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CHAPTER 11 Life and The Camera
Is it possible for the camera to look at life, honestly, and still be entertaining?
The answer is, honesty and life imply many things, and the way that question reads it certainly implies that the screen has been dishonest, but not that it has not been entertaining. In fact we can forget that part of the question entirely. Hollywood is staffed and geared to make almost anything entertaining.
If looking at life, honestly, implies that the screen is not doing its bit for the Truth, an honest camera in that sector is next to impossible.
If the camera were to look fairly and squarely for 70 minutes at the way the Truth is kicked around in this nation of nations, five minutes after the newspapers reported the picture those to the left of us, those to the right of us and those behind us would rise together and "certainly take steps!" That is if censors would let a movie like that get as far as the screen.
Granted that the conflicts stewing on our many political and economic fronts would add tremendously to the appeal of any movie, that the changes taking place in the social structure today would add that timely something the screen needs, that the screen might be helpful in levelling many nationally mountainous molehills, but the screen is a local medium, a community proposition, as well as a national.
The Truth for which one class or group clamors so earnestly in print too often becomes an ugly partisan reality in the camera. And what happens when that reality appears on the screen in any given community ? One or another articulate minority immediately yells Propaganda! And the theatre owner holds an empty bag, facing the grim fact that his theatre has become a soap-box, and the more disconcerting fact that the axes most people want to grind are extremely dull. Happily, the screen has been able to say NO to all forms of special pleading, which does not mean that the case for honesty and timeliness in nation-wide entertainment is entirely hopeless.
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