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...enthusiasm by the legendary John Grierson, by 1945 the NFB had won its first of many Oscars and had become one of the largest film studios in the world. Graham McInnes was arts columnist for Saturday Night magazine and a commentator on CBC radio before joining the NFB in 1939, making him among the first Canadians recruited by Grierson. One Man's Documentary: A Memoir of the Early Years of the National Film Board is a lively account of one of the most exciting periods in Canadian filmmaking. McInnes's stylish writing paints vivid portraits of Grierson and the others who helped make the NFB an international institution. Virtually unknown even to the most conscientious film academics and trivia-saturated film buffs, he has called his manuscript "an eyewitness memoir of days of high excitement." It is an insider's look at the people and practices of the NFB from 1939 to 1945. In 1948, McInnes left the NFB to join the foreign service; he eventually became Canada's first ambassador to UNESCO. From the introduction by Gene Walz
McInnes first meets Grierson in October, 1939:
"Sit down, sit down!" [Grierson] barked. "So you got here all right? Good! Now I want you just to try to understand what we're endeavouring to do. You have to see the perspectives, the growing points behind what's going on up here on the Hill. A nation at war; but still bemused. Still half asleep. You have to search, to analyze, to articulate the potential of Canada and to make it so compelling that people will want to plunge their hands into their own pockets. Their own pockets. You understand?"
I wasn't quite sure I did. The barked torrent of words flowed over me: a cataract of verbiage with unknown phrases sticking up like sharp rocks to confound the frail barque of my self-confidence and perhaps overwhelm it. He had a habit of jabbing a hole in the air as he spoke; of running his finger round quickly inside his collar; of jerking his head impatiently; of scratching his scalp; above al,1 of hoisting his feet up onto the desk--not in a lazy man's way, but with knees bent, poised like a coiled spring either, you thought, to push his own chair back and send it skidding the length of the room or else to leap right on top of the desk to harangue some imaginary mob. He was wound up tighter than a watch and gave a tremendous sense of controlled strength, of bounding energy and bursting vitality barely held in check by the diminutive body.
He appeared to be driven by a tremendous force, yet when he stood up to say farewell, after bruising me verbally for half-an-hour, I was astonished to see that I...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
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