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And this calculation was very often correct. At the time when school cinematography was scarcely on its legs, this was hardly to be avoided. The calculations of the non-academic cinematographist and of the cinematically unversed teacher were often identical, the latter, without funds of his own or other people's, being only too glad to secure the films and use them as an easy means of collecting the wherewithal to purchase equipment. We cannot, however, blame this particular form of fashion-following. It had its origin in financial stringency, for the film as an instrument of teaching is by no means so widely recognized in circles outside the responsible Ministries as the latter sometimes assume.
Cinematography to-day is so governed by fashion that the possibilities of propaganda — especially needed among teachers — are quite lost sight of. Here fashion has made people blind. " Films at any price " is the order of the day. The 1800-2000 schools in Germany and the thousand or so other institutions which are able to projeet cultural films are expected to pay for the costs of advertising. It is quite forgotten that there are altogether 86.000 schools and that of these at least 9-10,000 possess lantern equipment. If one lanternslide were to be made from each of the 50-100 sequences of the film and ii from each of these negatives some 30 glass positives were made — altogether, some 1500 pictures — and were then distributed among the State, Provincial and smaller local centres and the bigger municipal collections, and if they were incorporated in the curricula, the whole business would cost something between 1500 and 2000 mks, a mere trifle compared with the 8, 10 or 20 times higher cost of a film on some averagesize town. They would have a much greater permanent publicity value and save a lot in advertising costs, provided, of course, that the pictures were scenically and otherwise good.
We have little hope that these considerations will recommend themselves in the competent quarters. In these circles the cinema is a fashionable disease, as it were, and producers and distributors would rather accuse schools of being prejudiced against the cinema and blind to its possibilities than consent to revise their own estimates of the situation.
Photographs have often been the object of fashionable whims. The utility of the picture on glass is universally admitted; but agreement is less general as to whether it should be black and white or not, whether it should be painted, or whether the picture reproducing natural colours is not to be preferred. Economic calculations enter in and, as a result, we get a cheap picture — instead of the black and white photograph (on glass 1 mk. 50.), the cellophan picture (75 pf.), the diatype (35 pt.), the miniature for 3-4 pf. and slides on film (film-roll) at intermediate prices.
The same trouble is now arising in connection with the sound-film. We are all for the sound-film, we welcome it and anticipate from it results exceeding those of many silent films, but we oppose its employment in schools as yet, and resist all demands for its general introduction. The