" ELEPHANT BOY "
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] - SIR,—In spite of Mr. Basil Wright's generous championship of Mr. Robert Flaherty I am unrepentant. Mr. Flaherty was sent to India to direct a fictional film. A director several thousand miles from his studios and his producer must undertake some of the responsibilities of production as well as of direction, and nothing Mr. Wright mentions alters the fact that Mr Flaherty has not delivered the goods—the right setting for a particular story. Mr. Wright exhibits what I can only call a religious faith in something he admits he hasn't seen—the unused Mysore material. A critic must depend on the evidence of the eyes, and my memory of the bogus shark hunt in Mr. Flaherty's last picture does not incline me to believe in "his depth of human understanding," any more than the melodra- matic photography of Man of Aran convinces me of Mr. Flaherty's " unique feeling for cinema."—Yours, &c.,
GRAHAM GREENE.
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