The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

U) The Educational Screen Rembrandt and Whistler a joy and in- spiration to the entire world, by univer- salizing their masterpieces, why not let it do the same for the Booths and Barretts of modern days? Miss Pennell is ob- sessed with a fine hatred of the "ma- chine." If the "talkies" ever come it will be still more fatal, for there will be "two machines instead of one to kill art," she thinks. But art lies in the doer, in the doing, in the thing done—not in any inanimate means the artist may use for his ends. As well declare that a tuft of camel's hair on the end of a stick is not art. Neither is a grimy palette, nor a ham- mer and chisel; neither is a set of archi- tect's drawing instruments, though they can build a cathedral if an artist wields them. If Miss Pennell considers the poor little camera so insurmountable a barrier between an artist and the result he seeks, what unutterable contempt she must feel for the pipe-organ, for instance, that colossal example of an intricate mechanism standing ineluctably between the artist and his artistic production! So far our readers might conclude we did not approve of Miss Pennell's ideas. We do, in large measure and most em- phatically. Such remarks as we synop- size below please us immensely; we al- most wish we could have written some of them ourselves. "The cheaper movies are forgivable— they are no worse than the London penny gaff. Also the movieization of second rate novels and plays is no crime, there is originally so little art there to be debased. But in the great play or the great novel there is art, and its capture by the movies is an unpardonable sin. . . . Further, the chief menace of the movies is to our intellects, not to our morals. The morals of humanity have" not survived every trap laid by the ages to be lost in a Picture Palace. . . The evil they work is not in any challenge to active iniquity, but in the state of Nirvana into which they seduce their; audience—in the deadening of all feeling for art, the stifling of all tendency to thought. . . . Trained by the photo* play, its devotees lose all sense, all apl preciation of dramatic art, just as the man brought up on cheap chromos is) spoilt for the Louvre, or the man accusal tomed to the gramophone for opera or the concert hall. . . . And dramatic! art when it passes away (if only she had! said "if" instead of "when"!) will not go alone. Thought will fly with it. D.rama does not stop thinking—it merely transfers thought from real life to stage life. In lighter forms thought dwindles. "I doubt if a drug has yet been discov-3 ered more powerful as a sedative than a London Music Hall performance." Yet this is still flesh and blood and may occa«j sionally produce a thought. But "the movies are worse than a sedative—they are dope, pure dope, and the most deadly yet invented. . . . Something to look at, nothing to think about . . . stu- pefies, hypnotizes ... Staring at the screen the modern lotus eater drifts easily and placidly into the land where it is always afternoon . . . Because the movies encourage this apathetic state, fast making it a national condition, they are more demoralizing than Bolshevism td the proletariat and intellectuals alike. . . . That the classes called educated are interested is a fact not to be disputed, witness the. gorgeous theatres, high prices; correct theatres, academies ol music, opera houses which open their 1 doors to the movies; first nights that are social events, great actors condescending to be present; polite conversation trcat-i ing movies equally with art, etc." It is all quite entertaining to read anJ most of it very close to the uncomfort- able truth. Almost any point along here would have been a good place to stop,