The British documentary film was born in 1934. It is true that Grierson had made Drifters as far back as 1929, and that other countries had quite an imposing list of titles to their credit—Nanook (1920), Rien que lea Heures (1936), Moana (1926), Berlin (1927), and Turksib (1928), but documentary is the field which British cinema was to make its own, and in 1934 there appeared Granton Trawler, Man of Aran, Cable Ship, B.B.C.—Voice of Britain, Shipyard, Weather Forecast, and Song of Ceylon. The director of Song of Ceylon, Basil Wright, had been making documentaries since 1931, and in 1933 had given us Windmill in Barbadoes with its remarkably rhythmical sugarcane cutting sequence. Not until Song of Ceylon, however, does he seem to be fully at home in the film medium. In this he has created a masterpiece.

The historical importance of Song of Ceylon is considerable, but no special pleading based on this ground is necessary in making an estimate of its greatness. The problem which Wright sets himself is a huge one—presenting to a Western audience the life, tradition, the method of thought of an Eastern people—a people whose economy, religion and art alike are strange to us. It is plainly too great a problem for the economist, the historian, the statistician, or the scientist it is a problem for the poet.

The film possesses an elaborate Internal structure—a pattern of rhythms and of interlinking visual themes, which are brought together in the manner of a musician. It is a visual symphony, and like a symphony it is divided into four movements.