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57°
CONCLUSIONS.
The foregoing figures call for brief comment. The value of the average educational film is a subject that has been discussed too often to repeat here what educationists and teachers in all countries have often written in the pages of this Review.
The cinema is a favourite recreation of an enormous number of people. We cannot disregard the views of those who avoid the cinema because they know how an opinion or an attitude of mind, or a moral or physical habit sometimes originates in a single strong impression. And the impressions derived from films, especially in the case of the unaccustomed and of small children, are very strong indeed. Spectators themselves admit this. " The first time I saw a film I was frightened ". Fear, alarm and intense excitement are the normal affective reactions to the cinema.
During its short life the International Institute has developed beyond expectations and beyond its available means; all praise to those who realised the importance of its work and whose energy and initiative started it upon its way.
The function of the cinema is to educate. The views of the student world are now known to us and these pages summarise the opinion of boys and girls living in one of the most important centres of Italy, until a short time ago a rallying point of the film industry around which was grouped a vast population dependent directly or indirectly upon the prosperity of these undertakings.
To point out dangers, warn teachers and impress upon children that only certain films are fit to be shown them, is necessary and valuable work, but all the same, it is a negative achievement. It may be compared with the work of local authorities who fifty years ago prohibited bicycling within their communal boundaries in the interests of public safety or of those who would like to forbid the installation of wireless sets because the radio programmes are not always educational.
The young look with distrust upon these pedantic old women who oppose anything new and who interfere and obstruct instead of helping.
The cinematograph is of the utmost educational value by reason of the interest it stimulates, the clearness of its pictures and its ability to reproduce with photographic accuracy landscapes and scenes that we can otherwise never behold.
But let us insist upon good educational programmes, which can be quite as interesting as non-educational films, and let us consign to the rubbish-heap those mutilated products to which young people's welfare institutions have to resort for lack of others, films in which the cuts interrupt and make nonsense of the story or whirl the child's imagination towards unreal and illogical conclusions. Down, too, with those morally empty films compounded of speed and acrobatics or of bewilderment and confusion