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Micawber step. Following this line of suspicious supposition, we wonder if it is entirely by chance that Victorian themes are those most in demand in Hollywood?
Of the authenticity of the Indian films I cannot speak; but R. J. Minney, who comments on this development in the Miscellany, has observed elsewhere of Bengal Lancer that it "has caught the spirit of the British in India, which is essentially a noble blend of valour and discipline and manliness of a type that the Western world of this generation, with its new mincing ways, has lost entirely. . . . We see in Bengal Lancer how India is really governed. There is on the surface the hard-playing, polo-loving, be-all and end-all of existence. Below it is the stern thoroughness, shot with a keen sense of justice and fair play, not the sadistic fury of tryanny." It is good to have this assurance from one qualified to pass judgment. Certainly the film gives a stalwart exposition of the ideals behind British military service in India; and Hollywood, with an easy confidence which producers in this country seem unable to achieve, gives vigorous expression to a fervent brand of British patriotism. This element apart, Bengal Lancer is an exciting adventure story, not without its violently melodramatic moments and its blots of bathos, but handled compellingly by Henry Hathaway, and, in form, essentially of the cinema. In the last respect particularly, Clive of India does not stand well beside the Paramount film. One can always sense that it has been conceived as a play; that the action has been cut to suit the limitations of back-cloth and footlights; and that the emphasis is primarily on characterisation rather than on the relation of a man to a mighty background. The film dwells but lightly on the effect of Clive's manoeuvres in India. Indeed, it is quite timorous about India, and seems to be visibly relieved when the scene shifts back to London again. Clive of India throws off its literary harness and breaks away clean into movie only during the Plassey episode, where the armoured battle elephants claim for Suraj ud Dowlah the honour of inventing the tank. Skilled acting might yet have made this an impressive version of a fine play; but Ronald Colman and Loretta Young are out of their dramatic depth.
I can write with more knowledge of Hollywood's Barrie films as expressions of national life. It has been part of Barrie's achievement that he has introduced to a large audience Scottish types with which, from a purely music-hall or caricature conception, they were unfamiliar. Provided that they are made as carefully as What Every Woman Knows and The Little Minister, the filmed plays are likely to do the same for a very much larger audience in the cinema. They may not announce, as Scotsmen would like to see Scottish films announce to the world, that Scotland is a country of modern intentions rather than of ancient sentiments; but they will broaden and deepen a
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