316
are the actuality reports, the live
or sometimes filmed news stories
whose vividness and impact no
television drama has yet matched.
Who can forget the superb shots
of the faces of Hungarian work–
ers and students marching upon
the Budapest radio station, the
scenes of Russian tanks bearing
down on groups of sullen boys and
girls, or the clumsily bundled-up
refugees carrying children and
balancing their way over streams
with Russian soldiers visible
in
the
background? This summer there
was the memorable view of the
Andrea Doria
turning on her great
side and sinking into the sea. (One
cannot but be reminded of the
trite little "symbolic" ending of
"A Night To Remember" and
think how such film would have
dignified the tragic story.) In the
realm of thematic narrative docu–
mentary there was the sensitively
conceived and beautifully filmed
version of the sources of jazz, done
with simple folk in the South who
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How the doctrine of
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3
live with and create jazz. This
came in the
Odyssey
series, an am–
bitious project in socio-cultural
matters, executed with great un–
evenness in its weekly episodes and
varying from glittering pseudo–
documentary (as in the Virginia
City installment) to the secure, un–
jazzed-up realism of the jazz story.
I t is possible to say that in spite
of the dull and unimaginative re–
ports one has to sit through in
order to come upon merit, tele–
vision is functioning with some de–
gree of responsibility in the area
of news, public affairs and socio–
cultural reporting. Even here,
however, it has a long way to go
in order to become a consistently
rewarding product; even here the
creeping palsy of the "entertain–
ment" standard often depletes the
power of large and tragic events.
The intellectual content of all this
is another matter. Such issues as
where editorial lines can or should
be drawn by the networks are
matters of the gravest importance.
Technical possibilities such as the
use of cartoons, a potentially rich
but absurdly costly procedure, the
possible fusion of various forms
such as music and narrative, these
and a host of issues relating to
kind, function, means and end are
only now opening up for
serious
evaluation after almost a decade
of
prejudice,
partisanship and non–
sense.
Vivienne Koch
