RELIGIOUS FILMS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—I am afraid that this is becoming a futile discussion. Mr. Bruce Woolfe is a film-producer and I am a film critic. We are supposed to be discussing a film ; but in the process we are entering the complexities of a theological argument.
However, in spite of Mr. Woolfe's attack on my use of the phrase " business man's vade mecum" in connexion with parts of Where Love Is, God Is, I remain unrepentant, and still fmd myself unfavourably impressed by the arguments advanced—chiefly in the cobbler's soliloquies—as to how, for instance, " turning the other cheek " can be made to work out for one's own personal advantage. But perhaps Mr. Woolfe and myself diverge here on the old schismatic argu- ments about Faith and Works.
As regards the " battlefield between Church and Cinema," I have no further observations to make, except that, inex- perienced in life and business though Mr. Woolfe may regard me, I have not infrequently been to church, and am also happy to number many men of God among my personal friends (though not, I am glad to say, anyone resembling the vicar who appears in Where Love Is, God Is). From public sermons and private talks I have been forced to the conclusion that not a few of the clergy regard the cinema (perhaps with some reason) as a dangerous and immoral manifestation.
Despite Mr. Woolfe's final paragraph, I still maintain that what Tolstoy wrote is one thing, and what the film succeeds in saying is another. Matters of such high import depend very much on the mood in which they are presented, and to my mind Tolstoy's story has this moo& while the film in question has not. Incidentally, Mr. Woolfe's economic argu- ment about the local values of such commodities as bread and cheese smacks somewhat of the " business man's vale mecum" aforesaid.
To resolve our differences, I suggest to Mr. Woolfe and Dr. Gregory that we should spend a quiet Sunday afternoon together, devoted to a friendly discussion of James' Varieties of Religious Experience, or some similar book of an improving
nature.—Yours, &c., BASIL WRIGHT. Realist Film Unit Ltd., 34 Soho Square, London, W. 1. [This correspondence is closed.—En. Spectator.]
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