THE CINEMA Welcome to Britain IT is undoubtedly true, as
Mr. Tom Harrisson pointed out in last Sunday's Observer, that modern methods of mass communication— radio, film and Press—have often proved to have a surprisingly shallow effect. Yet there is one particular field in which I believe that the film is having a great influence, both for good and evil. The screen is nowadays the only important source of our impressions of foreign peoples. Whilst cinema audiences may be reluctant (often wisely) to adopt a film producer's ideas and opinions, however glamorously bedecked, it is much more rarely that they question the authenticity of the living figures whom they see moving before them on the screen, inhabiting a circumstantially convincing world and apparently representing the bulk of its inhabitants.
Few people would deny that before the War the British view of the American people was taken almost exclusively from the screen. Many critics, both British and American, have indicated the dangers which arise. Have the British public been taught by Hollywood to believe that America is a place of ruthless gangsters, idle playboys and women whose moral quality is normally measured in terms of physical perfection? With Americans amongst us now in such large numbers, millions of British citizens are daily finding them selves face to face with American qualities for which the screen had ill-prepared• them.
It is natural that the war, in making the need for good relations between members of the United. Nations a matter of urgent importance, should have led to the deliberate and widespread use of the film to present sympathetic pictures of one nation to another. The Ministry of Information has made many films of Britain for overseas distribution and the American Office of War Information has devoted much energy to off-setting Axis propaganda in South America by building up there a strong screen relationship. This week the M.O.I. is showing to private audiences a new film which has international understanding as its specific and only purpose and which represents the most ambitious work of its kind yet attempted. The film, Welcome to Britain, has been made in collaboration with American authorities over here, and is designed to explain to visiting American soldiers what kind of country it is in which they are to live and how they will best establish .a good relationship with its inhabitants. We see an American soldier, played by Burgess Meredith, moving through the British scene whilst he comments before its peculiar characteristics and rituals with perceptive wit, occasionally breaking off to demonstrate examples of good and bad American behaviour. After we have watched another American soldier reduce a country pub to frigid silence by his boasting and arrogance, Mr. Meredith moves in to show how, given time and politeness, even the most reserved Englishman will be more than prepared to respond to friendly overtures. We see our hero become so popular that he is invited home to supper where he eats the week's rations of his polite hosts in an awful demonstration of, lacjc of savoir faire on the part of military guests! Later- the dangers of prostitution are frankly and ingeniously contrasted with the more healthy friendship's which lie open to the American soldier who knows where to look for his female company. The film is a most ingenious mixture of fact and fun and although Bob Hope and Beatrice Lillie contribute comic turns which perhaps unnecessarily sugar the pill of exposition, these two excellent artistes in the very gaiety of their performance add extra links to the Anglo-American chain. The reminder from an American general to his soldier audience that their visit to this country provides an opportunity to rid themselves of racial antipathy between coloured and white Americans is a brave word on a sore subject. Welcome to Britain has been directed by Anthony Asquith, produced by Arthur Elton and photographed by Jo Jago. Burgess Meredith's virtuosity and an excellent script (itself the result of Anglo-American collaboration) make this a film which should be shown to British civilian as well
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