of one sixth of the globe."i* Again, Vertov's

lyrical visual style emulates Whitman's in MAN WITH A

MOVIE CAMERA. This 1929 film is a visual catalogue of

everday Things: trolly cars, street sweepers, window

washers, shutters, a woman awakening.

A 1929 film by another Russian filmmaker again

borrows from Whitman. Victor Turin’s film TURKSIB, a

feature-length film on the building of the Turkestan-

13 The capitalized word "Things" refers to the preoccupation 1930s’ artists had with concrete things as symbolic representations of the world.

Erik Barnouw, Documentary : A History of the Non- Fiction Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) , p . 6(j. 29

Siberia railway, imposes long sequences linked by subtitles in Whitmanesque style. "Turin’s tracing of small mountain rivulets into a raging, swollen river has been widely imitated."is The most obvious of these imitations is Pare Lorentz’s THE RIVER, which shall be discussed later in this chapter.

Walter Ruttman’s German film, BERLIN: THE SYMPHONY

OF A GREAT CITY, again uses Things -- factories, pedestrians, streetcars, food, rain, pubs, cabarets, and dancing legs to create a dramatic effect from the

"tempo’d accumulation of its single observations."

Credited as the impetus for the "symphonic form,"

Ruttman’s film also has obvious parallels to Whitman’s

style.16

Whitman dominanted the aesthetic sensibilities of

American artists as well, for in Whitman, "... the

poetic and the historical dream come together. There is

no gap between his [Whitman’s] beliefs and social

reality."17 The Things to which Whitman alluded created

a unique dichotomy between the corporeal world of the

15 Barnouw, p . 67.

1® Richard Meran Barsam, Nonfiction Film Theory and Criticism (New York: E . P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1976) , p . 27 .

17 Octavio Paz, O n Poets and Others (New York: Reaver Books-Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1986) , p. 8. 30

socially conscious poet and the visionary world of the artist.

America is dreamed in Whitman's poetry because it is a dream itself. And it is dreamed as a concrete reality, almost a physical reality, with its men, its rivers, its cities and mountains. All that huge mass of reality moves lightly, as if it were weightless; and in fact, it is without historic weight: it is the future incarnate. The reality Whitman sings is utopian.is

Utopia was a necessary dream for Depression era

America. The dream was parroted, became a mantra for the people. One Whitman was not enough.

Murray Kempton has said of the thirties that no other period in our literature produced so many counterfeit Walt Whitmans. This was in part because no other time so prized the Whitmanian "I" - able to see, incorporate, and give voice to all human experience. Several critics singled out for particular praise Whitman’s line "I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there." And Whitman’s stance of being there was a criterion of authenticity in expression at the time. To be trustworthy, a speaker needed to be the man or a firsthand witness; if he had suffered also, it would help.is

No one was a stranger to Whitman; he embraced the multitude as his own. ("I am large - I contain multitudes.")2o By enobling the suffering of the common

man, he offered a spiritual elixir to the downtrodden.

The voice of despair was juxtaposed with the voice of

I® Paz, p . 11.

19 William Stott, Documentar y E xpression inThirties America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973) , p. 36.

2 0 Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass" ed. Mark Van Doren (New York: Viking Press, 1945) , p. 134. 31 hope. His comforting rhetoric addressed the worker directly:

Shoulder your duds, dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth, Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go. If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip .... Sit awhile, dear son; Here are biscuits to eat, and here is milk to drink; . . .zi

Again and again Whitman’s voice resonated throughout

the poetry and prose of the 1930s. Even the most revered

writers of the period imitated Whitman’s style. Carl

Sandburg’s book-length poem. The People, Yes, published

in 1936, emulated Whitman’s technique of stringing prose

cameos together in a concatenation, and his use of

parallel construction and repetition. Yet Sandburg’s

content more accurately depicted both the humor and the

despair of the thirties. A constant tension, a movement

between the light and the dark, provides a subtext for

the humor:

"That old barn on your place, Charlie, was nearly falling last time I saw it, how is it now?" "I got some poles to hold it on the east side and the wind holds it up on the west."**

*' Whitman, pp. 127, 128.

* * Carl Sandburg, The People, Yes (New York: Brace, Harcourt and Company, 1936) , p. 10. 32

Both pain and pride compose the following description of desperation :

He takes a towel and wets it, placing it over the heart, the idea being that in case he shoots himself there will be no soot nor splatter and a clean piece of workmanship.% a

Prose writers, too, showed evidence of Whitman's dominance. Steinbeck’s work, The_ G_rapes__o^ , is the definitive novel of Depression America. Early in the book, Casy confides a Whitmanesque perception of the soul to Joad as he shares his thoughts aloud,

’ . . . Why we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,’ I figgered, ’maybe it’s all men an' all women we love; maybe that’s the Holy Sperit - the human sperit - the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.’z^

Steinbeck’s description of highway 66 also mimics Whitman’s voice:

Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66 - the long concrete path across the country, waving gently up and down on the map, from the Mississippi to Bakersfield - over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the rich California valleys.2 s

The universal pronoun "we" is used in the latter part of

the novel when Ma says to Tom, "... Why, Tom, we’re

2 3 Sandburg, p. 15.

2 4 John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Penguin Books-Viking Press, 19 39) p. 31.

2 5 Steinbeck, p. 151. 33 the people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out.

Why, we’re the people - we go on."^«

So closely allied to the dream of the thirties was

Whitman, that for some. Whitman was the dream. And when the dream was betrayed, it was Whitman who was the

traitor. Michael Gold, a Leftist writer who wrote a column for the Daily Worker and later was a contributing

editor for The Liberator, idolized Whitman. Emulating

Whitman’s passion and style, Gold wrote:

. . . The tenement is in my blood. When I think it is the tenement thinking. When I hope it is the tenement hoping. I am not an individual; I am all that the tenement group poured into me during those early years of my spiritual travail.2?

As Gold grew more cynical, he questioned Whitman’s dream

in the poem, "Ode to Walt Whitman," when he wrote:

And me a son of Walt Whitman Kicked into a basement to die - Eddie Greenbaum, skinny shipping clerk - Americano at twelve a week - Nietzche packing pink lady’s underwear - Pale, goofy young poet of hardware - Department store intellectual dope - Soaring with Keats above the gum-chewers - Doped by a priest named Walt Whitman - Why did I mistake you for the sun?2s

26 Steinbeck, p. 360

27 Aaron, p . 105.

2 8 Michael Gold, "Ode to Walt Whitman," in Social Writings of the 1930s, ed. Jack Salzman, and Leo Zanderer (n.p.: Burt Franklin & Co., Inc., 1978) , p. 89. 34

Though Gold renews his admiration for Whitman at the end of the poem, clearly Whitman’s dream is undone and Gold must look to the new prophet, Lenin, to dream again.

Whitman’s voice told of Things. Thirties writers told of Things. Yet it was often images of Things which affected the thirties most profoundly. As Roy Stryker so eloquently stated, "The climate was right for photography, wretched for farming." From 1935 to 1943,

Stryker directed a small group of photographers as Chief of the Historical Section of what was originally, as part of the New Deal, the Resettlement Administration (R.A.) and later became the Farm Security Administration

(F.S.A.).z»

The work of these photographers was largely concerned with the Things which occupy the artist. As part of this government-sponsored project, Dorothea

Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, Carl Mydans, Ben

Shahn, Russell Lee, Jack Delano, John Collier, Marion

Post, John Vachon, and Gordon Parks photographed 270,000

Things.30 Under Stryker’s guidance, these artists

"... introduced Americans to America.i

3 9 Roy Emerson Stryker and Nancy Wood, In This Proud Land (New York: Galahad Books, 1973) , p. 7.

3 0 Stryker and Wood, p. 17.

3 1 Stryker and Wood, p. 9. 35

In a set of instructions prepared for F.S.A. photographers, Stryker suggested that the photographers concentrate on what he called the "common denominators" of life in the small town. Among the myriad Things

Stryker urged his photographers to document were: main streets, storefronts, churches, garages, fire houses, porches, people loafing and talking, and close-ups of windows showing menus and "specials."32

The result of this project was not merely a photo­ documentation of the period or a holdings of photographs in the Library of Congress. These photographers, who could evoke powerful emotions by depicting a pair of worn shoes, the face of a migrant mother, or a grave with an empty plate on its dusty mound, created a figurative voice with images.

A few of these photographers did not rely on the

figurative voice of the image alone, however.

Collaborations between writers and photographers produced books such as You Have Seen There Faces by Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White, An American Exodus by Paul Taylor and Dorothea Lange, Let Us Now Praise Famous

Men by James Agee and Walker Evans, and Land of the Free

by Archibald MacLeish and selected F.S.A. photographers.

3 2 Compiled by Robert W. Wagner from a copy given to him by Roy E. Stryker, n.d. 36

These artists understood that by juxtaposing words and

images the power of both mediums would be enhanced.

In the thirties, the image was not yet regarded as the most credible medium. The word was far more tenable, especially if delivered over the radio:

Archibald MacLeish tried to coax poets to write for the radio because the medium’s credibility was so high. "Only the ear is engaged," he said, "and the ear is already half poet. It believes at once; creates and believes."3s

No one understood this better than Pare Lorentz.

PARE LORENTZ

Lorentz was a writer who began his affiliation with

films as a film critic, writing first, from 1930 to 1932,

for the New York Evening Journal and later, in 1933, for

Vanity Fair. Highly regarded as a serious film critic, Lorentz earned a national reputation and eventually wrote

for other publications including Town and Country,

McCall * s (the first woman’s magazine to include serious

film criticism), Fortune, Harper’s, Scribner’s, Forum, and Story.^ « In 1935, Lorentz was hired as a consultant for the

Resettlement Administration (R.A.) The R.A. wanted to

make a series of eighteen films that would "provide new

3 3 Stott, p . 83.

3 < Snyder, pp. 15-16 37 methods to solve awkward agricultural problems.

Lorentz recommended instead that the R.A. concentrate on one film that would be "good enough technically to bear comparison with commercial films and be entertaining enough to draw an audience."*®

Lorentz’s role shifted from that of consultant to

that of producer and director. With a limited budget of

$6,000, Lorentz produced THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE

PLAINS.3 7 The provocative moving images in the film were

directly inspired by the still photography of the 1930s,

including the use of real people as subjects, location

shooting, low horizon shots, and flat, unfiltered

lighting. THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS is credited for

having created the prototypical "look" of documentary

films to follow. What most distinguishes the film,

however, is the emotionally-charged commentary and music.

Virgil Thomson was selected from among twelve

composers interviewed to compose the original musical score. He and Lorentz worked together closely during

post-production; Thomson often played developing themes

35 Snyder, p. 25,

3 6 Howe, "U.S. Film Service Presents," U.S . C a mera (June- July 1940). From the personal files of Pare Lorentz, as quoted in Snyder, p. 25.

3 7 Snyder, pp. 27 and 37. The final cost of the film was $19,260, much of which Lorentz financed out of his own pocket. 38 on the piano while the rough cut was projected.3®

Although Lorentz had prepared a sketchy shooting script, the actual narration was written after all the footage had been shot and edited. Clearly, this methodology worked, and the final film, released in 1936, was heralded for its expressive visual lyricism, and its use of sound, especially the counterpoint between sound and images. Not only did the film receive acclaim from the critics. President Roosevelt ardently gave his support.

More importantly, the success of THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE

PLAINS made it possible for Lorentz to make his next documentary - THE RIVER.

Frustrated by government bureaucracy, petty

jealousies, limited income (Lorentz had drawn a salary of

$18.06 a day from the government), and the debt he had

accrued during the making of THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE

PLAINS (the film's final cost was $19,260), Lorentz went

to his superior at the R.A., Rexford Tugwell, to resign.

On his w’ay out of Tugwell’s office, Lorentz mentioned

that the R.A. was missing the biggest story in the world

- the Mississippi River. Convinced that Lorentz’s idea

for a film about "the River" was excellent, Tugwell

contacted the White House to secure funds. As a result.

President Roosevelt allocated $50,000 for THE RIVER.®*

3® Snyder, p. 34 39

An astute critic of even his own work, Lorentz realized that the narration of THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE

PLAINS was the film's weakest component. Determined to improve on THE RIVER, Lorentz wrote a literary narrative for this dramatic saga of the Mississippi River. Again,

Virgil Thomson collaborated as the composer.

THE RIVER was an unprecedented success. Particular praise was given to the narrative:

Mr. Lorentz provided a text crammed with fact and uplifted by an unusual lyric quality which shows up in all their triviality the "narrations" of most nonfiction films.

Literary artists, too, found the work laudable. James

Joyce described it as "the most beautiful prose I have

heard in ten years.After reading the narrative in

book form, Carl Sandburg said, "It is among the greatest

of the psalms of America’s greatest river."^2 The text

of THE RIVER was also compared to Whitman's Leaves of

Grass.

In retrospect, the comparison to Whitman was

understated. Frequently in the text of The River,

39 Snyder, pp. 50-52

Gilbert Seldes, January 1938, as quoted in "Pare Lorentz’s The River," ed. Lewis Jacobs (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1979) , p. 124.

41 White, "Pare Lorentz," Scribner's (January, 1939) , P. 10, as quoted in Snyder, pp. 183-184.

’3 Postcard from Carl Sandburg to William Sorkin, n.d. From the personal files of Pare Lorentz, as quoted in Snyder, p. 184. 40

Lorentz emulates Whitman’s use of repetition, hyphenated adjectives, and the cataloging of Things. Compare this first excerpt from The River with the excerpt which follows from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass:

. . . Down from the cut-over mountains, • Down from the plowed-off slopes, Down every brook and rill, rivulet and creek, . . .«3

. From the walls of the powerful, fortress’d house, From the clasp of the knitted locks- from the keep of the well-closed doors, . . .^ *

Again Lorentz borrows from Leaves of Grass in the following passage which includes the Whitmanesque use of the universal pronoun, repetition, and concatenation of

Things which are connected thematically:

We cut the top off the Alleghenies and sent it down the river. We cut the top off Minnesota and sent it down the river. We cut the top off Wisconsin and sent if down the river. We left the mountains and the hills slashed and burned, And moved on. . . . * ^

Pare Lorentz, The River (New York: Stackpole Sons, 1938) n.p. This text was taken verbatim from the film.

** Whitman, "The Last Invocation," Leaves__of Grass, pp. 314-315.

‘•5 Lorentz, n.p. 41

Compare the previous passage to the following excerpt from Whitman. Though the tone differs, the subject and techniques are similar:

. Cutters down of wood, and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kennebec. Dwellers in cabins among the California mountains, or by the little lakes, or on the Columbia, Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande - friendly gatherings, the characters and fun. Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river - dwellers on coasts and off coasts, . . .< 6

Lorentz should not be condemned for his liberal borrowings from Whitman, however. Instead, he should be valued as a visionary. Lorentz understood how film composition, music and language could fuse to create a unified poetic voice.

Both the literal and figurative voice were made manifest in the thirties. Documentary thrived. As a result of this fertile experimentation, three distinct narrative styles came into being. The first of these,

which shall be termed "poetic," is represented by the

film NIGHT MAIL.

^ ^ Whitman, "Song of the Broad-Axe," Leaves of Grass, p. 187. CHAPTER III

NIGHT MAIL

When the Empire Marketing Board (E.M.B.) was abolished in 1933, the fate of the Film Unit and its extensive Film Library was dubious. In support of the

Film Unit, Norman Wilson, the Editor of Cinema Quarterly, wrote :

. . . perhaps the greatest achievement of the EMB has been the training of a number of young men as film directors, free from the trammels and inhibitions of commercialism. Working in a unity of spirit and effort their talents have nevertheless been allowed to develop along distinctively individual lines. It may be that one day the influence of the spirit that has been created at the EMB Film Unit will have been its most valuable gift to the cinema.1

Wilson's astute observations not only voiced an empathy

shared by many; his comments, in retrospect, were prophetic.

Thanks to the General Post Office (G.P.O.) and the

support of Sir Stephen Tallents, the Film Unit continued

to produce films. Early in 1934, the G.P.O. moved into a

small sound studio in suburban Blackheath. Under John

Grierson’s guidance, the Unit flourished in an atmosphere

which Basil Wright described as "an orgy of

1 Norman Wilson, Cinema Quarterly Vol I., No. 4, 1933 as quoted in Paul Rotha, Documenta r y Diary (London; Seeker & Warburg, 1973) , pp. 62-63.

42 43 experimentation."2 Documentary filmmakers were discovering a new aesthetic.

Word of this new-art form spread among the intellectual community, drawing the curious into the experimental circle. In 1935, W . H. Auden, then a schoolmaster at the Downs School, wrote to his friend and former classmate, Basil Wright, inquiring about a job with the Film Unit at the General Post Office. Auden admired John Grierson’s documentary work, especially his portrayals of ordinary working men. Wright, who was working as a director for Grierson, passed Auden’s letter

on to Grierson. Auden was swiftly summoned, offered a

full-time job (for three pounds a week) and promptly put

to work. Auden shared the news with another friend. Nob

Snodgrass :

I’m leaving teaching pro tem at any rate to work for Grierson at the G.P.O. Film Unit . . . At the moment I ’m writing them choruses for a film about the Night Mail to Scotland. Have to get in all the Scotch place names I can find.a

Much of the footage of NIGHT MAIL, a depiction of

the postal train that ran nightly from London to Glascow,

had already been shot and edited in rough cut by the time

Auden was assigned to the project. In fact, that is

* Basil Wright, The_ Long View (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974) , p7 llT.

3 Humphrey Carpenter, W . H . Auden: A Biography (London: George Allen & Unwin, 198Ï) , pp. 177-178. 44 precisely why Auden was recruited. The initial screening revealed that something was missing, too much of the film was devoted to the mechanics of getting letters from one point to another. Grierson and Wright, who originally collaborated on the film’s conception, felt there was no sense of the people who wrote and received the letters.

Auden's task was to write a poem which would enliven the film and relate the subject to ordinary people.

Without having seen any of the existing footage of the film, Auden wrote the first draft while still at the

Downs School. When he arrived to fulfill his commitment to the Unit as a full-time employee, Grierson immediately sent him on location to watch the shooting and learn the technique of directing. Harry Watt, who was directing, disapproved of Grierson’s decision to engage Auden and treated Auden somewhat callously;

To me, at that moment, he was only somebody to run along the railway line with a spare magazine, and if he turned up late - as he was inclined to do - he got the hell bawled out of him. He was to prove how wrong my estimation of him was, and leave me with a lifetime’s awe of his talent.*

Throughout his work on the film, Auden worked most

closely with Alberto Cavalcanti. Brazilian-born

Cavalcanti had lived most of his life in Paris where, in

the twenties, he had been a leader in the avante-garde

* Harry Watt, Don ’t Look at the Camera (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974) , p. 8Ï. 45 movement. A lack of funds and a mother to care for prompted Cavalcanti to abandon experimental films for an attractive contract with Paramount Studios in Paris.

Despite the money, Cavalcanti was soon disgusted by the hack work. Quite suddenly, he quit and went to London where again he could experiment, this time with sound, under the auspices of the G.P.O. Calvalcanti became universally respected by everyone he encountered in the

Film Unit. Watt said of him; "I will categorically

state that British documentary films would not have advanced the way they did from then on [1934] without

Cav’s [Cavalcanti’s] influence."s

NIGHT MAIL was very much a collaborative production and the spirit of experimentation was the impetus for the work. As Cavalcanti stated:

We did lots of experimenting and the results were very good - we had on the one hand a very strong preoccupation with the social duties of film and on the other a preoccupation with trying to make sound mean something in film.s

For Cavalcanti, NIGHT MAIL was a place to explore his own theories of sound:

For me, sound consists of three main elements: music, noises, and words. My theory was that noises are subjective, and have an existence of their own. They can extend the visual sense, rather than

5 Watt, p. 65.

® Alan Lovell, "Notes on British Film Culture," Screen : The Journal of the Society for Education in Film and Television. 13, No. 2 (1972), p. 36. 46

duplicating it in terms of sound. We disliked commentaries and tried to restrict them to a minimum, but at the same time we recognized the rhythmic possibilities of words, and we used this in particular in Night Mail . . . ?

During post-production, Auden worked diligently

rewriting the commentary to fit the needs of the visuals.

The only space available to him was at the end of a dark hallway which ran parallel to the theatre where films

were constantly being shown. Sharing the space with the

Unit’s messenger boys, the imperturbable Auden wrote as

the boys played darts, wrestled, and,brewed tea. Since

the poetry had to fit the picture,’Auden would take

sections of the writing to his colleagues for perusal.

When it did not fit, we just said so, and it was crumpled up and thrown into the waste-paper basket! Some beautiful lines and stanzas went into oblivion in this casual, ruthless way. Auden just shrugged, and wrote more.®

After the commentary was complete, Cavalcanti

suggested bringing in a young, rather naive Benjamin

Britten to compose the music. Britten was subsequently

hired for ten pounds to compose the score and conduct the

eight musicians who were to play the music. The final

sound track was the result of the collaborative efforts

of Cavalcanti, Auden and Britten.

’ Lovell, p. 37.

® Watt, p . 92. 47

The nature of successful collaboration depends upon cooperation and respect. Because the Film Unit did indeed work as a unit, the individual contributors were not always properly credited for their work. As

Cavalcanti observed:

The credits on the documentary films of this period are very untrustworthy. We were not greatly concerned with them, and everything was done in such a spirit of complete cooperation that it was difficult to credit everyone who worked on the film. Everyone helped and suggested ideas.®

Harry Watt, who was credited in NIGHT MAIL as the co-producer with Basil Wright, was not so cavalier about the credits. Maintaining that credits are the "life­ blood" of the business, Watt was shocked when he first saw the film and realized that he was not given credit as the director, a title, he insisted, he deserved.*® Watt argued with Grierson to change the credits before the release of the film, but Grierson would not relent.

Ironically, according to Grierson, when COAL FACE,

GRANTON TRAWLER and NIGHT MAIL were made, Cavalcanti did not want his name on the credits "because he felt that association with such avant-garde work might jeopardize his chances of employment in British feature film production at that time."** Paul Rotha claims that

® Lovell, p. 37.

* ® Watt, p . 96. 48

Cavalcanti later complained that "his name had been suppressed by Grierson from credit titles and publicity on GPO films."12

Only the artists involved in the process truly know where credit is due. The importance of these disputes for the contemporary viewer is to recognize that the credits may not accurately reflect the contributions each individual may have made in the production of the documentary films made during the 1930s, especially in the G.P.O. Film Unit. These disputes should also not overshadow the significant contribution 1930s documentaries made to the evolution of cinema in Britain and throughout the world.

Of the G.P.O. films, NIGHT MAIL is particularly

important because it was one of the first films to try to

explore theoretically the relationship between words and moving images. Having a literary artist collaborate with

imaging artists was a bold experiment, one which fostered

the genesis of a poetic narrative style.

If narrative refers to a story or account of events

or experiences, then the poetic narrative is a story or

account which has as its essence poetry; that is,

figurative language, meter and/or rhyme are intrinsic to

In an interview. Devizes, 17 June 1970, as quoted in Rotha, p. 232.

12 At the 10th Leipzig Documentary Film Festival, 24 November 1967, as quoted in Rotha, p. 232. 49 the narrative. By first examining the soundtrack of

NIGHT MAIL isolated from the images, this investigator closely analyzed the narrative for its poetic elements.

Though NIGHT MAIL has been both praised and criticized for its poetic soundtrack, ironically, only four minutes of the twenty-four minute film are literally poetic. The first twenty minutes of the film serve as a rather long prose prelude to Auden’s poem. This prelude is an auditory assemblage of voices of postal workers talking, commentary providing facts about the postal special, sound effects (especially of train sounds), and music. This portion of the soundtrack fails to create a satisfactory narrative for several reasons.

The poor quality of the sound itself is a primary reason. When NIGHT MAIL was first released, the sound quality was immediately criticized;

The one drawback to the films [of the G.P.O.], and a problem you must tell them immediately in England if they are to be removed from all criticism here, is the sound quality .... It is heartrending to see such creative genius destroyed by inferior technical methods. It is not the dialect of your voices that will be difficult for American audiences, it is the poor sound,ia

Much of the dialogue of the postal workers is inaudible.

Even the portions of the prelude which were recorded

synchronously are barely audible.i* Not only does the

13 Eric Knight as quoted in Rotha, p. 180 50 poor sound quality interfere with the understanding of the narrative, it also underscores a secondary problem - continuity.

Since the prelude has very little semantic congruity, meaningful connections between the fragments

of dialogue and commentary are nearly impossible to

attain without an accompanying visual image. The

decontextualized voices offer no means of identification

with the speakers. Though there is clearly a distinction

between the informative tone of the commentator and the

colloquial tone of the workers, no evidence of sequential

development emerges. Consider the following example of a

typical sequence: the sound of a train on its tracks as

it comes nearer; above the sound of a train rushing by,

the commentator’s voice, heavy with import, saying, "Four

million miles every year, (pause) five hundred million

letters every year ;" a train whistle screaming above the

rocking sounds of a train; a fading to relative silence;

a worker saying, "That you, ’arry?" and the reply,

"You'll have to shelve the local. I’ve got the postal

on," followed by, "Rightto."

This sparseness of language is evident throughout

the lengthy, prose prelude which constitutes the first

part of the film. The dominant sounds are of the train.

^ The portions of the prelude which featured the workers sorting mail on the inside of the train were recorded synchronously. 51

interrupted occasionally by a musical interlude which

frequently simulates train sounds. Yet this economical use of language provides the proper antithesis for what

follows.

Auden's poem concludes the narrative of NIGHT MAIL,

To discuss lucidly the elements of poetry found in the

work, the poem is included here in its entirety:

This is the night mail crossing the border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner and the girl next door. Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb -- The gradient’s against her but she's on time.

Past cotton grass and moorland boulder. Shovelling white steam over her shoulder. Snorting noisily as she passes Silent miles of wind-bent grasses; Birds turn their heads as she approaches. Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches; Sheepdogs cannot turn her course. They slumber on with paws across. In the farm she passes no one wakes. But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done. Down toward Glasgow she descends Toward the steam tugs, yelping down the glades of cranes Toward the fields of apparatus, the furnaces Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen. All Scotland waits for her; In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs. Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks, Letters of joy from the girl and boy. Receipted bills and invitations To inspect new stock or visit relations. And applications for situations. And timid lovers' declarations, 52

And gossip, gossip from all the nations, News circumstantial, news financial, Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in Letters with faces scrawled on the margin. Letters from uncles, cousins and aunts, Letters to Scotland from the South of France, Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands, Notes from overseas to the Hebrides; Written on paper of every hue. The pink, the violet, the white and the blue; The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring. The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring. Clever, stupid, short and long. The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong,

Thousands are still asleep Dreaming of terrifying monsters Or a friendly tea beside the band at Cranston’s or Crawford's; Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-fed Edinburgh, Asleep in Granite Aberdeen. They continue their dreams But shall wake soon and long for letters. And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten.

Immediately preceding the first stanza, the music and sound effects (sandpaper and a wind machine) create a

rhythm, again emulating that of a train, which consists

of one accented beat followed by three unaccented beats.

When Stuart Legg begins his delivery, the rhythm subtly

shifts, without losing the momentum of the train rhythm.

The pattern in the first line consists of two

adonics, an adonic being a dactyl followed by a

W. H. Auden as quoted in Watt, pp. 92-94. The stanza breaks designate distinctive pauses in the narration. 53 trochee.16 Since natural speech utilizes the iamb most frequently, the artificial rhythm established in the poem logically parallels the mechanical rhythm of the train.

The rhythmic pattern continues to shift throughout the text. This shifting does not imply that Auden was unable to find a comfortable rhythm, rather the indication is that the language was subservient to the changing rhythms of the train established by the musical score and the edited images. The fact that Auden wrote the poem to

"fit" the images supports this conjecture.

Rhyme, too, helps to sustain the cadence of the train. The first and third stanzas, written predominately in rhymed couplets, provide an anticipated pattern which mimics the tempo of the train.

Additionally, in the third stanza, the lines have

internal rhyme, as is exemplified in the following lines:

"Letters of thanks, letters from banks, / Letters of joy from the girl and boy," and, "Letters of condolence to

Highlands and Lowlands, / Notes from overseas to the

Hebrides; and later, "The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring, . . Subtler phonic relationships are also

evident within certain lines. Note the assonance in the

16 Miller Williams, Patterns of Poetry:__An Encyclopedia of Forms (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1986) , p. 47. A dactyl is one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables; a trochee is one accented syllable followed by one unaccented syllable. 54

line: "And applications for situations," and both the assonance and consonance in the line: "News circumstantial, news financial, ..."

Stanzas two and four contain additional examples of consonance. Consider the following lines from stanza two: "Dawn freshens, the climb is done. / Down towards

Glascow she descends / Towards the steam tugs," or the opening line from stanza four: "Thousands are still asleep ..."

Figurative language, too, imbues the poem. The train is personified and is repeatedly alluded to as

"her" or "she." Onomatopoeia replicates the train’s sound with "... Snorting noisily as she passes."

Hyperbole is present in the line: "All Scotland waits

for her; ..." Finally, one of the most evocative lines

in the poem is the metaphor: "... the furnaces / Set

on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen."

The contrast in delivery also influences the tone of

each stanza. "The poem itself was spoken partly by

Grierson and partly by Stuart Legg, a member of the

Unit’s staff who was chosen because he could manage the

very fast pace required."i? Even though Legg was fast,

there still wasn’t enough time for him to take breaths.

To solve this problem, Legg would take an enormous breath

1 Carpenter, p. 183. 55 and read until he ran completely out of breath. That place was marked, and then he had to start again from that place.

In the first stanza, Legg’s rapid, stacatto-style delivery has a drone-like quality. A decidely rhythmic inflection parallels the train’s motion. This stanza is followed by Grierson’s slower, more theatrical delivery of the second stanza. The third stanza again thrusts the words forward, this time, in an almost frantic delivery.

The last stanza is delivered by Grierson with bravura.

He directs the concluding question with heartfelt

sincerity: "For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?"

Auden’s verse provides the needed sense of story

that the lengthy prelude omits. The poem also bridges

the pragmatic realm of the postal service with the

interpersonal dimensions of human experience. Since this

was the producers’ intent, Auden succeeded in fulfilling

their expectations.

Close analysis of the moving images without sound

offers further insights. As indicated by the sound

analysis, the story is image-dependent. The images

create the continuity necessary to make the film

comprehensible. The story begins at dusk, progresses

through the night and concludes at dawn. Postal workers

are seen in a series of shots which visually define their 56 tasks - to load, sort and deliver the mail on the postal special.

From the first shot of a postal worker in a stately- uniform hand-carrying a message, to the last shot of workers polishing the engine of the train, the overt message is that the postal service operates with the

upmost efficiency. Yet a subtext begins to dominate the

visuals very early in the film.

Both in the edited sequences and within individual

shots, the postal worker is dwarfed, both physically and

semantically, by the massive train which steadily,

unerringly transports the mail to the people. The first

shot in the film follows a postal worker as he carries a

slip of paper to another worker at a desk. The camera

moves in on the man at the desk. An over-the-shoulder

(OSS) shot reveals him picking up the receiver to the

telephone and listening, or talking, during an

exceedingly long take. The stasis of the shot makes the

worker appear dull, almost inanimate. This shot is

immediately juxtaposed with an aerial trucking shot

depicting a train racing along a vast network of railroad

tracks. The speed of the train is accentuated by the

moving camera, infusing the shot with energy, reinforcing

the covert message that technology is superior to man.

Soon thereafter, a carefully composed shot shows

three windows in the control tower overlooking the 57 expansive railroad tracks. In the foreground, a worker crosses before the windows from right to far left, then stands dramatically in silhouette against the dying light of day. Though the worker is in the foreground, the light and focus remain on the railroad tracks.

Metaphorically, the worker is as insubstantial as a shadow.

In another sequence, men are working with picks on

the tracks in the twilight. With lumbering motions, the men swing their picks. A man blows a whistle. The men

quickly clear the tracks for the encroaching train,

parting the way for "progress." As the train rushes by,

close-ups of one man smoking a pipe and another taking a

drink suggest an idleness only found in workers, never in

the ceaseless churning engines of the train.

Perhaps one of the most dramatic sequences is of the

mail drop. After sorting the mail while en route, the

postal workers bind up leather pouches to be catapulted

into designated nets along the course. As the men

prepare for the drop, their motions seem restrained.

Only a close-up of a man's hand, thumb in pocket, tapping

his extended fingers nervously, creates the necessary

tension in the scene. Again, the most exciting moment

centers on the train, traveling at break-neck speed, as

the net traps the pouch. 58

The lyricism of the camera also contributes to the train's dominance in the film. The camera helps to personify the train. In one shot, the train rushes in a rage toward the camera. A night shot reveals only the lights of the train, strung like beads on a necklace, adorning the train and "her" precious cargo.

Metaphorically, the train brings light into the lives of the needy, letterless people.

The editing creates its own lyricism. As a diminutive train winds through a valley and climbs up the hill toward Beattock, the long takes of the prodigious pastoral landscape parallel the steady climb. As the train rushes down the hill, the pace of the editing changes discernbly. The energy of the train, captured in the quickly cut images, is accentuated by skillful intercutting: a black farm dog races the train; rabbits bolt for cover; startled partridges scatter like dandelion seeds to the wind.

The images endow the narrative with continuity and lyricism. Yet the covert message; that is, men’s worth diminished by machinery, which the filmmakers convey

(perhaps unintentionally), belies the raison d'etre for the film. Only the union of sound and image can impart the meaning wholly.

Yet before sound and image can be fused as one, the components of each must be discussed. Because poetry is 59 constructed from words, and film from images, possibilities may be limited by the materials which are the art’s essence.

As early as 1776 Lessing discovered (in his Laocoon) the delimitation of the arts according to the nature of their material. In the spirit of his time he interpreted this limitation as a directive for artists, whereas the real development of art shows that every art sometimes strives to overstep its boundaries lay assimilating itself to another art. Boundaries are, however, uncrossable, not de iure but de facto, for material can never give up its nature.1*

Words are the poet’s material. From words, the poet may build a semantic accumulation or implement a polar tension among individual components. What the poet creates is dependent upon:

. . . words having sound and sense, pronunciations and spellings, dialect forms, related words ("cognates"); words having derivations and derivatives, i.e. histories and influences; words with archaic and modern meanings, slang meanings, metaphorical meanings. But what he creates is not an arrangement of words, for words are only his materials, out of which he makes poetic elements. The elements are what he deploys and balances, spreads out or intensifies or builds up, to make a poem.19

Poetry is often distinguished from other literary

forms because of its abstract qualities. However, a poem

is rarely entirely concrete or entirely abstract.

18 Jan Mukarovsky, The Word and Verbal Art, trans. ed. John Burbank and Peter Steiner (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1977) , p. 207.

19 Susanne K. Langer, Feeling a nd Form:A TheoryofArt (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953) , p. 2ÎÏ. 60

Rather, poetic language "oscillates between concreteness and non-concreteness . . ."zo This oscillation creates both a dynamism and a separatism between the components.

That component which separates itself from the others often manifests itself as a visual image in the mind.

Those filmmakers who experimented with words and

images understood that the visual image of the mind would

conflict with the visual image on the screen. When Auden was drafting the verse for NIGHT MAIL, Watt insisted

several lines be eliminated:

The first draft of the poem included lines which Harry Watt felt could not be matched with adequate images on the screen - lines such as 'Uplands heaped like slaughtered horses’, and 'this country, whose scribbled coastline traps the wild Atlantic in a maze of stone'. Watt observed: 'No picture we put on the screen could be as strong at that.' These lines and others like them were cut.21

Watt understood how Auden's words could ignite

imagistic thinking, usurping the power of the images.

Clearly the filmmaker denoted words as ancillary to

images. The choice is understandable since images are

the primary materials of the filmmaker's art.

Whether an image's meaning is determined by the

composition or lighting of the image, the subject of the

image, or the juxtaposition of that image with

surrounding images, the image remains bounded by its

20 Mukarovsky, p. 2.

21 Carpenter, pp. 182-183 61 concrete properties. "The outstanding characteristic of the screen image is its literalness. The cinema picture is a medium of literal statement . . ."22 What the producers of NIGHT MAIL had to discover was how to wed literal screen images with the more figurative images of the mind.

Since neither poetry nor film are static, the meaning of the synthesis of words and images resides not

in one or the other, but in the antinomies between the two arts. "There is neither a totally passive nor

totally active party in the contact of the arts with one another."23 In NIGHT MAIL, the moving images are often

lyric; the poem often evokes visual images. This would

imply that activeness and passiveness are in a constant

state of kinesis.

When this researcher heard NIGHT MAIL without the

screen images, two particularly vivid figurative images

emerged which warrant discussion. The first was prompted

by the lines; "In the farm she passes no one wakes, /

But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes." Without any

literal images, this scenario came to life in the

imagination.

22 Alberto Cavalcanti, "Sound in Films," in Film Sound: Theory and Practice , ed. Elisabeth Weis and John Belton (New York : Columbia University Press, 1985) , p. 109.

2 3 Mukarovsky, p. 210. 62

When sounds and images were reunited, the lines were delivered while a shot was shown from atop the train as it bulleted through the rocky-steep hills. While the screen image intently sustained the energy of the train, the abstract image created a striking contrast. The peace of the surrounding countryside was only slightly disturbed by the imposing train.

These diametrically opposed images produced a larger meaning. This effect could not have occurred without nonsynchronous sound.

Nonsynchronous sound counterpoints visual components. By yoking apparently dissimilar visual and audial images, a powerful film metaphor can be achieved. Out of the clash of sight and sound comes an idea.24

The creation of an enhanced meaning based upon the antinomies of words and images refutes Lessing’s contention that the arts are limited by the nature of their material. While it is true that material cannot give up its nature, by fusing materials in a collaborative art, new elements may be formed. In the

case of film arts, when sounds and images are ironically

juxtaposed they are joined to create a composite element.

This newly formed element cannot be created unless a

dynamic relationship exists between the sounds and image.

2 4 John Harrington, The Rhet o r i c of Film (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1973) , p. 41. 63

The second evocative image generated when the text was isolated from the images was stimulated by the lines;

"... the furnaces / Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen." The allusion to the gigantic chessmen make the dark plain seem surrealistically colossal. When this was heard with the screen images, the figurative image was aborted by the literalness of one pale smokestack in a dingy industrial surrounding.

As soon as the viewer is forced to confront semantically similar literal and figurative images simultaneously, the literal image dominates.

The movement, or lack of movement between words and images is also influenced by the activity within the

individual images. When images are barren of movement,

the viewer is freed from the dominance of the concrete

image and invited to think imagistically. While a static

image is sustained depicting a Scottish town in the early

morning, the lines "... Thousands are still asleep/

Dreaming of terrifying monsters ..." invite the viewer

to imagine a child asleep or to remember the monsters of

one’s own childhood.

In all probability, the producers of NIGHT MAIL

carefully juxtaposed the words and the images, thinking

through the theoretical implications. Also, because the

rhythm of the train was a dominant tempo, every attempt 64 was made to coordinate the reading of the narrative with the projection of the images.

For Night Mail we scratched marks on a loop of negative film to correspond with the ’beats’ of the engine-sound. This was projected while the poem was spoken by Stuart Legg. He timed his reading to the scratches, which appeared as flashes on the screen.2 s

This practice was similar to click tracking, a process of recording clicks onto a sound track which is later heard through earphones by a musical conductor who matches the tempo of the music with the projected i m a g e s . 2s

When NIGHT MAIL was released in 1937, not everyone approved of the poetry in the film. In a letter to Paul Rotha, Eric Knight wrote:

. . . From your showing, I am utterly convinced that poetry - and most especially rhythm poetry - has no place in the spoken field in films. I do not know why yet; I can only guess at the reasons and tell you. The poetry of a film lies in its visuals. When it is placed in the aural, we get an over- effect that goes beyond its goal and reaches over into the comic. It was a laudable try with Auden yet not a success. But it is fine that such experiments should be made.2 ?

Knight’s observations confirm how readily the

concrete images dominate and how challenging the task was

for these collaborative artists. Though his assessment

2s Alberto Cavalcanti, as quoted in Alan Lovell, p. 38.

26 John Mercer, comp., "Glossary of Film Terms," University Film Association , Monograph No. 2 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Temple University, 1978) , p. 18.

2 7 Eric Knight as quoted in Rotha, p. 181. 65 was naive, his concluding remarks were astute. Without

the experiments of the G.P.O. and other government agencies throughout the world, a rich literary and filmic

heritage would never have come into being.

Experimenting with sound and image was clearly a

goal of the G.P.O. Film Unit. Not all documentary

filmmakers were as concerned with theory, however. The

growing threat of Fascism shifted the concerns of some

artists from aesthetics to politics. Such was the case

with the producers of SPANISH EARTH, the subject of the

next chapter. CHAPTER IV

SPANISH EARTH

Though government agencies sponsored the majority of documentaries produced during the 1930s, independent films were still being made. The obvious advantage of producing independently was complete creative control; the disadvantage was raising the capital to fund the film.

Late in the summer of 1936, the Dutch filmmaker,

Joris Ivens, and his frequent collaborator, editor Helen van Dongen, were at work editing an educational film for the Rockefeller Foundation. While thus employed, van

Dogen was asked by a group of Loyalists to edit Spanish

War newsreel footage into a documentary film. The

objective of the documentary was to:

. . . detail the war’s background and clarify the issues for an American audience. Available footage was mainly from the Franco side, making the job difficult and expensive. Ivens, who since the outset had sought means to aid the Loyalists, suggested it would be better in every way for the group to produce their own film.i

Ivens had ready supporters among the ample pro-

Loyalist faction. Fueled by Marxist ideology, these

intellectuals oscillated between the "speculative

1 William Alexander, Film on the Lef t : American Documenta r y F ilm From 1831 to 1942 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981) , p. 150

66 67 abstraction of pure theory"* and the physical perils of anarchistic confrontation:

The Spanish Civil War (18 July 1936 - 1 April 1939) was the cause celebre for the intellectuals of the Left, regardless of national origin. It was the Adventure of the decade for other participants, many of them depression-scarred and depression- riddled . 3

Archibald MacLeish proposed a plan to Ivens. The

film footage van Dongen had been given by the Loyalists would be edited with a minimum of time and expense, then new monies would be raised to fund another film to be

shot by Ivens in Spain.* The first Loyalist film, Spain

in Flames, was completed and released in February 1937.s

Four active pro-Loyalists, John Dos Passos, Lillian

Heilman, Ernest Hemingway and Archibald MacLeish,

incorporated to found a group called the Contemporary

Historians who would be responsible for sponsoring,

funding and distributing what was to become the second

* Frederick Buell, W . H^^_ Auden a^^ Social Poet ( 11 h i c a , New York: Cornell University Press, 1973) , p. 113,

3 Margaret Calien Lewis, "Ernest Hemingway’s The Spanish War: Dispatches from Spain 1937-1938," Thesis. University of Louisville 1969 , p. iv.

* Joris Ivens, The Camera and I (New York: International Publishers, 1983) , p. 10^3.

3 Thomas Waugh, ",S.hoil_ys_ M 3:. .§.n.d Aesthetics of t heCommitted Documentary (Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1984) , p. 113. 68 film, SPANISH EARTH.® The group’s commitment was not solely financial. All of the members agreed that no one would receive a salary and that the work would be committed to the Spanish cause. Ivens managed to raise two or three thousand dollars to begin production and that sum was increased by an additional $3,500 of

Hemingway’s own money for filming expenses.? Altogether, the producers personally underwrote a budget of $18,000.®

Several of the Contemporary Historians have been credited as having scripted the film. Bernard Dick’s text, Heilman in Hollywood, states that initially Heilman was to have written the script:

When Heilman visited Spain in 1937, she was convinced she had made the right choice. One does not know if she was aware that both sides were guilty of atrocities; to her, the Spanish Civil War was a battle between the forces of freedom and fascism. It was for this reason that she agreed to write the narration for the antifascist film documentary. The Spanish Earth (1937), that Joris Ivens shot behind the Loyalist lines. However, a

® Alexander, p. 150. All sources consulted agreed upon these four; however, Clifford Odets, Dorothy Parker and Herman Shumlin were also credited as part of the original Contemporary Historians in Alexander’s text. Waugh, too, affirmed that Herman Shumlin (Heilman’s Broadway producer) and Dorothy Parker were part of the core group, as did Ivens in his autobiography. Other pro-Loyalists who may have been associated with the group were W. H. Auden, Andre Malraux, George Orwell, C. Day Lewis and Rex Warner.

? Angel Capellan, Hemingway and_the Hispanic World (Ann Arbor, Michigan: ÜMÎ Research Press, Ï985) , p. 242.

® Thomas Waugh, p. 113. 69

bout with pneumonia in Paris prevented her from joining Ivens in Spain, . . .*

Waugh asserts that a first draft was written by Ivens with Heilman and MacLeish.lo Ivens' autobiography says only that he had a rough script "... prepared by one of our committee in New York."ii Dos Passos, too, has been credited as the writer, and though he did meet Ivens

in Spain, there is no evidence that he penned any of the script.

The rough script was a dramatic story featuring a peasant family who innocently become ensnared in the

forces of politics and war. When Ivens arrived in Spain with his cameraman, John Ferno (who worked for no pay and

often put his life in jeopardy), the realities of war

quickly made it apparent that staging a dramatization was

ludicrous - the war was drama enough. As Ivens later

reflected: "This is the sort of documentary script you

imagine can be filmed - only when you are very far from

the war-torn country of your script.

Dos Passos had joined Ivens and Ferno in Spain,

acting primarily as a translator, interviewing people for

® Bernard F . Dick, Heilman in Hollywood (East Brunswick, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1982) , p . 115.

1® Waugh, p. 113.

1 1 Ivens , p . 104.

Ivens, p. 106. 70 the new script. After four weeks of shooting, Ivens interrupted the work long enough to go to Paris. He needed to preview the footage, but more importantly, he needed a fresh perspective:

For the first time I was really seeing the destruction and death I had read about. These sights change something in your thinking, acting and your living. That was the main reason I wanted to go to Paris: to check on myself and to show this new footage to people there who would tell me whether I was making a film, or just newsreel shots.13

While Ivens was in Paris, Dos Passos left Spain

"... in bitter disillusionment over the political

developments in the popular-front government."i* In the meantime, while in Paris, Ivens had a few drinks with

Ernest Hemingway who was en route to Spain as a

correspondent for the North American News Alliance

(NANA). This chance meeting was to be the beginning of a

vigorous collaboration.

Two weeks later, Hemingway and Ivens met again, this

time in Madrid at the hotel The Florida, Though they

made no formal arrangements, from that day forth

Hemingway became an indispensable member of the crew. He

went everywhere with them, helping with whatever was

needed, including carrying heavy equipment. They filmed

in the front lines, in village squares, in fields, and

> 3 Ivens, p . 111.

1 Alexander, p. 152. 71 once, with the camera camouflaged under old clothes, in

the third floor of a ruined house. As an unappointed apprentice, Hemingway learned the craft of filmmaking.

As a seasoned fighter, he looked after Ivens and Ferno.

Hemingway’s experiences with the crew, his writing

skills, and his passion for Spain and its people made him

a logical choice to script SPANISH EARTH.

This choice was to determine the narrative style of

the film. Believing, as Ivens did, that the Spanish

Civil War was a "dress rehearsal for the inevitable

European War," Hemingway perceived himself as a

humanitarian journalist. His presence in Spain was as an

"anti-war war correspondent."is From Hemingway’s point

of view, his role as scriptwriter varied little from his

role as correspondent. He would simply give the facts to

the people.

The journalistic narrative is essentially a direct

presentation of facts or occurrences in a narrative which

is primarily informative or persuasive. Close analysis

of the soundtrack of SPANISH EARTH evidenced considerable

journalistic qualities within the narrative.

The text is deliberately dispersed in fragments,

creating a metaphorical puzzle which simulates the

confusion and ambiguities of war. Language is

1® Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway; A Life Story (New York: Bantam Books, Ï9 7Ô) , p. 382. 72 economically interspersed throughout the pervasive music and sound effects. In these brief lexical interludes, couched between alternately rousing and melancholy

Spanish folk music, Hemingway developed a parallel structure between two stories: that of the common people working the land and planning the irrigation of the dry fields and that of the People’s Army resisting the

incessant attacks of the oppressive Enemy,

Following the emotionally provocative strains of choral voices singing a dirge-like melody, Hemingway

immediately introduced the parallel structure:

This Spanish earth is dry and hard and the faces and hands of the men who work that earth are hard and dry from the sun. This worthless land with water will yield much. For fifty years we’ve wanted to irrigate but THEY held us back. Now we will bring water to it to raise food for the Defenders.

This example also demonstrates the oscillation between

factual language and emotionally charged, persuasive

language which permeates the entire work.

Early in the narrative, Hemingway presents factual

information in brief statements such as: "The village of

Fuenteduena where 1500 people live and work the land for

the common good." In addition to providing knowledge,

this sentence fragment awaits completion, urges the

listener to interact with the text. These statements

1® This excerpt and all subsequent excerpts taken from the soundtrack have been transcribed directly from the film. 73 continue throughout the narrative. Later, as an introduction to speeches delivered in Spanish by political leaders, Hemingway simply states: "The loudspeaker of the People’s Army has a range of two kilometers." Eventually, in longer passages, the whole story begins to coalesce:

For they are professional soldiers, fighting against a people in arms, trying to impose the will of the military on the will of the People. And the People hate them. For, without their tenacity, the constant aid of Germany and Italy, the Spanish revolt would have ended six weeks after it began.

Further verification of this journalistic style comes from parallels in text between actual cables

Hemingway sent to the NANA and excerpts from the narrative. Consider this cable written on March 27, 1937 :

I sat down with pair field glasses (at this moment while writing this backen hotel shell just came in on roof building just behind hotel exploding great whoom and correspondent outlooking window saw not single person leave line where standing probuy food. Only movement scurry children direction shell . . . 17

Hemingway’s mention of not a single person leaving the

line when the shell exploded is alluded to in this

passage from the film:

Lewis, p. 32. This is included exactly as the cable was written. In cables, all articles were generally dropped and Hemingway had a tendency to combine verbs and prepositions as in "outlooking." The prefix "pro" in the hybrid word "probuy" means "for" or "in order to." 74

You stand in line all day to buy food for supper. Sometimes the food runs out before you reach the door. Sometimes a shell falls near the line.

The allusion to the children scurrying in the direction of the shell is also apparent in this excerpt from the film:

Boys look for bits of shell fragments as they once gathered hailstones . . . [This is interrupted by the high-whistling, shrill sound of a shell firing, then exploding] . . . so the next shell finds them.

Another cable, written on April 9, 1937, describes the bombers approaching:

As watched heard drone planes overcoming uplooking saw three Government bombers shining in sun . . . 18

Echoes of this are heard in the following passage from the film:

Before, death came when you were old or sick. But now it comes to all this village. High in the sky and shining silver it comes to all who have no place to run. No place to hide.

Note the even more striking comparison in the following

excerpts beginning with a cable dated April 21, 1937:

. . . and wherever go whatever time all day during incoming over two hundred shells unable outsight outsmell whitish gray granite dust acrid high explosive smell . . .

The film text reiterates:

18 Lewis, pp. 40-41

18 Lewis, p. 58. 75

The smell of death is acrid high explosive smoke and blasted granite.

Hemingway’s script tends to personify the camera- eye as a participant in the journalistic search for truth.2 0 This truth is substantiated by the omnipresence of the camera as in the line, "Man cannot act before the camera in the presence of death." This is sustained

through the use of the present tense which provides

immediacy, and the use of second person which produces a newsreel "You are there" consciousness as in the lines,

"This is the true face of man going into action. It is

little different from any other face that you will ever see. "

A constant shift in person throughout the narrative

activates a dynamic which gravitates between distant

objectivity and intimate subjectivity. Consider the

following sequence:

The government urges all civilians to evacuate Madrid. [Music] But where will we go? Where can we live? What can we do for a living? [Music] I won’t go. I’m too old . . . We must keep the children off the streets except when they’re in need to stand in line.

In the following example, there is tension within the

line caused by the use of the pronoun "we" which implies

a sense of personal involvement and the word "statements"

2 0 Hemingway may have been influenced by Dos Passos’ conscious use of "The Camera Eye" and "Newsreel" in his book U.S.A. 76 which exacerbates the removed role of the journalist:

"We took no statements from the dead, but all the letters that we read were very sad."

The persuasiveness of the language was not dependent upon the use of person or tense, however. Just as

Hemingway used the Spanish Civil War as a dramatic setting for his novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, he used the common people as dramatic characters in the documentary. Though there was a weak attempt to secure a

storyline around a character named Julian (who was part

of the original outline and was primarily Ivens’

invention), Hemingway’s quiet scenarios of common people

were far more moving. The fact that the characters had

no specific names only strengthened the subtext of the

universal qualities of all peoples victimized by war as

exemplified in the following:

They say the old good-byes that sound the same in any language. She says she’ll wait. He says that he’ll come back. He knows she’ll wait, who knows for what, the way the shelling is. Nobody knows if he comes back. Take care of the kid, he says. I will, she says, and knows she can’t. They both know that when they move you out in trucks, it’s to a battle.

Though the American vernacular, especially the word

"kid," is juxtaposed with images of Spanish peasants,

the authenticity of the moment is not diminished.

Colloquial language is an element of commonality which 77 reinforces the universal qualities of the scene since the colloquial speech tends to be associated with common man.

Certainly Hemingway’s delivery of these lines provided the necessary understatement. Because Hemingway was immediately involved, he did not have to work at sounding credible. Yet the very first audiences heard the voice of Orson Welles, not Hemingway, narrating the

film, and many of the existing prints still credit Welles as the commentator.

. . . [Archibald] MacLeish suggested Orson Welles, a name that would both attract viewers and bring in money. And in fact, those who previewed it - Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins at the White House on 7 July, the celebrities at the Ambassador Theatre in Los Angeles on 11 July, the guests at Fredric March’s home on 12 July, and a capacity audience at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium on 13 July - viewed a Welles-narrated film. Ivens, unsophisticated when it came to the nuances of English, had thought that the narration was excellent, but Heilman, Parker, Shumlin, and van Dongen felt that Welles’ rich tones were inappropriate. In accordance, Ivens agreed to drop Welles, and the film opened in late August at New York’s Fifty-Fifth Street Playhouse with Hemingway reading the narration.

Hemingway’s commentary was not spoken in isolation,

however. The folk music and sound effects contributed

much to the impact of the soundtrack.

The composers, Virgil Thomson and Marc Blitzstein,

utilized motifs of Spanish folk songs, imbuing the

soundtrack with authenticity. The sound effects.

^' Alexander, p. 153. 78 especially the incessant sounds of shells whistling and exploding, build tension enough to distress listeners.

Yet it is the ordinary sounds juxtaposed with the background of the bombing that inhabit the memory. The sound of glass breaking, which was used in the film, inspired an incident Ivens shared in his autobiography.

A Londoner, a surviver of the blitz, related how the sound of shattering glass stirred disturbing flashbacks;

It’s the glass, the sound in the morning of the broken glass being swept up, the vicious, flat tinkle. That is the thing I remember more than anything else, that constant sound of broken glass being swept up on the pavements. My dog broke a window the other day and my wife swept up the glass and a cold shiver went over me. It was a moment before I could trace the reason for it.zz

Ivens understood that sound is a sense which often forces painful recollections. All of the elements of sound fused to evoke a provocative and memorable soundtrack.

Hemingway’s journalistic style provided a narrative which was both informative and persuasive. The struggles of

the Spanish people were enobled by his direct yet

eloquent prose. Scrutinizing the moving images without

the sound purveys further insights.

The images structurally supported the parallelism

created in the narrative. The viewer is immediately

captured by the painterly quality of the slow pans which

22 As quoted in Ivens, p. 121. 79 sweep languorously across the earth and sky. Spain awakened new sensibilities in Ivens:

I learned a new feeling for landscape. A painted landscape had never had any particular personality for me. When I went to Dutch museums I always headed straight for the portraits and the pictures with people. Nature meant little more than a setting for human activity .... Here [Spain] was something I had missed all my life suddenly made strong and alive - and the landscape revealed to me afresh every morning.23

Ferno's camera work was impeccable. In one shot, a man and his mule in the foreground transcend their simple

lives to become noble subjects highlighted by the expansive blanched landscape. In another shot, the black

shadows of two men lead the eye to the cracked, arid soil of the Spanish earth. This is immediately followed by a wider shot of a single tree in a field, maybe a

cottonwood, its leaves blasted to one side by the hot

wind. Even the whimsical is present as a small dog, tail wagging rhythmically, prances after a woman and her small

child.

Masterful use of both natural and artificial

lighting further enhanced the images. A man kneading

dough is backlit like a Dutch painting. The light and

texture of a stuccoed casa assumes the defined lines of a

Cubist painting. The accumlative effect of these

23 Ivens, pp. 117-118, 80 individual shots produced an ambience of a people enobled by an august land.

Just as the land shapes the people, so does the war.

The people are depicted as workers striving to control their destinies. If the earth is too dry for the crops, then irrigation plans must be drawn. This portrayal of

the people is maintained throughout the film as the ditch diggers become trench diggers, working as hard in the battlefield as they would in the onion fields. The war

images, however, are a stark departure from the idyllic

landscapes of the countryside.

The only foreshadowing for the gritty, newsreel-like

footage of the war, which is to interrupt the serene long

takes of earth and sky, is a brief shot of a baker lining

loaves of bread on a shelf which is juxtaposed in front

of a military poster. Soon thereafter, a map which

traces a line from Fuenteduena to Madrid directs the

viewer toward the city and its people. Some rather

static shots of political leaders speaking, intercut with

closer shots of audience members, are still not adequate

preparation for the grim images of war which follow.

Shells exploding, women running in confusion with

their babies cradled in their arms, Red Cross workers

hauling away dead bodies, small children in uniform,

tanks invading farmers’ fields and hundreds of other

images, masterfully edited by Helen van Dongen, depict 81 the cruelties of war. Remnants of buildings pile together like a fallen stack of toy blocks. A Grecian statue appears to watch as fragments of art works are gathered into wheelbarrows and hauled away. A single light swings gently from the ceiling of a wall-less building.

The polarity between the pastoral images of the peasants preparing the earth for irrigation and the

People’s Army retaliating from the waves of attack by the

Fascists are intercut to create both parallel structure

and tension. Without sound, it isn’t always clear whether it is the People or the Enemy being attacked, yet

the message is lucid -• death is impartial.

Sound and image treated separately indicated complex

interrelationships among these components. Examination

of the film as originally conceived, with sound and

moving images coupled, revealed new meanings.

The power struggle which occurs in the relationship

between images and their lexical counterparts has much to

do with how the story is told. In a storybook, for

instance, the narrative is controlled by the words on the

pages; pictures are decorative, the responsibility for

story is dependent upon the words. Conversely, in a

picture book, the story is told in images; the text is 82 auxiliary.2 4 The experimental use of asynchronous sound in film elucidates the difficulty of working in a medium where words and images are engaged in a semantic struggle.

In film, meaning is continually modified by the dominance of either words or images, or the interinanimation between the two components. Part of the success of SPANISH EARTH is how words and images support one another in semantic synchrony or counterpoint. When the viewer, without benefit of sound, sees a caravan of men carrying doors to the trenches, the interpretation is limited by the realistic context of the literal images; thus, the viewer assumes a passive role. Regard how that interpretation alters when the images are accompanied by

Hemingway’s prose: "These were the doors of houses that are empty now. Those who survived the bombardment bring them to reinforce the trenches." The figurative context provided by the words invites the viewer to abstract, perhaps to envision the empty, doorless houses.

Again and again the viewer is beckoned to participate in the making of meaning. A windowless high- rise, gutted by shells, teeters precariously as if awaiting a gentle breeze to actuate its demise. The

2 4 Uri Shulevitz, Writin g W ith Pictures: H o w t o Write and Illustrate Children’s Bopks (New York : Watson- Guptell Publications, Ï985) , pp. 3-4. 83 commentary informs the viewer that: "... Living in the cellars of that ruined building are the enemy. They are

Moors and pinned down. They are brave troops or they would not have held out after their position was hopeless." No longer is the building empty, physically

or figuratively.

Perhaps the most memorable example of this

figurative recontextualization is when the viewer sees a

corpse on a rubble-strewn street. A Red Cross ambulance

backs up to the body. Uniformed men walk around the

body, remove personal belongings from the body and load

the body into the back of the truck. While this is

happening, the commentator states:

This is a man who had nothing to do with war, a bookkeeper on his way to his office at eight o ’clock in the morning . . . [Music] . . . So now they take the bookkeeper away, but neither to his home nor to his office.

The ironic juxtaposition of sounds and images

engenders other meanings. Amidst a sequence featuring

loud explosions and people running and screaming in

confusion, a sudden silence has a forceful impact. The

silence connotes an uneasy anticipation, of the next

shell, of the next loved one killed. Later, when three

enemy planes shell a village, the angelic voices of a

boys’ choir bequeath the dead child, the mother, the man

with mouth poised ready for the next breath, with an

unsolicited requiem. The high voices of the young boys 84 fuse with the harsh images of the dead to produce an effect that is far more significant than either words or images alone could impart.

SPANISH EARTH entices, invites, engages the viewer to share in the making of meaning. Yet SPANISH EARTH also finds meaning in its form and function. Documentary films can be a stale format to allow intellectuals an arena for their collective social consciousness or they can be creative works which provoke action. Ivens and his collaborators were able to achieve the latter and to inspire their contemporaries.

Praised as "the most rational appeal the screen thus far has presented for the cause of Spanish democracy^s

SPANISH EARTH also provided monies for the Spanish cause. The screening at the Los Angeles Philharmonic netted over

$20,000. "The seventeen guests remaining at Fredric

March’s after Errol Flynn escaped a donation by fleeing through a bathroom window, gave $1,000 each to the

Loyalist cause . . The monies went to the Ford

factory in Detroit to purchase ambulance chasses for the

Spanish ambulance corps which Hemingway and Dos Passos

had established. This direct use of contributed funds to

provide needed medical care for the Spanish people is

z 5 John T. McManus, "Down to Earth in Spain," N e w York Times , 25 July 1937, Sec. A.

26 Alexander, p. 158. 85 evidence of the producers’ commitment to their ideological beliefs.

SPANISH EARTH is the rare film which is both an aesthetic achievement and a stimulus for action. Ivens would later employ another literary artist to compose the commentary for a documentary about electricity on a rural farm in Ohio. That film, which constitutes the next chapter, is entitled POWER AND THE LAND. CHAPTER V

POWER AND THE LAND

In 1939, Pare Lorentz was head of the United States

Film Service for the Department of Agriculture. Busy shooting his own film, FIGHT FOR LIFE, Lorentz sought someone to make a film for the Rural Electrification

Administration (R.E.A.) which would educate people from small towns and farms about the importance of rural electrification. When Lorentz asked Joris Ivens if he would take on the project, Ivens accepted for two reasons: he was attracted to the subject, ”a constructive government project in the interest of

American small farmers," and he needed a mental rest from two strenuous previous endeavors in Spain and China directing SPANISH EARTH and THE FOUR HUNDRED MILLION, respectively.i

Ivens first had to find a farm which he felt would pictorially represent an ordinary American farm.

Resisting any place which typified a region, such as the

South or New England, Ivens settled on the gently rolling

landscape of the Midwest, specifically Illinois, Ohio and

West Virginia. He then asked the R.E.A. agency in

Washington to provide him with a list of places where

1 Joris Ivens, TheCameraandI (New York: International Publishers, 1983) , p. 187.

86 87 electric lines and poles were being put up. Armed with a

list of about fifty counties, Ivens, the writer of the shooting script, Ed Locke, and cameraman, Arthur Ornitz began their sojourn in search of a farm.

After about three weeks of searching, Ivens and his crew decided upon a farm just outside of St. Clairsville,

Ohio, owned by the Bill Parkinson family. Early in their

search they had spoken briefly to Bill Parkinson but

Ivens felt that Parkinson had acted "pretty cold about

the whole thing.Yet the Parkinson family and their

farm seemed to persist in the crews’ recollections so

they returned to the Parkinson’s farm where they met

Hazel Parkinson, Bill’s wife, whom Ivens described as "a

quiet, dignified woman.This time they were sure this

was the place. As Ruth Parkinson Brannon, the

Parkinson’s only daughter recalled, ’"As I remember it,

mom and dad agreed without much hesitation . . .

Actually, they didn’t know just what they were getting

into."’*

Ivens immediately prepared for shooting and the next

day filming began. Though most of the crew lodged at a

hotel in St. Clairsville, Ivens and Locke rented spare

2 Ivens, pp. 188-189.

3 Ivens, p. 189.

* Ken Keylor, "Parkinsons Recall . . . the year of the cameras," C q m L ng.. May 1985, p. 6. 88

rooms from Bill P a r k i n s o n . s Renting from the Parkinsons included breakfast with the family every morning, which was not only a convenience, it also helped Ivens and

Locke get a sense of the rhythms and daily routines of the family.

Ivens and his crew had to overcome unexpected obstacles while shooting. About the third day of shooting, Ivens sensed some resistance from Bill

Parkinson. Ivens addressed Parkinson directly, asking him if there was a problem. Parkinson confided that his neighbors were calling him a sucker, saying:

Those movie people are making this film here. Maybe they are from Hollywood. You work and you only get five dollars a day, why don't you ask for more?®

Jake, one of Parkinson's son reiterated.

After they [Ivens and his crew] was there about a week, my dad got to wonderin’ how’s it come that they come in and didn’t ask him to sign a contract or anything. Well, that kind of shook Mr. Ivens and Mr. Locke up a little bit I think. They was afraid they might get the picture half-shot and my dad’d say get the heck out of here.?

As a result, Ivens and Parkinson sat down and conferred.

Ivens assured Parkinson that they were all receiving five

* Personal interview with Ruth, Frank and Jake Parkinson, 25 March 1988. General comments were jointly offered, specific quotes will be attributed to each individual speaker in future references.

® Ivens, p . 189.

? Personal interview, Jake Parkinson, 25 March 1988. 89 dollars a day since this was a government sponsored film and five dollars was the maximum amount the government allocated any employee. The two men settled the misunderstanding without any harsh words, and from that day forward, Parkinson was cooperative. The rest of the

community remained skeptical, however.

Between the farm and St. Clairsville was a town

called Warnock, populated by about four hundred staunch

Republicans. Warnock’s Republican residents did not

approve of the R.E.A., a New Deal project sponsored by

the Roosevelt administration. Since Ivens was affiliated

with the R.E.A., he and his crew, who often had lunch in

the small town, were regarded with suspicion. The rather

conspicuous entourage would drive through town in an open

1929 Packard touring car with a heavy camera on its

tripod set up in the car. The Republicans distrusted

these foreigners in their big car. As Ivens remembered:

The rumors started in that strange ghosttown : we were Germans, spies and the set-up in the car was for a machine gun and they had seen us taking pictures from the hills of the little bridge spanning a little stream. That stream, in their minds, was of great strategic importance for the Middle West. They reported that we had taken photographs of the bridge.®

Soon thereafter, the sheriff and the prosecuting attorney

appeared at the Parkinson farm. According to Jake

Parkinson: "To tell you the truth, they was about half-

® Ivens, p. 194. 90 kicked [drunk] the day they come. That didn’t go over too good with ray father."® The sheriff, a cousin of the

Parkinsons, said to Parkinson:

"Bill, if you need any protection against these strangers, we will help you to get rid of them." Bill chased him off his land, saying: "I know who I take in my house; you better get off fast."i°

Nothing came of the encounter that day but toward the end of the shooting, Ivens had to go to court with

Bill to get him excused from jury duty. Ivens explained to the judge that he was making a film for the government and Bill was needed during that week to complete shooting. The judge said to Ivens: ’"Is he as good an actor for you as he is for me?"’ And as Ivens and

Parkinson left, the judge said to Ivens: ’"By the way,

are you that German spy?"' It seems the judge had

received a deluge of letters "denouncing those dangerous

people with the open, 1929 Packard . . ."ii

The other obstacles Ivens had to overcome were more

subtle barriers of language and culture. Sometimes, when

he was trying to coach the actors, he would allude to

hybrid words of his own invention to convey his needs.

® Interview, Jake Parkinson, 25 March 1988. 1 ® Ivens, p . 194.

Ivens, pp. 194-195. 91

On one shoot, in broken English, Ivens encouraged Bill to put on his "hand socks" for the camera. "Hand socks" seemed like a logical substitute for gloves.12

Ivens was not the only person to encounter obstacles. The Parkinson family had no idea how much more work making the film would entail for them:

We soon found out that this movie business was causing us a lot of extra work. You would do something once just so they could frame the shot, a second time for focusing and lighting and finally a third time in hopes that everything would go all right with the film. Why, we loaded and unloaded the same wagon of hay three times one day!is

For one scene, the Parkinson boys had to unload and reload heavy milk cans from the back of a wagon. Because the process was long and in the heat of the day, the cans were emptied of milk to prevent the milk from spoiling.

Always striving for authenticity, Ivens had the cans refilled with water to maintain the impression of heaviness.1 *

Though Ivens tried to truthfully represent the

Parkinsons and their farm, various aspects of farm life were altered to accomodate the film. As Jake Parkinson elaborated :

12 Personal interview with Ruth, Frank and Jake Parkinson, 25 March 1988.

12 Tom Parkinson as quoted in Keylor, p. 7.

11 Interview with Ruth, Frank and Jake Parkinson, 25 March 1988. 92

. . . we farmed with mules but couldn’t use them in the film. Joris said theatergoers would think the farm was in the deep South or Arkansas. They didn’t want to make the film appear to favor one region of the country over another, so the mules were replaced with horses.is

For dramatic purposes, Ivens built a scene around Bill

Parkinson having his milk rejected by the local dairy. To achieve a genuine reaction of shock, Ivens tricked Bill:

In our picture the father was filmed receiving a notification from the dairy that his milk is sour: he expected to unfold and pretend to read a blank piece of paper. But instead he read a startling message from me on the official stationery of the creamery department, complaining about his sour milk in no uncertain terms.is

The most ironic alteration involved electricity.

Nine months prior to the filming of POWER AND THE LAND, the Parkinsons had installed electricity in their home through the Belmont Electric Cooperative. Ruth Parkinson

Brannan explained how electricity complicated the production :

The first part of the story tried to show farm life without electricity, so we had to hang sheets from the ceiling to cover up the light fixtures, move pictures to hide the switches on the walls and dig out the old sad irons again.i?

Though Ivens perceived verisimilitude as important, the most persuasive aspect of the film was the simple story of an honest, hard-working farm family. By

15 Keylor, p. 7.

1® Ivens, p. 192.

1’ Keylor, p . 7. 93 dramatizing the nobility of the farmer and his family, and by showing how electricity was accessible to the humblest of men, Ivens was able to reach his intended audience. He understood, too, that the best stories are told by storytellers. Stephen Vincent Benet was to spin this story.

Benet was not a novice scriptwriter. In 1929, after achieving long sought after monetary success with John

BmHDJ.s__B.odY, Benet invested his profits in "good, sound,

New Era stocks"^® in hopes of subsidizing a few years to write additional poetry. The collapse of the stock

market forced Benet to quickly reassess his standing and

seek a position more lucrative than that of poet.

Hollywood had the answer. Enticed by an offer from

United Artists of a twelve-week contract at a thousand

dollars a week, Benet had a chance to make money fast,

write about an American folk-hero, Abraham Lincoln, and

work with the respected director, D . W. Griffith.*®

Benet accepted the offer and went to work on the

film ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Soon Benet was disenchanted with

the inane "waste, stupidity and conceit"2 0 in the

Charles A. Fenton, Stephen Vincent Benet:.The Life and Times of an American Man of Letters (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1958) , p. 231.

1® Fenton , p . 233.

z0 Fenton, p . 236. 94 business of making movies. After writing four versions of the script, Benet was induced to conference on the story with seven people on the fifth version. Once, after a particularly destructive story conference,

. . . he phoned a friend who had been in Hollywood for some time: "Aren’t there any men of principle in this goddamn town?" "No," said the friend, and hung up .21

Fortunately his disillusionment with Hollywood did not embitter him enough to prevent him from writing the

script for POWER AND THE LAND. Though his attitude

toward Ivens’ film was positive, he was underpaid for his

efforts (as were all the cast and crew) as he mentioned

in a letter to Carl Brandt, Benet’s literary agent and

close friend: ". . . 1 have been doing the commentary

for an REA film [Power and the Land, with Douglas Moore]

- Government - which is fun but of course no m o n e y . "22

When money was not an incentive, subject matter was.

In the late thirties, Benet was writing anti-fascist

propaganda for both private and governmental agencies.

Though his growing awareness of foreign and domestic

issues and his abiding belief in America affirmed his

patriotism, it was his writing style which made him a

suitable candidate to script POWER AND THE LAND.

21 Fenton, p . 237.

22 Selected Letters of Stephen Vincent Benet, ed. Charles A. Fenton (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1960) , p. 351. 95

In his writing, Benet becomes the mercurial storyteller who slips in and out of personas with chameleon speed. This quality, combined with his usage of "common speech and folk i d i o m , assured Ivens that

Benet should write the script.

The dramatic narrative has as its essence the tradition of storytelling where a narrator relates a

story of real or imagined events which may be exaggerated to heighten audience interest. By scrutinizing the words

from POWER AND THE LAND free of the images, evidence of

Benet's dramatic narrative was revealed.

The story is of a family who has to struggle with

the difficulty of operating a farm without benefit of

modern technology, in this instance, electricity. The

work is hard and the days are long. Sometimes the milk

sours when the cans aren’t kept cold. Bill, the father,

and his fellow farmers meet to talk about the possibility

of starting an electric cooperative. Some men are

doubtful, others want the luxuries the folks in the

cities already have, like running water, refrigeration

for their milk and a radio to listen to the weather

reports. Finally, the neighbors decide to work together,

to bring the power and the light to the land.

2 3 Parry Stroud, "Stephen Vincent Benet," Twayne's United States Authors Series ed. Sylvia E. Bowman (New York; fwayne Publishers, Inc., 1962) , p. 139. 96

Like the old man who forgets himself when telling a story or the quick-witted man who subtly, but continually, emphasizes a thought, repetition dominates

Benet’s style. Very early in the script, the narrator says: "Summer and winter go by. It may be dark in the barn but you’ve got to milk just the same." After more exposition and some musical variations, the script reiterates: "Summer and winter go by but the water has to be pumped and the fire lighted." This same pattern of set-up, exposition and repetition is exemplified in the line: "Sour milk, good for pigs but not for human beings," which is later restated in the line: "Sour milk, good for pigs but the milk check won’t be so good this month."

Repetition is also evident in the parallel construction of various sentences. Regard the following examples which gain a semantic accumulation as they progress :

Lights up! 1936. Twenty-six R.E.A. systems, 7,500 farm families like Bill Parkinson’s get light. 1937. Lights up! There are 122 systems now. Power and light for 43,000 farm families. Lights up for Mississippi and Ohio. Lights up North, South, East, West. 1939. Five hundred and forty-eight systems, 435,000 families and other users and many more to come on the line. Lights up! Six hundred systems operating in early 1940,2 •> spreading their lines over 45 states.

2 * Though POWER AND THE LAND was shot in 1939, the film’s narration and the subsequent release of the film did not occur until 1940. 97

The emphasized phrase "Lights up" exaggerates the importance of the examples provided just as the good storyteller uses repetition for effect.

The use of the vernacular dominates the text. By using the language of the common man, a sense of familiarity ensues. Colloquialisms invite commonalty as in the lines: "Cooperation? On a farm that’s just horse sense." The relaxed tone of spoken language is often emulated by omitting the subject of the sentence as in,

"Seems wrong somehow," or by blending a verb and a preposition together into one unit as in the following pairs: "going to" becomes "gonna" and "out of" becomes

"outta."2 5

The narrator assumes the roles of differing characters when he relates the story. When the men of the community get together to discuss the possibility of starting a cooperative, the narrator easily slips from one voice to another:

"Electricity, 'bout time we got it around here." "Well, it sure would help me out, and the woman, too" .... "The power company says you can see their lines go across the country, see ’em in the sky but they don’t bring the power down at the farm." "Say it costs too much, say a lot of things

2 5 Ivens took great care to find a voice which sounded like someone from the country. After listening to about forty-five people, he finally decided on William Adams to narrate. 98

The tall tale even finds its way into the narrative.

The narrator confides: "They say a lady in Missouri even taught her wringer [washer] to shell peas. I won’t ask for an affidavit on that but she says it's true."

Exaggeration is also evident in the personification of the land as folk-hero. Consider the following example:

"Not the best land, not the worst, but it has raised five healthy Americans and Bill and Hazel. That’s something for land to do."

One portion of the script, delivered in stilted, rhythmic cadence is poetic. Yet the verse acts as a supportive rather than a poetic element, in much the same way that a Greek chorus functions. The refrain "cut the corn" resonates strains of brotherhood, the universal voice of the common man. Typically, the stanzas are uninspired and the delivery echoes the sing-song style of a child’s nursery rhyme. The following excerpt is fairly representative of this poetic portion of the narrative:

. . . The knifes are cutting the loads piled high, The sun beats down from the August sky. We built our freedom and strength this way From Mississippi to Iowa [pronounced I-o-way], From Oregon to the rocks of Maine We’re building it still together.

Throughout the text, Douglas Moore’s music

vacillates between reflective, quiet solos and rousing,

nationalistic melodies. The music effectively parallels

the shifting tone generated by the script. Since the 99 story is relayed so completely through words and music, the purpose of the images come into question. Since the soundtrack was written after the footage was shot, it is unlikely that the images were intended merely as illustrative supplements to the text. The importance of the images becomes obvious in the close analysis of the images without sound.

The images, like the words, have a continuity of story and purpose. From the first shot of a farmhouse and barn dwarfed by the majestic dawn sky to the last shot of a farmer smiling contentedly at his wife, the story depicts daily life on an ordinary farm from pre­ dawn to dusk. Continuity is determined by nature rather than the superficial constructs of man. A continuity of purpose is also established by the parallel construction between the first part of the film which features life on the farm without electricity and the second part of the film which depicts life on the farm with electricity.

In the first part of the film, a structural tension is created by the contradictory messages imparted by the images. Overtly, the message is that a farmer’s life is one of toil. This message is reinforced by showing the farmer and his family go about their daily chores with solemn faces. The males rise before dawn, and guided by the light of a lantern, plod to the barn to milk the cows. This is the beginning of a series of tasks 100 performed by the farmer and his sons throughout the day: manually pumping water, leading the cows to pasture, loading and unloading heavy milk cans, feeding the pigs, sawing, chopping and splitting wood, hitching the team of work horses, loading a wagon with hay, cutting corn, unhitching the horses and leading them to the barn, eating dinner, returning to the barn to milk the cows again and sharpening tools on a grindstone powered by a footpump. The women are not idle either. Mother and daughter begin their tasks at dawn and continue throughout the day: stoking the woodburning stove, pumping water into buckets, heating water on the woodburner, filling washtubs and scrubbing clothes by hand, hanging clean clothes on the line to dry, cleaning and filling oil lamps, heating irons on the woodburner to iron clothes, and cooking meals.

Covertly, and probably unintentionally, another message is being proffered. The farm not only represents toil, it also symbolizes a haven for the man who chooses to remain close to the earth, to his roots, a place where a man can watch over his family and nurture his children just as he nurtures his crops.

This message is punctuated by the quality of the

images. Early in the film, a shot of two white horses grazing in a misty pasture is a dreamy, impressionistic moment embodying the subtle mystery of nature. This shot 101 is interrupted by a low horizon shot of the farm at sunrise, the new sun branding a circle of light into the haze. The shot which follows reveals the white horses again, still enshrouded in mist, a dream untouched. The absence of sound coupled with the stillness of this

filmic moment endows the image with power, affirming the abstract quality of the image and inviting contemplation.

This impressionistic spirit is sustained throughout

the first half of the film. A long shot employing a soft

focus creates a pastoral landscape of cows grazing lazily

in the lush grasses. A series of shots invoke a sequence

which is at once whimsical and lyrical. A young boy, dwarfed by towering cornstalks, peeks from behind the

stalks at his father. The camera follows the boy as he

finds a giant sunflower. The boy carries the sunflower

over his shoulder as he would a knapsack. A long shot

shows the cornstalks in the foreground and the sunflower,

carried by the now unseen boy, moving in a kind of dance

in the background. This shot is immediately juxtaposed

with a shot of the boy climbing up a hill with the

sunflower over his shoulder. At the crest of the hill is

a dead tree, a black-boned skeleton which effaces the

former lyricism as quickly as the burst of a child’s

balloon.

The second part of the movie begins with another day

on the farm. The first shot of a bright day shows a 102 number of men working together in a cornfield. The boy from the sunflower sequence brings a jug of water to his father to drink. A series of close-ups show hands cutting the corn, feet working their way through the rows of corn. The men carry bundles of corn to a wagon and load the bundles onto the wagon. Another close shot reveals farmers, one-by-one, snapping their knives into a block of wood. The farmers then gather in a circle and discuss something intently. The theme of the whole scene

is one of shared communal goals.

A series of dates and maps shift the tone as technology is introduced to the story. Emulating

Eisenstein’s composition within shots, vertical lines create a conflict of planes which emphasize the dialectical relationship between life on the farm before and after electricity.*6 in one shot, as the farmer

stretches his arm up to the sky to point to the electric

wires, he creates a vertical line within the shot. This

composition is repeated in another shot when the electric

lines are shown vertically crossing the sky and again in

a shot which shows a group of men hoisting an electric

pole up from the ground.

The second part of the film also demonstrates a

series of actions which parallel those from the first

26 Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form : .Essays in Film Theory (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Ï949) , p. 54. 103 part of the film. The difference, of course, is that all the tasks have become relatively easy because of electricity. No longer does the farmer’s wife need to stoke the fire, she now has an electric stove. No longer does the farmer need to carry a lantern to the barn, he has an electric light to illuminate the yard. With childlike delight, the farmer flicks the light switch on and off. The young boy of the sunflower scene is shown peeking from behind a shower curtain and playfully

interacting with his father who is washing his hands with running water now that there is an electric pump. When

the farmer enters the kitchen, he takes off his hat and hangs it on an old oil lamp. This simple gesture

signifies that the oil lamp no longer serves its intended

purpose.

The irony of the second half of the film is that

though the advent of technology is envisioned as

progress, technology is what ultimately destroys the

simplicity, and subsequently the beauty of farm life, and

for some farmers, destroys a whole way of life. An

additional irony is that only a small corner of the

original Parkinson land exists intact today. The

remainder of the approximately 200 acres is now being

strip-mined.

Additional perspectives regarding the film can be

gained from analyzing the words and images together. In 104 general, the relationship between the words and images is conventional. The soundtrack was conceived as if it were synchronized with the images. Rather than creating a dialectical relationship between words and images, thus producing a larger meaning, the words and images are parallel in story. This parallelism depletes the dynamism between the words and images, creating a stasis between these two elements.

Ivens’ theories concerning the relationship between words and images are capsulized in the following passage:

Why make a film when you are a brilliant writer? But in film making the writing, the words, are part of an interplay with pictures, sound, music, brought together in an editing that changes the qualities of every component. In unsuccessful documentary there is a fight between the picture and the commentary or the music; like a movie star, each wants to steal the scene.2 7

There is no danger of scene stealing in POWER AND THE

LAND. Though the harmony between the words and images

supports the tone of the film, it also deprives the film

of realizing its aesthetic possibilities.

The use of repetition in the text is also

problematic. Since the narrative is delivered as a

story, it shares many elements of oral literacy. In oral

cultures, repetition functioned as a methodology for

remembering. Once cultures had the ability to record

stories, the need for repetition diminished. The nature

2 7 Ivens, p . 201. 105 of composition was altered by the knowledge that composing could extend thinking.

In oral cultures, the storyteller used descriptive language and gestures to create a context for the mind,

inviting the listener to participate in the active process of imagining. Gesturing provided an incomplete signal, a skeleton for completion by the viewer.

The repetition and descriptive language used to stir

memory or imagination in oral storytelling is not

necessary when language is paired with images. A literal

image has no need for descriptive language since the

properties of the image are represented concretely.

This is affirmed by Ivens when he addresses a

writer’s evolution of understanding when composing for

film :

The poet Stephen Vincent Benet made the usual mistake in his first commentary and wrote about fifty percent too much. The only way of convincing a writer is not by discussion, but by projecting the picture and asking him to read his own commentary.2s

Again, the need for language, especially that which is

descriptive in nature, is diminished by the dominance of

the literal image.

The most effective use of words enhancing the visual

images occurred in a scene at the dining room table.

Hazel Parkinson, backlit in painterly fashion, is sewing

28 Ivens, p. 196. 106 by the light of the oil lamp. Her children are studying at the same table. The commentator's remarks are first about the children, and then they acquire the inner voice of Hazel Parkinson as she worries about her children's eyesight: "... but the letters and words, too tired eyes, blur and dance on the page. She doesn't care so much about her own eyes, but her children's ..."

That same dining room table is where Ivens would share breakfast with the Parkinsons every day during his

stay in their home. Ruth Parkinson Brannan remembers vividly one particular morning with Ivens, whom she and

her family affectionately called "Dutchy":

The thing that I remember the most about him was the morning that the war started. World War II when they invaded Poland, because his family was in Holland. And he was in the dining room eating breakfast that morning when the news that, they always listened to the news on the radio when my mother was fixin’, gettin’ breakfast for ’em, and he heard that news and I never will forget the look on his face ’cause he knew his family was right there. And he wired money to his family to buy sandbags and told ’em to sandbag the whole house.*®

Ivens, like the rest of the world, turned his attention

to the war. The government, too, concentrated on the war

and the films which were government sponsored beginning

in the 1940s were propaganda films having pragmatic

applications.

* ® Interview with Ruth Parkinson Brannan, 25 March 1988. 107

POWER AND THE LAND represents the end of a decade of experimentation which was unique in the history of filmmaking. Filmmakers and literary artists collaborated to produce films which challenged their theoretical, aesthetic and ideological values. This fertile period produced artistic pioneers who have endowed the contemporary viewer with a unique legacy of films and a

living model of theory manifest in practice. CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION

This interdisciplinary study of the poetic voice in the narratives of selected documentary films of the 1930s offers (1) theoretical postulations about the dynamics between words and moving images, (2) implications of these findings for the student as viewer, (3) applications of these findings to teaching active viewing, (4) new knowledge about film history, and (5) deeper insights into the literary amd filmic artists featured within this study. These findings were derived from close analysis of the documentary films NIGHT MAIL,

SPANISH EARTH, and POWER AND THE LAND.

The threefold methodology of first analyzing each film's soundtrack independent of the images, then analyzing the images isolated from the soundtrack and,

finally, analyzing the sound and images together as they

were originally conceived is crucial to the understanding

of the dynamics between the words and images. Since

words and images are elements of film, this final

analysis explores both their shared and disparate

properties as discovered within this research.

Three identifiable properties are shared by words

and images. Firstly, story can be told in words or

images; that is, neither words nor images need depend 108 109 upon one another for a story to be told. Both words and images do need a structural framework within the narrative for story to occur, however. Secondly, both words and images may be interpreted metaphorically.

Words may convey metaphor through language conventions such as figurative language, parallel structure, repetition and rhyme. Images may convey metaphor through the conventions of the medium. In film, the composition of each shot, the relationship between respective shots, and the pace of editing all contribute to the poetic effect of the images. Thirdly, words and images are in a constant state of kinesis. Since language in film is conveyed primarily through oral language, language is in motion. Moving images, as is evident in the term

"moving," are inherently kinetic. Because words and

images are in this dynamic state, a semantic struggle

occurs. Meaning is continually modified by the dominance

of words or images, or the interinanimation between the

two elements. The dominance or submission and,

consequently, the activeness or passiveness of each of

these elements is dependent upon the relationship of

these respective elements to one another.

This research prompted a succession of

generalizations regarding the dynamics between words and

images. These generalizations are elucidated as follows: 110

1. When words and images literally tell a parallel story, the elements of each may become static, depleting the inner dynamism of the corresponding elements. This stasis binds each element to its own properties, prohibiting these elements from transcending their respective properties to create a third composite element.

2. When a story is predominately told in images, words function in an auxiliary capacity, reducing the function of language in its interactive role with images. Descriptive language, especially, is diminished when paired with literal images since the concrete properties of the literal image overpower the abstract properties of language.

3. Neither the word nor the image dominates exclusively; meaning is a movement based on the dominance of one element and the submissiveness of the other. When these elements compete for dominance, the literal image often rules, diminishing the meaning of the figurative image. When these elements are counterpoised or support one another in semantic synchrony, the meaning is enhanced by the dynamics between the two elements. This dynamic allows each independent element to transcend its own properties and combine to create a third, composite element.

From these generalizations, a conceptual framework ensues which offers a model for thinking about the interinanimation between words and moving images. The proposed framework reveals three states of interinanimation between words and images. Figure 1. illustrates a stasis between words and images, binding each element to its own properties. As indicated in the generalizations, this might occur when words and images tell the same story. Figure 2. shows the movement between words and images as interactive. In this state of flux, there is a semantic struggle between the words Ill and images, each element contending for dominance.

Figure 3. reveals the interinanimation between words and

images when juxtaposed in semantic synchrony or

counterpoint. This dynamic enables each individual

element to transcend its own properties, creating a third composite element.

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE INTERINANIMATION BETWEEN WORDS AND IMAGES

Figure 1. Words and Images in Stasis

Words Images

Figure 2. Words and Images in Flux

Words Images

Figure 3. Words and Images in Fusion

Composite Element 112

This theoretical model provides a conceptual framework for the contemporary viewer, particularly the secondary student, who may be relying on images to convey thought yet has no intellectual tools to interact with these images. This framework not only evokes thinking about the interinanimation of words and images, it also requires that the learner understand the properties of words and images as components of the visual media. Once a student has rudimentary knowledge of these components, he or she will be better able to actively interpret images.

Secondary teachers must facilitate this active viewing process in the classroom. In order for teachers

to be articulate about the interpretive act of viewing,

they themselves must become active viewers. This

requires that teachers begin to discriminate between

lexical and visual narratives. The use of picture books

in the secondary classroom could be used as an

introduction to understanding the role of words and

images in story. Viewing silent films and examining the

use of language within these films could be a key to

comprehending the differences between lexical and visual

metaphor. Studying the conventions of film would help

teachers understand how camera angles may establish point

of view, for instance. Learning about film editing and

the theories which underly the conventions of editing 113 would provide cognitive correlations between editing as a composing process and writing.

The classroom can be an experimental laboratory for today’s student in much the same way that the 1930s was a laboratory for the filmmakers of the time. Relatively easy access to videotape cameras and inexpensive film equipment such as the Super-8 camera, editor and projector can be used to teach students to test their own theories about the relationship between words and images.

These hands-on experiences would not only induce students to become more active viewers, they would also challenge

the students to reconceptualize what literacy means to

them. By producing visual poems, for instance, students would have to know what a poem is, how a visual poem would differ from a lexical poem and how images and

language interact.

If educators expect students to become critical

thinkers and responsible citizens in the world community,

then they must become critical of the medium which

influences their thinking most profoundly. Educators

must be more visionary, addressing the needs of students

who are increasingly reliant upon computers and visual

media for learning. This vision must embrace

reconceptualizing what literacy is. By teaching students

to be critical viewers and to expand their perceptions of 114 literacy, teachers can keep this research alive by making the classroom a living component of this dissertation.

The contributions of this study are not confined to the field of education, however. New knowledge of film history, beneficial to contemporary filmmakers, educators and historians, makes this research relevant to the film discipline. An elucidation of the 1930s and the influence of Walt Whitman and Pare Lorentz upon the emergent poetic voice places the study within an historical horizon. The identification of three narrative styles, the poetic, journalistic and dramatic, helps the contemporary scholar classify the body of documentary films made in the 1930s. This study also clarifies inaccuracies found in the credits of the documentary films featured within the study. Not only does this information rectify previous

« y data, it also cautions film historians that credits from

1930s documentaries may be untrustworthy.

Prior to this research, little was known of the

Contemporary Historians and their independent funding of

SPANISH EARTH. Today’s documentary filmmakers may find

the Contemporary Historians inspirational entrepreneurs, demonstrating the importance of independent funding as a

viable means of financing documentaries of socio­ political relevance. 115

Controversy continues to flourish regarding the role of dramatization in documentary filmmaking. The contemporary documentary filmmaker will benefit from knowing how judgments were made with respect to credibility in the documentary films of the 1930s. Both

NIGHT MAIL and POWER AND THE LAND used re-enactment and staging without compromising the integrity of the subjects.

New knowledge of the filmmakers and literary artists provide additional insights. Interviews with the

Parkinson family yield a portrait of Ivens and his work which contributes to the existing body of knowledge about this important filmmaker. The identification of the NANA cables as source material for the narrative of

Hemingway's SPANISH EARTH was previously unrecognized.

Though Hemingway may not have consciously employed these sources while composing the narrative, their influence is apparent. Hemingway’s terse, journalistic style may also have been influenced by the economical language mandated by the cable format.

The ideas generated from this research propogate

ideas for further research. An in-depth study of the

secondary student as viewer would provide important information for secondary teachers. Research focusing on how the brain functions differ when a reader thinks

imagistically from when a viewer interprets images would 116 have important educational applications. The role of sounds other than words as another component of the theoretical model could also be explored.

This research has provided a theoretical framework for thinking about the viewing process, implications about these findings for the viewer, applications of the findings to teaching active viewing, new knowledge of film history, and deeper insights into the literary and filmic artists featured within the study. The value of an interdisciplinary study of this nature is the proliferation of wholistic thinking within the academic community. APPENDIX A

FILMOGRAPHY

NIGHT MAIL (1936)

Sponsoring Agency: General Post Office

Producers : John Grierson, Basil Wright

Directors : Harry Watt

Editors : R. Q. McNaughton, Basil Wright

Sound : Alberto Cavalcanti

Music ; Benjamin Britten, Walter Leigh

Script : W. H, Auden, Basil Wright

Narrator : Stuart Legg

THE RIVER (1937)

Sponsoring Agency: Farm Security Administration Film Unit, Pare Lorentz in charge.

Direction, Script, and Editing; Pare Lorentz

Photography: Floyd Crosby, Willard Van Dyke, Stacy Woodard

Music : Virgil Thomson

Conductor : Alexander Smallens

Narrator : Thomas Chalmers

Editorial Assistant: Lloyd Nosier

117 118

SPANISH EARTH (1937)

Sponsoring Agency: Contemporary Historians, Inc.

Director : Joris Ivens

Camera : John Ferno, Joris Ivens

Editing : Helen van Dongen

Commentary : Written and spoken by Ernest Hemingway

Score : Compiled by Marc Blitzen and Virgil Thomson

POWER AND THE LAND (1939/1940)

Sponsoring Agency: U. S. Department of Agriculture

Director : Joris Ivens

Scenario : Joris Ivens, Edwin Locke

Camera : Floyd Crosby, Arthur Ornitz

Editor : Helen van Dongen

Commentary : Stephen Vincent Benet

Commentator : William D. Adams

Score ; Douglas Moore BIBLIOGRAPHY

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