Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘Culture is the rule, and art is the exception.’ The functionaries of culture have never seemed keener to prove this to us. Art is too important to be left to its appointed custodians. If we are going to have any kind of culture strong enough to sustain us through the harsh periods between those glimmering exceptions — if culture is going to survive as anything other than the shape of a stock curve — it will be because of the work of a subculture that knows how to confront the memory of what has been done with the tenacity of what ought to be done. It makes sense to gather our forces where we can, however meagre, however provisional. Film criticism, which once existed, has become what Mallarmé described: ‘a constellation, cold with neglect and desuetude’. But some of those stars are still faintly glowing. Narrow Margin exists because we would like to see what we can make of the light that remains. First stop: two men who understood the dignity of acts of creation — their own, and those of their peers and predecessors.