MOVIE TONICS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 19

MOVIE TONICS.

ARE THEY NEEDED ?

CONSUMER MORE CRITICAL

THE FIUJC

(By DR. EDGAR DALE, Bureau of Educational Research, Ohio State University, in the "Christian Science Monitor.")

The motion picture industry has been a pioneering industry. It has had. to meet baffling technological problems and ' it has solved them. Bat there :s another kind of change which the motion picture industry has not sensed too well. , This is the increas:! discrimination of t : ie motion picture consumer. Our tastes are the result of our experiences. We judge by our bests. And the millions of people who have seen "Captains Courageous," "Fury." "Black Legion," "They Won't Eorget," '"She Story of Louis Pasteur," 'i'he Good Earth," "White Parade," "Romeo and Juliet," "Winterset," "The Prince and the Pauper" and "Zola" have had their standards set hijrher by that experience. Varying Tastes. This su«;<iests better definition* of movie publics with possibilities of motion picture theatres specialising in particular types of programmes. Why should every theatre in almost every city play almost identical pictures? Why do not some of them specialise in revivals, some in news reels and shorts, others in thrillers and melodramas f And this leads to one further suggestion. The motion picture industry has grossly neglected the production of intelligent short subjects. At the present time the motion picture industry is reviewing its short subjects to discover which of them might prove useful for school use. But there is danger in having the production of educationally powerful films concentrated in th« hands of a small group of men, some of whom are closely linked to major banking interests. We need, therefore, to have production of motion pictures carried on by many agencies outside of Hollywood— by churches, by trade unions, by schools and colleges, by independents, by the Government. English Portent. The production of the so-called documentary film, which has risen to great prominence in England, is a portent of what be done in America. The making of documentary or non-fiction films is in part a reaction against the fictional unreal approach to life problems so frequently found in typical Hollywood movies. We have a fictioniaed labouring man, a fictionised stenographer, a fictionised financier, a fictionised newspaper man. The movie world operates in a realm of fictional and often fictitious stereotypes.

The typical documentary film is, of course, not the only type of film that docunients life—fiction films do it, too. Yet the documentary film by its very nature gives a much wider opportunity for creative artists to give us their interpretation of current economic, politic, industrial, or religious problems.

This movement has not yet struck America with full force. Nevertheless the film, «The Plough That Broke the Plains,* made by the Resettlement Administration, is one of the finest documentary films yet made. When you realise that more than half a million people have already seen this film in the State of Ohio, you get some notion of the extent to which a single film such as this one can make the American public sensitive to the problem of soil erosion and land planning.

Film* That Are Needed. What films might be ma<le that would be especially useful for the purposes of such a group as this, I make the highly tentative suggestions of the following films:—■

A film showing typical housing conditions for negroes. We can document on celluloid some of the striking facts presented by Edith Abbott in her book, "Tenements of Chicago." Here she tells us that nearly half of the sleeping rooms of Chicago's tenements are overcrowded beyond the legal maximum— that negroes in Chicago, as elsewhere, must pay higher rents than white tenants—for the worst housing. Low wages and low incomes are a basic difficulty. Such a. film would not he as funny as showing Stepin Fetchit on the screen, but would do much more to promote decent living conditions.

We need films showing child life in different lands. Such films might show how basically similar child problems are no matter where one may live. Such films ought, perhaps, to show similarities in the work a-nd play of children the world over instead of emphasising i bizarre differences as is sometimes done.

Detecting Propaganda. Finally, and most important of all, we must equip our citizenry with the understanding, the insight, the discrimination necessary to evaluate critically what they see on the screen, hear on the radio, or read in the Press.

We have learned in America and elsewhere to make and distribute propaganda faster than we have learned howto resist and evaluate it. It comes to us in a constant stream from the Press, the radio, and the movies. We need a Consumers' Research Organisation to evaluate its factual accuracy, its biased sources. I realise that this is a task of overwhelming magnitude, but by using the' very instruments that too frequently deceive us, we can make excellent progress in achieving our objective. Through the motion pictures which we shall make in the future we shall emphasise fact not fiction. We shall deal less frequently in the future in our films with life on the upper economic levels', with nobility and royalty," with "escape" sterotypes We shall emphasise the dramatic in the struggles and successes of the common man. We shall follow Emerson's advice to look for "beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts in the field and the roadside, in the shop and the mill."