The gentle art of murder

It often seems that more rubbish is written about the cinema than about almost any other art form. Since too many films are of questionable quality it is hardly surprising that much of what is printed about them is too. Good films, though, often fall victim to pretentious criticism by poseurs, and the greater a film is (or allegedly is) the worse this risk is, and the less original thought is applied to the received wisdom. Happily, one controversialist recently threw stones at Citizen Kane, which is almost compulsory as the Greatest Film Ever Made in tiresome lists on that subject, saying: yes, maybe it is, but what did it influence and what did it change?

Such lists, and indeed most mainstream criticism, regard the English cinema as a poor relation. When the British Film Institute compiled its list of 360 great films that required books such as Mr Newton has written, only two Ealing films were included. One was Went the Day Well?, the other was Kind Hearts and Coronets. The notion that there might be 358 films more deserving of detailed critical attention than Dead of Night, Passport to Pimlico, Whisky Galore!, It Always Rains on Sunday, The Man in the White Suit or Hue and Cry should be an exciting one, but it isn’t. Instead, it should depress the intelligent cineaste that, presumably in the desire not to be thought parochial, or because of the British self-loathing that affects so much of our intelligentsia, the immense quality of those films should be overlooked. The golden age of the British cinema should now increasingly be seen to have assumed a cultural importance that extends beyond film and beyond these shores.

Most popular

Julie Burchill

The glamour and grit of J.K. Rowling

Kind Hearts and Coronets is perhaps the greatest ever British film: not just because of its intrinsic value as an entertainment, but because it is so unlike all that preceded it, and much that came after.