EROTIC FILMS CONDEMNED

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 April 1932, Page 8

EROTIC FILMS CONDEMNED

the Box-office standpoint

LONDON, February 29.

Cinema films of certain types were strongly criticised at a conference held in Birmingham on Saturday, of representatives of judicial, municipal, educational, religious, and professional bodies.

Sir Charles Grant Robertson, ViceChancellor and Principal of Birmingham University, moved a resolutioi| submitting that a comprehensive inquiry into the arrangements for licensing films was urgently called for, and asking the Home Secretary to receive a deputation. “I go to the pictures,” said Sir Charles, “and see five minutes news and five-reel films from Hollywood, which I have seen before in different forms for tlie last ten years—the same old cowboys, the same old vamps, and the same old threadbare stories. Films are the criticism of life, but what is the life they criticise and represent? “A 14-year-old girl answered a questionnaire as follows: ‘Women without any clothes are love stories.’ Another wrote: ‘I learn from the cinema how to love and murder people at the same time.’

“Is that the kind of thing we really want?” asked Sir Charles. “A film representing a great piece of heroic mountaineering has been refused a showing because there is no sex appeal in it. I am glad the King has ordered it to be shown to him, and if it is shown to the general public the house will be crowded.”

Dr. W. A. Potts, psychological adviser to the Birmingham, justices’, asked the conference to think of the effect on adolescents when in connection with one of their chief amusements they saw suggestive bedroom scenes, undressing, and scenes of unbridled passion. The resolution was carried. Mr. S. Lewis, Birmingham Cinematographic Exhibitors’ Association, said they were in business not for moral uplift, but to make reasonable dividends, and the bettei - type of picture which they would prefer to show did not give an adequate box-office return. A first-class children’s film now showing did not make money, but put on a cowboy film with plenty; of men in it saying “Stick ’em up,” and children would throng to see it.