[...] Malcolm Cowley, sifting his attentive experience of the period and of its writing, picks out three features for emphasis that our films may be seen to share. The transcendentalist possibility I was noticing seems to be what Cowley calls the period's millennialism, as if under the depression an ecstasy were discernible; he also mentions the presence in a number of the period's good novels of the theme of death and rebirth; and he finds a chorus of witnesses to the dignity of man. As we progress these themes will be found to play curiously sensitive roles in our set of films. But to see this we will have to develop a certain skepticism about appearances. For example, it will be a virtue of our heroes to be willing to suffer a certain indignity, as if what stands in the way of change, psychologically speaking, is a false dignity; or, socially speaking, as if the dignity of one part of society is the cause of the opposite part's indignity, a sure sign of a disordered state of affairs.