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AUDIENCES DEMAND BETTER STORIES 351
it as his opinion that " Gangster films may not do much to encourage crime."
And what of the other side of the picture of the women inspired to run a home like the heroines of the screen, or the adolescent youth who must surely notice that the hero of the film is the popular chap and that no one really likes the villain. Is human-kind so low in the animal scale that the busybodies must always assume that it wants to imitate the worst instead of the best in human nature ?
The American way of life may be a couple of generations behind that of Europe where culture is concerned ; after all they were pioneering to open up a new country while the dandies of the old were the patrons of playwright and painter. Differences between American life and British and Continental life, however, grow more and more plain in the moving picture medium. Both Britain and Hollywood recognise now that the film story, to-day, is every bit as important as the star, but it is in the choice of stories in which the principal divergences occur.
Hollywood still considers it good policy to write its stories down to the average receptivity level of its public ; British studios strive to write stories up to the level demanded by the highest I.Q. in any given cinema audience.
Both could still be of a better general level of excellence. The advocates of a nationalised film industry believe that government guidance could bring this about in Britain. This is no place to discuss the pros and cons of nationalisation ; perhaps the advocates of an officially directed film industry are right, possibly not, but one wonders what effect changes of government would have on the industry.
For five years producers might happily produce pictures of the most advanced type, and then, confronted by a change of government, discover themselves called upon to make entertainment of a more reactionary sort.
' Whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter, the question of a higher level of production in both Britain and America depends on audiences as much as on the pictures themselves, and to get better audiences the cinema needs a people who are, taking it all round, living a life free from fear of the job, fear of going hungry, a people living in reasonably comfortable homes.
We have seen that films are most popular in the industrial districts, less popular in the agricultural centres.