Cinema Progress (Jul 1936 - Jul 1939)

CINEMA PROGRESS BORIS V. MORKOVIN* The motion picture, this prodigious child of the 20th century, has within two decades become a powerful young giant, whose power has expanded beyond his own field — the commercial entertainment. School, home and church have found that they are challenged by this giant in their own domain — education. Lured by the glamour of the wide unknown world opened to them by the movies, children have become movie fans; their desires, attitudes, manners of conduct being moulded by motion pictures. It has become cle^.r that this new and powerful agent of mental control cannot be ignores. But purely negative and prohibitive attempts to keep children away from movies have proved to be ineffective. Condemnation and forbidance served only to make the fruit seem sweeter and more alluring-. The negative attitude of some parents and teachers often created only confusion and mental conflict in the child, who w^s not a ways able, himself, to reconcile the ideas suggested by movies with those taught in school, church, or home. As a wa> out of this blind alley, a new movement, called "Cinema Appreciation" has been started with the determination to meet the movie giant in his own field. Two methods of accomplishing this have been suggested. First, to smooth out the possible discrepancy between the two sets of ideas in the mind of the child, by means of interpretation, criticism, and discussion of movies in schools, homes, churches, and communities; and to encourage children to shop for better pictures in order to develop discrimination and higher standards of taste and appreciation. This will create a growing audience with a demand for a new and higher type of picture. Second, to utilize some of the splendid materials in good pictures for children's information and enjoyment. In order to use these methods successsfully, teachers, parents, ministers, and civic leaders should take pains to study and understand the nature of. motion pictures as a new and distinct art of the 20th century, different from all other arts, including the stage and literature, with which it is most closely allied. Only on the basis of such study can the criteria of excellence and *Head of the Department of Cinematography, University of Southern California ; Story Denartment Walt Disney Studio. standards of better taste and appreciation be established. Appreciation of motion pictures should be taught in the public schools, just as the appreciation of literature, drama, art, and music is taught. In that way the movie enthusiasm of youth can be harnessed and changed imo a powerful instrument of education. Modern educators who join this movement are vitalizing their class work by motion pictures. As Dr. Robert Kissack of the University of Minnesota put it, they are "catching up with the tools of civilization." They realize that in the age of airplanes, radio, and imminen; t,levsion, we cannot follow horse and buggy methods in our education. * * * Education has not been the only domain the young movie giant has invaded. His precocious growth has vitally affected other regions of national life and creative endeavor. Some faithful creators of fiction, stage-drama, art, music, opera, vaudeville, ballet, have been bitterly complaining of the encroachment and ravages of this new Frankenstein monster; movies have been taking and "distorting" their stories and have snatched at their talents. On the other hand, such writers as Booth Tarkington proclaim the insufficiency of old arts and techniques in the face of the new art of the movies. It is their belief that prose, fiction, drama and opera are doomed and can be vitalized only as contributors to motion pictures. Recently H. G. Wells proudly announced, "I have entered the motion picture field and leave things to come, pestilence and famine, to others." On his way back to England from Hollywood, he told an interviewer from the N. Y. Times, "I have learned the lesson and I am most enthusiastic about the result." The power and influence of motion pictures upon the social and creative life of the nation can neither be destroyed nor disregarded. It demands serious attention, study, and research. The frontiers of creative arts and their relationships should be re-defined and consciously adjusted in view of the powerful newcomer. Cinema has become a great factor in modern art and literature. It is developing a new form of expression of human thought and emotions, and as such it has to be an outgrowth of the national genius, crystalized and influenced by the national institutions of science and culture. It 4