A PRIZE ESSAY

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 105, 27 January 1933, Page 14

A PRIZE ESSAY

“Films and Character” r |''HE following article on “Films and Character,” by Air. Allan Green, has been awarded the annual ‘Daily Mirror” £5O prize, as the best work of a student of the London School of Journalism: — Is your daughter’s most fervent desire in life to dress like Norma Shearer? Take comfort. She might have modelled herself upon the girl next door. And Norma Shearer has decidedly the better taste. Does your youngster play "Gangsters and Police” and “Hold-ups” to an extent which causes you to shiver at the grip of the sensational film on his young mind ? His father played “Deadwood Dick” and “Highwaymen" with the same exuberance. • The games are identical, only the names differ. Juvenile first-offenders answer for misdeeds in which the influence of the screen is traced. Magistrates make suitable comment, parsons point the moral, old ladies raise their hands in horror. Yet, were the' stimulation of the cinema absent, the girlish vanity, the boyish emulation of deadly desperadoes, the youthful viciousness would inevitably find vent. Youth will express itself, and has never lacked inspiration. Grimly earnest people assert that we older folk are growing lightminded and pleasure-loving. They tell us that a passion for films is luring us from serious issues. But the Jeremiahs have ever raised their voices in similar remonstrance, and their cry probably never reached Such a trumpet-blast as in the solemn and filmless days, of Oliver Cromwell and Queen Victoria. The cinema bears much obloquy as an inspirer of crime. But crime still has its roots either in want or natural vice, and hard times bring the increase. Criminals were never at a loss for methods of carrying on business. And the moral havoc of sex appeal; shrewd publicity this. How anything calculated to corrupt everybody’s morals but our own unfailingly draws us! But if subtle and secret licentious promptings could be curbed as readily as film morals, how simple this vexed question would become. If, in these matters, the films arc merely the scapegoat , for Impulses more deeply rooted, in what is their appeal potent enough to pierce so deeply into our natures as to affect our character? The screen idol is responsible for the particular arrangement of millions of locks of hair, for the cut of millions of frocks, the tilt of millions of hats. Tricks of speech of the cinema are reproduced in common talk. But each of these is transitory, the film themselves must constantly provide something new lest interest perish. Each age has had its affectations; but we have taken little harm from them. Bewigged exquisites shot their ruffles and set the fashion at one period; their posturings now seem amusing. The prudery, propriety and tall collars of Victorian times were not in the least amusing; but we have emerged from those exacting days very much our natural selves. And where real character is concerned, are we not meeting the films with similar resistance? Films disseminate knowledge, and in doing so they play their allotted part for good or ill in modern advancement. 1 They fill an hour’s leisure, stir the emotions, stimulate us to laughter; distract the mind from immediate cares But they are not changing our character. That part of us is impervious to them, just as it has been to every other innovation. It lies deeply buried. Our interest in it is generally unconscious; seldom are its depths plumbed. Blit when we had occasion to' make a serious call upon it in 1914 it proved identical with the one produced against the Spanish Armada, or against the French at Waterloo. We are just as venturesome as ever. Our motorists and flying men, for instance, display an appetite for risks almost amounting to gluttony. Wherever progress and personal danger go hand in hand we are well represented. When the 1931 financial crisis arose we made yet another call upon our character, and it is carrying us through with a phlegm which has marked us since our beginnings. When the real tests have come we of this generation have proved typically British. In the things that matter we have not changed. If we ever do it will need influences a thousand times more potent than that of the films to move us.

QNE of the largest sets ever constructed will be used for a single sequence in “Sweepings,” starring Lionel Barrymore. Located at the RKO studios, this set, in reality a miniature, represents the entire charred ruins of Chicago. following the famous fire.