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Left : Wilfrid Lawson, Michael Rennie and Movita in “ Tower of Terror.'' Leslie Howard enters the Ger- man Ministry of Propaganda in “ Pimper- nel Smith.” pictures of the raid made by our Commandos on Vaagso Island. They showed us the catastrophe at Pearl Harbour and the devastation in Coventry. The eloquence of the film camera in such matters is greater than all written words. Then there is that side of films best known to us—the enter- tainment side. In a world ringing with tumult, it was not unnatural that it should find inspiration there, the treatment varying from knockabout burlesque to tense melodrama. In a war so widespread indeed there can be no dearth of material for producers to choose from. One daily newspaper contains enough tales of heroism and heartbreak, mirth and misery, to provide a dozen ideas. In a world shaken to its foundations by a tumult such as has never before been known, with fire and sword laying waste the green earth, with death and destruction, tears and tragedy, savagery and suffering on such a scale that scarcely a family has been untouched by it, from the Eskimo of the frozen Arctic wastes to the jungle dweller of the tropics, in neutral and belligerent countries alike, it has been made plain that the man who wanted to be master of the world has become the waster of the world. And the film could not, if it wanted to do so, ignore the war. Between them, the American and British studios have covered the war pretty thoroughly. Some of the films have been based on fact—some episode of individual heroism or treachery. Others have been pure fiction, the background provided by some particular event that actually happened. The war in the air and the part played by aircraft and the men who fly them has perhaps been predominant. This is not par- ticularly surprising considering the predominant part this Service has taken in shaping the course of the war right from the beginning, when Hitler's mechanised hordes poured into Poland, and his dive bombers and heavy bombers pounded Warsaw by day and night. This phase was touched on in “ Dangerous Moonlight," one of the finest films produced, for it had a great theme that was told and acted with deep sincerity. It was that rare thing, a really inspiring film—the story of a Polish pilot, a great musician who in the ruins of his beloved Warsaw and the Polish Air Force’s heroic struggle against hopeless odds—a struggle repeated on the land—found inspiration for a great composition, and of his later struggle when he escaped to America—his music, which was his life, against his flying, which was his country’s hope of life. . . . There was no song made about this film. It suc- ceeded on its merits. And the Warsaw Concerto, composed by Richard Addinsell for the film, was as great as the film—and that, too, won well de- served acclaim. “ A Yank in the R.A.F." was notable for its vivid reconstruction of the evacuation of Dunkirk. The sequence showed in a way nothing but the real thing could have surpassed, the hell on earth endured by the British Army, trapped by France’s Fire-fighters aboard H.M.S.Ark Royal, the aircraft-carrier, in “ Ships with Wings.” fames Cagney and Dennis Morgan in “ Captains of the Clouds." 83 i