Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

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PROPAGANDA AND THE CINEMA 53 ing is seen in ninety per cent, of America's sophisticated drawing-room films. Upon analysis, we find that such a film as Dance, Fools, Dance or The Tarnished Lady is erected upon an entirely unsound basis. The players have no true relation to the story, nor the story to the setting. These American movies are simply hero plus heroine plus background without any proper unification. When compared with such a film as Die Dreigroschenoper, their social relationships fall asunder, whereas the Pabst film is the result of a perfect understanding of human values and their environment. A still more forceful comparison can be made between The Love Parade and Le Million, which when considered from a non-technical point of view are poles apart. However much we may deplore the star-system, there is no doubt that it is a godsend to the great American public in that it is something on to which they can grip. The standardized direction and semiintellectual value of most Hollywood movies force the intelligent filmgoer to interest himself in the characterization of the actors. And whilst in theory we may admire the uplift of the American incidental propaganda film, with its spacious settings and brilliant trappings, it should be realized that this perpetual influence is perhaps persuading people to live above their economic level and is possibly causing moral instability. Nobody will deny that the propaganda of The Front Page in all its wildness is nothing more or less than anarchism. It is the most unmoral film that I have ever seen on the screen in London, just as it is one of