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Slow-paced and pedagogical in intent, Experiment in the Welsh Hills is
chiefly interesting for its distinctively modernist treatment of the British
landscape.
Empire Marketing Board debutant Arthur Elton uses abandoned mining equipment,
menacing cloudy skies and the alien harshness of the Welsh landscape to bring an
unmistakably Dovzhenko-influenced tinge to British cinema. Other Soviet
borrowings include the use of CAPPED-UP film titles to mirror the difficulty
that the Welsh hill farmers face in driving their flocks over the Black
Mountains.
However, despite the film's thematic insistence that the greater application
of science can help farmers tame their environment, Elton's short is essentially
romantic. Its imagery frequently recalls Hollywood westerns, with sheep farmers
taking the place of Californian cattle drovers. As Elton's previous EMB work had
involved producing 'children's films' by chopping together clips from old
American films (such as The Covered Wagon, 1923) this similarity is perhaps not
coincidental.
Acquired by commercial distributors Gaumont-British in 1933, Experiment on
the Welsh Hills was re-cut to fit a similar 'scientific' niche to the company's
popular Secrets of Nature series. Newly entitled Shadow on the Mountain, the
shortened film's visual qualities were more markedly pronounced. Elton's framing
of ploughed fields as if they were paintings by Miro served as a filmic
equivalent of John Piper's cataloguing of the Picasso-esque oddities of English
church decoration and Paul Nash's avant-garde paintings of
Avebury.
Scott Anthony
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1. Improving the hills (1:55)
