The cinema : 1952 (1952)

I78 THE CINEMA be due to one or other of the special properties of television, which it does not share with film, and which will in time engender in it its own special presentation and style. in Television differs from film in two main respects, in the way it is used and in the things it can do. In examining both of these, we find that television is tending to differ in its social function from film, while both media are widening their scope and perhaps dividing between them spheres of influence in the personal life of the individual. We may leave aside the purely technical use of film for industrial recording, noting merely that the experimental televising of surgical operations provides a close parallel, and an omen perhaps of television's future value to industry. In every other respect, the film requires for its audience a group of some kind or another ; even in the field of technical instruction, there can be few films that have not been made specifically for viewing and use by a group. For most of us, film means the normal programmes of the commercial cinema; here too we view our films in the anonymous company of hundreds or thousands, performing a deliberate act by leaving home and paying money to see them. The whole business of going to the cinema has been cleverly analysed by Mayer and others, who point out that to many people the actual film is only a part, the climax perhaps, of a social act that has many other implications, involving the warmth and darkness and luxury of the cinema, the membership of a group audience, and the values implicit in most feature productions. The most significant, though least tangible, of these factors is probably the sense of ' mass participation ' which the members of a large audience experience, or which at least they cannot comfortably