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The Present as Past: Assessing the Value of Julien Bryan's Films as Historical Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Jane M. Loy
Jane M. Loy*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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With this ringing affirmation, Julien Bryan concluded Americans All, his first documentary about Latin America produced under the auspices of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CI-AA) as part of the U.S. government's effort to foster hemispheric solidarity. By 1945 he had completed twenty-two more, including four on Latin America as a region; five on Chile; three each about Peru, Bolivia, and Uruguay; and one each concerning Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, and Paraguay. The CI-AA distributed the films to thousands of U.S. schools, clubs, and organizations during the war. After the conflict was over, they continued to be the standard educational films about Latin America until, by the 1960s, damage or obsolescence forced most prints out of circulation. For the historian, however, “obsolescence” is not an undesirable quality, and a careful screening suggests that these thirty-year old documentaries contain an extraordinary visual record of Spanish South America and provide insight into inter-American relations. The purpose here is to assess the value of Bryan's twenty-three films as historical evidence, based on an analysis of the narration and photography and taking into account the special nature of film as a source material.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , 1977 , pp. 103 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. The author expresses appreciation to Sam Bryan of the International Film Foundation who made copies of the CI-AA films available for screening and gave generously of his time to answer questions concerning his father's career. Special thanks also go to Jules and Miriam Bucher whose letter to the author (25 August 1976) provided invaluable information about the filming and editing of the Bryan series. A brief version of this study was presented at the meetings of the American Historical Association, December 1976.

2. Oscar E. Sams Jr., “We Learn about South America,” Nation's Schools 35 (Jan. 1945): 50.

3. Christopher H. Roads, “Film as Historical Evidence,” Journal of the Society of Archivists 3 (Oct. 1966): 183.

4. Nicholas Pronay, “Why Should Historians Use Newsreels?,” Paper presented at the National Archives Conference on the Use of Audiovisual Archives as Original Source Materials, 9 November 1972, p. 7.

5. E. Bradford Burns, Latin American Cinema: Film and History (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1975), p. 5.

6. Martin A. Jackson and John O'Connor, Teaching History with Film (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1974), p. 36; Pronay, “Why Should Historians,” p. 9.

7. Roads, “Film as Historical Evidence,” p. 187.

8. William T. Murphy, “The National Archives and the Historian's Use of Film,” The History Teacher 6 (Nov. 1972): 131.

9. In addition to the book cited above, Burns has completed several articles. See “The Latin American Film, Realism and the Historian,” History Teacher 6 (Aug. 1973): 569–74; “National Identity in Argentine Films,” Americas 27 (Nov. 1975): 4–10; “Visual History,” Americas 26 (Aug. 1974): 5–12; and “‘Los Gauchos judios’ (The Jewish Gauchos) Shown in Buenos Aires,” Nation 221 (16 Aug., 1975): 126. For studies by Paul D. Vanderwood, see “Hollywood and History: Does Film Make the Connection?,” Proceedings of PCCLAS 2 (1973), pp. 53–59, and “Latin America in Ferment: The Vision of Saul Landau,” Film & History 5 (Feb. 1975): 1–7; 23. Allen C. Woll has written two articles on Hollywood films and the Good Neighbor Policy—“Hollywood's Good Neighbor Policy: The Latin Image in American Film, 1939–1946,” Journal of Popular Film 3 (Fall 1974): 278–93, and “The Dilemma of Juárez,” Film & History 5 (Feb. 1975): 15–17.

10. William Lytle Schurz, Latin America (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964), p. 274.

11. Donald Marquand Dozer, Are We Good Neighbors? (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1961), pp. 82–83. See also Arthur P Whitaker, The Western Hemisphere Idea (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964).

12. Ibid.

13. Donald W. Rowland, History of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter American Affairs (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947), p. 67.

14. Walter Wanger, “Film Phenomena: The Film World Looks to Latin America,” Saturday Review of Literature 22 (17 April 1943): 42.

15. Dorothy Jones, The Portrayal of China and India on the American Screen, 1896–1955 (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for International Studies, MIT, 1955), p. 7.

16. Woll, “Hollywood's Good Neighbor Policy,” p. 291.

17. Rowland, History of the Office, p. 74.

18. In the 1930s most American documentary filmmakers worked independently and depended on their own resources, counting on only occasional support of progressive groups, unions, and educational foundations. Some government agencies were producing documentaries, but the Pare Lorentz films were the first aimed at the general public. For a more detailed history of the American documentary, see Lewis Jacobs, The Documentary Tradition: From Nanook to Woodstock (New York: Hopkinson & Blake, Pubs., 1971).

19. Jacobs, The Documentary Tradition, p. 182.

20. Dozer, Are We Good Neighbors?, p. 115.

21. Rowland, History of the Office, p. 174.

22. Julien Hequembourg Bryan, Ambulence 464 encore des blesses (New York: MacMillan, 1918).

23. Begun as a radio program in 1931, by 1935 The March of Time, Inc. developed into a “newsreel” consisting of actuality footage, interviews, and staged scenes. Sponsored and heavily influenced by Time Magazine, it was shown every month in theaters across America.

24. Julien Hequembourg Bryan, Siege (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1940).

25. Current Biography 1940 (New York: H. W. Wilson), p. 114.

26. International Film Foundation (hereafter cited as IFF), “Julien Bryan and his Documentary Motion Pictures,” n.d.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Julien Bryan, “War Is, Was and Always Will Be, Hell,” in Jacobs, The Documentary Tradition, p. 167.

30. “The International Film Foundation, Inc.,” School and Society 62 (29 December 1945): 423.

31. IFF Catalog, 1952.

32. IFF, “Julien Bryan.”

33. Bryan, “War Is,” pp. 168–69.

34. Julien Bryan, “The 1958 Kenneth Edwards Memorial Address,” University Film Producers Association Journal 2 (Fall 1958): 5.

35. New York Times, 21 October 1974.

36. Letter, Jules Bucher to Jane Loy, 25 August 1976.

37. Bryan, “The 1958 Kenneth Edwards Memorial Address,” p. 6. “Julien Bryan Teaching Films Produced for the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs” (New York, n.d.).

38. Bucher to Loy, 25 August 1976.

39. Bryan discussed these problems in detail at the National Archives Government Filmmaker's Symposium, 15 October 1973. A tape of his presentation, “#64-94 Film Makers' Perspectives” (Reel), can be purchased by writing to the Cashier, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 20408.

40. Julien Bryan, “Lecture at the Imperial War College” (London: n.p., Spring 1974). The CI-AA films were the work of many people. Bryan as producer supervised their efforts and endorsed the verbal and photographic content of each title. For the purpose of this analysis he will be regarded as the “author” of the series.

41. The exact dating of the films is difficult because of discrepancies in the catalog listings. Eight of the films were available by November 1943 because they were reviewed by Keith Adamson and Helen Hardt Seaton in their article, “Educational Films on Latin America”in Latin America in School and College Teaching Materials (Washington, D.C., 1944) published by the American Council on Education. The Library of Congress has printed cards showing dates for nineteen of the films in its Film Catalog 1948–52 (vol. 24). None of the sources lists dates for Central Chile or Children of the Americas although they must have been made at approximately the same time as the other CI-AA films.

42. Adamson and Seaton, “Educational Films,” p. 397.

43. “The Inter-American Cultural Film Program,” in The Educational Screen and AudioVisual Guide (Feb. 1942):60.

44. Marion Quinn, “Why Not Study All America?” Progressive Education 19 (Nov. 1942):379–83.

45. Adamson and Seaton, “Educational Films,” p. 386.

46. Walter Wittich, “The Curriculum Clinic: Enter the American Nations,” The Educational Screen 24 (March 1945): 106–7. Universities whose film libraries lent the films in the 1950s include University of Illinois, Indiana University, University of Massachusetts, New York University, and UCLA.

47. Bryan, “#64–94 Film Makers' Perspectives,” reel 1.

48. For complete location information see appendix.

49. Bryan, “Lecture to the Imperial War College.”

50. Jacobs, The Documentary Tradition, p. 182.

51. New York Times, 21 October 1974.

52. During the 1940s educators seem to have favored these intensive narrations. Jules Bucher notes that the teacher consultants to the CI-AA series objected to any part of the film running without commentary as a waste of time and vetoed long or unusual words in the script as unsuitable for the elementary school mentality.

53. Hereafter the source of direct quotations from a film used in the text will be indicated by the initials of the title.

54. In his National Archives talk, Bryan admitted that Housing in Chile was a “kind of rigged bit of filming.” He also said that the poor family selected as the film's subject probably, as a result, got into their new apartment two or three years earlier than it would have normally taken them.

55. In addition to his own materials, Bryan had access to March of Time archives and may have purchased film from local Mexican or Brazilian studios.

56. Adamson and Seaton, “Educational Films,” p. 398.

57. In addition to Dozer and Schurz, see Hubert Herring, Good Neighbors: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and 17 Other Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942); Samuel Guy Inman, Latin America: Its Place in World Life (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1942); A. Curtis Wilgus, The Development of Hispanic America (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1941). The film portrayals of individual countries was in agreement with what scholars were saying at the time. Herring, in Good Neighbors, extolls the democratic tradition in Colombia and Uruguay, and Russell H. Fitzgibbon reflected the economic and political euphoria in the latter nation in his study, Uruguay: Portrait of a Democracy (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1954).

58. In addition, Argentine Primer and Uruguay present the cattle estancia; Peru, a sugar hacienda; South Chile, a sheep estancia; and Venezuela Moves Ahead, coconut and cacao plantations.

59. Compare this statement with the following made by Hubert Herring in A History of Latin America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1955) and left unchanged in the 1968 third edition: “The Indian of the altiplano farms the exhausted soil, herds a few animals, lives in a stone or mud hut, eats dried potatoes, parched corn, and fried beans, and dulls his appetite by chewing coca leaves. Ignorant and lethargic, the Indian counts for little in the life of the nation” (p. 524).

60. Burns, Latin American Cinema, p. 10.