POINTS OF VIEW

Waipa Post, Volume 48, Issue 3467, 17 May 1934, Page 5

POINTS OF VIEW

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. » —■ MOTION PICTURES. Sir, —As a result of the comment fostered by Otorohanga picture screenings, on two nights last week, of “Farewell to Arms,” I crave space for a few remarks. The old silent pictures frequently offended by their suggestiveness. The pictures under review, impress their patrons not only by sight but with an animated sound as well—and portrayed lust—for love. The talkie picture broadened the field of the movies and opened up new channels for art and drama. Screen plays, lifted almost bodily from the fast degenerating Broadway stage, were made into movies overnight, with the result that the cinema has now become the instrument for the telling of tales, the like of which used to be confined 1 , a few years back, to the sophisticated stage or the barnyard. The difficulty with the talking pictures, as we now have them, is that they may have taken to preaching a philosophy of life which, in many cases, is definitely the wrong philosophy—sinister and invidious. Some of the screenings teach the philosophy that marriage, the purity of women, and the sanctity of the home are out-moded sentimentalities. The stories, upon which most of the present day talkies are built, concern themselves with a discussion on social problems. The movies discuss such questions as divorce, race suicide, and innumerable kindred unsavoury subjects presenting them with a lack of restraint and an approval of immorality, whose effect on the adolescent patrons cannot be anything but harmful. It would appe|r that many American producers are out to see which of them can produce the most vicious film. There is sometimes a definite attempt to create audience sympathy for the violation of the moral law. Sin is condoned, false moral values are instilled in young—and critical minds. The subject matter of these offensive films deals with sex relations of every conceivable kind. Thus are lowered the public, and the private standards of conduct of many young people. When the pictures are not vile altogether, the subject matter, presentations, photography, dialogue, action, the films are frequently crowded with salacious details—indecent talk, obsqene wit and offensive situations. If one were to glean one’s knowledge of family life in America from the American screen presentations, one would, unerringly, come to the belief that adultery is but a slight adventure in romance that any understanding wife can easily forgive. Some of the Hollywood productions merely serve as the instrument of debauchery of the youth of the land, in order to swell the box* office receipts of the theatres they supply. As a matter of fact, the records indicate that few pictures attain to any outstanding success that are suggestive or unclean. There are men and women in Hollywood clasisfied as “artists” who are creators of this new school of vice. The actors, as such, have little influence on the character of the stories that are placed upon the screen. Players are not actually consulted regarding the moral values, or lack of them, which a type, or character, which they may be called upon to play, suggests. Along with the director of the picture, the writer is the person who creates all the filth in an objectionable picture, and it writer who is most responsible, next to the managing executives of the studios. Many stories, now current on the screen, emanated from the Broadway stage, from authors of vaudeville skits, acts and playlets. It is from these men, and women, that many stories now current on the screen are selected. Many of these people care nothing for decency, good taste, or refinement, as records show; most of them are living lives of infidelity, and worse. If all the literacy talent in the hovers aroujnd Hollywood, then one cannot but observe that the world of literature to-day is in a very bad way. If this is literature, then we are in the midst of an almost universal era of cyn'cism, obscenity and destructive criticism. Many American writers for the screen spend much of their talents in glorifying public and private libertinism, and, as panderers of this sort, our motion picture producers have welcomed them—shifting the blame to the public taste for such fare. It is a sad commentary on our literary achievemlenlts, after centuries of intensive education. —I am, Gtc ANCHORITE. Otorohanga.