International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1934)

THE CINEMA AND TEACHING METHODS 355 and voluntarily isolating objects from the multitude of images surrounding them, that is, exercising its powers of observation under natural conditions. The drawback is more marked if we are not dealing with objects outside the child s ordinary surroundings and reality but with facts and phenomena which, being perceptible in that reality of which the child forms part would be better observed in a continuity of relations and connections with things and facts constituting the surroundings and atmosphere common to them and the child. In this case, the observation would be at least for a time a referring to the subject, that is the construction of an experience around a subject. One charge which is fairly brought against the film is that it disturbs the normal rhythm of time and reality with its rapid succession of images. It renders everything vastly more rapid than it really is. It contracts intervals and almost determines a kind of conventional time, which differs from normal time, and upsets the normal aptitudes for ordinary perception of time, and in this way creates a form of over-excitement and therefore nervous fatigue. Again, often enough, it does not observe that minimum of interval between images which constitutes the time threshold of perceptibility of stimuli, or that minimum of duration of movement of the attention from one object to another which Mager has called Aufmer\amkeitsschrift (step of the attention). These are minimums which vary from one individual to another and it is possible when the rhythm of the sequence is, too rapid that fatigue may be set up in the spectator, incapacity to follow the images and a form of mental exhaustion. Moreover the damage is all the greater according to the youth of the spectator. Consequently we can argue that the time rhythm of the images must be made the subject of attention so that it is considerably slower than the tempo commonly used in motion picture houses. On the other hand, it is clear that while the fixed projection is better adapted for purposes of exercising the power and method of observation since it gives the spectator plenty of time to examine it in all its details, the film picture starts a current of images which cannot be followed by the mind in one direction only, but must be followed by the attention without repose or change of direction. Naturally enough when it is a case of presenting to the attention an aspect of reality which consists of movement and change, the drawback is an unavoidable one. There remains, in any case, the unquestioned psychological fact of the superiority of what we may call spatial observation over time observation, that is of observation turned on what exists as a spatial whole compared with observation of what follows and changes in time. This is a fact which depends on the unidimensional character of time and the preponderant part assigned to the memory in the perception of a time whole, or rather in the reconstruction and interpretation of a series developing in time. It is self-evident that the exactness and the thoroughness of comprehension of a series of successive images, both in their reciprocal value (antecedent and consequential, cause and effect, etc.) and in the meaning of the whole which they help to form, will be all the greater in proportion as the attention has had the opportunity of fixing itself on the static image of objects or forms constituting the ultimate phases or fina product of the process, so that minute examination and understanding of them throw a stronger light on the process itself and facilitate reconstruction and reflective comprehension. Advantages and Lim Another not inconitations of the siderable criticism Sound Film. whjcln jg ra;sed agamst the cinema and luminous projections in general is that they throw all the effort on visual perception, that is, they assist in eliminating the collaboration of the other senses and therefore remove the observation pro