International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1934)

CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE DANGER OF VENEREAL DISEASES 793 wives or sweethearts, in spite of the love they feel and the promises they have given, put themselves in the way of the many dangers that lie in wait for them in the equivocal resorts and dance halls of those ports. The picture of the young sailor's wife with her baby in her arms, or the sweetheart, watching the horizon for the sail or plume of smoke that announce the return of the loved one, are too familiar to everyone for there to be any doubt as the emotion that would be aroused by a film dealing with this subject. The courage of young women in suffering, their power of love and forgiveness offer so many emotional themes, and the finest frame for such themes is the motion of the sea and the waves dashing against the rocky coast. But there are other films beside the French. We have seen excellent films projected with success, such as « The Enemy of the Blood », a film which has been shown in nearly every cinema in France and has made the danger of venereal diseases, the need of combatting them and the possibility of protection known to hundreds of thousands of spectators. So far we have spoken of films that have been produced to be seen by everyone. We must now speak of those intended for special environments. The questions that can and must be dealt with cover a vast field. A whole film library can be formed of them by degrees. Let us take for instance, the education of young soldiers. There is no longer any reason to keep silence or to conceal anything, and especially we must no longer keep hidden the image of the sexual organs or, more correctly, the image of their lesions. It is no longer necessary to show simply the lip chancre, we may also show a genital chancre. In the same way, we can show gonorrhea more completely and also its chief symptom. There is also another branch of hu manity for which it is absolutely indispensable to have special films, namely, indigenous populations, which have not yet aquired the town mentality and whose interest must be aroused by talking in their own language, instead of just putting subtitles which they do not understand. In an entertaining film conceived by Benoit-Levy and carried out in animated cartoon form by Mourlan, a Mohammed, strong as a lion in the beginning, agile as a panther and as a gazelle, distresses the audience as the film proceeds by a series of mishaps, which appear, at the end of the film, to be due to a neglected syphilis. Mohammed learns that he has only to submit to treatment to become cured, and shortly afterwards we see him again as agile as a panther and strong as a lion, marching with the best dromedaries and tiring them out. It must not be imagined, however, that this film produced for the natives of North Africa could be projected in all Mussulman countries. We ourselves found that although it was excellent in Algiers and Tunis it was not suited to Cairo, the Mussulman inhabitants of which town have a difficulty in understanding the Arabic spoken in Algiers and also need films of a different type. As we said above, therefore, what is wanted is a entire film library which must be formed by degrees and developed from day to day. The silent film has served its turn; the public wants the talking film now. We must organize ourselves to supply it, just as we were organized to supply the silent film. On the other hand, the problem of venereal diseases cannot be dealt with in one single film, not even in one of the great superfilms. Some of them will deal with certain developments and sides of the problem, others will endeavour to illustrate points that have up to now been kept dark. The range of subjects to be treated is very vast. It is also necessary to do over again the