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CINEMA PROGRESS
encouraging of all is the extremely heavy weighting of opinion that the quality of presentation is on the upgrade. On only one other count do the scales balance heavily and definitely to the credit of this art. It does seem to cultivate and dignify the art appreciation of the public.
On just about half the items, however the cinema suffers disapproval. The impression is rather definite that it errs in its treatment of ideal love among mates, murder and the value of human life, sensuous and illicit companionships, and respect for law. There is an overwhelming condemnation of its resort to sentimentalities, sensory and sensuous appeals, the implication that drinking and smoking are essential to social success, the use of melodrama, and a mediocre type of humor. The matter of playing up to artificial social standards is an object of definite disparagement. The films ''usually deal with the leisureluxury class." They "tend to be ultrasophisticated." They "make the rich usually honorable and the poor stupid." There seems to be a heartache for the wholesome simplicity and the sincerity of a Will Rogers or a Marie Dressier.
The public itself must bear a heavy share of the blame if the cinema is not as spotless as cultivated people would desire. Producers cannot afford to lose a half-million or a million as is sometimes done, on films of distinctly superior quality.
The burning question is that of what the general public can do to improve this
situation. / should like to see the cinema as a craft and also as an art taught in all high schools of the United States. I should like to see researches made that are to the last degree objective and that are in all ways scientifically sound, extending through a period of three or five or more years, on both the specific and general effect of motion pictures on the behavior and ethical attitudes of children and youth. I should like most of all to see the springing up in America of what one might call a Young People's Better Arts Association, that should encourage in every way the Little Theater, the art gallery in every community, better landscape architecture and house-furnishing, more art in the curriculum of the public schools, and better moving pictures.
If the youth of America, the millions in other countries, and artists, producers, and directors should band together for improving all the arts including the motion pictures, the tawdry, hair-raising, sentimental, commercializing and propagandizing films would have to fold their tents. We shall not get very far in the long stretch of years with all this until art and art appreciation are made central and fundamental instead of incidental in all the schools of America from the baby years through college and university. It is quite possible that we will have it so we can bring onto the human scene generation after generation of persons who cannot be tricked with the gaudy and the spectacular presented in the name of Art.
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