One Man's Documentary: A Memoir of the Early Years of the National Film Board (review)

Graham McInnes (1912–70), a government man, an art lover, and a writer, is a minor figure in Canadian history. A bit of a dilettante, McInnes came from a creative and esoteric British family, passed his youth in Australia, and then came to Canada to spend time with his father and attend university in Toronto. As well as working in the Department of External Affairs and later in diplomatic circles, he wrote about Canadian art and published two novels and four volumes of his memoirs. The last memoir project he worked on recounted his experiences working at the National Film Board of Canada during the war years. Mostly complete when he died in 1970, it has languished in the Film Board archives until being brought to light by University of Manitoba film professor Gene Walz, who has also added an introduction, a filmography, and some explanatory notes, not to mention some classic NFB personnel photos.

John Grierson, Canadian film commissioner during the war, was famous for hiring promising young men without film experience, and McInnes certainly fit the bill. With a degree from the University of Toronto, McInnes had worked as a broadcaster and journalist in the late 1930s and was hired at the NFB as a screenwriter in 1940; he later turned his hand toward producing and even did a little directing. He worked on famous wartime films, such as Coal Face, Canada (as well as many of the not so famous ones), and then hit his stride at the end of the war with a series of well-respected films called Canadian Artists. All told, Walz lists forty-five films in which McInnes played some role.

Even so, McInnes is virtually unknown in Canadian film studies, and there are some clear reasons why. As a rule, wartime NFB films contained no credits. The corporate identity of the Board and the public service it was providing were thought by Grierson to be of more importance than individual recognition (although he himself received a great deal). So McInnes's contributions are not readily apparent, even to someone who may have watched his films. Also, his filmmaking career was a short one. After the war, McInnes took a post in External Affairs, making his stint at the NFB more of an extension of his government work, or even, given his emphasis on script writing, of his journalism, than of a filmmaking career as such.

Because of his relative obscurity, as well as the thirty-five-year delay of publication, not to mention the sixty years that have elapsed since the recounted events took place, this memoir has the feel of a time capsule. Innocent of the debates that have ensued in subsequent years about the place of the Film Board in Canadian film history, McInnes writes with an enthusiasm infused by his memories of youth, new technology, and the sense of purpose provided by the war that is often quite engaging. At times his frank assessments of many aspects of the NFB are downright surprising. Take, for example, this admission of ambivalence about Grierson's watchword, non-theatrical documentary film: 'Though Grierson was himself a born teacher and evangelist, and though it was an article of faith with him that film, documentary film, was the great teaching and information medium of the future, he could never get us really excited over non-t[heatrical]' (48, italics in original). Admissions such as these, along with often racy stories about NFB employees and their circle, give a vivid and not entirely positive picture of working at the Board, which seems all the more compelling as a result. (McInnes is particularly fond of capturing the idiosyncrasies of speech in lengthy sections of dialogue.) An index would have been a valuable feature for looking up the dozens of tidbits about filmmakers and other Ottawa characters found throughout the book. [End Page 350...