We must begin by recognising this fact: the Church is not concerned about culture. The Church can only be defined by her fidelity to a mission—that which was given by her founder. And this mission is not a command to be cultured, it is to save. “How is a man the better for it, if he gains the whole world at the cost of losing his own soul?” As for that “soul”, we must lose it if we would gain it. All the riches of the world, the triumphs of the flesh as well as the triumphs of the spirit, count for nothing in the kingdom of God, which is for the poor. We should be more than happy to sell everything in order to gain that single pearl. Go, teach, baptise. Not “baptise” Plato or Aristotle, literature or art, the community or the human personality, but baptise (without inverted commas) all mankind. It is not a matter of “assuming values”: it is rather the salvation of our brethren.

“So it was, brethren, that when I came to you and preached Christ’s message to you, I did so without any high pretensions to eloquence, or to philosophy. I had no thought of bringing you any other knowledge than that of Jesus Christ, and of him as crucified”. (I Cor. 3. i-v).

Twenty-five years ago, Father Martindale, writing on “The Movies” in the very first number of Blackfriars, decided that “the thing can be used as well as misused, like thyroid or theology”. Since he wrote, the situation has changed: it can no longer be said that in the cinema “voice-anxiety is eliminated”, and we are usually spared “Bishops wearing their mitres at the tea-table and Abbesses giving absolution”. The “hundreds of thousands” who visit the pictures weekly in this country have become as many millions. But the need for a solid basis of criticism is as urgent as ever. The vast technical development of the cinema, its tremendous commercial growth and social importance, have not been matched—at least not among Catholics—by much discrimination.

It is of little use any longer to deplore the existence of the cinema. It is firmly established as the most popular form of entertainment, and one supposes that Catholics are to be found in their proportion to the population as a whole among the weekly millions. There are many features of the cinemas as an industry which are certainly deplorable, but these should not prejudice an objective examination of the cinema as a medium, though in fact “what is wrong with the films?” can usually be traced back to “what is wrong with the Big Business behind them?” But it is difficult to envisage much change in the commercial side of the cinema: the tendency is all towards more mergers, more mammoth corporations spreading their tentacles from the studio right down to the local Ritz. For the cinema is not strictly an art; it is an industry which—among many other people—employs artists. Like any other commercial undertaking, the question it ultimately asks is: “Will it pay?” From the factory (the studio) to the shop-counter (the box-office) this is the real preoccupation; and the millions queueing nightly from Barnstaple to Bogota, they are the people who decide.

There could hardly be a more controversial topic than that upon which I have so rashly consented to embark in this article. The him is an artistic medium, and the discussion of art raises problems upon which all men, creators, critics and public, hold strong and conflicting views. Propaganda, too, is an inflammable subject. Not all those who are officially concerned in it would agree upon the ethics—or even upon the definition—of their calling. It is proper to state at the outset that the following reflections are wholly my own, and in no way represent any views that may be held, officially or otherwise, by my colleagues at the British Council.

Indeed, the British Council, whose immediate purpose is defined by a Royal Charter as being “the promotion of a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language abroad”, tends to avoid the use of the word “propaganda”—and that for the very practical reason that the term is now used in an almost wholly discreditable sense. To-day, the bemused or cynical citizen of a crazy world recognizes propaganda only in one sense; the deliberate propagation of falsehood for political ends. “That,” he says, as he turns his news-sheet over or his wireless off, “is just propaganda”. And he means, quite simply: “Someone is lying, and they hope to take me in. “ We must recognize, at the outset of our enquiry, that “propaganda” raises the issue of truth, and that “the film as propaganda” will involve us in a conception of the film as a truth-telling medium, or the reverse.

Not a little interest has been aroused by the publication, in a recent issue of the Tablet (18/8/1945), of a review by Mr. T. S. Gregory of M. Maritain’s Christianity and Democracy. Even more hostile in tone than an earlier critique (see Tablet 18/11/1944) of the author’s The Rights of Man, its manifest aim is to belittle, if not wholly to discredit, the reputation of the distinguished French philosopher. 6) Maritain has never escaped criticism even’ from his warmest admirers; they have noted a tendency to over-simplify complex historical issues, an occasionally unpersuasive manner of discoursing as it were from a great height, an uncertainty of judgment in aesthetic and literary matters. But these and possibly other limitations have done little to diminish their respect for him as a noble Christian intelligence and perhaps the ablest metaphysician of our day. His writings now have their recognized place as source-books of modern Thomism, to which professors of theology and philosophy are accustomed to refer their students. For this reason, if for no other, Mr. Gregory’ remarks merit serious consideration.

The worth of a political essay may fairly be judged on its own account, without reference to its author’s views as expressed elsewhere; but when it is made the occasion for a radical attack upon a philosopher’s system of thought, we have the right to expect from the critic familiarity with the philosophical standpoint in question. Mr. Gregory offers little to justify this expectation; he knows that Maritain has somehow achieved considerable fame, but betrays no inkling of that upon which it is based.