Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

PROPAGANDA AND THE CINEMA 55 is little question that we are on the eve of an enormous campaign in film advertising, a movement that has already been in progress for some time in America. In fact, America has for many years subtly employed the screens of the world as advertising space for its industries and agriculture as well as for its national selfassertiveness. Moreover, credit is to be given to it for having done the job so efficiently. The tremendous impetus behind the whole American film to-day is largely brought about by the wishes of Wall Street, the virtual controllers of policy in the Hollywood and other American studios. After a recent trade depression following on a New York slump, orders were issued to Hollywood from the powers in the background in Wall Street that films scheduled for this year's production should be the customary boyand-girl romances set against an industrial or agricultural environment, in an attempt to strengthen general industrial and agricultural conditions in America. Incidentally, the sum allotted for production in Hollywood this year is, I am given to understand, in the neighbourhood of forty million pounds. It is obvious that the Americans consider this indirect method of advertising, by familiarizing their public with the interiors of factories and the workings of big industrial concerns, to be the most valuable stimulant to trade. The majority of the sponsored propaganda films are not publicity films in the old sense that they hold up some proprietary article before the eyes of an audience and command them to buy it. On the contrary, the most delicate care is taken to conceal the real purpose