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1970 was European Conservation Year. Several commemorative industrial
documentaries were made (for example, ICI's The Choice), joining a cycle of
sponsored films about pollution that was first kicked off by Shell's The River
Must Live in 1966.
As filmmaking, BP's The Shadow of Progress is much the best entry in this
peculiar sub-genre - indeed one of the last really momentous films to come out
of the sponsored shorts industry. Multi-award-winning, it was distributed
internationally, receiving thousands of non-theatrical bookings and (outside the
UK) some cinema screenings. The BBC twice televised it as part of the schedule,
as well as reusing it as a trade test transmission.
The film posits environmental problems less in terms of any specific chain of cause and
effect (though the commentary describes several), than of philosophical paradox:
"How could it be possible to exhaust the inexhaustible?," asks the narrator,
"Man assumes it is not. But behind every question of man's resources, there now
grows one master question." If such artful vagueness reflects the film's status
as a sponsored product, it also helps it feel today a far more impactful,
timeless statement than any number of editorially independent, but ephemeral, TV
news reports.
The relationship of sponsor to topic could be a subject of heated debate, but
there is no doubting that the production team's handling of the subject is both
skilled and sincere, if constrained. Writer-director Derek Williams has gone on
record regretting what he sees as a weakening in the later 'solutions' parts of
the film, having to be broadly optimistic and to avoid overt criticism of the
sponsoring industry. However, the steady, almost hypnotic mood that descends
from the very opening shots (of traffic lights gradually coming into 35mm
Eastmancolor focus) is maintained throughout, affording a genuinely cinematic
experience. Shots representing nature, the growing density of humanity, and the
environmental destruction and detritus it has caused (the latter perhaps too
sumptuously filmed) were taken in several different continents.
On the strength of the film's great success, Williams persuaded BP (its
interest in socially relevant 'prestige films' now awakened) to fund a sequel.
Also produced by Greenpark Productions, The Tide of Traffic (1972) was an
equally fine film, this time dealing with a specific subject. Later, at Balfour
Films but still for BP, the director returned to ecology with Planet Water
(1979) - a more muted echo of the haunting, majestic Shadow of
Progress.
Patrick Russell *This film is included in the BFI DVD compilation 'Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain 1951-1977'.
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1. Exhausting the inexhaustible (3:43)
