190 years of The Spectator
19 November 1937
Not even the newspapers can claim so large a public as the films: they make the circulation figures of the Daily Express look insignificant. The voice of Mr Paul Muni [who stars in The Life of Emile Zola] has been heard by more people than the radio voices of the dictators, and the words he speaks are usually a little more memorable. The words of dictators do not dwell in the brain — one speech is very like another: we retain a confused impression of olive branches, bayonets and the New Deal.
But does reaching the public necessarily mean reaching the biggest, most amorphous public possible? Isn’t it equally possible to reach a selected public with films of aesthetic interest? The artist needs an audience to whom it isn’t necessary to preach, in whom he can assume a few common ideas, born of a common environment.
