Creativity Quote by Ivor Novello

Cinema here isn’t framed as an art form pleading for legitimacy; it’s treated as a fact on the ground, already naturalized into everyday life. Novello’s word choice does the heavy lifting. Calling film an “institution” borrows the language of churches, schools, and civic life - structures that don’t merely entertain but organize time, habit, and belonging. That’s a strategic elevation, especially coming from a musician and stage figure whose own world was being reshaped by the screen. He’s not just praising movies; he’s acknowledging a new center of gravity.

The line about “roots sunk deep” is quietly defensive. Roots imply permanence, but also competition: once something takes root in the public’s routine, it’s hard to dislodge. In the interwar and postwar years, cinema wasn’t a niche pastime; it was mass culture’s most reliable weekly ritual, a cheap ticket into glamour, melodrama, and collective feeling. Novello’s emphasis on “millions” isn’t a throwaway statistic. It’s an argument from scale: you don’t get to dismiss an audience that large without sounding elitist, out of touch, or both.

There’s subtext in the modesty of “enjoyment and entertainment.” He avoids claiming cinema makes people better, smarter, or more moral. Instead he validates pleasure as a social force - not guilty, not frivolous, but foundational. Coming from a composer-performer, it reads like a pragmatic truce: if the pictures have captured the crowd’s heart, the smart move is to take that seriously, adapt to it, and stop pretending it’s a fad.