Plan for cinema (1936)

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X V Q.\ * 10 PLAN FOR CINEMA magnificent medium, full of so many scientific variables that its very existence is only just possible, a cause for wonderment every time we come fully to appreciate the fact. That is not to say we should blunder about in a turbulent sea on no course; no organism has yet ripened in such a way. We can give a lead by indicating a direction, arrived at by analysis in purely aesthetical terms: it is imperative such a pointer, as it were, should be given. For without direction the creative artist in this new medium is liable to be compelled to follow the flight of a highly mechanical bird. And it is not meet that the artist shall be "§€fvan{ to the engineer. Creative artist? you say. And what has the genuine creative artist to do with providing entertainment to meet the taste of vast hordes of semi-illiterates ? Nothing whatsoever ; for the production of entertainment films is primarily not creative, but selective and interpretive. The productioi^^,a,fc£In^o-day is a collectiv^mnmffihgi^vnicl^ great numbe^ot people contribute their quota of work and personality, essentially a democratic business; and the creative artist in the highest sense has no truck with democracy or collective systems of any sort. A film director is analogous to an orchestral conductor. He must be first of all a good selector, a sieve through which good ideas, contributive to the whole, may pass, powerful enough to hold the reins of a varied team and obtain the most from them, a man of sufficient sensibility and strength to impress his ego on the whole. Thus far