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fifteen
years at last falls in love with him, he breaks down completely and groans and
moans desperately for three days. To increase the ‘deep’ meaning of the film
they photograph the heroes from the most surprising angles: the cameraman
crawls under people’s feet, swings on the chandelier, and hides himself in a
bowl of soup. Everybody is delighted with the new technique and admires the
director’s richness of thought.
    English film directors
follow a different and quite original line. They have discovered somehow that
the majority of the public does not consist, after all, of idiots, and that an
intelligent film is not necessarily foredoomed to failure. It was a tremendous
risk to make experiments based on this assumption, but it has proved worth
while.

    There are certain rules you
must bear in mind if you want to make a really and truly British film.
     
    1. The ‘cockney heart’ has
definitely been discovered, i.e. the fact that even people who drop
their aitches have a heart. The discovery was originally made by Mr Noel
Coward, who is reported to have met a man who knew someone who had actually
seen a cockney from quite near. Ever since it has been essential that a cockney
should figure in every British film and display his heart throughout the
performance.
    2. It has also been
discovered that ordinary men occasionally use unparliamentary expressions in
the course of their every-day conversation. It has been decided that the more
often the adjective referring to the sanguinary character of certain things or
persons is used and the exclamation ‘Damn!’ is uttered, the more realistic and
more convincing the film becomes, as able seamen and flight-sergeants sometimes
go so far as to say ‘Damn!‘ when they are carried away by passion. All bodies
and associations formed to preserve the purity of the English soul should note
that I do not agree with this habit — I simply record it. But as it is a habit,
the author readily agrees to supply by correspondence a further list of the
most expressive military terms which would make any new film surprisingly
realistic.
    3. Nothing should be good
enough for a British film producer. I have heard of a gentleman (I don’t know
whether the story is true, or only characteristic) who made a film about Egypt
and had a sphinx built in the studio. When he and his company sailed to Egypt
to make some exterior shots, he took his own sphinx with him to the desert. He
was quite right, because first of all the original sphinx is very old and film
people should not use second-hand stuff; secondly, the old sphinx might have
been good enough for Egyptians (who are all foreigners, after all) but not for
a British film company.
    4. As I have seen political
events successfully filmed as detective-stories, and historical personages
appear as ‘great lovers’ (and nothing else), I have come to the conclusion that
this slight change in the character of a person is highly recommendable, and I
advise the filming of Peter Pan as a thriller, and the Concise Oxford
Dictionary as a comic opera.

DRIVING CARS
     
    It
is about the
same to drive a car in England as anywhere else. To change a punctured tyre in
the wind and rain gives about the same pleasure outside London as outside Rio
de Janeiro; it is not more fun to try to start up a cold motor with the handle
in Moscow than in Manchester, the roughly 50-50 proportion between driving an average car and pushing it is the same in Sydney and Edinburgh.
    There are, however, a few
characteristics which distinguish the English motorist from the continental,
and some points which the English motorist has to remember.

     
    1. In English towns there
is a thirty miles an hour speed-limit and the police keep a watchful eye on
law-breakers. The fight against reckless driving is directed extremely
skilfully and carefully according to the very best English
detective-traditions. It is practically impossible to find out whether you are
being followed by a