Forget these misleading examples because it is obvious that Shakespeare could not possibly have had any film technique, and recent research has proved that he did not even have an eight-seater saloon car with his own uniformed chauffeur.
You must not touch any typically American subject. For instance: a young man of Carthage (Kentucky) who can whistle beautifully goes to town, and after many disappointments forms his own swing-band and becomes the leading conductor of New York's night life — which, if you can take the implication of Hollywood films seriously, is one of the highest honours which can be conferred on anyone in that country. At the same time he falls in love with the cloak-room attendant of a drug-store 2 round the corner, a platinum-blonde, ravishingly beautiful, who sings a little better than Galli Curci and Deanna Durbin rolled into one and, in secret, has the greatest histrionic talent of the century. After a last-minute scandal with the world-famous prima donna she saves the first night of her lover's show in the presence of an audience of six million people by singing Gounod's slightly adapted song (“If you would be my tootsie-bootsie, I would be your tootsie-bootsie”). The young and mighty successful band-leader marries the girl and employs Toscanini to clean his mouth-organ.
Or — to mention one more example of the serious and “deep” type of American films — there is a guy, buoyant, happy and miserably poor young man in New Golders Green (Alabama), who becomes tremendously rich just by selling thousands of tractors and jet-propelled aeroplanes to other poor fellows. The richer he becomes, the unhappier he is — which is a subtle point to prove that money does not mean happiness, consequently one had better be content to remain a poor labourer, possibly unemployed. He buys seven huge motor cars and the private planes and is bitter and pained; he builds a magnificent and ostentatious palace and gets gloomier and gloomier; and when the woman he has loved without hope for 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 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 the 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 quite 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 characters 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 English motorists from the continental, and some points which the English motorists have to remember.
1. In English towns there is a thirty miles per hour speed-limit and the police keep a watchful eye on law-breakers. The fight against reckless drivers is directed extremely skillfully and carefully according the the very best English detective-traditions. It is practically impossible to find out whether you are being followed by a police car or not. There are, however, a few indications which may help people of extraordinary intelligence and with very keen powers of observation:
(a) The police always use a 13 h.p. blue Wolseley car;
(b) three uniformed policemen sit in it ; and
(c) on these cars you can read the word POLICE written in large letters in front and rear, all in capitals — lit up during the hours of darkness.
2. I think England is the only country in the world where you have to leave your lights on even if you park in a brilliantly lit-up street. The advantage being that your battery gets exhausted, you cannot start up again and consequently the number of road accidents are greatly reduced. Safety first!
3. Only motorists can answer this puzzling question: What are taxis for? A simple pedestrian knows that they are certainly not there to carry passengers.
Taxis, in fact, are a Christian institution. They are here to teach drivers modesty and humility. They teach us never to be overconfident; they remind us that we never can tell what the next moment will bring for us, whether we shall be able to drive on or a taxi will bump into us from the back or the side.
“... and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life”
4. There is a huge ideological warfare going on behind the scenes of the motorist world.
Whenever you stop your car in the City, the West End or many other places, two or three policemen rush at you and tell you that you must not park there. Where may you park? They shrug their shoulders. There are a couple of spots on the South Coast and in a village called Minchinhampton. Three cars may park there for half an hour every other Sunday morning between 7 and 8 a.m.
2. Please note my extensive knowledge of the American language.