The point occurs to one at once, on seeing these pictures, why shouldn't something of the same kind be done to record our own war-time activities? A great deal of criticism, and often fair criticism, is levelled at the inadequacy of our newsreels, Would not some sort of regular bulletin on the lines of the "Journal de Guerre" fulfil a real need?
The film correspondent of the "Observer" put the question to Mr. Gerald Sanger, producer of British Movietonews, and he replied that in his view any development of space for newsreel material would be welcome. "Our trouble at the moment," he said, "is lack of playing-time. It isn't easy to cram all the news of the world into nine minutes twice a week and still make a well-balanced reel. Nowadays there is more and more news coming in. The Government departments have come to recognize that we are rather important factors from their point of view and they are giving us a lot more facilities then they did at the beginning of the war. The material is there, and we could make our reels still more interesting if we had double the space to present a subject. As it is we have to pack anything from fourteen items into a nine-minute issue. I should hate to estimate how much good stuff is wasted.
"Why can't we make the reels longer? Because the theatres apparently don't want to show them longer. An exhibitor has too little playing time left over after his feature pictures. If the public could convince the exhibitor and distributor that they wanted more time for their news we should have a bigger scope all round, and it would be a real service to British newsreels generally."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.