FILMS AND CRIME

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4952, 6 February 1937, Page 6

FILMS AND CRIME

LORD HEWART DEFENDS THE CINEMA. “On what grounds other than prejudice can you base the view that the cinema makes criminals of young persons?” asked Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice, speaking in London at the annual dinner of the British Kinematograph Society. “It is commonly stated that when adventures of passion and crime are portrayed before young people they tempt them to a life of crime,” Lord Hewart declared. “There is something to be said for Bill Sykes and all his kind, and the criminal who exhibits heroic qualities may naturally be a more popular figure in fiction than the persons whose features and piety remain unimpaired and unattractive from the first page to the last. “Yet it is seldom suggested that children who read works of this kind

—many of them to be numbered among the classics of literature —are thereby encouraged to entertain evil designs or indulge in criminal practices.” Every film of crime and adventure possessed the common feature that the criminal was brought low. Why should it be suggested that these things were harmless in books, but harmful on the screen? Lord Hewart said that film producers had been resorting less and less to stories of a cheap or ridiculous kind. “British films, I am informed and believe, have been given a lead in this wholesome direction,” he went on. “The so-called instructional films, the frankly humorous films, the historical films, Mr. Walt Disney’s cartoons, the news pictures—all these play an increasingly important part in the programme. “The result is that in British cinemas to-day there are offered to the public wonderful and magnificent photography, acting and dramatic effects.”