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AUDIENCES— POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY cinema alone has a universal audience. Yet where are the social philosophers to-day who reflect on the norms which guide and underlie the contemporary film?
We leave it — at least in Western Europe — to the financial holders of this most powerful Art-industry to decide what 'the public wants'. The only link between State and cinema consists of purely technical police regulations. The British Board of Film Censors is not a State institution though by virtue of its monopoly it has all the advantages of a State institution, except that of being free from any control of the House of Commons. It is guided by uncontrollable, vague norms applied by an unknown body of 'experts' appointed by the film industry itself; an institution which is entirely inadequate for its formidable task. The moral and spiritual code as applied by the Film Censors is hardly more elaborate than the Ten Commandments of the Bible. The complexity of our modern world problems has not yet communicated itself to those who decide what films we are allowed to see and in what shape.
Indeed, Augustine has written for our time. Let the laws protect the rights of property and leave men's morals alone.
Surely, the daily and weekly papers all have their film critics — and some of them may, and do, join our cry in the wilderness, but are we heard? Are we not regarded as cranks or unwelcome outsiders, as alien elements who only want an undue influence in matters of which we are not competent to judge?
In the meantime our children, our adolescents, a considerable proportion of the adult population of Great Britain are conditioned by those very few who hold the reins of the big exhibitorcircuits.
Only Soviet Russia has logically applied the Athenian lesson. There Art, Cinema, Society, and State are intimately related to each other. 'There is', writes a competent observer in The Spectator (July 6th 1945), 'an "organic unity" between the people and their art . . . and because the cinema is considered the most important of all the arts for the Soviet State, the significance of any developments reflected in Soviet films extends far beyond the field of cinematography.' The immediate relationship between audiences and film technicians which, for the cinema in Western countries, is non-existent, forms the substance of the Russian cinema. Children, adolescents and adults are not fed by fan-stories and starhero-worship, they actually form a productive part in film creation and appreciation. Certainly the Planned centralised
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