Newsreel
A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, information, and entertainment for millions of moviegoers. Newsreels were typically exhibited preceding a feature film, but there were also dedicated newsreel theaters in many major cities in the 1930s and ’40s,[1] and some large city cinemas also included a smaller theaterette where newsreels were screened continuously throughout the day.
By the end of the 1960s television news broadcasts had supplanted the format. Newsreels are considered significant historical documents, since they are often the only audiovisual record of certain cultural events.
History
Silent news films were shown in cinemas from the late 19th century. In 1909 Pathé started producing weekly newsreels in Europe. Pathé began producing newsreels for the UK in 1910 and the US in 1911.[2]
Newsreels were a staple of the typical
The first official British
The First World War saw the major countries using the newest technologies to develop propaganda for home audiences. Each used carefully edited newsreels to combine straight news reports and propaganda.[6][7][8] During the Second World War, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, a state organization in Nazi Germany for disseminating stories favorable to the administration's goals, created Die Deutsche Wochenschau (1940–1945). There were no other newsreels disseminated within the country during the war.
In some countries, newsreels generally used music as a background for usually silent on-site film footage. In some countries, the narrator used humorous remarks for light-hearted or non-tragic stories. In the U.S., newsreel series included
An example of a newsreel story can be found in the film Citizen Kane (1941), which was prepared by RKO's actual newsreel staff. Citizen Kane includes a fictional newsreel called "News on the March" that summarizes the life of title character Charles Foster Kane while parodying The March of Time.
On August 12, 1949, one hundred twenty cinema technicians employed by Associated British Pathé in London went on strike to protest the dismissal of fifteen men on the grounds of redundancy while conciliation under trade union agreements was pending. Their strike lasted through to at least Tuesday August 16, the Tuesday being the last day for production on new newsreels shown on the Thursday. Events of the strike resulted in over three hundred cinemas across Britain having to go without newsreels that week.[9]
Effect of television
In 1936, when the BBC Television Service was launched in the United Kingdom, it was airing the British Movietone and Gaumont British newsreels for several years (except for a hiatus during World War II), until 1948, when the service launched their own newsreel programme, titled Television Newsreel, that would last until July 1954, when it was replaced by News and Newsreel.[10][11][12]
On February 16, 1948,
On August 15, 1948,
In New Zealand, the Weekly Review was "the principal film series produced in the 1940s".[13] The first television news broadcasts in the country, incorporating newsreel footage, began in 1960.[14]
The last American newsreel was released on December 26, 1967, the day after Christmas.[15]
Newsreels died out because of technological advances such as
Retrospectives
A 1978 Australian film titled Newsfront is a drama about the newsreel business.
A 2016 Irish documentary, Éire na Nuachtscannán ("Ireland in the Newsreels") looked at the newsreel age in Ireland, mostly focusing on Pathé News and how the (British) company altered its newsreels for an Irish audience.[17][18][19]
See also
- List of newsreels by country
- Time-Lifefrom 1935 to 1951
- Universal Studiosfrom 1929 to 1967
- Fox Film Corporation 1929–1934 and by MGM1934–1967)
- Fox Movietone Newsproduced by Fox 1928 to 1963
- Paramount News newsreel series produced by Paramount Pictures from 1927 to 1957
- Warner Brothers1947–1956)
Notes
- ^ The six or seven minutes of newsreel exhibited in ordinary program houses are selected from many reels of current events. Nowhere could one be sure of seeing all the newsreels made in any one week. In Manhattan, William Fox, in collaboration with Hearst Metro tone, found what to do with the newsreels discarded weekly by their companies. He took over a Broadway theater (Embassy) and changed its program from a $2 show twice a day to a continuous 25¢ show. He made the program all newsreels, to run for an hour, a full photographic report of the pictorial parts of the week's news.
References
- ^ "The Moving Image". wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au. Archived from the original on March 15, 2022.
- ^ Fielding 2015, pp. 44–46.
- ^ Popple & Kember 2019, p. 69.
- ^ Diamonstein-Spielvogel 2011.
- Time magazine. November 18, 1929. Archived from the originalon March 6, 2009. Retrieved October 31, 2008.
- S2CID 191452425.
- ^ Ward 1985.
- ^ Wolfgang Miihl-Benninghaus, "Newsreel Images of the Military and War, 1914-1918" in A Second Life: German Cinema's First Decades ed. by Thomas Elsaesser, (1996) online.
- The Glasgow Herald. August 17, 1949. Retrieved August 4, 2013.
- ^ "Opening Night: November 1936". BBC. Retrieved March 11, 2023.
- ^ "BBC - Television Newsreel".
- ^ "BBC Television News and Newsreel". BBC Online. Retrieved March 11, 2023.
- ^ "Weekly Review | Series | Short Film | NZ On Screen". www.nzonscreen.com. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
- ^ "Early evening news on TV - Television in New Zealand | NZHistory, New Zealand history online". nzhistory.govt.nz. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
- ^ Cohen 2000.
- ^ "Original Negative of the Noticiero ICAIC Lationamericano". UNESCO. Archived from the original on November 12, 2010. Retrieved November 12, 2010.
- ^ "Ireland in the Newsreels | A six part television series for TG4 by LMDÓC".
- ^ O'Connor, Amy (March 26, 2016). "These amazing photos show what Rathmines' Stella Cinema is like inside these days". The Daily Edge. Archived from the original on September 28, 2022.
- ^ "Afternoon Talk: Ireland in the Newsreels". Irish Film Institute. Archived from the original on March 19, 2023.
Bibliography
- Fielding, R. (2015). The American Newsreel: A Complete History, 1911-1967, 2d ed. McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4766-0794-8. Retrieved March 18, 2024.
- Popple, S.; Kember, J. (2019). Early Cinema: From Factory Gate to Dream Factory. Short Cuts. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-85031-5. Retrieved March 18, 2024.
- Diamonstein-Spielvogel, B. (2011). The Landmarks of New York, Fifth Edition: An Illustrated Record of the City's Historic Buildings. Excelsior Editions. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-3771-2. Retrieved March 18, 2024.
- Ward, L.W. (1985). The Motion Picture Goes to War: The U.S. Government Film Effort During World War I. Studies in cinema. UMI Research Press. ISBN 978-0-8357-1683-3. Retrieved March 18, 2024.
- Cohen, D. (2000). Yellow Journalism: Scandal, Sensationalism, and Gossip in the Media. Book Collection Nonfiction: Middle School Edition. Twenty-First Century Books. ISBN 978-0-7613-1502-5. Retrieved March 18, 2024.
Further reading
- Baechlin, Peter and Maurice Muller-Strauss (Editors), Newsreels across the world, Paris: Unesco, 1952
- Barnouw, Erik, Documentary: a history of the non-fiction film, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993 revised
- Clark, Joseph (2020) News Parade: The American Newsreel and the World as Spectacle University of Minnesota Press ISBN 9781452963600
- Clyde, Jeavons, Jane Mercer and Daniela Kirchner (Editors), "The story of the century!" An international newsfilm conference, London: BUFVC, 1998
- Fielding, Raymond, The March of Time, 1935-1951, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978
- Imesch, Kornelia; Schade, Sigrid; Sieber, Samuel (Editors), Constructions of Cultural Identities in Newsreel Cinema and Television after 1945, Bielefeld: transcript, 2016.
- McKernan, Luke (Editor), Yesterday's news. The British Cinema Newsreel Reader, London: BUFVC, 2002
- Smither, Roger and Wolfgang Klaue (Editors), Newsreels in film archives: a survey based on the FIAF symposium, Wiltshire: Flicks Books, 1996
- Vande Winkel, Roel, "Newsreel series: world overview", in: Aitken, Ian (Editor), Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, New York/London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 985–991
- Zielinski, Siegfried (2006) Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means Cambridge: The MIT Press
External links
Media related to Newsreels at Wikimedia Commons