There is not a good documentary without a story, and there is not a good story film without what is called the documentary technique. All the qualities of that technique – photography that is consistent with the nature of the subject in value, intensity and design, movement in images to parallel in rhythm the idea being expressed, the dependence on showing a story rather than telling it, people straight from everyday life in dress, talk and manner, and the environment as a living, natural part of their life – are all qualities that started in the story film and appear wherever a good movie, called documentary or otherwise, appears… But either the documentary or the story film, to be any good, will express the essential nature of the subject, which is human life in one form or another. Whether the start is from actuality or from the imagination, there is only one way to photograph a mail box, and that is the best way in terms of the desired end, and there is only one way to show an idea or a story in the movies, and that is also the best way.
—Manny Farber. From the article Between Two Worlds, published on July 12, 1943.
