The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

142 The Educational Screen anti-Hayes war. "Let the Movie Producers Sue All of Us", from the Christian Leader, Universalist, is a short, terse challenge that thrills any reader: If the Motion Picture Producers start suit against The Churchman they will have the whole religious press on their necks, and a chance to start suit against all the rest of the papers. The movies are bad. It is time we waked up to the facts. A law suit would arouse the country. Think of Hays on the stand ! "Wanted— A Leader" from the Harrison Reports, suggests that many independent thinkers among the producers are willing to desert the Hays camp if only a leader, strong enough to mete out defeat, is found. The Educational Screen can only hope, with the others, that the right man wins, and there is little doubt, in this particular brawl, as to the identity of the "right man". The March First issue also contains an editorial from a Lansdowne. Pa. correspondent, "Children and the Movies", another article entitled "Movies Condemned by Actors' Chaplain," and a third, titled "Bishop Stires Against the Movies". These three articles tell again of the symptoms that are the real indicators of the need of the present war being waged by The Churchman. BOOK REVIEWS Film Technique, by V. L Pudovkin, Victor Gollancz, London, England. For many moons the literati have chattered of montage, and it is rather a good thing that they now have a chance to find out what this over-exploited word really means. Who is more fitted to tell them than V. L Pudovkin? Others may have won a reputation talking about montage, but Pudovkin made his name actually montaging (if I am permitted that nice word). He has been the director of Mother, The End of St. Petersburg, and Storm Over Asia. All the knowledge he gained, from these titanic endeavors, he has peptonized in several essays, some of which have just been translated into English. For Pudovkin the whole art of the film is — editing. By this word he means the arrangement, of the various lengths of film, in sequence and rhythm. Strips of celluloid are to the cineaste what words are to the poet. By placing two bits of film next to one another the experienced can achieve visual w i t, metaphor, comment. The film, according to Mr. Pudovkin, is not shot, it is built. Here is an example, from the film Mother, of the Russian way of affecting the spectator by plastic synthesis through editing. "The son sits in prison. Suddenly, passed in to him surreptitiously, he receives a note that next day he is to be free. The problem w.as the expression, filmically, of his joy. The photographing of a face lighting up with joy would have been flat and void of effect. I show, therefore, the nervous play of his hands and a big close up of the lower half of his face, the corners of the smile. These shots I cut in with other and varied material — shots of a brook, swollen with the rapid flow of spring, of the play of sunlight broken on the water, birds splashing in the village pond, and finally a laughing child." Naturally some of the book is slightly out-dated. For one thing, it has been about a year in translation. The section on sound and films is little more than an expansion of the famous declaration made in Close Up, October 1928. Moreover, the translator's notes overlook some bad slips. Pudovkin is allowed to say that, in a sequence of mixing shots, the cameraman, having taken one shot, must immediately begin to take the next. On the whole, apart from these minor lapses, the work of annotation and translation is excellent. Gollancz has published, also. The Political Censorship of Films a little pamphlet which is most industriously compiled. Facts about the stupidities of British regulations are carefully grouped. The Film Society opened its season with Potemkin. Although better late than never, one can still grumble that the presentation was not sooner. It is a pity to let all the films wait so long before they are shown to the artistic dilettante : not because it is bad for the dilettante but because it is bad for the prestige of films. OSWELL BlAKESTON My Workbook in Phonics, by Marjorie Hardy, Wheeler Publishing Company, Chicago. 1929. Again Miss Hardy adds to her already extensive and efiicient contribution to the training of the child in phonics and reading. The combination of tiny pictures and cutouts for filling in the spaces in the sentences, fulfill the wiser phonics idea. Without any splitting of the words, the child will still discover those similar elements present in words. The contextual presentation of word and illustration distinguishes Miss Hardy's work. Silent Reading Hour Series, Library Edition, by G. T. Buswell, Wheeler Publishing Company, Chicago. 1929. "Happy Days" for the first and second grades, "True Stories" for the second and third grades, and (Concluded on page 146) J