screen. By adding a second creative element it released
the realist film from a certain naivete and allowed it to
come to grips with the more complex issues which
now confronted it. Thus it gave the director of "6.30
Collection" a whole new world of images in the
sounds and shouts of a sorting-office at the rush hour;
it gave, in such films as "Weather Forecast," a more
direct means of imparting information through the
spoken word; it linked the qualities of good journalism
more closely with the film by bringing the worker to
the microphone to describe his job, as in "Under the
City"; it brought to the screen in "Night Mail" the
dramatic possibilities of specially written music and of
monologue, by providing a ground on which the film
director, the musician and the poet could pool their
resources on equal terms. The scope added by sound 209
made possible the projection of a great public service
such as the Post Office in terms of its contact with
society.
Following the lead of the G.P.O., many other organi
zations have used the realist film as a method of public
address. Bodies such as the Ministries of Agriculture
and Labour, The Central Electricity Board, The British
Commercial Gas Association, the B.B.C., the Ceylon
Tea Propaganda Board, the Orient Line, and Imperial
Airways, have produced films to make their work and
their problems more widely and more vividly known.
Technique and treatment develop side by side with an
expanding field. New subjects call for new methods of
presentation to dramatize the new material they offer.
The conflict between Buddhist tradition and modern
commerce in Ceylon allowed Basil Wright to apply a
"INDUSTRIAL BRITAIN" (Empire Marketing Board)
traced the tradition of centuries behind the skill of the craftsman
Production john grierson and Robert Flaherty. Acknowledgments to H.M. Stationery Office.
