For our Saturday evening entertainment quotient to complete our enjoyment of a perfect spring day, we viewed a classic. The best-known novel of Lord Buchan, former Governor-General of Canada, a British Aristocrat, a bitter anti-Semite, and a celebrated writer. The 39 Steps was made into a film, and was directed by the most famous man of his times, Alfred Hitchcock. And it was a 1935 production. Its vintage preceded our birth by a year.

It turned out to be a dismal waste of time. Perhaps not for aficionados of creaky, over-emoted films; we found it completely lacking any lustre, but for some spectacular scenery of remote, mountainous areas of Scotland.

Film-making is one of the more modern arts. But as a genre it seems to fail far more often than it succeeds as an art form transcending its pop-culture value. Values that have become increasingly degenerate, unfortunately.

As an art form it cannot stand the test of time as have other forms of art; literature, music, the plastic arts, painting, architecture and even the theatre arts. We have the examples of Shakespeare, Murasaki Shikibu, Handel, Bach, da Vinci, Albrecht Durer, the arts and sculpture and architecture of the ancient Greeks and their famous copiers, the Romans. These are the durable arts, those that elevate humankind and speak to our very souls.

Whereas the dregs of popular culture degrade the common human spirit.