Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

272 CLOSE UP over-emphasized with incontinent exaggeration. The spot-lights of theatricalism, of sensationalism, are focussed upon humanity's foibles and passions, detaching them from the normal, interpretative background of life, while the multiple inflections of chivalry and romance are reduced to the common, not to say very common, denominator of sex appeal. It stands to reason, therefore, that the screen with its meretricious picturings of life should agitate our social guardians and by them be accused of responsibility for the prevailing drift from the standards of a past generation. If the Women's Christian Temperance Union expressed itself a bit more emphatically than usual at its recent national convention, it revealed nothing new as to its representative judgment when it declared : "The films have worn us down to the thinnest veneer of national decency. Their hypnotic suggestions have tended to break down the modesty of women, have brought the morals and manners of the underworld to the top, and by their continued representation of drinking as a harmless pastime have opened the doorway to national law violation. " We have no quarrel with such conclusions by such good women. They are but the natural outflow of a zealous righteousness untrammelled by analysis or the intricacies of logic. With simple, post hoc assurance a disturbing social change is laid to a particular concrete manifestation, which as a scapegoat needs only to be packed off into the wilderness to restore the status quo. That the films may be no more than a reflection of a changing order — a single factor of a complex evolution development — themselves a predominant effect and in turn but a subordinate cause — is a consideration beyond the bounds of missionary philosophy. Nor, after all, need this phase of the subject seriously concern us. The Sisyphean task of reforming the movies may be left to the research councils and the temperance unions. What should and does truly concern us, is not the cinema's screen morals, but its individual moral delinquency as an institution. Designed to serve a social purpose of cardinal value and usefulness, and with every need, invitation, opportunity and facility to be of such service, it wilfully neglects thus to apply itself, and, moreover, as a matter of obstinate policy, superciliously scorns any suggestion looking toward its enlistment in the cause of education or public morals. Entertainment, diversion, relaxation are ever a human need, and the films unquestionably fulfil this need — fulfil it, indeed, with the biblically enjoined good measure, pressed down, and running over. But their inherent capabilities vastly exceed the satisfying of this simple office. On the scale and with a power of appeal beyond those of the newspaper or the radio, it lies within their easy ability to wield a far-flung, effective influence in bringing the peoples of the world into closer relationship upon questions of common interest and moment, and to aid mightily through example and the spoken word in resolving the perplexities of a wrangling and bewildered populace. The art of the cinema — its technical art — is concededly of the highest order. It places the films in the front rank as a medium of impressive and influential expression. Yet while civilization today as never before is struggling to hold its bearings and in need of every means of guidance and every instrumentality for the tempering of hatreds and passions and for the salvaging