The question of religious films is important, and it is
all to the good that men like the Bishop of Lichfield are interesting themselves in it and that men like Mr. Joseph Rank are willing to help to finance experiinents in the new field. But it is not a field in which success is easy to achieve, and there will probably have to be the usual period of trial and error before the ideal medium of presentation is evolved. One obvious—and as a general rule, I should say, unsatisfactory— method is simply to film Bible narratives. Another is to concentrate on films inculcating a definitely religious lesson. That is what has been aimed at in two films which I have been seeing this week, produced by Gaumont-British for the Religious Film Society. One of them, Where Love Is, God Is, described as an adaptation of Tolstoy's story (though I found the resemblance hard .to discover) is a really admirable piece of work, and the family Bible out of which the little shoemaker, hardened by bereavement and then softened by the oppor- tunity of helping other people, reads afew salient verses, gives the film just the atmosphere and the point it requires. But I would entitle it Inasmuch. The other, As We Forgive, the scenario of which is the work of Canon Sedgwick, the Rector of Warnford, is equally good technically, but the lesson it inculcates is moral: rather than definitely religious. Technically, no doubt, my appreciation of the films may be all wrong. I simply record the impression they made on me as an ordinary unsophisticated mortal.
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