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CONCLUSIONS AND POSTULATES
interest? What part did the anticipation of the censorship complex play? — a question which is of particular relevance with regard to American and British films. (In Russia the political structure of the censorial system must play a considerable role as those who are familiar with the studio history of the film Peter the Great will have to admit.) French films have perhaps such an intensive personal note, because there is practically no moral censorship of French films, whereas the Puritan tradition in England and U.S.A. is still powerfully alive. Jeremy Collier has not written in vain.
Film director and script writer live in a concrete society. Their works must consequently reflect or interpret the social life of which they are a part. To analyse where life meets art is perhaps one of the subtlest problems the sociologist has to face. Perhaps I may illustrate this point. Last year — the Allies had just landed in France — I saw in a repertoire cinema in Cambridge Fritz Lang's film, The Testament of Doctor Mabuse, a film which I had previously seen in Berlin in 1932. It struck me now to what a surprising extent this film reflects the state of German society in those years when the Nazi advent was imminent. The film is well-known. I need not say anything about its morbid and destructive character. It may clearly stand as a symbol of Nazism. One actor in particular fascinated me. He was by no means a leading figure. Just an ordinary sub-gangster. When hunted down by the police, he refused to surrender. Crazily he went down shooting . . .
Wenn die Germanen untergehn,
Dann muss die Welt in Flammen stehn.
His hooligan face and attitude were unforgettable. (In 1932 I was not struck by the sociological significance of this figure, or of the film, though I remembered one or two frightening sequences in it.) I have never come across a more intimately illustrated relationship between a film and the historic phase of a concrete society.
When I discussed my observation with one of our most sensitive film directors, he was able to solve my problem. He related how Lang had seen this hooligan in Berlin's West End and did not rest until he had him before the camera. When I asked the same friend: do you ever think of the public when you work with the camera?, he quietly said: never.
As sociology of literature is still in its infancy, it will be evident that a sociology of film choosing, its starting point from such an
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