The devil's camera : menace of a film-ridden world (1932)

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44 the devil's camera fluence that sex films are exerting throughout the world ? Already to a large extent, and with a very few honourable exceptions, Hollywood is rotten with sex -mania. Unless that mania can be strangled at the source it is only a matter of time before it will contaminate the world. The one powerful argument that can be urged against what we have stated in this chapter is the oft-made assertion : ' But you can't scrap sex, it is part of our lives.' That is true enough; it is against the scabrous exploitation of it that we are protesting. There is no reason why sex-influence should not take its proper place in films where it is a legitimate part of a sincere true-tolife story. No one would wish to prevent the faithful playing of Tess, for example; but under its present policy Hollywood would build the whole film round certain episodes in it and subordinate everything else to them. You cannot trust film producers with any plot which contains the slightest reference to sex. Remember what they made of Conrad ; and did they not introduce a bedroom scene into Sheridan's fine old classic The School for Scandal? On the other hand, sex has from time to time been treated sincerely on the screen. The British film Young Woodley for instance, the story of an idealistic schoolboy in love with the house-master's pretty wife, was handled most scrupulously. Frank Lawton, who played the part of the schoolboy in this film, afterwards made an appeal for clean, faithful sex films through the columns of The Film Weekly. 1 Much of the ingenuity that normally should have gone to the making of sincere, clean pictures,' he said, ' has been degraded to the careful arrangement of neglige, the timing of covert smirks, significant whispers, the posing of mirrors in bathrooms; in short, the complete science of the keyhole. 1 1 would appeal to every one to give the cinema a