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. £21 Federal commission would not be generally accepted. As to State boards of censorship, the}' would naturally <>ive place to State laws forbidding the exhibition of any films not approved by the Federal jnotion-picture commission. The Washington Times photoplay editor says. May 19, 1914: The operation of a Federal censorship would enable the exhibitors to fight local censorship with a great deal stronger argument than at present. For that reason it would seem to be very much to the advantage of the filni men to help get the proposed legislation through as quickly as ix)ssible. As we have stated before, it might not eliminate all the local censorship, but would tend to lessen their number. At the very first public presentation of the bill it received strong moral and financial support from several exhibitors present, who believed the establishment of one really national censorship would relieve the business from the annoyance of many censorships all over the land. In a letter dated May^23, 1914. the World Film Co. in- dorsed the bill in the following words: As one of the representative film companies of America we i»ropose to lend our support and cooperation toward securing the passage of this worthy project. Other companies say they would favor it if assured the Federal censoring would eventually do away with State and local censoring which Ave believe there is good reason to believe it would do. It has been urged that there are undoubtedly some films that might have a very good influence on adults that Avould be decidedly harmful to children by promoting sex curiosity prematurely, and that there- fore the bill should be so amended that some films might be approved as suitable for everybody and others " For adults only.""' Of course, the Federal commission could not regulate such a local matter as attendance, but cities in "such case would naturally make and ordi- nance providing that children should not be admitted to the " adult" films, or this might be done once for all towns in a State by the legis- lature. It is a very convincing proof that a better national censorship than the Xew York national board has provided is needed and de- manded: that Chicago's board condemns 15 per cent of the films that reach that city chiefly because they show and so teach the detail methods of crime: Cleveland and San Francisco also reject some that the New York board approves. What the Nation wants is not an 85 per cent censorship, or even a 96 per cent censorship, but a 100 per cent censorship. It has been said in the discussion of this bill that the protection of children against improper films is sufficiently provided for by laws and ordinances against obscenity, which, it is ingenuously as- sumed, mayors and police are alert to enforce. But it is very waste- ful to have a thousand city governments reciuired to do for a nation- wide business what one National Government can do better in a case like this at the fountain of the evil; and, besides, the main objection to films in these days is not their incitements to vice but rather their contagious pictures"^ of crime, and it takes a high grade of psycholo- gical talent and training to tell what treatment of crime in a photo- play will promote crime and what treatment will have the opposite effect. This is the chief task or motion picture censorship to-day. 44072—No. 2—14 11