Introduction: Documentary Before Verité

When writing several chapters on documentary film for the Oxford History of World Cinema (1996), I was struck by the state of the field. The standard accounts of documentary before about 1970 seemed all too familiar and predictable.¹ Ironically, this was particularly true for the 1930s, for which there is an extensive bibliography. The depth of this literature – compared at least to historical writings on documentary of the 1940s and 1950s – has proved to be a trap. The work that has been done, while generally of a high level, has centered on a select set of topics: the New York Film and Photo League, US. Government films of the 1930s – particularly The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1938), The March of Time and newsreels, John Grierson and the British Documentary Film Movement, leftist documentary work of the 1930s in France and Germany, and the work of a few auteurs (Robert Flaherty, Joris Ivens, Leni Riefenstahl and to a lesser degree Dziga Vertov). These areas closely correspond with Erik Barnouw's remarkable Documentary: A History of the Non-fiction Film (1974), which seems to have codified our general understanding of this period. And yet there are many areas of 1930s documentary for which there has been little or no in-depth historical research. These are not – or not necessarily – subjects of secondary or peripheral interest (though even an understanding of the margins will change our understanding of the center). The study of documentary – particularly its history – is still in a relatively early stage, and the basic contours of the field have not been explored as deeply we might assume.

For the history of any period or any subject to retain its vitality (for instance, the history of documentary in the 1930s), it needs to be rewritten from fresh perspectives and enriched with new sources and kinds of information. To make an effective intervention in an existing historical paradigm is not easy.

Conference papers may never appear in print. My own essay in this issue is symptomatic: I had been presenting a talk on My Song Goes Forth (1937), Paul Robeson's first involvement in documentary, at conferences (Orphan Film Conference), film festivals (Margaret Mead Film Festival) and on visits to universities (University of Chicago). Some commentary on the film has also appeared as film notes at retrospectives: "Paul Robeson: Star of Stage and Screen" at UCLA Film & Television Archives, and "Borderlines: Paul Robeson and Film" at MoMA. But without the appropriate occasion, this work may never have been turned into a full-fledged article. There may have always been more pressing issues. Moreover, even when individual essays are published, if they appear in isolation their impact can prove extremely limited. A special issue such as this one provides a structure for bringing a set of ideas to full fruition and a context for readers to better appreciate the results.

I encountered the authors and their essays-inthe-making under a variety of circumstances, but they grabbed my attention for two inter-related reasons. First and foremost, they shared a similar project – the opening up and rewriting of documentary history in the 1930s and early 1940s. More selfishly (and perhaps more subjectively), these essays connected to my own more immediate interest in Paul and Eslanda Robeson and the couple's move into documentary in 1936–37, the subject of my own essay in this special issue. Film History has thus provided an opportunity to bring these articles together, so they can speak to one another in a public forum. Many thanks to Richard Koszarski for this opportunity. At the same time, these essays draw attention to more ambitious projects that should eventually result in book-length studies.

Carla Leshne is working on a larger book project that focuses on radical filmmaking in California in the 1930s, particularly the Film & Photo League in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Such a study is badly needed. Writings about the Film and Photo League in the United States, notably books by William Alexander and Russell Campbell, have focused on the New York chapter, which was formed in 1930. Of the three key...