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and Laughter has never been repeated. But after seeing half a dozen it is impossible to doubt that here, in spite of much that is poor, is that blend of realism and fancy on which alone good art can be reared.
Yet never are these two English artists (who are really one artist) ever mentioned by serious critics. Perhaps because they are English, but more probably because the films produced by them shew little appreciation of the pure medium : as if any English artist was ever able to keep to the lines, Shakespeare, vSterne, Gainsborough, or anybody else. They all tried, to do ten things at once, and wrote poems when they throught they were painting pictures, and (Shakespeare above all) were postively slovenfy and uneconomic and perverse in their use of the material. We are like this, and we can't help it, but when the result pleases we wonder what the academic are cackling about.
Not long ago a film of the Squibbs series was reported to be on at a small cinema in a slum district. It was a rare chance, and we went at once.
We wTere not disappointed : the film was English, with the proper tang ; the tang of Fielding or Sterne. But it is not its merits, but its reception that is important. The previous film which we had to endure was a lively melodrama : seductions, faked marriages, bedroom scenes, desperate villains, private yachts, burning houses — every sort of salt thrill imaginable. Now for this we clap, and even, when the fire-brigade dashes up, we raise a cheer. But we clap ten times louder, and stamp our feet and cheer ten times more vigorously for
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