Anewsreel is a form of shortdocumentary film, containingnews stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in acinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, information, and entertainment for millions of moviegoers. Newsreels were typically exhibited preceding afeature film, but there were also dedicatednewsreel 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 1960stelevision news broadcasts had supplanted the format. Newsreels are considered significant historical documents, since they are often the only audiovisual record of certain cultural events.
Silent news films were shown in cinemas from the late 19th century. In 1909Pathé 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 typicalNorth American,British, andCommonwealth countries (especiallyCanada,Australia, andNew Zealand), and throughout Europeancinema programming schedule from thesilent era until the 1960s when television news broadcasting completely supplanted its role. TheNational Film and Sound Archive in Australia holds the CinesoundMovietone Australian Newsreel Collection, a comprehensive collection of 4,000 newsreel films and documentaries representing news stories covering all major events.
The first official Britishnews cinema that only showed newsreels was theDaily Bioscope that opened inLondon on May 23, 1909.[3] In 1929,William Fox purchased a former cinema called theEmbassy.[4] He changed the format from a $2 show twice a day to a continuous 25-cent programme, establishing the first newsreel theater in the United States; the idea was such a success that Fox and his backers announced they would start a chain of newsreel theaters across the country.[5][a] The newsreels were often accompanied bycartoons orshort subjects.
The First World War saw the major countries using the newest technologies to developpropaganda for home audiences. Each used carefully edited newsreels to combine straight news reports and propaganda.[6][7][8] During the Second World War, theReich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, a state organization inNazi Germany for disseminating stories favorable to the administration's goals, createdDie 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 includedThe March of Time (1935–1951),Pathé News (1910–1956),Paramount News (1927–1957),Fox Movietone News (1928–1963),Hearst Metrotone News (1914–1967), andUniversal Newsreel (1929–1967). Pathé News was distributed byRKO Radio Pictures from 1931 to 1947, and then byWarner Brothers from 1947 to 1956.
An example of a newsreel story can be found in the filmCitizen 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 oftitle characterCharles Foster Kane while parodyingThe March of Time.
On August 12, 1949, one hundred twenty cinema technicians employed by Associated British Pathé in London went onstrike 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]
In 1936, when theBBC 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, titledTelevision Newsreel, that would last until July 1954, when it was replaced byNews and Newsreel.[10][11][12]
On February 16, 1948,NBC launched a ten-minute television program calledCamel Newsreel Theatre withJohn Cameron Swayze that featured newsreels with Swayze doing voiceovers. Also in 1948, theDuMont Television Network launched two short-lived newsreel series,Camera Headlines andI.N.S. Telenews, the latter in cooperation with Hearst'sInternational News Service.
On August 15, 1948,CBS started their evening television news programDouglas Edwards and the News. Later the NBC, CBS, andABC(USA) news shows all produced their own news film.
In New Zealand, theWeekly 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]
Newsreel-producing companies excluded television companies from their distribution, but the television companies countered by sending their own camera crews to film news events.
Newsreels died out because of the nightly television news broadcast,[15][16] and technological advances such aselectronic news-gathering fortelevision news, introduced in the 1970s, rendered them obsolete.
Newsreel cinemas either closed or went to showing continuous programmes of cartoons and short subjects, such as theLondon Victoria Station News Cinema, laterCartoon Cinema[17] that opened in 1933 and closed in 1981.
The last American newsreel was released on December 26, 1967, the day afterChristmas.[18] Nonetheless, some countries such as Cuba, Japan, Spain, and Italy continued producing newsreels into the 1980s and 1990s.[19]
The first British newsreel wasPathé Animated Gazette (June 1910–1970).[20][21] Other British newsreels include:
An Australian movie production dramatizing the cameramen and producers of newsreels was released in 1978. The title wasNewsfront.[24] Some events featured during the presentation were regarding the 1949 election of the Australian Prime Minister, the rabbit plague, and the introduction of television (1956).
A 2016 Irish documentary,Éire na Nuachtscannán ("Ireland in the Newsreels") looked at the newsreel age inIreland, mostly focusing onPathé News and how the (British) company altered its newsreels for an Irish audience.[25][26][27]
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