Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1956)

DeMILLE THRUSTS GOLDEN CALF (Continued from Page 24) seamy side of life, then we are not better than those sordid leavings. Yet at the same time I need hardly tell this audience that it is not the primary business of motion pictures to preach sermons — or to distort the truth by showing a picture of the world which is false because it leaves out the fact that life has a seamy side. There are well-meaning people who want art to be so antiseptic that — if they had their way — they would repeal the very definition of art as a mirror held up to nature. These good people try very hard to get their way — sometimes by censorship, sometimes by means of organized and disciplined pressure groups. Decries Censorship I stress the fact that these people are good and wellmeaning — but — they know not what they do. Neither motion pictures nor any other art has the right to corrupt morals. But it has the right to be judged as an art — and by judges who know what they are talking about. There is one Biblical subject which I have long wanted to produce. I have done considerable work on it, at considerable expense. But I was halted when one influential religious leader — after reading my treatment of the subject — said, and I quote him, "You simply cannot show anything evil in the same picture with the spotless purity of this subject". This kind of thinking betrays a lack of understanding. A motion picture requires drama and action. Drama means conflict. You cannot show the brightness of good unless you show it in contrast to the darkness of evil — nor can you do it by putting preachments in the mouths of your characters. Some professional moralists tell us that art should ennoble and strengthen character. Strong characters are not formed by being blindfolded and wrapped in cotton wool. Life is a warefare between good and evil — and, as the great Puritan poet, John Milton, put it, "he that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian." The really great moralists — men who have thought deeply on the problem of art and morals — have understood that. Only a few months ago, the Catholic Bishops of Germany wrote — and I quote — that "to call things by their right names, and to recognize the power of evil in the world, is of great value" precisely because it "gives rise to shocks which can have a wholesome effect." The German Catholic Bishops express their gratitude to writers who "mirror reality" as it is, instead of painting a "sentimentalized . . . untrue picture" or "human existence, its struggles, defeats, and triumphs." This broad and deep understanding of the function of art is a far cry from the pettiness of censors whose whole idea of morality is apparently bounded by the length of a skirt and the depth of a bodice. It would be really immoral for us to portray a world that contained no evil or a world in which evil was never strong or alluring. It would be immoral because it would be untrue. We would be really corrupting the minds of youth if we taught them that they are living in a world where virtue triumphs because it has nothing to triumph over — for what is more corrupting to the mind than to be taught a He? In a very real sense we are defending morality when we fight censorship and we we refuse to yield to the ridiculous demands of pressure groups — and I am not saying that all their demands are ridiculous, but some of them, in your experience and mine, can certainly be called that. Our responsibility as artists and as molders of thought makes great demands upon us — and the greatest of these is the demand for self-discipline. Censorship is not the answer — but neither is unbridled license. We do well to fight censorship — but the best way to fight it is to give it no legitimate grounds for attacking us, while defending to the full our right to portray the world as the world is. You may say that I am asking the motion picture industry to walk along a razor's edge, with deep pitfalls on either side. And perhaps I am. I have never said or thought that being molders of the world's thought was an easy job — but that is one reason why, after 43 years, I still find it the most exciting, the most challenging, the greatest job on earth. Sees Career as 'Adventure' Motion pictures have been my life for 43 years — and every foot of it in film and every minute of it in time has been an adventure which I would not exchange for anything else in the world. Who else in the world has the world's friendship as we have it? Who else in the world can go, as our pictures go, into every corner of the world — almost into every home and heart of the world? Who else — except the missionaires of God — has had our opportunity to make the brotherhood of man not a phrase, but a reality — a brotherhood sharing the same laughter and the same tears, dreaming the same dreams, encouraged by the same hopes, inspired by the same faith in man and in God, which we paint for them, night after night, on the screens of the world? We hold great power. The world turns to us — it has to, for nothing else has the power to rivet the world's attention and mold its thought as our work can do. Make it a power for good — for truth, for beauty, and for freedom. Remember Winston Churchill's words: "Those who serve supreme causes do not consider what they can get, but what they can give. "Let that be our privilege ... in the years that lie before us." Page 26 Film BULLETIN February 6 I9S6