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348 QUALIFICATIONS OF A FILM CRITIC
The critic who can convey that time compression in words and that sense of power in words has yet to be born.
Until that day comes, the makers of film at least have a right to ask that critics should know something of the technique of the film. The cult words, integrity, film-sense, and so on, are worked to death. How refreshing it would be to read a criticism that commented on the background music, or even noticed that it is a part of the picture pattern, or to read one that had something intelligent or intelligible to say of the cutting, as well as the direction, and of the camera work instead of the eternal harping on plot. Have the reviewers never noticed that when the average man or woman tells one about a film they always tell one its plot ? The public can understand and evaluate plots very readily. They do not need the critics' help in this.
When will the critics give them the pointers which will enable them to evaluate, not stories, but pictures ?
What are the qualifications for becoming a film critic ? One could fill a chapter enumerating them. Some skill or at least experience in making films would seem to be helpful, though admittedly it is quite possible to be a drunk without ever having served behind a bar.
Which is perhaps the clue to why film critics become film critics — they like pictures, they absorb pictures as blotting paper absorbs ink, they, perhaps more than more evenly-balanced filmgoers, have experienced to the full that emotional excitement which a good film brings to its beholder.
The way into the film studio is not easy, although at least three British newspaper critics, and possibly several more in America, have served their term in the studios. They are easily the best critics.
All of which would not be important were it not that the film is too heavily burdened by self-appointed critics and investigators, as well as self-appointed busybodies of more virulent sorts, all of them with the desire and the time to devote to slowing it down to four miles an hour by walking in its path with a mental red flag masquerading as a red badge of courage.
In America the Hays office considers every film from the point of view of wThether it will morally harm little Elmer or Irwin. In Britain, little Alfred or Ida may not go to the pictures when an " A " certificate film is being shown unless they are accompanied by an adult (who, presumably, by his or her mere presence takes the sting