THE BOY'S WORLD?
SIR,—May I briefly and amiably argue with Mr. Basil Wright? I saw, a few nights ago, his own film and the film (Zero de Conduite) which he reviews in last week's Spectator. His own seemed to the lay mind so satisfying, so honest and competent a piece of work that his praise for the French film is all the more baffling. He says that the- film presents the world -of the young adolescent from his own, rather than from an adult, point of view. What adult has ever been able fully to enter into the boy's dream-world? Its secrecy and its evanescence, as well as its intense subjectivity, are its chief qualities. A friend of mine, a film critic, took her two sons (joung adolescents, if they will forgive the offensive jargon)
to Zero de Conduite. They were both bored and baffled. If this was M. Vigo's idea of his dream-world, it wasn't theirs. 1' do not claim that adults can't make brilliant and sensitive forays into the boy's world ; Forrest Reid and Walter de la Mare are two notable explorers.. I claim, simply, that M. Vigo has done it badly and pretentiously.—Yours, &c.,
25 Brookfield, Highgate West Hill, N.6. knot CONNELL.
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