“… a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries, … a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence,… which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a ‘star’ in Los Angeles.”

—  Georges Duhamel, book Scènes de la vie future

describing cinema, Scènes de la vie future (1930), p. 58

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Georges Duhamel23
French writer 1884–1966

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