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ping diseases on the holy stones; or the pygmies of the Wambutti; or the Punak of Borneo, a quarter of a million of them, naked, cultureless, happy, the last folk of the Golden Age ; or the dead cities of Northern England, cities of more dreadful night than that dreamt by Thomson; or. . . .
We are shown instead, wearyingly, unendingly, ad infinitum and ad nauseam, the fishers of Iceland and the dancing-girls of Bali. A strange, unrecorded tabu has smitten the travelogue-makers; the rest of the earth, those two islands apart, is forbidden their observation. So, with faith and fortitude, twice a week, we sit in the bug house and watch Iceland — mostly female Iceland — grin upon us over the salted cadaver of the unlucky cod ; we gaze upon unending close-ups of gigantic buttocks bent in arduous toil ; we blink upon geysers and giggling Scandinavian virgins. . . . Or, in Bali, we watch the Devil Dance. The girls appear in masks; the novice film-fan deplores these masks till later he sees a group of the girls without them. Then he understands that even the devil has an aesthetic eye. . . .
Next, Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy have entertained us with a desperate vigour. They have sawn themselves in halves, fallen down chimneys, eaten gold-fish, married their sisters, committed arson, or slept in insect-infested beds. And gradually, whatever the pursuit, the grin has faded from our faces. We are filled with awareness of a terrible secret unknown to the lords of the films: that the dictum on art being long and life short was never intended for injudicious application to a single-reel comedy. . . . Mr. Hardy has discovered fleas in his bed. Excellent! We laugh. The flea has infested the skirts of the Comic Muse since the days of Akhnaton. But Mr. Hardy is still horrified or astounded. Yard upon yard of celluloid flicks past, and we await fresh developments. There are no fresh developments. The film, we realize, was made for the benefit of a weak-eyed cretin in whose skull a jest takes at least ten minutes to mature.
Then we have had Mickey Mouse . . . and remember Felix the Cat. Rose-flushed and warm from heaven's own heart he came, and might not bear the cloud that covers earth's wan face with shame, as Mr. Swinburne wrote. But some day, surely, he will return and slay for us this tyrant. How long, O Lord, how long?
But now the Big Picture is coming. First, a lion has growled convincingly or a radio tower has emitted sparks or a cockerel has crowed in a brazen I-will-deny-thee-thrice manner. The heraldic beasts disposed of, we come to the names of the producer, the scenario-writer, the costumier, the sound-effects man; we learn that Silas K. Guggenheimer made the beds, Mrs. Hunt O'Mara loaned the baby, and Henryk Sienkiewicz carried round drinks. The fact
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