Wolfgang Suschitzky. Report on Steel (1948)

Wolfgang Suschitzky combined his work as a photographer with work on films, as a cinematographer. In the 1930s and 1940s, especially, these films commonly had an overtly propagandist element. Typical of this is the short film, Report on Steel (1948), which presented striking images of Port Talbot steel works in Wales, accompanied by dramatic music and a voiced-over script that today seems melodramatic. 

The aim of the film and of Suschitzky's accompanying photographs was to emphasise technical innovation and power as Britain embraced the latest technology to forge a new modern nation in the aftermnath of the Second World War. Suschitzky presents men at work in organised industrial spaces, with situating views and details of control panels and offices to suggest order and controlled production of almost clinical efficiency.

In 1960 Suchitzsky was again the cinematography on another related film, Stone in Steel. Also producing a group of early colour transparencies of  the dramatic meltingshop at Samuel Fox Ltd, which was also part of the United Steel group.

Stone Into Steel was a 1960 short film directed by Paul Dickson that documents the activities of the Appleby-Frodingham Steel Company in Scunthorpe. The Appleby-Frodingham Steel Company was the largest unit in the United Steel group. Wolfgang Suschitzky was the cinematographer, Edward Williams composed the music, and Stephen Cross was the editor.