... THE CINEMA By JAMES AGATE REALITY AND FILM BY far the most interesting film seen in our cinemas since the beginning of the war is Men of the Lightship, showing at the News Theatres. This recounts how, on a day in January this year, two German bombers attacked the East Dudgeon lightship. Everybody will have his own reaction to this actuality. One critic finds it wholly startling, and adds If ...

... THE CINEMA By JAMES AGATE Maker and Material SOME little time ago I wrote an article on this page in which I said, not that film directing was unimportant, but that its importance was overrated. I gave the reader six films of world reputation and twelve lesser known films, and challenged him or her to name the director of each, supplying all the directors' names at the end of the article. lne ...

... THE CINEMA By JAMES AGATE WHAT PLEASES THE PUBLIC THE other day I read somewhere-- precisely where doesn't matter-- an attack on the quasi-musical person. It was a witty and an erudite attack, but completely invalidated, to my mind, by the notion, undeclared though implied throughout the article, that great composers write their music for the benefit of musical critics only! I think I never ...

... 44 HIGH TEMPERATURE THE TATLER AT THE THEATRE By ANTHONY COOKMAN PLAUTUS and Shakespeare, those shameless revellers in the fun of mistaken identity and stage hulla baloo, would surely have lapped up this farce, but I hesitate to recommend it to the brainier kind of playgoer. He might think it all pretty senseless; and certainly it is of a simplicity that would have be wildered the old ...

... THE CINEMA SPOTTING THE PRODUCER By JAMES AGATE LET us thrash out this question of directing pictures and how much it matters. Readers may remem ber a statement in these columns a fortnight ago to the effect that no musical critic would be able to identify the con ductor of a symphony orchestra if he waggled his stick behind a screen, where upon that eminent critical fish, Mr. Ernest Newman, ...