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PREFACE
be added that, from a practical point of view, he contributed to the making of certain wartime documentaries and cinemagazines for the U.S., Army, notably to the famous Why We Fight series under the supervision of Frank Capra. Griffith's additional section to this new edition, Part Three : The Film Since Then, to which he has written his own Introduction, carries my full support of his critical judgement and I take this opportunity of formally thanking him for his contribution. It should be remembered that he is writing from an American point of view. I must share occasional responsibility, however, where films have not been available to him, mainly in the nonAmerican chapters, and where I have been fortunate enough to visit certain European countries since the war. Finally it should be added that he is writing briefly ; to have surveyed the past eighteen years of films in detail would have meant a vast new book in itself.
A new edition, as the reader will have noted, permits an author to indulge in the luxury of a new Preface.
Films recollected in memory, says Richard Griffith, are apt to be biased by nostalgia. How right he is ! When I was fortunate enough to spend some months at the Film Library in New York in 1937 and '38, I found that out only too well. On the other hand seeing old films again brings pleasant surprises; things you never saw and certainly implications which you were too inexperienced to observe. In general, however, films of the past usually live in our mind as being better than they really were, especially fiction films. Memory adds values to them that were never there. Yet^ divorcing technique from viewpoint, one realises now how much one missed by not understanding fully a director's aim at the time, or not knowing the conditions under which a film was made, or the purpose indeed for which the film was made at all. That is why I greatly welcomed last year Dr. Siegfried Kracauer's book From Caligari to Hitler because it gave
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