Donald Duck, the mediumistic freedom of Messrs. Hecht and MacArthur, the upthrust of the artistic cinema in Czechos-Slovakia. The simpler of us enlarge on personalities the golden career of Mr. Clark Gable, what Alfred Hitchcock said when presented with forty canaries, and that dear little £4,000 contract that Shirley Temple pulled out of her birthday sock." - Meaning and context.">
"Films of the Week: 'These Three' That One", The Observer (26 April 1936), p. 18
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It is one of the rarer necessities of film criticism that one has to write, occasionally, about films. This is a necessity which I find, as the years go on, my colleagues and I evade as much as possible. Those of us whose persuasion is high, write about theories the bourgeois ideology of Donald Duck, the mediumistic freedom of Messrs. Hecht and MacArthur, the upthrust of the artistic cinema in Czechos-Slovakia. The simpler of us enlarge on personalities the golden career of Mr. Clark Gable, what Alfred Hitchcock said when presented with forty canaries, and that dear little £4,000 contract that Shirley Temple pulled out of her birthday sock.

— C. A. Lejeune

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "It is one of the rarer necessities of film criticism that one has to write, occasionally, about films. This is a necessity which I find, as the years go on, my colleagues and I evade as much as possible. Those of us whose persuasion is high, write about theories the bourgeois ideology of Donald Duck, the mediumistic freedom of Messrs. Hecht and MacArthur, the upthrust of the artistic cinema in Czechos-Slovakia. The simpler of us enlarge on personalities the golden career of Mr. Clark Gable, what Alfred Hitchcock said when presented with forty canaries, and that dear little £4,000 contract that Shirley Temple pulled out of her birthday sock." in the context of ""Films of the Week: 'These Three' That One", The Observer (26 April 1936), p. 18" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "C. A. Lejeune" (Quotes, 1926–1939) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 19, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
C. A. Lejeune

About C. A. Lejeune

Caroline Alice Lejeune (27 March 1897 – 31 March 1973) was a British writer remembered as The Observers film critic from 1928 to 1960. She was among the earliest newspaper film critics in Britain, and one of the first British women in the profession. She formed a friendship early in her career with Alfred Hitchcock, "when he was writing and ornamenting sub-titles for silent pictures," as she later wrote.