‘Of the scholars, nothing is to be expected, I am afraid’, wrote Sir Arthur Elton, a pioneer of the documentary film, pleading in a much-quoted article of 1955 for greater recognition of the value of film as a source material for history. It was true that up to that time professional historians, in Britain at least, had shown small interest in the utilisation of film, either in research or in teaching. Yet even in 1955 Elton's words disregarded some significant developments. If in the early days of film it had tended to be those involved in the craft of filmmaking themselves, like the American W.K.L. Dickson or the Pole Matuszewski, who called attention to its potential historical importance, there had none the less been considerable discussion of the matter by scholars between the wars within the International Congress of Historical Sciences and elsewhere, and a distinguished Cambridge historian, George Kitson Clark, had been among those who, in 1948, founded the British Universities Film Council to promote the use of film in higher education. Moreover, had Elton's vision extended to Germany, the gloom generated by the British situation would have been lightened. Not for the first time in the history of historiography, the Anglo-Saxons were lagging behind. In Gottingen, serious work on film regarded as a historical document had been in progress since 1949 under the aegis of such figures as Professors Walther Hubatsch, Percy Ernst Schramm and Wilhelm Treue.