P. P. McGuinness, “The year’s best film: the plain story of Issie Stone,” The National Times, July 28-August 2, 1975, p. 20.
Despite the multifarious pleasures of the film festival, the few good commercial films which are at present on general release, and the tried and always true quality of the National Film Theatre of Australia’s programs, there is only one film which clearly stands out as the best film so far this year.
It is a plain, not particularly well photographed or scripted documentary called I. F. Stone’s Weekly. I am writing as a journalist whose main concerns are in the fields of public policy, economics and politics — but it is a judgment which is shared by most of the major specialist film critics.
Nobody who cares about free speech, freedom of inquiry or political freedom could fail to be impressed by the record of I. F. Stone, who single-handedly produced for 19 years his regular commentary on and analysis of the misdeeds of the US Government, which became one of the most influential independent critics of officialdom. Stone emerges from the film as a touchingly enthusiastic figure — gnome-like and unimpressive at first sight, but ultimately somebody who commands respect and affectionate admiration.
The core of the film is a lecture Stone gave some years ago to a young audience, in which he explained his attitudes, his methods, and some of his successful exposes.
His attitudes correspond to the impressions of any precise observer, and most members of the Canberra press gallery:
In the job of covering a capitol, there really are certain basic assumptions you have to operate on. The first is that every government is run by liars, and nothing they say should be believed. That’s a prima facie assumption, unless proven to the contrary.
So far, this could be dismissed as easy cynicism, or as the kind of paranoid conspiracy theory which flourishes in certain of the quasi-fascist “left” circles which talk about “Investigative journalism,” by which is meant the justification of their prejudices.
But Stone goes further:
And second, a government always reveals a good deal, if you take the trouble to really study what it says.
This, as the film shows, is Stone’s method. He has the secret to true investigative journalism — hard work, curiosity and a good memory. He reads every government report he can lay his hands on, every newspaper report (in several languages), every page of the Congressional record (ie, Hansard). He never stops working, never stops thinking and talking about his work, and, above all, never stops for long to indulge in highfalutin moralising.
The most charming thing about the man is that he enjoys his work so much: “I really have so much fun I ought to be arrested.” This what first-rate journalism is really about, total absorption, hard work, love of stirring. It is a very rare phenomenon indeed. And Stone recognises its dangers — you can love the work so much that you even tend from time to time to forget that it is really a fire that you are talking about, really human suffering and injustice.
Stone does not only hold most journalists to shame by his example; he does the same for most of the politics, history, economics, or what-have-you academics who sneer at journalists who only report events day by day. Stone did, every week, week after week, what the highly paid and secure analysts only pretend to do — he went to the original sources and exposed the realities of the policies of the US Government and its agencies.
In the lecture which the film reproduces he describes how just as a result of his retentive memory and his nose for contradictions, again backed up by a lot of leg-work, he was able to show that the US Atomic Energy Commission was attempting to sabotage the test-ban negotiations.
Finally, it is worth noting that he was expelled from, and remained barred from, the National Press Club in Washington, as a result of a contretemps arising from his objections to discrimination against a black judge whom he took to lunch.
The most peculiar thing about I. F. Stone’s Weekly is that the Australian Film Institute, which is handling its distribution in Australia, has been unable to find an exhibitor in Sydney. (In Melbourne they are showing it at their own Playbox Cinema in Exhibition Street.)
The gentleman who handles these things for the ABC rejected it for showing on television on the grounds that it was too “parochial.” Like the Vietnam war, no doubt. And so far no commercial exhibitor has been found. But this does not greatly matter. For it is a film which should be shown over and over in private and club screenings; no journalist, no university student, no political commentator, no one who talks about freedom of speech should miss it.
