A Believer in the Little Man
There is a certain man whose annual holiday from work causes considerable regret to the British people, for with his holiday comes the cessation of a newspaper feature that makes millions laugh. Strube, the Daily Express cartoonist, is the man, because through the medium of his pen-and-ink character, the “Little Man,” we see our true British selves, the failings, the shortcomings, triumphs, and achievements of the middle class.
The middle classes are the essence of England, and Strube in his wisdom has chosen his “Little Man” from their ranks because that little bowler-hatted individual reflects the only genuine life and drama that exist in this country.
But who else realizes this? Certainly not the one concern which should—the British motion picture Industry. The dramas entangled in the lives of England’s “little men,” the dramatic coloring to be picked out in the existence of the ordinary people—these elements of first-class entertainment in film have lain dormant and ignored for years.
British film producers know only two strata of English existence, the poor and the rich. On these they base the plots of their films which go out to the cinemas of the world, conveying the impression to other audiences that the English live either in cottages or cocktail cabinets, and speak with their lips twisted or with a plum in their throats.
Totally ignored by British filmmakers is that vital central stratum of British humanity, the middle class. Forgotten are the men who leap on buses, the girls who pack into the Tube, the commercial travelers, the newspaper men, the girls who manicure your nails, the composers who write the dance numbers, the city clerk and his weekend Rugger, the stockbroker and his round of golf, the typist and her boyfriend, the cinema queues, the palais de danse crowds, the people in the charabanes, on the beaches, at the race courses; the fellows who love gardening, the chaps who lounge in pubs, the secretaries of clubs, the chorus girls, the doctors, the car salesmen, the speed cops, the schoolteachers.
In them lies the spirit of England that, for some unknown reason, is almost entirely ignored on the screen. American producers have not halted where we have stood still. They have exploited the drama of their people and made it a feature of eight out of ten of their films. If we in this country only got our education from the screen, we should know more of the life of a middle-class American than we do of the English people who fill our trains and trams at rush hours.
The higher you run your finger up the British social scale, the faster the drama dies. The veneer of civilization is so thick among the rich that individual qualities are killed. There is nothing to film, nothing worth putting on the screen. Voices are the same, expressions are nil, personalities are suppressed. The upper classes are too “bottled up” to be of any use as colorful screen matter, too stiffened with breeding to relax into the natural easiness and normality required by the screen.
But come downwards into that more colorful belt of beings, the middle class, and observe their unhampered attitude to life. Here is something that film producers should get their hands on—the British personality that the world should really know. Here are people who smile and mean it, girls who catch their fingers in doors and say what they feel. Here are expressions that come swiftly and naturally without restraint, here are manners and ways flowing easily, speech unaffected, emotions more free, instinct sharper. In other words, there is grand camera stuff waiting at the Industry’s door.
I am trying to get this stratum of England on the screen. I am fighting against a hard enemy, the film of chromium plating, dress shirts, cocktails, and Oxford accents which is being continually made with the idea that it shows English life. Soon I hope we shall do unto America what they have done to us, and make the cheerful man and girl of our middle class as colorful and dramatic to them as their ordinary everyday citizens are to the audiences of England.
“More Cabbages, Fewer Kings: A Believer in the Little Man” was originally published in Kinematograph Weekly, January 14, 1937, 30. It was also published in Kine Weekly, April 1937, with slight changes.