International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1934)

FACTORS IN FILMS FOR CHILDREN 53 So called interesting pictures are without any spiritual interest. Then, in any case, how are we to organize this programme of an interesting cinema ? According to the common opinion, what is interesting is emotive. Now there are very strange ideas existing about emotion. It is often thought that emotion is born where the conception of moral values ends. The truth is otherwise. Every emotion is the somatic translation of the struggle engaged in between two opposed concepts. To seek to accumulate acts and exterior words without stimulating the ideal nucleus of an idea is a vain undertaking. Nothing is less emotive than what germinates beyond the field of values. This is why, for example, a great part of the literature designed specially for very young children is despised by them. They look rather for the human touch where the adult has traced some moral concept or some lively argument. What has happened in the case of infantile literature, ought to serve as an indication in the preparation of films for children. It is argued : let us make special versions of masterpieces universally recognized as such and make motion pictures of them. We cannot go wrong. But, is it possible to extract a masterpiece from another masterpiece ? Can we, for instance, build another Milan cathedral with the stones of the famous duomo ? I think not, and the same thing must be said of the masterpieces of literature. What was created as literature will only have its proper appeal in the pages of a book. Without waiting for the general verdict on the film recently released in America, Alice in Wonderland, I am now prepared to state that the youthful Anglo Saxon who has read the book of Lewis Carrol will find the characters he loves much in the condition as if they had given their blood for a transfusion. The conclusion is simple. Film masterpieces must be born film masterpieces, that is the piece must be conceived and executed for seeing. Loans from literature are dangerous. I can understand that in Italy we may project Alice and read Pinocchio, while in America they should read Alice and film Pinocchio. This is the only real intellectual exchange possible, and its advantage lies in overcoming the language difficulty and the different conception of things, transposing the work of art on to another plane. If anyone feels the desire to read the masterpiece in the original, so much the better. The desire will lead the student to learn the language of the original work. It is evident that this question of intellectual exchanges applies to other kinds of exchanges, including those interesting the adult world. Didactic Films. Two words on the so is called instructional film. There are a vast quantity of illusions and errors common here. Some people think that the cinema can explain all mathematical theorems and reduce all the demonstrations and problems of geometry to a collection of catchy motives. I must repeat that nothing can be learnt without effort. The cinema ought not to endeavour to eliminate effort, but rather to strive ta make it productive. The vision of things begins its dominion where the word fails to penetrate. Natural sciences and the arts are the most suitable subjects for cinema teaching, as everyone agrees. One point that, in my opinion, has not yet been sufficiently considered is the possibility of increasing the potentiality of the word and informing it with meaning by means of the image. We can express best that which we have seen, but it is not enough to have seen to be able to put what we have seen into words. It is necessary to create a series of synthetic and vocabular relations between sight and word. The films that should enrich our linguistic store ought to suggest the word and the construction. They should therefore contain a very long series of legends that translate the pictures, and there should be recurrence in the sequences to avoid definite repetition. Humility is not only the first virtue in life, but also in didactics. There is no intellectual progress which can be compared to that great