YOUTH AND FILMS

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 June 1942, Page 7

YOUTH AND FILMS

THE CENSORSHIP ASPECT

To what extent does attendance at picture theatres influence the school routine of . children and to what extent does the censorship control the visits of juveniles? These questions were discussed with theatre managers in Auckland (says the New Zealand Herald). One manager, with a lifetime experience of theatrical enterprises, stressed that programmes were made up in the main for adult audiences. Snort films which had a special appeal to the juvenile mind were often attached to programmes shown on Saturday afternoon, which was recognised as the children’s hour in the cinematograph world, but attempts to cater for young people by films regarded and advertised as specially suitable for them had proved failures. Invariably, the reaction of children had been a suspicion that they were being “played down to” and they simply refused to patronise such shows.

It was pointed out that there were really two censorships of American films. There was that imposed by the Hays Corporation, to which all the major producers of the United States subscribed and which required a synopsis of a projected picture before production began, and which controlled this form of entertainment by certain rigid rules. The same rules were again applied in varying degree by State censorships, including that of New Zealand.

In the Dominion, films were passed for exhibition under two certificates —for universal exhibition or as being suitable only for adult audiences, but the censor sometimes emphasised that a particular subject was “definitely unsuitable for children.” If children were brought to the theatre by parents in face of a censor’s ban, the management could do nothing about it, but children who tried to gain admittance alone were kept out. However, censorship of cinema entertainment should lie in the home and it was actually the parents’ responsibility, not that of the exhibitors, to say what pictures their children should not see.

Regarding the attendance of children (those under 13 years) at evening performances, some illuminating figures were quoted. Recently a record of three of the largest theatres in the city for four consecutive weeks was taken. At one, the number of juveniles paying for admission for the period was 191 out of 16,514, or 1.16 per cent. At the second house the percentage was 1.75, and at the third, which showed subjects which were more generally in favour with children, it was 2.8 per cent. These figures, it was claimed, disposed of the contention that large numbers of children were at the pictures when they should be in bed. Suburban theatres might show a larger percentage of young patrons at night, but not to any great extent.