American cinematographer (Feb-Dec 1922)

Four THE AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER December, 1922 Edll CcltlOn Bq Dr. Remsen DuBois Bird, 1 I 1^% • 1 1 President, Occidental College and Pictures Famous educator discusses the place of the motion picture in world's environment. Films are classified as important educational factor. Education is unfolding — development — direction. Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes it just happens right; sometimes wrong. Sometimes it is consciously directed. Sometimes it is consciously directed right and sometimes wrong. As to the latter, witness the Artful Dodger and all the acumen gone astray in suggestion to perversion, selfishness and crime. But sometimes, many more times, the direction is right and when so, it makes for living, for happy living and reasonable and intelligent usefulness, and may the blessings fall on every formal and informal educational influence that consciously or unconsciously produces this desired result. Three Institutions There are three institutions in society, which have set for themselves just this task. They are the church, the home, and the school. As to the church, education is unquestionably its avowed purpose. The church teaches that it may produce life that is better and more useful. But mutual recriminations, petty bickerings and befogged vision have sorely limited its power in the production of those virtues of love, joy and peace, of kindness, goodness and faithfulness, of meekness and self control, which are essential to happy and to useful living. There are, however, voices in the tree tops and a stirring of the wind, and men and women of good will are finding one another though they be divided by creed and color and clan. The Home With the church stands the home, the foundation of our society, the bulwark of our liberties, the greatest of all teachers. "Son, hearken unto my words," saith the home, "and give attention unto my saying. Get wisdom and discretion. Blessed is the man that getteth wisdom, yea, the man that getteth understanding, for the getting thereof is better than the getting of silver and the gain than fine gold." How beautiful is the home! Yes, but principally in retrospect. A multitude of interests, a burden of social obligations, the nervous energy of the day, the cost of living, the apartment house evil, and behold, the home is almost gone. Still, here also, there are signs, signs of weariness with the empty going and coming, and perhaps, they who seek happiness will find it again in the quiet nurture by the familiar fireside of the unfamiliar home. The School And there is the school, that institution of society, founded and fostered for the sole purpose of education. How proud we have been in America of that school! Our compulsory education, our magnificent buildings, our wholesome athletics, the flood of students seeking to furnish themselves for leadership in the multitude of our institutions of higher learning. How proud, until the war gave us the grand jolt, revealing the fact that 30 per cent of th8 youth of the draft age were illiterate, 47.4 per cent undeveloped beyond thirteen years mental growth, and 33 1-3 per cent unfit physically for military service. Victimized by petty politicians, with teachers underpaid and therefore under-trained, our schools have to a considf-nible extent lost the gleam of life for abiding happiness and real usefulness. They have so vocationalized in certain areas as to become ridiculous and they have stressed the practical to the loss, the incredible loss of the fine art of living and the quest for it in the love of beauty, truth and righteousness. But there is no field of human endeavor where there is to be found more sincere, undaunted sacrificial service and love of humanity, and despite the truth of much criticism, the school is the great servant of education, and is right now increasing in power and prestige. Informal Influences Then there are the informal educational influences, but in educating value quite as important as the church, the home and the school. These are the street, the imagination, and the places of amusement. How much of what we are and hope to be, or fear to be, has come from the unconscious influences of companionship or through the jostle of our fellows in the street? How much has come from our own sudden dreaming — the desire for success clearly visualized and fixed in our ambition, the refreshing, haunting, longing, awakened by the inevitable girl, or from the heroic self devotion to some worthy task, welling up, like a new spring, from some stray word, or book, or magnetic personality, or some adolescent dream. Finally, there are the amusements, the game, in which we participate, and the stage, on which we gaze. It is in this last classification that we find the motion pictures, a new informal educational influence, sprung full-grown and mighty from the gods and the muses, and already reckoned one of the greatest educational forces in the world, and one, let me say, that bids fair to be of the greatest value for good. No Town Too Small For Films There are thousands of ugly Main Street towns in the United States and elsewhere, and millions of dwellers therein, who have been awakened to desire, ambition and appreciation with regard to the truly beautiful, who would never have been so awakened were it not for the influence of the motion picture screen. What a transformation has come, already, and we hope may reveal itself even more in the judgment of beauty, in the art of photography, in dress, in building, in furniture, in music, in decoration, in demeanor, which wrould not have been were it not for the pictures released in the numberless small and unkempt towns. Heroes Change The educational influence of pictures is not, however, confined to the aesthetic appreciations alone. It is also to be found in the formation of the standards of character. Whether these standards are the highest or not, they are being formed today to a considerable degree by the motion picture stars. The glorious hero of the school boy swinging along the lane is not Sir Galahad, or Ivanhoe, or any of the Henty stereotypes of yesterday. It is not the local strong man, or some famous pitcher or wielder of the bat. but it is Doug Fairbanks, or Will Rogers or Rodolph Valentino— the influence of Valentino seems the greatest right now— or Harold Lloyd or Charlie Chaplin, tne heroes of the films. And what these men and the women who share their fame, present as virtue, in patriotism, honor, courage, love and truth, is at this moment in history moulding a countless host of boys and girls the whole wide world around. Pictures are not only important in the fixing of taste and the forming of character, but they have given a wealth of information and of understanding otherwise unattained. How many of us have found compensation for the weary hour of some stupid "feature" picture that happened along, through the beauty of some travelogue, or the interest of some weekly, or the welcome information of some industrial film? Binding Force of the Cinema Pictures are not only a great educational force in themselves, and an increasingly conscious one, but they are, to some degree, helping to increase the value and efficiency of the institutions which have from time immemorial been (Continued on page 21)