Motion Picture Commission : hearings before the Committee on Education, House of Representatives, Sixty-third Congress, second session, on bills to establish a Federal Motion Picture Commission (1978)

MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. 147 Dr. Chase. That is my point exactly; that probably all the pictures in the country that are shown will be brought to the Federal censors and, in my opinion, this gradually increasing demand for censor- ship by villages, cities, and States will be stopped; that they will cease to ask for any other censorship than the broad, sensible, and natural regulation which they will find under the control of the Federal motion-picture commission. In that connection I want to call atten- tion to one point. There is one kind of censorship that this bill will certainly kill, and that is unreasonable police censorship. We heard at another hearing from a gentleman who described his unfortunate relationship with the police here in Washington. Now, w4ien this bill passes and these films are licensed by the Federal commissioners you will not find any policemen, any chiefs of police, or any sub- policemen, who will be likely to go into court with a film that has the approval of the United States Government. At the very be- ginning such a man Avould be met Avith the criticism, " Well, the United States has approved it; what have you got to say about it ? " T think it will destroy unreasonable police censorship. Here is another interesting thing—— Mr. Fess (interposing). Do you think that would be a good thing? Dr. Chase. Yes; I was just coming to that. In the use of licensing power it is necessary to protect the people and to provide somebody who will grant the license who knows more than the people do; some- body who is expert. If you are going to have food examined you want somebody who knows more about it than the ordinary citizen. NoAv, the author of " The Inside of the White Slave Traffic " is a very good man—as far as I know he is a good man—and he thinks he is doing a good thing in producing what seems to some to be an abomi- nation in the way of motion pictures. He says that he wishes there were censorship in New York, because he would like to have his play examined by a trained expert rather than by policemen or by an ordi- nary judge. In these days we realize that a judge who passes on a multitude of ditferent subjects can not be equally competent to pass on all of them. So we have om* children's court, and we have our court of domestic relations, so that the judge who has had large ex- perience in cases dealing with children may be the man to ^^'llom children's cases are referred. In domestic relations it is found that a large number—in Brooklyn I tliink it is 75 per cent—of the cases of family dissension that are brought before a traiiied judge, who has had experience in how to bring broken families together, are successfully settled. Tliis would not be true if those cases had been brought before various judges miscellaneously. Now, there is a great advantage in having these pictures examined by trained experts, like some one who has been trained in college, some one who has a knowledge of art, a knowledge of literature, and a knowledge of psychology; a man who understands \Ahat the psychological effect of a picture is. A gentleman who spoke here said that 12 business men were called in and asked to pass on a picture and that they approved of the picture. You Avould not like to have 12 business men given authority to pass on any proposed business enterprise of yours unless they could give good, long, and careful attention to it. and had by experience and training been specially fitted for it; the snap judgment of any 12 men is not suffi- cient, it may be sufficient with reference to a case Avhere the only