AT THE CINEMA

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 111, 12 May 1934, Page 15

AT THE CINEMA

DEMANDS OF AUDIENCE

THE NEED OF ESCAPE

'' If ever I am tapped on tho shoulder as I cuter a cinema by one of my i graver acquaintances I shall not trouble to make excuses. I shall not say, 'I only conio here to study human nature.' I don't! Igo to see the pictures —which disappoint me nine times put of ten, but which always offer at least an exciting possibility of good entertainment," writes Ernest H. Jeffs in the "Congregational Monthly." "But I declare, nevertheless, that . the audience at tho cinema is always , one of the best parts of the show," cpn- ' tinues Mr. Jeffs. "Tho friendly darkness is full of dreams. Here are a thousand men and ; wonieu who are all bent upon ono pur- . pose—to escape into a larger and lovelier world. Forget for a moment the many grave shortcomings of the cinema 1 as Hollywood has shaped it; its too pro-' : valent coarseness, silliness, and moral [ nvuddleheadodness. "Whether they get it or not, the 1 great majority of this audience have come hero for beauty, whether they ; knew it or not. Hrere is a pale city , clerk who may never have a real adventure in Ms life. Tonight he is careering over the plains of Colorado on 1 a matchless steed, a hero: in love and war, free, gallant, and strong. This plain little working girl, too, is living in a dream. "No longer starved of beauty and pleasure, she walks like a queen amidst stately halls (Hollywood scorns a draw-ing-room less than fifty feet long) or drives in her superb car down the sunlit avenues of fabulous cities. Mid-dle-aged people are young again; young peoplo leap in one glorious hour to tho height of their wildest ambitions; young and ,old alike possess all tho wonders of the world and all the richness of life that can be lived in it. NIGHTLY DREAMING. "I know how dangerous all this nightly dream may be. Even if the morality of the film is sound, if virtue conquers and vice is punished, it is easy to be misled by the delusive easiness of the victory. It is easy to grow discontented with the lack of poetic justice in real life—as easy as it is to be dazzled by all the pictured luxury whieli contrasts so violently with tho realities of tho little parlour at home. And yet I am on the side of the pictures and the dreamers. I will not call for less cinema-going; only for better . cinemas. , i ,"¥o are born to dream and to be > discontented. , Always men and women have desired a beauty and a richness and a freedom of living beyond anything that seems practically • possible. Always they have been haunted . (like the' poetess Emily Dickinson) by 'the word escape.' It does not alarm me 1 that the cinema tends to stimulate this inward discontent. It is the first striving of what may truly be called a divine discontent. "The cinema audience is a touching and a hopeful spectacle to me. All these people have paid their money for a key to the kingdom of beauty, wjiich is an outlying colony of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is vile to cheat them with vulgar and tawdry substi- • tutes for beauty; as, alas! they aro too often cheats But I repeat, I am on the side of tho cinema and its 'fans.' WILL,COME ONE DAY, "When. I hear, theiheartiest laughter greeting the cleanest fun—when I note the deepest hush of attention accompanying the truest. touches of drama and romance—l am reassured as to the soundness of the' great heart of the public. "°A'rid-Ia am not .too much discouraged when,;as I turn homeward from the .crowded cinema, I pass the unlighted churches and remember what a struggle they are having against the indifference of all these millions who go nightly to 'the pictures.' "Hf.it. be true that tho great lure of the cinema is its promise of a larg-br and a lovelier life—if'only for an hour or two of dreaming--—I think with' a new hope of the churches and thenoffer to the people. 'A man wants the world!' says P. W. Boreham. Yes, and more than the world. He wants all the beauty and richness the world can give;: but he also wants (though he may be slow to understand his own longings) a peace and joy which no Hollywood drawing-room can give him. He will come to us again some day, asking for something better than a dream."