International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jul-Dec 1929)

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CRIME AND THE CINEMA IN THE UNITED STATES (from the Italian) A debate on one of the most absorbing questions of the day has recently been opened in America : the influence of the luminous screen on the minds of the spectators and on their criminal propensities. There are three parties to the debate : Roger W. Babson, of the Babson Institute of Mass, Frederick Hoffmann, consulting statistician and specialist on criminology and Carl A. Milliken, secretary of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America and a member of the Administrative Council of the I. E. C. I. We have here the names of three outstanding personalities in this vast field of study and the complicated domain of industrial life at grips with a problem that for years has held the interest of the nations of the world. It is a problem of absorbing interest to scientists, artists, thinkers and readers of the human soul, and one that has suggested new goals to teachers, psychologists and criminologists, all intent on the pursuit of a truth that has not yet clearly emerged from the labyrinth of investigation, owing to the contradictions between conflicting heses and the quasi impossibility of conciliating them in such a manner as to permit a definite conclusion to be reached. It is the purpose of the International Institute to ventilate this still unsolved problem with the utmost energy. At a recent meeting at Geneva of the Commission for the Protection of Childhood, after hearing the report of the director of the Roman Institute of the Cinema, this was officially entrusted with the task of tackling the subject, also by means of an investigation of an international character. This task is now being silently and actively carried out. But meanwhile it is necessary to keep all those who have the social problem at heart in touch with what is being said and written on the question and with the contingent aspects of the subject in life and in discussion. For this reason it may be useful to summarise the chief points of a debate of great documentary and evidential ^ alue that took place on « the other side »'. In an open letter of April 8 of the current year, entitled « The Crime Wave », Roger W. Babson, referring to criminal statistics computed by Dr. Frederick L. Hoffman, and directed more especially to the study of the homicidal [phenomenon in the United States in 1928, quotes the following data : 303 —