The cinema : 1952 (1952)

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132 THE CINEMA fully-literate public during the past eighty years, the demands on these facilities for entertainment and information are correspondingly large. But many people are too hastily and imperfectly educated to be in a position to choose successfully the kind of entertainment they most need or to understand at all easily the work of that kind of artist who possesses a quality of knowledge and a subtlety of response to human experience which exceeds what they can readily appreciate. Critics and reviewers serving the popular and specialized press alike have become not only interpreters helping a public numbering millions to appreciate what is being done for them by the professional artists and entertainers, but also clearing-house agents who spend their lives trying to keep abreast of the welter of contemporary artistic production and then sort it into some kind of order for the benefit of those who have to concentrate for their living on other affairs and need guidance to help them enjoy the various available arts during the leisure hours left to them. The responsibility of the critic has always been to respond quickly and keenly to a new work of art, and to share with the artist himself a passionate realization of the capacity of the art they serve together. Artists are human beings ; they are liable to lie, cheat, and deceive themselves and others in just the same way as the rest of humanity. The critic, because he is separated from the immediate act of creation, can or should be able to perceive these deceits, whether they are either involuntary or deliberate. For most of the artistic output which results from the widespread contemporary demand for entertainment is of an inferior kind, prone to weaknesses which need exposure and discussion. It may be an insult for an imperceptive critic to tear apart the work of an Ibsen, but it is far more likely nowadays that both the critic and the public will be faced most of the time with work below rather than above the level they can appreciate. The critic becomes, therefore, not a parasite preying on the