The film answers back : an historical appreciation of the cinema (1939)

of self-destruction, or the equally impossible idealist way out of leaving it to a change of heart in the Headmistress. We shall have occasion to examine other pre-Nazi films to show that the mood of the intelligentsia was one of throwing up of hands in despair. At a time when the German people were harassed by economic stress and the claims of rival politicians, one of whom offered all the lying promises of a heaven on earth, cultural leadership had abdicated, leaving the solution to be worked out by the abandoned and distraught people, all in their own several ways. In pre-Nazi Germany, we see in Maedchen in Uniform the fatalism which portrays an abhorrent, crushing authoritarian Prussianism, and is helpless to do anything about it. Prussianism shrugs its shoulders, simply says 'Very wellf and goes on its way as before. In English films, there appears the fatalism which accepts the method of authoritarianism, and smilingly pats it on the back as the only and inevitable manner of bringing-up the young. Only in the. American film is there no such fatalism. As we shall see in an examination o£Dead End and Boy of The Streets and the trends which such films indicate, there is a straight look in the face at reality, a determined feeling that what man has twisted man can straighten out, a desire to transform the social instincts of children from the gang spirit to the communal spirit, a realization that children have the right to be treated as self-responsible individuals on equal terms with adults, to achieve their citizenship. They must not be driven to a terror-stricken obedience as in the case of the drummer-boy in Korda's The Drum, who stands before a General sagging at the knees with fright, and who is made to breathe an intense sigh of relief when the interview is over. All the evidence goes to show that we in England have not, and the Americans most certainly have, learnt the 171