Films For Minds

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 112, 15 August 1941, Page 4

Films For Minds

E print on another page our film critic’s reaction to Major Barbara, now about to be seen by the New Zealand public. If we add further comment here it is not so much to urge readers to be sure that they do see it, as to draw attention to the fact that the film has now broken from’ the circus tradition and become an intellectual stimulus. It is true that this particular film is also an intellectual irritant; and when irritation goes beyond a certain point it is not stimulating but depressing. Those who are merely annoyed by Major Barbara will get no more benefit from it than will those who are merely amused. But most people will be both annoyed and amused and given furiously to think. And that, if it is not a new experience with a film, is rare enough to call for comment: It means that the film is beginning to be what the stage has been for three hundred years-an expression and a criticism of life. Shaw himself calls Major Barbara a parable; and it is a near enough definition of a parable to call it a story with a moral. To go further and say what the moral is-if we could agree that there is one only-would not be so easy, but that would be doing something that readers should do for themselves. For Shaw, of course, is almost the most Provocative thinker, talker, and entertainer in England, and when, as in this film, he has Sybil Thorndike, Marie Lohr, Robert Morley, and Wendy Hiller to talk through, his extravagances are overwhelming. To attempt to say in a sentence or two what he says in approximately two hours would be both impertinent and absurd. : Our excuse for saying anything at all is the fact that all this stimulation, provocation, and entertainment is now provided by a medium that .most serious people have hitherto treated with some disdain. The number of films in English capable of influencing stable minds has been so small that it is not worth while trying to recall them. But with Major Barbara added to Pygmalion it is possible to say that the film is putting away childish things and beginning to mean something to the human mind.