Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

CLOSE UP waiting opportunity calls aloud to the enterprise of the amateur association. Meanwhile educated adults discussing the desirability of films for children have fallen into three groups : the pros, the contras, and those who, regretfully accepting the fact that the film has bolted with humanity and is by no means to be restrained, urge on behalf of the juveniles a restriction to the severely instructional. Most educationalists who believe in the film come heavily to their support. Comparatively few consider its artistic possibilities. Amongst these few is conspicuous Mr. Hughes Mearns, who, in his interesting contribution to the May Close Up, demonstrated the use of the film as artistic experience, as a means by which children may be trained to discriminate, to detect the commonplace in style and in sentiment, to reach, for instance, the point of blushing with shame for a poet who offers them the heart of a rose.'* His plea is, in fact, for the children's film regarded as an elevator of the taste of the rising generation. Training in taste is incontestably an admirable ideal for those whose business it may be to select films for the use of schools — provided the children are not too overtly acquainted with the nature of the intended process. Much, if not everything, that the film can do is at stake the moment the onlookers are aware that they are being challenged to judge, and particularly is this the case with children of normal egocentricity and love of power. A large, perhaps the larger, part of education '' is unconscious, its vehicle a wholehearted irresponsible collaborating enjoyment. In proof, let any adult recall his early experience and compare his response to those things that were presented to him with credentials 22