JOHN DOE, OR JOHN DOPE?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 217, 20 August 1943, Page 3

JOHN DOE, OR JOHN DOPE?

Sir,-I did not see Meet John Doe, but G.M.’s review of it appealed to me as a piece of ruthless and accurate anatomising of a type of picture that is fundamentally phoney. The honest, forthright, simple citizen, is pitted against a scheming selfish crowd that run things for their own sordid material purposes. Whether he gets away with it or not he is portrayed as a paragon and, as wishful thinking is our chief pastime, we all warm towards this reflection of our own innocuous and somewhat naive selves, At least I have, and have found Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington sufficiently entertaining. But fundamentally these pictures are all askew. It would be an unbelievable simpleton who kept himself intact when confronted by the tough crowd with whom he unguardedly mixes it. He is too defenceless, front, flank and rear. A real John Doe picture will instruct us from the screen when it shows John, in spite of his simple code and his heart as big as a ham, going to pieces under

the impact of the temptations proffered by grafting coteries of go-getters, or trapped by their nefarious ruses. And as art cannot in spite of Hollywood dispense with truth, it is a real John Doe that is wanted. A harder task for Hollywood would be a real John who was honest but also hard-boiled, and had the strength of the graft and corruption he crusaded against. A harder task this, because such a John would be unique, The moral of social and political life now and always, it seems to me, is that Honesty is not Enough, any more than a determination to play a straight bat on a sticky wicket hemmed in by an alert in-field is enough. I do not wish to be misunderstood. Honesty is a great, perhaps the greatest of human qualities. Lincoln had it, and he was also high-minded, humane, and far-seeing, but, besides, Lincoln was as a politician shrewd and hard-boiled, He was perhaps the unique John Doe the screen wants, because he could handle pitch-and large quantities of it-and yet was wary enough to keep himself surprisingly undefiled. In conclusion, those who do not agree with mein accepting G.M.’s estimate of the J. Doe type of picture will probably do so in thanking him for the only film criticisms printed in New Zealand that make their readers think

F. L.

COMBS

(Wellington).