 Most standard works on documentary and on British film history mention Edgar
Anstey in connection with Housing Problems, the seminal 1935 'social problem'
film, which he co-directed with Arthur Elton. It remains important - and is
still jolting when seen on the big screen. But it is the totality of Anstey's
career that sets him apart from his peers. Although not the most talented
director within the documentary movement, unlike most of his exact
contemporaries he was - as a producer - able to sustain a stable and prestigious
career for many years after the decline of British documentary had supposedly
occurred.
Anstey was part of John Grierson's film unit at the Empire Marketing Board
and his first directing assignment seems to have been Uncharted Waters (1933) -
sadly believed no longer to exist. Along with the rest of Grierson's group he
was transferred to the GPO, where he co-directed at least one film, 6.30
Collection (1934), and is said to have made a central creative contribution to
Granton Trawler (1934), usually attributed principally to Grierson himself. He
was soon laying down further documentary roots as (briefly) the Shell Film
Unit's first producer. He then moved into the growing world of independent
documentary production, within which he made several films sponsored by the gas
industry - in some ways, the most enlightened of 1930s sponsors. As well as
Housing Problems, Anstey worked on Enough To Eat (1936), another socially
conscious though now very dated film about working-class nutrition.
Anstey next enjoyed two years heading the London office of the legendary
American newsreel March of Time (1935-51), working on British stories such as
'The Black Areas' (1937; about impoverished mining districts) and 'Health and
Physical Fitness' (virtually a compressed remake of Enough To Eat). This work
further exposed him to the importance of production and editing, and it seems
likely he had realised directing was not his forte.
Like his contemporaries, Anstey was busy during World War Two, working on
propaganda documentaries for various production companies - films such as
Wartime Factory (1940). Shortly after the end of the war, Anstey was associated
with the short-lived Rank cinemagazine series This Modern Age (1946-50), an
attempt to adapt the March of Time style to postwar Britain. The extent of
Anstey's actual involvement is unclear but several issues of the series
demonstrate very well the shift of documentary towards the concerns of a Britain
urgently reconstructing itself through nationalisation, while coping with the
economic stresses caused by the costs of war.
Unlike several of his documentary colleagues (notably Paul Rotha), Anstey was
brilliantly able to adapt to this changed environment and in 1949 became head of
the new film unit set up by the British Transport Commission. Henceforth he was
always producer rather than director, and responsible for some 500 films made
for British Rail, London Transport and the Inland Waterways Board, all of them under public ownership. By the time of his 1970s retirement, Anstey could
reasonably be argued as having been responsible for the most consistently high
quality, large and cohesive body of documentary films ever produced in Britain.
Most of the films have amazingly high production values and are still
entertaining at worst, magical at best.
The films have won great popular nostalgic affection yet have been mostly
ignored by 'serious' film critics. It's certainly true that Anstey's productions
increasingly relaxed into a seductive blend of realism and escapism that fitted
the 1950s 'never had it so good' ethos every bit as well as, say, the gentler
Ealing comedies. This sort of filmmaking came to be seen as suspect to those who
advocated a more journalistic function for documentary: the model that
eventually prevailed on television. Moreover, Anstey appears to have run British Transport Films as
a highly disciplined bureaucracy, virtually a branch of the civil service, in
which film craftsmanship was taken very seriously but maverick tendencies not
encouraged (consider, for instance, Anstey's displeasure at John Krish's The
Elephant Will Never Forget, 1953). The Free Cinema filmmakers reported that
Anstey was unfriendly to them and dismissive of their efforts. That said, Anstey
was willing to provide crucial breaks for Geoffrey Jones and John Schlesinger,
whose techniques deviated a little from the BTF norm.
Above all, many documentary enthusiasts, including certain former colleagues
of Anstey (Rotha again), were disappointed that the apparently
independent-minded reformism of Anstey's more crusading documentaries of early
days should have given way to such uncritical promotion of state services.
Several explanations might be advanced for this. The most uncharitable is that
Anstey's commitment to social change had always been skin-deep. A more generous
one is that Anstey simply had no choice, as an employee of the tightly
controlled nationalised transport industry, than to deliver exactly what its
briefs demanded to the best of his unit's considerable abilities. But perhaps
the most persuasive argument is that Anstey was consistent: his generation's
earlier demands (for slum clearance, for greater state planning and improved
public services) were achieved, and providing loyal service to an improved
society was the logical next step.
A viewing of a selection of Anstey's film, spanning the decades, would show a
remarkably consistent interest in technical processes and in the interdependence
of all members of society for its smooth and humane functioning. Yes, his films
reflect the best of his generation's values and, yes, they also betray their
limitations. As such, he left a valuable legacy to future generations, one that
still deserves celebration as well as criticism.
Patrick Russell
Bibliography
Anstey, Edgar, 'What is a Documentary?', Colonial Cinema, June 1945, pp. 31-33
Anstey, Edgar, 'The New Realism in Feature Films' BBC Third Programme, 12 Oct. 1947 (transcript held in BFI library)
Anstey, Edgar, 'Television, Film and Reality', Film Forum, vol.8 no.3 (1953), pp. 3-9
Anstey, Edgar, 'How we Use Films: 7 - For British Transport', The Film User, May 1954, pp. 213-215
Anstey, Edgar, 'How Films Serve the World's Biggest Employer', Industrial Screen, May/June 1959, pp. 92-94
Anstey, Edgar, 'Film and Television: Barometers of Social and Industrial Change', Video and Film Communication, Feb. 1975, pp. 8-12
Anstey, Edgar, 'The Grierson Influence', Undercut, Summer 1983, pp. 10-20
Elton, Margaret, 'Obituary: Edgar Anstey', Independent, 2 Oct. 1987, p. 14
Hardy, Forsyth, 'Tributes to Anstey and Wright', Scotsman, 7 March 1988, p. 8
Macdonald, Kevin and Mark Cousins, Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary (London: Faber & Faber, 1996), pp. 122-125
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