COMMENTARY

Basil Wright was one of Grierson's closest associates. He was one of Grierson's first recruits, and remained close to Grierson throughout his career. His 1935 film Song of Ceylon showed that he was capable of making impressive films. However, he made few films of consequence after that. In'Documentary Today’ (1947), Wright draws on Grierson's model of the need, in a complex society, for instruments of mass communication to explain society to the people. He often draws on the same language used by Grierson, sometimes stating Grierson's positions in terms even stronger than Grierson himself would. For example, he argues that documentary film-makers should be ‘in the forefront of policy’ and ‘several steps ahead of the politicians’. Similarly, he puts even more strongly the view expressed in Grierson's writings of the 1940s that ‘documentary is not this or that type of film, but simply a method of approach to public information’. It is, however, difficult to square such a statement with a film such as Song of Ceylon.

Wright gave a number of interviews throughout his career, and these often tend to be more informative than his written work. Consequently, I have included an interview which I conducted with him in 1983, and which provides interesting insight into the various intellectual influences on the documentary movement during the 1930s.

DOCUMENTARY TODAY (1947)

What is a documentary film? A swift canvass around the country would provide a curious collection of answers to the question. A documentary would be variously defined as a short film before the feature, as a travelogue, as a description of how things are made, as an instructional film, as an aid to teaching, as an artistic interpretation of reality and, by some theoreticians in the documentary field, as a film made by themselves. In point of fact, confusion of public thought as to what documentary film is doesn't matter much. It is the creators of documentaries who must essentially be quite clear about what it is they are trying to do.