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That is what costume films can make us realise. I am not speaking to the cultured audience, who know these things, and who can watch a gang-war and a wheedling hot mamma with detached amusement ; we must not forget that the great film public is often entirely uneducated. To them films are more real than life; to them the speech of actors is something to be mimicked, their gestures something to be copied. I am not a moralist in the usual sense of the word. I detest the idea of a censorship or of any attempt by outsiders to rule life too completely; but I cannot help feeling that, instead of being a power for good, the films have too often been a power for evil. They have taught young girls to expect a swift and ugly seduction; they have taught young men to woo by clipping their wenches on the jaw and to have contempt for honesty. How many other finer things they could have taught the world: the simple world, that believes all it sees in newsprint and to whom the films are teachers and leaders !
Costume films, I firmly believe, will bring back a sense of honour and honesty. Instead of lads striving to be Cagneys they will wish to be d'Artagnans; and the women will expect a certain finesse, a certain beauty, about love-making. Costume films will bring colour into life. We have been forced into believing that abstract things like " honour" and "love" are exploded. They may be empty words, but surely a belief in them makes life richer, more beautiful? We need romance terribly to-day. Half our present sense of futility is based on the lack of these old values that man has most carefully formed and treasured for centuries. It is not right that they should be swept aside by machine-gunning gangsters and crude golddiggers, such as most films have glorified. Of course, we must not blame the films for this loss of values : the causes are too numerous and too well known for me to define them here. And, after all, pictures are the servants of the public and mirror only the passing moods of a generation. If costume films are returning it means that the public demands them; that it is weary of a life that has no meaning beyond a bottle of gin and a few loveless kisses.
Historical novels are coming swiftly into popularity; historical films are coming, too. And this has made me very happy. It is a healthy sign, a sign of renewed vitality. Now we will be shown the past — we will see before us the great achievements of man, the gigantic history of a little creature that has risen from we know not what, who has conquered and enslaved all animals within his reach, who has conquered even the earth itself and the space enclosing the earth. The greatest story in the universe is the story of man. Too long have we been taught to despise ourselves; too long have we been shown only the decaying side of civilisation ; now we will be shown its growth. The films will teach us self-respect.
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