Documenting John Grierson

At Scotland's Stirling University they remember a native son

whose life was so remarkable that they have an entire archive

devoted to writings both by him and about him.

The man's name was John Grierson,

and, quite simply, he changed the way we see the world.

APPLAUSE

The Grierson Awards is the only British awards event

devoted solely to documentary.

Slightly cocky demeanour.

A man with a flair.

No sort of conception that men were different to women.

He was dictatorial, noisy.

He was a teacher all the time, I think.

A subversive.

A bit of a connoisseur of the morose.

He made us believe that we could change the world.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: London Euston to Glasgow Central.

Greetings, reunions, people arriving, faces in a crowd.

Ordinary faces, ordinary people.

Yet one of these people is famous.

I wonder if you spotted him.

One great British film-maker celebrates another.

The master of suspense

speaking in his own characteristic deadpan way.

Some many years ago before I left England,

young Grierson was making his early mark on the film world

at much the time as my own humble efforts

were beginning to reach the screen.

In the years that have intervened,

Dr John Grierson has become dubbed the father of the documentary.

Grierson first made his name when, aged 30,

he persuaded a Tory government in London to finance a short film

about herring fisherman in the North Sea.

Grierson's film Drifters was revolutionary.

For the first time in class-conscious Britain,

British workers were shown in a way where people could see

the value of the work they did and the effort needed to do it.

Grierson called this type of film "documentary".

He had started a movement which would spread around the world.

Drifters was a huge success.

Grierson thought that for democracy to function as best it could

then people voting should have the best possible understanding

of how the society they were a part of worked.

Grierson believed that film as a medium

could change things for the better.

APPLAUSE

Later in life, in a classic lecture at the National Film Theatre,

Grierson outlined what had been his manifesto.

It was always, as we saw it, a chance to say something,

a chance to teach something, a chance to reveal something,

a chance, possibly, to inspire -

certainly always an opportunity for influence of one kind or another.

And you had political angles.

I was a pretty radical fella,

and saw a chance of doing certain things about the working class,

about housing problems and all that sort of thing.

John Grierson was a headmaster's son.

He grew up in the small Stirlingshire town of Cambusbarron.

He inherited his social conscience from both his parents.

His mother was politically active at a time when most mothers weren't.

She was a suffragette,

and during bad times she ran a soup kitchen for the unemployed.

Grierson was just 16 when the First World War broke out.

Underage, he joined the Navy and served on minesweepers.

Off duty, he made little sketches

and wrote letters home for any of his shipmates

who couldn't read or write.

After the war, while at Glasgow University,

John Grierson toyed with the idea of becoming a minister of the church,

but on a scholarship to America

he saw the factual films of Robert Flaherty.

Grierson had showed great interest

in Flaherty's film about the Inuit people,

Nanook of the North,

and in a review of his second film, Moana,

he used the word "documentary"

for the first time in a film context.

He and Flaherty were to form a long friendship,

with frequent arguments about working methods -

but Grierson always said Flaherty had the best eye in cinema.

John Grierson decided that cinema would be his pulpit.

He would make films with a message.

Films that would change the world.

The term "documentary" was his and Flaherty's...

..and it was invented in New York.

Sounds like the night they invented champagne!

It WAS invented in New York.

They didn't know what they were going to call the movement

and they thought "actuality", "actuality films",

and then, no, because it would resemble too much

the French newsreels "actualite".

And so, they had to think again.

And, finally, the first one was very uncompromising, it was the...

.."the self-dramatisation of the actual",

which was fairly tough-going, and limiting.

But that lasted for two or three years,

and eventually it came out,

as you know, as "the creative interpretation of the actual".

'The old order changes, giving place to new.'

This poetic film on industrial Britain

was produced by Grierson and directed by Robert Flaherty.

Grierson had realised that he could advance his cause more quickly

by producing films rather than by directing them.

He set up a film-making unit at the Empire Marketing Board in London.

Being termed a civil servant didn't bother him,

though "civil" is perhaps not the first word

that many would have applied to him.

He had an amazing gift of the gab.

He could inspire and enthuse them to do things.

He could also con money out of a sponsor

like nobody I have ever seen.

That was part of his genius, was to be able to

walk into somebody's office and explain to them

why it was important for them, what was in their self-interest,

to make this film which...

for his self-interest, was completely different.

-Scenario's ready.

-Right-oh. Thanks.

Driven by the force of Grierson's personality

and his seemingly inexhaustible energy,

films started pouring out of the unit.

With a Government department paying the bills,

Grierson had to take great care

nothing they did could be seen in any way as an artistic indulgence

and a misuse of public money.

Right, cut it there.

When the Empire Marketing Board closed, his film unit survived

and was transferred across to the GPO - a very powerful body

running both Britain's postal service and the nation's telephones.

Right, start 'em up.

Grierson's contribution was first of all in selecting people.

I mean, he selected - I don't know whether it was five, six or seven

young men and women

who had got first class degrees at Oxford and Cambridge -

people like Stewart Legg and Arthur Elton, Humphrey Jennings -

and developed them as his creative team.

With these energetic, young college types,

Grierson changed the possibility

of what short films could be.

With subjects ranging from miners working at the coalface,

taking cameras underground...

to an innovative mix of animation and actuality

in Len Lye's Rainbow Dance,

selling the idea of the savings bank...

to director Humphrey Jennings first short film,

Post Haste, on the history of the postal service...

..and an intimate look at people's housing problems,

using actuality sound from working people.

Grierson's unit was one of the first

to put women in positions behind the camera.

With Housing Problems it was Ruby,

one of Grierson's two sisters in the unit.

Ruby used the then revolutionary technique of on-camera interviews

with ordinary working people to great success.

Gets on your nerves, where everything's filthy.

Dirty, filthy walls - and the vermin in the walls is wicked.

She told her brother, "You look at people in a glass bowl -

"I'm going to smash that bowl."

So, I tell you, we're fed up.

Anybody comes to see you,

they say they feel bilious when they get down the stairs

because it's all crooked.

Grierson had no conception that men were different to women,

so he would be quite happy to hire a female director

when it absolutely was not done.

He actually hired his two sisters, Marion and Ruby,

who both worked as directors - and very good ones, too.

By showing the nature of the social problems in a very graphic way,

Grierson built up an emotional reservoir of commitment

to that idea of central planning,

of an interventionist role for the State

which was seen as very benign and very progressive -

in contrast, perhaps,

to what was happening through the State in the Soviet Union,

or had happened through the State in Nazi Germany.

Film-making was one of the holy professions.

You had power to communicate ideas that were really important

and it was very important what you were going to say -

much more so than the simple act of film-making, you know,

which was attractive to us then,

but it was, what were you going to do with that?

What were you going to say,

what were your ideas that you were going to express?

And that you had a responsibility to use that art,

which was an incredibly powerful one,

to actually say something that would make the world a better place.

Grierson's gift for grouping other talents around him

was at its peak in this ground-breaking film.

He brought in sound expert, Alberto Cavalcanti,

the poet, WH Auden

and the composer Benjamin Britten.

The idea of having poetry in the commentary

so bothered the film's co-director, Harry Watt,

that Grierson told him to take a holiday.

When word got out that the poetry was actually working very well,

Watt soon came back.

'This is the night mail crossing the Border

'Bringing the cheque and the postal order

'Letters for the rich Letters for the poor

'The shop at the corner and the girl next door

'Pulling up Beattock A steady climb

'The gradient's against her but she's on time.'

Music: "Night Mail" by Benjamin Britten

Night Mail remains the most famous of the unit's films,

and when the train crosses the Scottish Border,

Grierson's voice takes over the commentary.

'Down towards Glasgow she descends,

'Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes.

'Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces

'set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.

'All Scotland waits for her -

'in the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs,

'men long for news.

'Letters of thanks Letters from banks

'Letters of joy from the girl and the boy

'Receipted bills and invitations

'To inspect new stock or to visit relations

'And applications for situations...'

This was a man who recruited an amazing

number of avant garde artists.

Think of WH Auden, think of Benjamin Britten.

Possibly the paramount illustration of that is Norman McLaren.

Never, if you see the early films of Norman McLaren

could you find somebody so...

apparently different from Grierson.

But what was Grierson like to work with?

As long as you got on with him,

that was all right

and I didn't get on with him.

I'd find him...

I was away with him

in the North of Ireland,

alone there quite a bit,

and he was really delightful.

Quite different from the man in London.

In London, he was dictatorial, noisy.

Critical of everything

he didn't like.

So, today, in the roar of a Glasgow football crowd,

you may well observe the vigour and the enthusiasm,

the ambition and the unconquerable determination of the Scottish race.

Like the night mail,

Grierson himself headed back to Scotland and helped form a committee

to make seven films of Scotland for the forthcoming Empire exhibition.

With his GPO colleague Basil Wright directing The Face Of Scotland,

an optimistic picture of the character of the nation

in 13 minutes.

ALL SHOUT

Today they are the same race of whom, nearly 500 hundred years ago,

the historian Holinshed spoke.

"There unto we find them to be courageous and hardy,

"offering themselves often unto the uttermost perils

"with great assurance."

In 1937,

Grierson was invited to Canada

to advise their government on the uses of film.

He wrote a plan for a Canadian national film board.

The Canadians liked his plan so much they asked him to run it.

None of us can imagine the Film Board having been made without him.

It was his genius

that persuaded McKenzie King -

the Prime Minster at the time -

to give him a mandate.

And Grierson wrote, drafted,

the Film Act of Parliament.

Grierson brought a few of his documentary colleagues

to Canada with him.

Among them Norman McLaren, the brilliant animator,

and, crucially, the exceptional film-making talents of Stewart Legg.

For the duration of the Second World War,

Grierson drove his ever-growing team at the Film Board

with characteristic energy and inspiration.

In addition to their many other films,

they produced two series every month -

Canada Carries On

and World In Action.

The World In Action series was up against the American March Of Time,

but still succeeded in being shown in several thousand American cinemas

as well as throughout Canada.

From the safety of Canada, Grierson was all too aware

of the dangers facing the team he had brought together in Britain,

busy making effective propaganda films

such as Humphrey Jennings' Fires Were Started.

This film reflected the "Britain can cope" attitude

to the effect of German bombing, whilst also boosting moral.

SIRENS WAIL

Once we had the war

and an understanding of the kind of propaganda

that the enemy was using against us,

and the very sophisticated Nazi propaganda, then...

..in Britain, as part of the war effort,

far more resources went into film.

And, of course, Grierson played a very important role

with his World In Actions, made in Canada at that time,

made in North America,

which helped bring North American opinion round to the side of Britain

with its fight against Nazism.

The National Film Board of Canada

was probably his finest achievement.

He was no longer lodging his film operation

within a conventional government ministry,

but he had an ad hoc national institution for film

devoted entirely to the production of documentary

and, of course, thanks to another Scot, to animated film.

It had always been his intention to leave the Film Board

at the end of the war, and put it in the hands of Canadians.

No case ever ends for the Federal Bureau of Investigation

until it is solved and closed with the conviction of the guilty

or the acquittal of the innocent.

In 1945, in the middle of a Communist scare panic,

the name of a Russian contact was discovered

in the notebook of one of Grierson's secretaries.

Despite it's perfectly legitimate reason for being there,

rumours ran wild and Grierson resigned.

In court he treated the idea of being any kind of Communist agent

or spy as laughable.

Grierson headed for New York.

He had hoped that the newly-founded UNESCO might be interested

in funding documentary films addressing world problems.

But he was targeted by J Edgar Hoover, chief of the American FBI.

Hoover saw Grierson as a dangerous Red

and his American visa was cancelled.

I think it's going to be necessary

to enlarge the detail of agents at Little Rock, Arkansas.

Grierson was under constant surveillance

from the point when he went to New York.

Hoover was convinced Grierson was a Communist spy

and was trying to figure out some way to prove it and couldn't,

and was really annoyed.

And so Hoover got somebody who was a member of the World Today,

which was Grierson's New York company, to spy for the FBI.

This person, I don't know who that was,

would go through the company correspondence at the end of the day

and then write down anything that was interesting

or photograph it and give it to the FBI.

And, of course, this person's complaints were used by the FBI

to justify kicking Grierson out of the United States,

which they did do.

But Grierson landed on his feet, in 1947, in Paris,

as UNESCO's first director of mass communications.

There he developed the policy of "each to each",

where each country contributed to the wider group of countries

their own particular strength.

After three years in Paris, he was invited back to Britain

to take over at the Central Office of Information.

But he found the bureaucracy stifling.

No, I mean, quite honestly,

he was not a success at the COI.

Erm...

My recollections are vivid because he

was enormously stimulating,

and a very exciting man

to have in your midst,

and the debates we had both

in the office and in his own flat,

which was very close by,

were wonderful.

I mean, people would drift in and out

of these debates

rather like a seminar.

Although the purpose of the meeting

might be to decide

whether we'd make a film on coal,

you might get absolutely anywhere -

like growing strawberries in Wiltshire,

who should select teachers,

who were the most important people

within a democracy

and fundamentally deciding the issues of democracy,

and all of this would happen

with a room full of perhaps six, eight, ten people.

And a good deal of whisky in the evenings.

He had that bright-eyed, brisk, slightly cocky demeanour.

He looked around like a sparrow the whole time.

He was always decently but not foppishly dressed.

He didn't affect the artist's garb.

He treated everyone as if they were slightly hostile to him.

He did not accept warm overtures easily.

He kept people at a distance -

and I remember at the first meeting,

if anyone got a little bit too familiar

or began talking a little bit too intimately

he was instantly slapped down.

Next - Group 3.

Grierson led a Government initiative

to make feature films in Britain.

At Group 3, Grierson, as always, inspired.

The company made some great films, such as The Brave Don't Cry,

a realistic fiction about a Scottish mining disaster

reflecting the harsher side of Scottish life.

But Rank distribution cold-shouldered

these Government-subsidised films.

As a result, their cinema release was severely limited

and the unit was finally forced to close.

Can you hear me?

After 15 years, Grierson's American visa was renewed.

When he arrived in New York on the Queen Mary,

two FBI men came aboard before anyone disembarked.

They escorted Grierson ashore,

telling him, "This is just so you know we know you're here."

Grierson recalled with humour, "For the first time,

"I had my pick of that long line of yellow cabs."

The documentary form developed and strengthened through the war,

through the 1940s,

but then along came television in the early '50s,

and here you had suddenly a mass medium.

A very democratic medium in some ways,

although it still talked in rather upper class tones

in the BBC in the early '50s.

But then, in 1956, a certain more brash approach

was brought in by commercial television and the ITV companies,

and that led to a wonderful series called This Wonderful World.

On This Wonderful World programme for Scottish Television,

which was the only network programme coming from Scotland at that time,

which was of course an assortment of clips from films

that had taken his fancy over the world.

Calling all workers!

This Wonderful World, for Scottish Television,

was a well-loved prime time opportunity to show excerpts

from documentaries from around the world

as well as looking back on the best of home production

such as Humphrey Jennings' brilliant wartime propaganda film,

the lyrical Listen To Britain.

MUSIC PLAYS OVER SPEAKERS

SINGING MUFFLED BY MACHINERY

It was during this time that Grierson was asked to write

a film treatment about Clyde shipbuilding.

Grierson picked an American director, Hilary Harris,

whose work he had seen at a festival in Brussels.

Grierson told Hilary he should look for that moment

when a ship is being launched

and its hull kisses the water for the first time.

Hilary shot many, many launches but ended up frustrated,

saying, "There is no kiss."

But with all those launches,

he now had the footage to make one of the very best openings

of a documentary.

VOICES AND STRIDENT MUSIC MERGE

Seawards The Great Ships went on to win an Oscar.

In his late 60s, Grierson was invited back to Canada,

to Montreal's McGill University.

To continue to do what he had always done.

Inspiring, energising and enabling a new generation

to follow in his footsteps.

Well, we learned that Grierson was coming to Montreal

to teach at McGill, and we were very excited about this,

because this was going to be a chance

for a number of us to get to know him better.

We spent time visiting him at his Crescent Street apartment

and we got to know a number of his students,

and we witnessed what we saw as a whole new generation

of kids who were going to be imprinted by this guy.

And some of them were going to become very important in the film business.

When Grierson was in town it just sparked

so many people's imagination.

Partly because they had known of him and were dying to meet him.

He had an energy that was very infectious

and he would seem to draw you in

to whatever the subject was.

What fascinated me was his way of thinking worldwide all the time,

not just local, it was international.

We thought the subject was about documentary film,

but he would turn up with a newspaper

with a photograph from the Vietnam War,

and he would start talking about the propagandistic value

of that photograph.

To hear him talk internationally the way he was,

you felt it was like a community.

Students would skip classes to crash his sessions.

I know I was at one of them,

and I thought, "If the fire commissioner ever came by

"this building he'd close it down."

There were students sitting in the stairways.

APPLAUSE

He somehow managed to engage every one of us

who was in that large room.

He was one of those people who could talk -

he talked to taxi drivers, he talked to everyone,

and always interested, and always had something to...

So, in that sense, he was a poet.

He was a poet of...

not just of this level that he had in knowledge,

but also a poet of the common man, you know?

So that's what made him a great documentarist, and a leader.

He asked what are you going to be going in for?

And I said, "Well, I'm in teaching." And he just immediately said,

"Teaching is the most important job in the world."

And I felt so validated by that,

in a small community of people who had dismissed me

because I wasn't looking at going into film.

And then all of a sudden, out of the blue one day,

he said, "How many hours a day do you work?"

So I worked maybe three hours a day or something like that then,

as a freelancer.

And I said - I lied, and I said, "Oh, eight hours a day."

And he jumped up and he said, "What? You only work eight hours a day?

"How do you expect to change the world

"if you only work eight hours a day?!"

He made us believe that we could change the world.

He once called Judy when we were first married

and said, "Well, you know..."

He wanted to talk to me, I wasn't home.

He said, "You know, Adam's going to change the world."

I'm sure he said that to everybody, of course,

but he really made you believe that,

even though you knew it was sort of bullshit,

but the potential was there, you know,

and he made you want to live up to that expectation.

Grierson had spent a lifetime smoking and drinking

and at the age of 71 he was paying the price.

His brother, a doctor, told him,

"Give up both and I'll guarantee you three more years."

Remarkably, Grierson did so.

He got the three years

his brother had promised him.

He died in 1972

in a hospital in the city of Bath,

aged 74.

At an annual event in London,

Grierson Awards are given to the best documentaries of the year.

It's a great honour to win one,

and a reminder of a remarkable man.

John Grierson didn't just make films,

he made film-makers.