Disney v. Eurotrash
From Mr Nigel Rodgers Sir: Matthew d'Ancona ('Disney is the New Shakespeare', 16 October) is surely com- paring chalk and cheese. Disney films may be brilliant in their own ways; but for depth, subtlety, human ambiguity and — yes, let's say it — poetry they are hardly comparable to Shakespeare's plays, any more than Jef- frey Archer or Wilbur Smith — clearly fine enough writers in their own ways — are to be compared to Tolstoy or Dickens.
Elitism, properly understood, in aesthetic matters is not a crime but a perennial necessity, although few people in cool Bri- tannia dare to admit it.
The trouble with today's cinema is that Truffaut, Bunuel, Fellini, Herzog and other post-war giants of the non-Hollywood cine- ma have no heirs. For the last decade Euro- pean cinema has produced only meretri- cious, immensely boring films such as Les Amants du Pont Neuf (to name perhaps the least unwatchable) which even the French don't want to see.
Nigel Rodgers
nigel.rodgers@btinternet.com
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