these sometimes tragic, sometimes pathetic
scapegoats, whose concepts of obedience and
duty were over simplifications which appeared
to mitigate over-complicated moments of his-
tory. And yet, is the very fact of calling them
back not a clear illustration of the confusion
which often exists between the two kinds of
courage?
I said before that physical courage abounds
today as perhaps never before, moral courage,
on the other hand, is too often lacking. It is
in this sphere that the arts are called upon
to exert their most vital function that of
asking questions eloquentiy. Answers are not
their strength, since answers are dogmatic,
and dogma is the antithesis of art. But asking
questions are a job the arts do admirably
and is there not a way of asking a question
which suggests what the answer should be?
To be, or not to be?
Of all the arts, the cinema is certainly the
one with widest diffusion, and therefore the
sociologist will see in it the one with the
heaviest burden of public responsibility. Owing
to the amount of money involved, however, it
is the one most exposed to idealistic corrup-
tion. Cowardice increases in ratio to the
amount of money invested. Those films which
are referred to as multi-million dollar produc-
tions are invariably biblical reconstructions
which, by virtue of their subjects alone re-
ceive the approbation of clerical and educa-
tional authorities the world over. Little matter
if, in demonstrating the victory of good over
evil, ninety-nine percent of the film shows
evil leading good right into the last lap,
where morality beats the devil in a celestial
photo-finish. The lions are well satisfied in
their diet of Christians so that there is never
any cruelty to animals which might offend the
susceptibilities of the upright the Roman
hero who has butchered women and children,
flagellated slaves, caroused and sung hedo-
nistic madrigals, and crucified scores of
prisoners-of-war suddenly sees a blinding
aureole in the sky with the help of a thou-
sand female voices and a battalion of violins,
and learns the message of brotherly love and
gracious living. Admittedly virtue wins by a
technical, or perhaps, more aptly, a techni-
colour knock-out, but up to that moment, the
devil had been leading handsomely on points.
Naturally films of this kind are absolutely and
strictly inadventurous; there is far too much
money involved for any but the most conven-
tional viewpoint the only vague surprise
being the poverty of the language used on the
freeway to Damascus. Before leaving films of
this type, I must however defend them for a
moment on purely historical grounds. Many
critics attack them for reasons of taste, belie
ving apparently that Roman taste must have
been impeccable.
It was, I am sure, no more impeccable than
is transatlantic taste today, and the lapses
must have been very similar in tendency. You
only have to enter the headquarters of an im
portant bank in New York, and stroll intimi-
dated, among the great columns of Gorgon-
zola and Roquefort, to feel powerful echoes
of the imperial style. It is for that reason that
I believe that even if Greek films are best
left to Greeks, or at least to Europeans, none
can capture the true atmosphere of ancient
Rome more faithfully than Hollywood.
Lest it be thought that I am levelling an
attack on that particular Mecca of the movies,
I hasten to say that in spite of its compara-
tive affluence, Hollywood has achieved some
remarkable results results which are not
merely technical; natural for a society which
is changing perhaps too rapidly for the com
fort of not only its enemies but also its friends
but results which are artistic as well, and
which make the advocated self criticism of
the Communists seem like the confessions of
school-children to a practical joke. There is
a whole spate of films, adapted from a similar
spate of bestselling novels, in which the Pre
sident of the United States either goes mad,
imperceptibly mad, mad so that nobody no-
tices until it's too late or else he is the
victim of a sinister military plot by fanatical
officers or else he is powerless to stop the
sudden lunacy of a comparatively low ranking
officer with access to a particulary lethal but
ton. No one could call this tendency reassu-
ring, whatever their political outlook. A rea-
lity of this sort would strike dismay in Hanoi
and in Saigon, in Washington and in Moscow,
and yet it is curiously oredible in this day and
age that a highly placed official should go mad
without anyone noticing. A thousand years
ago, the courtiers would know the king was
mad, but would pretend not to notice. Today
they just wouldn't notice. We are in the grip
of science, and of pseudo-science. Once ar-
ticles can appear in the newspapers, as I
have seen them, categorizing the 36 stages
of escalation, from the first unpleasant look,
1st stage, to the distruction of the world, 36st
stage, then you can make a science of any-
thing, and make anything of science. A Da-
nish lady of 104 was summoned to enroll in a
nursery school the other day, because the
computer only went up to 99, and she appea
red in the records as being 5 years old. This
lady is an omen and a symbol of the massive
follies which threaten us all. The terrible in-
justice meted out by an ailing computer will
make the sacrifices of the early saints seem
like isolated bits of bad luck. And a mad
computer is in all probability even more dan-
gerous than a mad man.
In any society which believes itself to be a
free-in other words, in all societies criti
cism is encouraged for the same reason
as the engineer who insists on placing safety-
valves on an engine; there has to be some-
where for the steam of opinion to escape.
The fact that criticism is encouraged, however,
does not for a moment imply that it should
be listened to, or even heard. The Englishman
likes to think that he can laugh at himself. He
only does this, however, in order to take all
the pleasure out of laughing at him. The En-
glish sportsman prides himself on being a
good loser; by being this, he makes his op
ponent feel guilty for having won.
Similarly, the more we are encouraged to
express opinions, the fewer opinions we find
there are to express and in this connection
it is indicative that the largest turn-out at
elections are always on those occasions
when there is only one candidate. Hitler and
other dictators could always boast a vote
over 99%, whereas any two candidates are
delighted if they can muster 70% between
them.
The Americans vote assiduously and demo-
cratically for two parties between which there
is a minimal difference. The left wing of one
is much closer to the left wing of the other
than to its own right wing and in any case,
the left wing is a little further to the right
than most other countries' right wings. In
England, the labour party is in constant diffi-
culties because the Conservatives have moved
so far to the left as to leave no discernable
platform to any but for its own extreme left
wing. In any case, all parties in England are
parties of the centre. And as if this were al-
ready not confusing enough, we can easily
come across reactionaries of the extreme
left in some of the Socialist countries - in
fact, much of the attitude of the Chinese go-
vernment is as conservative as possible in
terms of the left its nostalgia for the purity
of the barricades and the austerity of dress,
the sudden abolition of rank in the army
all this is positively Goldwaterish in its ad-
herence to tradition.
In point of fact the terms left and right have
ceased to have much meaning we must
find some other imagery for the patterns of
contemporary political thought perhaps
petrified and flexible would be as good ex-
tremes as any. The position of France is per
haps the clearest example of the meaning-
lessness of left and right. Those who see
in her a subtle right-wing tendency, with a
return to obsolescent concepts of la gloire
are often the very same critics who resent
her realistic desire to expand her trade and
influence to all corners of the globe, inclu-
ding those of the so-called People's Repu-
blies. The truth behind this apparent paradox
is simply that France refuses to allow her
reflexes to become conditioned by the pe-
trifying official attitudes which have consis-
tently diminished the span of public opinion
in the West ac well as in the East. She is
flexible.
Even if some of us may consider that under
the influence of her present administration
France is rapidly becoming a French colony,
she is still the power who's Windows are the
widest open on the world, and who's seis-
mograph is the most sensitive to change in
others.
What has all this to do with the cinema? In
that the cinema is a reflexion of life as it is
lived, as it should be lived, or, more com-
mercially, as it should not be lived, it has
everything to do with the cinema. Seated in
a New York movie-house, watching Stanley
Kubrick's film „Dr. Strangelove, or How to
fall in love with the bomb and stop worrying",
I was party to the following reaction on be-
half of the member of the audience immedia-
tely behind me. The film starts with the shot
of a dangerous looking aircraft high above the
clouds, and the commentator reminds the au
dience in tones of the most savage irony that
at every second of the day and night there
is always a hydrogen bomb in the air capable
of destroying a continent or two. The reac
tion of the solid burgher to his female com-
panion were the words, makes you feel safe,
don't it?" A little later in the film, when a
colonel in the obvious throes of a nervous
breakdown, to put it mildly, begins to venti-
late his theories about communists polluting
the water ways in order to poison the popu-
lation of the United States the female com-
panion suddenly said ,,l knew it! Haven't I
said all along that that's what the commies
were up to?"
Here is a depressing and classic example of
how a couple of spectators of petified
tendencies can sidestep a bulldozer of iro
ny, and convert even a deliriously subversive
film into a patriotic tract. People like the
comfort of communal thinking. It is not only
a question of keeping up with the Jones', but
of keeping in tune with the Jones' and the
mass of absurd proverbs which clutter every
civilized language are permanent evidence of
that condition placed banalities all over the
landscape of language since the beginning of
time much as Alpine huts which shelter
the lonely travelier in winter against the ri-
gours of the climate clichés can shelter
the timid conversationalist against the rigours
of a new thought.
It is a weird reflection on our society that a
social comment of far-reaching satire very
rarely succeeds in making the communal im
pact which had been hoped for; in order to
really touch the public where it hurts, you
have to commit an act as unpardonably
harmless as awarding some medals to the
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