26 JULY 1946, Page 15

NEWSREELS AND POLITICS

Sts,—Bearing in mind the enormous influence of the cinema on the minds of a large part of the public, I am driven to register a very deter- mined protest against this week's edition of British Movieton& News. In this film a sequence appears showing comic and freak bicycles being ridden by dwarfs and others in France. This is very amusing, and while the audience are still roaring with laughter the scene is changed to the trial of General Mihailovitch. Still hardly able to control their mirth the audience are given the opportunity to look-directly into the tortured eyes of the man on trial for his life. At the same moment the com- mentator instructs us that this trial is conducted " exactly on the pattern. of Nuremberg." Since we have been told how at the Jugoslav trial every remark made by the judge or the prosecutor was greeted with cheers and every speech of the prisoners or their defence with boos and hisses, this is hardly a well-chosen comparison Finally the commentator firmly announces that General Mihailovitch put party before country." After this the word " British " in the title of the news film seemed rather