FILMS AND PUBLIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 165, 14 July 1932, Page 14

FILMS AND PUBLIC.

A BRITISH INQUIRY. CRITICISM AND SUPPORT. NATIONAL GUIDANCE NEEDED. The. establishment of a Film Institute to act as a national clearing house in regard to all matters concerning the cinema is the principal recommendation made by the Commission on Educational and Cultural Films. The commission, in their report on "The Film in National Life," which was presented to the Prime Minister in June, explain that the duty of the institute would be: "To provide information on all matters affecting the production and distribution of educational and industrial films, and to influence public opinion to demand films which were good as entertainment, but had more than entertainment value." The work of the institute would be constructive, not restrictive. It would be incorporated under Royal Charter, and financed in part by public funds. It is suggested these could be raised from a percentage of the profits on Sunday cinemas, or on the import duty on foreign films. A board of seven governors would be appointed by the Government for five years. Its duty would be to set up an advisory council, including representatives of educational associations, the film industry, and persons nominated by the Government Departments concerned and by the Dominions and India. Evils Overstressed. A general survey of the progress of the film industry is made in the report of the commission. The following are points:— "The policy of playing to the 'hicks' (ignorant countrymen) has brought the American industry to the verge of bankruptcy. If public opinion does not express itself the same thing will happen in England. Much of the British industry has been in the hands of men of little vision, who sought a quick return for their money. If they failed to hit the mark they were apt to aim lower instead of higher." "We feel that Government control, such as exists in Eussia, is unnatural, unhealthy, and not in the national tradition."

"Handled with skill the film can depict tragedy and comedy in a manner worthy of the masters; ill-used, it degenerates into vulgarity and tedium." "The evil effect of the cinema has, in our view, been overstressed."

"Educational opinion . . . has been more ready to condemn than to investigate." "There is "particularly a danger lest the attendance of children at public cinema performances be regarded as of itself a bad thing." "The film might be a most powerful instrument of union with tho Dominions." The commission emjdiasises the value of films in -stimulating the backward child. A generation of children is learning to pick up points and impressions on the screen very quickly, and this stimulant makes for original and clear thinking. Instead of helping to form tho mass-mind, the film encourages originality. Nor does the Commission insist on the young being shown ' only "improving" films, even if these could be obtained in sufficient numbers. "The children of to-day are as much entitled, to their crooks as the children of yesterday to their bandits. Douglas Fairbanks as D'Artagnan, the Thief of Bagdad, or the Black Pirate, brings adventure stories to life. A child needs phantasy, and can get it healthily from films. The saga, the ballad, the stories of old renown, were forces of education which we arc in danger of losing to-day, though we teach mathematics better. All too few films have the heroic quality. Too often they are concerned with the he-man and the good woman—a pinchbeck substitute." The Commission suggests that the "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," Kipling's "Puck of Pook's Hill," and the works of E. Nesbit are "full of stories, romantic and simple, which could be filmed in the British countryside by directors who were aware that the one sin to children is sentimentality." Offensive Comedies. Discussing the cinema's effect on children's taste, the report says that slapstick comedy is healthy and a delight to a child, and what is vulgar and offensive to childhood is the social comedy, where men in other people's bedrooms hide in cupboards from their wives. The Commission lays down the principle that it is "tlie function of an efficient censorship to reflect public opinion, and not to lead it" and expresses the opinion that the Board of Film Censors "has tried to hold the scales evenly," and, "on the whole, reflected public opinion very faithfully and commanded confidence." As to the growth of the cinema, the Commission states that it was told that there were in the world to-day 61,551 cinemas, about half of which were wired for sound reproduction. Nearly 20,000,000 people attended a picture house every day. There were 5000 commercial cinemas in Great Britain.