International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1932)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

OPEN LETTER TO THE DIRECTOR OF THE 1. 1. E. C. Dear Sir, Your inquiry on " The impressions of children on war films " has doubtless procured for you numerous letters of congratulation on a work which was as important in the classification of the data as it was interesting for the purposes it set out to fulfill. The classical " know thyself ", this form of introspection on the part of the young scholars of Italy, was carried out thanks to a precise questionnaire and a series of queries suitable for gathering without any outside influence the children's reactions to the vision of recent war films. It was a laborious task, but a useful one, providing a rich harvest of information. To begin with, I must confess, the children's opinions pronounced in their great majority in favour of war films as being instructive, surprised me, not because I disapproved this opinion, which confirmed an already existing certainty of mine, but because I believed that a sight of the horrors and tragedies of war projected on the screen would inspire in children above all else a strong terror of warlike phenomena. This terror is to be observed from certain symptoms. In any case, stronger than personal fear, stronger indeed than the idea of death or any possible suffering there prevails a sentiment, that namely of abnegation or self-consecration when it becomes necessary to defend the fatherland rather than attack other peoples, to succour the weak and procure the triumph of right and justice, as opposed to combatting for the old formula that might is right. Our esteemed contributor Eva Elie seends us an open letter which we have great pleasure in publishing, not because it contains remarks flattering to our work., but because it defines very clearly certain points of our inquiry on war films and their real value. Eva Elie recognizes that our inquiry had no other result save to demonstrate to children and adolescents that war is a sad and tragic phenomenon to be deprecated by all. The answers to our questionnaire prove it abundantly, even in expressions and cases that may appear and are in fact heroic. To recognize that a conflict between peoples is a source of patriotism, and creates the desire to defend one's country to the last coincides with the conception of Madame Elie, distinguishing between a war of defence and a war of conquest or aggression. It is not a necessity of this that war as war is a phenomenon to be idealized and approved. We are on a ground here where one cannot admit the possibility of discussions owing to the various and opposed points of view. Our contributor also recognizes a fact, to which we have referred, though merely in a vague way at the beginning and conclusion of our inquiry. This is that the war film as seen on the screen has a remarkable effect on the formation of the spirits and minds of young people. To be a pacifist cannot and ought not to mean either today or tomorrow that one is a coward. It means understanding the atrocious suffering caused by war, it means banning it with all human means up to a certain limit, a limit dictated by conscience, the sense of duty and sacrifice, not for oneself