COMMENTARY

Although in his published writings Paul Rotha has always defended the documentary movement, he was always at least semi-independent of Grierson and the others, and only briefly employed by Grierson. Basil Wright has described his relationship with Grierson as one of ‘continuous unarmed combat’ (interview with Ian Aitken, 1987). Like Grierson, Rotha was a committed and strong-minded individual, unable to accept anything other than a leadership role. This led him to leave the documentary movement early, and engage in his own film production work, a move which enabled him to reach a critical perspective on the movement which escaped many of the other film-makers. Nevertheless, this degree of independence, and freedom from Grierson's overbearing presence, did not lead to a great film-making career. Some of the documentaries made in the thirties remain important, but, after that, few films of significance appeared. Rotha's strong, sometimes belligerent personality also seems to have left him somewhat isolated during the last years of his life. Orbanz (1977: 38), for example, depicts him as having few friends apart from Basil Wright, more or less ignored by the younger generation of documentary film-makers, and enwrapped in his memories.

In his ‘Afterthought’ (1972), Rotha makes a number of fairly strong criticisms of Grierson. He states that he did not share Grierson's ‘almost blind allegiance’ to the journalistic film, and describes the films which Grierson produced at the NFB as ‘ephemeral’, ‘let off with missile speed’, and having no lasting qualities. He is also strongly critical of Grierson's decision to leave the GPO Film Unit in 1936, arguing that this was a major factor in the disintegration of the documentary movement. His opinion of Cavalcanti appears to be low: he is seen as a rather unreliable opportunist. Rotha also argues that the documentary movement was let down by the Labour movement both during the 1930s, and after 1945. He argues that Labour ‘had no ear for such an approach to imaginative public service’, and unlike the Communist movement, which supported film-making, did not commission films. Rotha sounds particularly bitter on this point.