An Englishman who has lived abroad for a dozen years
tells me that the feature of English cinemas that strikes him most forcibly is the quite disproportionate attention paid in the news section of the programme to films of naval, military and aerial displays. The criticism, I think, is just. I suppose such things lend themselves rather readily to filming, but they often make quite boring pictures. Launches of cruisers, for example, are very tame affairs, yet they turn up on the screen with a regularity that suggests that the public has a passion for seeing them. Whether there is any veiled propa- ganda behind these displays I have no knowledge. I find it hard to think they are the answer to a popular demand. Another terribly overworked news subject is motor- racing. Again I suppose it gives the photographer an easy subject, but apart from an occasional smash it is hopelessly monotonous stuff. News pictures, as a whole, have had little part in the progress that cinematography generally has achieved in the last five years.
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