John Grierson

John Grierson and Night Mail

Biography

John Grierson was born on the 26th April 1898 in Deanston, Stirling in Scotland. He was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary. He died on the 19th February 1972, aged 73 in Bath, Somerset, England. 

In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert Flaherty's Moana. He is the founder of the British documentary-film movement and its leader for almost 40 years. He was one of the first to see the potential of motion pictures to shape people's attitudes toward life and to urge the use of films for educational purposes.

Education

Grierson joined the war (World War I) in 1915 then joined the navy soon after. He then decided to go to the University of Glasgow in 1919 and then in 1923 he received a fellowship to study at the University of Chicago, and later at Columbia and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focus was the psychology of propaganda and the impact of the press, film and other mass media on forming public opinion.

When he returned to England in 1928 a year later the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit sponsored his only directed film called Drifters which was released in 1929 which was a study of the lives of North Sea herring fishermen.

Social Critic

In his essay "First Principles of Documentary" (1932), Grierson argued that the principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form; that the "original" actor and "original" scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials "thus taken from the raw" can be more real than the acted article. In this regard, Grierson's views align with the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov's contempt for dramatic fiction as "bourgeois excess", though with considerably more subtlety. Grierson's definition of documentary as "creative treatment of actuality" has gained some acceptance, though it presents philosophical questions about documentaries containing stagings and reenactments.

Night Mail

Night Mail is a 1936 British documentary film directed and produced by Harry Watt and Basil Wright, and

produced by the General Post Office (GPO) film unit. The 24-minute film documents the nightly postal train operated by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) from London to Glasgow and the staff who operate it. 

Night Mail premiered on 4 February 1936 at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in Cambridge, England in a launch programme for the venue. Its general release gained critical praise and became a classic of its own kind, much imitated by adverts and modern film shorts. Night Mail is widely considered a masterpiece of the British Documentary Film Movement. A sequel was released in 1987 entitled Night Mail 2.

With a tone which often seems educational and eventually patriotic, a voice-over narration explains to the viewers the ins and outs of the complicated system which allows mail to be received, sorted, and delivered by the “Postal Special” train.

Through composed shots and complex continuity editing, the documentary follows the Postal Special through a routine night shift from 8:30 pm through to the next morning and highlights the role of the everyday man in the massive undertaking. Utilizing a combination of aerial shots, re-enactments of various tasks, and plenty of actual footage of the train’s progression, Night Mail paints a vivid picture of Britain’s well-oiled communication system which warrants pride and optimism for its audience: the people of England.