COMMITMENT IN FILMS
SIR,-1 am sorry that Oxford Opinion feels mis- represented, though whether by me or by Penelope Houston in Sight and Sound I am not quite clear. Of course. we (the committed) 'would never disrffiss a film because we do not like its meaning'; of course we would not reject IBMs on the grounds that they do not conform to our view of the -human situation." ' But to say that '"commitment" is . . . fatal to the critic' seems to me sp much moonshine. A critic isn't a machine for issuing judgments, a sort of esthetic comptometer; he is a person with his own way of looking at things, his own cast of mind and particular way of feeling and respond-
ing. From the moment he's born he',s committed to something (hy temperament. inffiiences, health and digestion if you like, any number. of things); and he can't, because he's labelled 'critic,' stop being the particular person he And that (that person,
that , individual self) comtilits him, "sin every way you like to think of; that is, in fact, his value as a critic.—Yours faithfully,
Tower Cottage, Fletching, Sussex ISABEL. QUIGLY
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