Review by Choice Review
Ellis (Northwestern Univ.) has written widely and well about film, and John Grierson is a fitting addition to that earlier work. This book sets out to "take a line a bit more critical of Grierson than the standard line" and to provide a more complex and balanced portrait of the man than the one provided by the first wave of Grierson critics, many of whom had been personally involved with the man and his work. Ellis largely achieves this task, constructing a rich portrait of both the period everyone discusses--the EMB and GPO film work, the founding of the National Film Board of Canada--and the often-embattled figure of the postwar era. Ellis provides a fascinating, unmoralistic meditation on the competing visions of the documentary idea in the early phase of the genre, and of a paradoxical man who rooted his work in the practical world of private and government sponsorship while justifying it with the idealistic rhetoric of community responsibility. Ellis's final ringing endorsement of Grierson is less reserved than some readers might wish: though intending to be revisionist, he is in fact more traditional in his assessment than others he associates with that approach, given the goal stated at the outset. Essential for all serious film collections. K. S. Nolley; Willamette University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
