Focus: A Film Review (1950-1951)

238 Catholic Film Institute No. 2: Catholic Film Criticism Strictly speaking it is incorrect to talk of “Catholic Film Criticism”; just as it is incorrect to talk of Catholic novels, Catholic music, Catholic art. There are, of course, novels which deal with Catholic subjects, music composed to be sung at Mass and Benediction, and art which finds its proper resting place in churches and convents. There are a few films made by Catholics which treat of religious subjects and call for criticism as such. What is meant is that Catholics who are artists, writers, musicians, critics, bring their own special mental attitude to bear upon the subjects they are concerned with and cannot help colouring those subjects with that attitude. That is not the same thing as saying that all novels, music, art whose authors are Catholic must be shaped for use in religious surroundings, but it does mean that Catholics cannot help bringing certain fixed standards of belief and behaviour to bear upon their work even if the theme of the work is not intended to be edifying. In the case of films we are, from the beginning, up against the fact that so few intelligent people are willing to allow that films can be discussed and defined in equal comparison with other art forms. Indeed the definition of art itself has caused many a dialectical headache and outside lecture rooms in Catholic seminaries and universities I doubt whether anybody has ever arrived at a satisfactory definition. Granting that the classical definition of St. Thomas, " ars est recta ratio factabilmm” , is valid as it applies to other media of expression, it must, I think, be considered that potentially, at least, it is valid when the form of expression is cinematic. Father Hilary Carpenter has rendered that definition, “a good quality or virtue of the practical intelligence, a potentiality whereby a man is in a condition of soul to envisage the proper ordering of things to be made by him”. This, upon examination, will be seen to apply to the man who chooses to express his ideas in terms of cinema as much as to the man who expresses his ideas in terms of paint, stone or musical sounds. People are apt to be confused by the fact that most films are the product of a conglomeration of bits and pieces, persons and machines, and to suppose that, under such circumstances, it is not possible for the film finally projected upon the screen to have any connection with art A little quiet thought should enable them to see that if a man has ideas to express and ‘‘is in a co>idition of soul to envisage the proper ordering of things ” he should be able properly to order the disposition of light upon persons, places and things, viewed through a motion picture camera in such a way that the final result, projected upon the screen, comes near to being, in its own order, a work of art. There is no time here to expand this idea ; we are more concerned at the moment with the function of the critic who views the final result on the screen. We say that our object is to encourage the development of Catholic criticism of films. The critic is, above all else, a judge. That means that he must be equipped with sufficient knowledge of the subject he is judging as well as a sufficient background of culture to enable him to put his judgment of the particular subject he is criticising into its proper general context. Whereas with other art forms, a school or standard of criticism has been developed over the years, cinema is still so new, and to some people so vulgar, that on the whole little has been done to formulate a proper critique of cinema. The Church has, of course, been concerning itself with film for a longer period than those who are not of the Faith. Indeed the birth of film criticism may be said to have taken place in Belgium in the early days of ♦