Introduction:Chasing Reality

Abstract

Introduction: Chasing Reality Richard Koszarski This is not an issue devoted to documentary film, nor does it examine in any systematic way the ontological issues governing the relation of the mediated filmed image to its unformed subject. Instead, the seven papers collected here trace something of the cinema’s perennial concern with absorbing and improving upon any ‘real’ events, locations, performances or personalities that fall within its purview. On one end of the spectrum, filmmakers who find their subjects in the everyday world have almost automatically been seen as operating closer to ‘reality,’ regardless of the style in which they approached (or represented) these events. The actuality and the news film were, at least in the beginning, understood as the opposite of the fictions and fantasies which eventually came to dominate the commercial cinema. But it has been a long time, of course, since anyone has regarded the non-fiction film quite so naively as this, and the first two papers in this special issue provide further evidence of the unique difficulties film audiences are faced with in distinguishing fiction from fact. Daniel Kowalsky discusses the Soviet film offensive in Spain during the Civil War, not only through an analysis of the footage shot there by Roman Karmen and his associates, but by situating this work within the context of the Soviet theatrical features which were also mobilized for this battle. Revealing Spanish and Russian-language materials provide new insights into the significance of this conflict in the history of film propaganda. Exhibition as a locus of non-fiction cinema was also important in the American cinema, but despite the prevalence today of all-news radio and cable channels it is surprising how little has been written about the history of all-news motion picture theaters. The Telenews operation, designed to accommodate the active participation of local managers (who could reorganize ‘the news’ theater by theater), is the subject of a unique joint historical inquiry by members of the Aronson family, an account which draws in film history, local history and genealogical research. When Paul Rotha set out to define the field in his ground breaking Documentary Film (1936), he pitched a much wider tent than is generally accepted today. In addition to certifying as ‘documentary’ such films as Eisenstein’s October, Rotha also allowed an entire ‘Naturalist (Romantic)’ tradition. The centerpiece here was Nanook, but the foregrounding of nature in an active role was also identified in films like The Covered Wagon (James Cruze, 1923) and Stark Love (Karl Brown, 1927). Brown’s film was indeed shot in the mountains of North Carolina, but apparently even that did not provide enough ‘reality’ for the Paramount publicity department. Using newly uncovered local sources, John White reveals how the studio passed off a well-known college athlete as a camera-shy, barefoot hillbilly. Historic recreations pre-dated The Covered Wagon, of course. In Louis Pelletier’s account of the pioneering British-American Film Manufacturing Company and its efforts to create an ‘historically correct’ Canadian cinema, we see how this impulse to blend history, entertainment and education seemed, at a crucial moment in film history, the high road to cinema art. Filming even fictional narratives on location was thought to add not only eye-catching spectacle, but the authentic texture and excitement of modern life itself. Many filmmakers deserted the back lots in the years immediately following the Second World War, including such studio stalwarts as Alfred Hitchcock, who shot I Confess in Quebec City late in 1952. But the issues of authenticity which immediately confronted that film turned out to involve ritual rather than locale, as Amy Lawrence demonstrates. And at the far end of this continuum, about as distant as possible from the concerns of Ivens and [End Page 3] Flaherty, are questions of performance and personality as reflected in the life and work of the movie star. Moving from stage to screen, Robert Donat understood the ways in which mechanical reproduction might rob his performances of both immediacy and authenticity. Vicky Lowe reveals how Donat attempted to counter the Kuleshov effect by regulating the tone of his performance in The Citadel (1938) through the aid of an analytical ‘emotion...