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AND THE MODERN CINEMA human being to its environmental structure, more fully. He returns to 'the analogy' of the Elizabethan theatre with the modern cinema. 'The moving-picture clientele is truly universal. ... In theory, at least, it is to Hollywood that we should look for new dramatic triumphs. But, unluckily, the moving-picture clientele does not compose an audience at all. It does not participate in the creation of a play, and its influence upon creative artists is exercised through deputies not of its own choosing. The true audience of a moving-picture is a delegation of studio critics. Their difficulties are considerable, for the diverse elements constituting that humanity whose tastes they try to gauge form an amalgam in no one theatre but are distributed in complex patterns. It is little wonder that Hollywood's aim is confused. It is interesting to notice that Chaplin and Disney, the Hollywood creators who have permitted the fewest intermediaries to come between them and their public, are the truest artists and the most generally approved.'1 The Elizabethan audience was a crowd sharing in a unifying experience. Our modern crowds are atomised and lack the organic structure without which art must lose its social function. It deteriorates either into Vart pour Part or into empty 'entertainment'. An Elizabethan play which did not please had to be taken off the stage. A contemporary film — good or bad — is forced on the public through the irresistible power of the exhibitor circuits. The general manager of one modern cinema cartel may decide what 'the public' wants. The spiritual dictatorship of the modern cinema is more powerful than the dictatorship of Hitler because it is less obvious, hidden in the vast machinery of the modern large-scale industry. A French film critic, as a friend is kind enough to inform me while I am writing this chapter, extends my argument to the international aspect of the film industry. He writes: 'Nous assistons depuis plusieurs annees, et le cinema est la preuve, a la constitution d'un grand trust du cinema. Si les gouvernements ne se penchent pas sur ce probleme, si des mesures energiques ne sont pas prises, dans cinq ou six ans le cinema, moyen d'expression populaire et sociale d'une diffusion extraordinaire, sera entre les mains de quelques personnes qui domineront non seulement l'art cinematographique, mais encore la pensee des createurs cinematographiques.' (Cf. Spectateur, Paris, June 6, p. i sq.) So it seems my observations do not warrant the expected objection that they come from an uninformed outsider.
Against this background I am not at all certain whether Pro
1 Ibid. p. i66sq.
D 49 M.S.F.