The cinema and the public: a critical analysis of the origin, constitution, and control of the British Film Institute (1934)

countries for first-hand information regarding their operation, but had, admittedly, based its conclusions concerning them on extracts from back numbers of the International Review of Educational Cinematography ; that, in fact, in both Russia and Italy,* the State was using the Institutes for its own propagandist purposes — the Commission itself stated that Mussolini used it effectively ; while in Russia, as the Archbishop of Canterbury reminded the House of Lords,** it was used to teach the children that there is no God ; and, further, that the combined influence of all these Institutes together was completely ignored by those Hollywood producers who still supplied 70 per cent, of all the entertainment films shown in this country. 2. A careful examination, again, of the Chapter in the Commission's report on Film Censorship — a matter in which large numbers of clergy, social workers, teachers and others are acutely interested — revealed a bewildering jumble of out-of-date statistics on the one hand,*)* and, on the other, of academic generalisations altogether divorced from realityj ; while leaving the reader at a loss to know whether, in the opinion of the Commission, the present system of a trade censorship was a good one which the Institute should leave severely alone, or a bad one which the Institute must hasten to modify by some form of Certification of its own — a kind of super-censorship — such as could hardly fail sooner or later to take its place. * The same is now true of Germany. ** On July 6th, 1932. t E.g., those regarding the proportion of " A " and " U " films given on p. 37. % E.g., the reference to the treatment of " sex subjects " on p. 35. Page 14