Chronique

Among movie-goers there is a sect whose members prefix all discussions of films with the statement: ‘I only go to the movies to be entertained.’ The statement implies that the rest of us, who are serious about the films, go to them as we would to caster oil. Any appreciation of art is a satisfaction of an emotional need and therefore a pleasure; the people who go to the movies just to be entertained are not referring to this pleasure but are implying that the movies aren’t art and if taken at all ought to be taken frivolously, and that those who do think the movies are an art go to them in a vain pursuit of nonexistent esthetic values. All the implications of their statement seem to me snobbish and silly.

Notes