Paul Rotha (3 June 1907 – 7 March 1984) was a British documentary film-maker, film historian and critic.

Early life and education

He was born Paul Thompson in London, and educated at

Highgate School Highgate School, formally Sir Roger Cholmeley's School at Highgate, is an English co-educational, fee-charging, independent day school, founded in 1565 in Highgate, London, England. It educates over 1,400 pupils in three sections – Highgate ...

and at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

Career

Rotha was a close collaborator of

John Grierson John Grierson (26 April 1898 – 19 February 1972) was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert J. Fla ...

, and

Wolfgang Suschitzky Wolfgang Suschitzky, BSC (29 August 1912 – 7 October 2016), was an Austrian-born British documentary photographer, as well as a cinematographer perhaps best known for his collaboration with Paul Rotha in the 1940s and his work on Mike Hodges' ...

was one of his cinematographers. He directed and produced dozens of documentaries including ''Contact'' (1933), ''

Air Outpost ''Air Outpost'' is a 1937 film produced by documentary maker Paul Rotha Paul Rotha (3 June 1907 – 7 March 1984) was a British documentary film-maker, film historian and critic. Early life and education He was born Paul Thompson in London, and ...

'' (1937) ''The Face of Britain'' (1935),'' World of Plenty'' (1943), ''Land of Promise'' (1947), ''A City Speaks'' (1947) and many others. '' The World Is Rich'' (1947) and '' Cradle of Genius'' (1961), both of which were nominated for an

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

, and feature films including the BAFTA-nominated ''

No Resting Place ''No Resting Place'' was a 1951 British motion picture directed by Paul Rotha, produced by Colin Lesslie Productions, and starring Michael Gough, based on Ian Niall's 1948 novel. It is noteworthy for its early use of location shooting and for brin ...

''. Rotha was Head of BBC TV's Documentaries Department between May 1953 and May 1955. Rotha shared with

Otto Neurath Otto Karl Wilhelm Neurath (; 10 December 1882 – 22 December 1945) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist. He was also the inventor of the ISOTYPE method of pictorial statistics and an innovator in mu ...

an interest in the techniques of visual communication, and the two men worked together on several films, where Neurath's ISOTYPE pictorial statistics were animated as an important component of the films' arguments. He was a major opponent of sound in movies. Rotha wrote, produced and directed the 1958 crime drama '' Cat & Mouse'', based on a novel by

John Creasey John Creasey (17 September 1908 – 9 June 1973) was an English crime writer, also writing science fiction, romance and western novels, who wrote more than six hundred novels using twenty-eight different pseudonyms. He created several charac ...

and starring

Lee Patterson Lee Patterson (March 31, 1929 – February 14, 2007) was a Canadian film and television actor. Life and career Patterson was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, as Beverley Frank Atherly Patterson. He attended the Ontario College of Art and D ...

and Ann Sears.

Personal life

Rotha married Irish actress

Constance Smith Constance Smith (7 February 1929 – 30 June 2003) was an Irish film actress, and contract player of 20th Century Fox in the 1950s. Early life Smith was born into a family as the first of 11 children.'' The Oakland Tribune'', 18 March 1962, O ...

in 1974. Smith had twice (1961 and 1968) been charged with attacking Rotha and stabbing him."Beauty held in knifing of director," Los Angeles Herald & Express, 15 December 1961 Rotha died on 7 March 1984 in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

References

Sources

*''The Film Till Now: A Survey of the Cinema'' (London:

Jonathan Cape Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death in 1960. Cape and his business partner Wren Howard set up the publishing house in 1921. They established a reputation ...

, 1930) *''Documentary Film'' (London:

Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...

, 1935) The first major study on documentary film *''The Film Till Now: A Survey of World Cinema'', with an additional section by Richard Griffith, revised and enlarged edition, (London: Vision, 1949) *''Portrait of a Flying Yorkshireman: Letters From

Eric Knight Eric Mowbray Knight (10 April 1897 – 15 January 1943) was an English novelist and screenwriter, who is mainly known for his 1940 novel ''Lassie Come-Home'', which introduced the fictional collie Lassie. He took American citizenship in 1942 sh ...

in the United States to Paul Rotha in England'', edited by Paul Rotha. Selected correspondence (London:

Chapman and Hall Chapman & Hall is an imprint owned by CRC Press, originally founded as a British publishing house in London in the first half of the 19th century by Edward Chapman and William Hall. Chapman & Hall were publishers for Charles Dickens (from 1840 ...

, 1952) *''Rotha on the Film; a Selection of Writings About the Cinema'' (Fair Lawn, New Jersey: Essential Books, 1958) *''Documentary Film; the use of the film medium to interpret creatively and in social terms the life of the people as it exists in reality'', by Paul Rotha in collaboration with Sinclair Road and Richard Griffith. 3d ed., rev. and enl.of ''Documentary Film'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1952; New York: Hastings House, 1963) *''Documentary Diary: An Informal History of the British Documentary Film 1928–1939'' (New York:

Hill and Wang Hill & Wang is an American book publishing company focused on American history, world history, and politics. It is a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Hill & Wang was founded as an independent publishing house in 1956 by Arthur Wang (1917/1 ...

, 1973) *''

Robert J. Flaherty Robert Joseph Flaherty, (; February 16, 1884 – July 23, 1951) was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film, '' Nanook of the North'' (1922). The film made his reputati ...

: A Biography'', edited by Jay Ruby (Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press The University of Pennsylvania Press (or Penn Press) is a university press affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The press was originally incorporated with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on 26 Ma ...

, 1983) *''A Paul Rotha Reader'', edited by Duncan Petrie and Robert Kruger (Exeter:

University of Exeter The University of Exeter is a public university , public research university in Exeter, Devon, England, United Kingdom. Its predecessor institutions, St Luke's College, Exeter School of Science, Exeter School of Art, and the Camborne School of Min ...

Press, 1999)

External links