The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-10-20


neutrality-suspicious. Barbusse.
BY this time you have, no doubt,
either seen or heard about the RKO-
Pathe newsreel of the massacre at
Ambridge, Pa. 1t has created a stir
unequalled by ny an elaborate and
expensive film turned out by studios
anywhere. 1t has excited to an in
tense pitch the whole scale Of class
reactions to a film and letters and
editorials about 1t are appearing in
the capitalist press.
Richard Watts, Jr., Of the New
York Herald Tribune, fired the first
broadside in a brilliant review en-
titled Merely A Newsreel." Richard
Watts is unquestionably the most
competent and honest critic of the
film in the whole capitalist press. We
will not soon forget his uncompro-
missing attitude in connection with
Thunder Over Mexico" In all his
writings one feels his utter disgust
with the cretinistic level to which
ninety per cent of Hollywood's "art"
can sink. And unlike most of his
colleagues, he writes fearlessly about
what he sees.
To him the Ambridge newsreel is
something which Gin stark dramatic
power and national significance pro-
vides a motion picture of the utmost
Importance. =. At the beginning you
see the pickets lined up before the
mill, while the sheriff and his dep
uties approach them in a manner not
without its similarity to the ominous
march Of the Czarist troops in the
Russian revolutionary epic, "Potem-
KIM. A deputy strikes picket
with a club and the simple, eloquent
cry goes up, THAT amt right"
You can feel the ever growing ten
sion. then clubs and fists begin to
fly and the deputies open fire.
"a striker lies dead upon the street
and another, wounded, is carried
away on the back of friend. the
gallant sheriff has, upon the ap-
proach of trouble, hastily stepped
into the background. The battle is
over, but man is dead, and bitter,
unreIenting hatred has been aroused
that no fire words or apologies can
pacify (nly emphasiS.-L0. as a
warning, an omen and grimly dis
turbing picture of what industrial
struggle really is, the picture is so
enormously important that it should
be part of our training in current
events. At the end, the sheriff, with
straight face, deplores the battle
and adds that he tried to keep the
peace but the strikers called him
bad names. =. I thought the guardian
Of the law would be Missed by the
high-strung motion picture audi
ences. Yet I am told that at the
Radio City Music Hall on Thursday
the eloquent gentleman was ap-
plauded. At the Embassy Theatre
they frequently applaud newsreel
pictures Of Hitler, for that matter"
A worker writes to the Herald
Tribune: MY blood boiled while I
viewed the Pathe newsreel depicting
the scenes Of a labor riot near the
steel mills OF Anbridge, Pa. How
we workers can sit in SNUG COM
placency and view such an episode
and not give vent to our feelings
reflects to what degree we have been
cowed."
And so there you have it, merely
t newsreell" Where are the thou
sands of newsreelS of similar hap
0enings that are invariably shot"
by the capitalist newsreel firms and
hat never reach the screen? A
Irop in the bloody ocean of capital
st violence against workers has
rickled through with the flood of
newsreels of baby parades, military
maneuvers and N. r. A. speeches and
many all too innocent folks become
indignant. Weren't the Sacco-Van-
zetti newsreelS destroyed by order OF
Hays? And who has forgotten the
March Sixth demonstration in 1880,
the film record of which was or
dered shelved by the infamous
Grover Whalen?
Truth is revolutionary and makes
"the blood of workers boil" that is
why such newsreels rot in the vaults
of the movie firms without ever
reaching an audience. Whalen,
Hays and the class they keep house
for are afraid of truth.
A word on the power of the news
reel document and what workers
organizations can learn from the
Ambridge film. 1t is not generally
known, but fact just the same,
that Lenin pointed out in 1921 that
the films greatest power lies in its
capacity to record reality. 1t was
his opinion that the film is most
convincing when it leaves the studio
and its articles and applies itself
to recording "unplayed" events. We
comrades know this to be true from
our own experience with newsreel
making. We know, for instance, that
no enacted movie on the subject
could have carried as directly and
powerfully as our documentary rec
ord of the Scottsboro demonstration
in front of the Supreme Court In
Washington. We can afford to dis
count the criticism Of many among
US who think that we are handi-
capped because we have failed thus
far to turn out single studio film.
We agree with Watts, who, con-
tinuing on the question of the AM
alFr7N-