Geoffrey Malins
| Geoffrey Malins | |
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Geoffrey Malins in his photographic studio, c. 1905
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| Born |
Arthur Herbert Malins 18 November 1886 Hastings |
| Died | 1940 |
| Occupation | Film director, screenwriter, photographer |
Arthur "Geoffrey" Herbert Malins (18 November 1886 – 1940) was a British film director most famous for camera and editing work on the 1916 war film The Battle of the Somme, which combined documentary and propaganda, and reached an audience of over 20 million viewers.
Malins was born in Hastings, Sussex, the son of a hairdresser. Starting his career as a photographer, he secured a position in 1910 with the Croydon-based Clarendon Film Company.
Prior to the outbreak of the First World War, Malins joined the British arm of the Gaumont Film Company. In the autumn of the 1914, the company sent him to Belgium to record footage of the Belgian army in action.
1915 saw the release of a number of song films shot by Malins. These were silent films based on well known tunes such as Abide with Me and On the Banks of Allan Water, designed to be shown with live singers providing a musical accompaniment. Late the same year Malins received a War Office appointment to act as an official cameraman. He was given an honorary rank and sent to the front with an assistant.
The pinnacle of the footage shot by Malins and his assistant John McDowell in 1916 is represented in the feature The Battle of the Somme. The huge success of the film led to the release of The Battle of the Ancre and the Advance of the Tanks but Malins' work at the front was hampered by increasing ill health. He was invalided out of the army in June 1918.
Malins published an account of his wartime filming in 1920 entitled How I Filmed the War. The book conveys the extremely dangerous conditions under which Malins worked (though it also omits reference to McDowell). In it Malins described his own feelings towards the Battle of the Somme's initial reception in Britain:
"I really thought that some of the dead scenes would offend the British public. And yet why should they? It is only a very mild touch of what is happening day after day, week after week, on the bloody plains of France and Belgium ... the British public did not object to these realistic scenes in the film. They realised that it was their duty to see for themselves."
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