Screenland (May-Oct 1940)

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® Whoever saw a "fashion plate" with rough, chapped lips? Smart lips must have the smooth sheen of glossy red silk. So don't risk Lipstick Parching! Take advantage of the protection offered by Coty "SubDeb." This amazing Lipstick actually helps to soften . . . while it brightens your lips with the season's ultra -smart, ultra -brilliant colors! THRILLING RANGE OF 9 SHADES! You'll like the dramatic shades of "Sub-Deb" Lipsticks! Newest of many grand shades is Magnet Red . . . very dashing, very red. Satisfy Your Suppressed Desires at the Movies! Continued from page 24 like to do and can't — as did Scarlett O'Hara in 'Gone With the Wind.' "A decent, upright, law-abiding citizen who would not for the world commit a questionable act, may go to the pictures where he sees characters do all sorts of things which he, in the role of the man known to himself and his friends, can never indulge in. It is impossible for him to do them, he has been too. well brought up and conditioned. And yet, by a process of empathy, he unconsciously lives through these same experiences as his own, he identifies himself with the characters doing the very acts he would not do in the character of himself as known to his world. Thereby the repressed and hidden emotions, primitive desires, forgotten disappointments, which he may not be conscious of, are there, are given expression, and subside again or diminish, or even pass off altogether into thin air. Aristotle, again speaking for the Greek drama, called it a mental purge, or 'catharsis.' He especially felt that the tragedies were invaluable in purging the soul of sordid and base ideas and desires. "And coming down to the movies," said Dr. Brill, "I think Aristotle's idea about the purifying effects of tragedy have been a potent part of the phenomenal success of Miss Bette Davis in her recent contributions of pictures with unhappy endings. Many of the Greek tragedies were tragedies of fate in which the individual was made to bow to the will of the gods. Miss Davis' skill in acting lifts the pictures in which she appears to heroic proportions attaining the effect of one of these ancient pieces. Miss Davis has been the first of our screen actresses to do the tragic thing supremely well. As Judith Traherne in 'Dark Victory' in which the heroine goes blind ; as the Empress Carlotta in 'Juarez' in which she goes insane; as Charlotte in 'The Old Maid' in which she is forced to relinquish all claims to her unknowing daughter; and as Elizabeth in 'The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex,' in which she is forced to send her lover to the scaffold, she has brought to light a rare and forceful power of the screen to practice the healing art. There are many people who find release for their bound emotions in a tragic theme and many find escape from reality in the sorrowful theme as well as in the happy, or Pollyanna one, which we are accustomed to associate with escape. I would not say that Miss Davis' success means that there is a definite transfer of taste and trend from happy to unhappy endings as a general thing. Her work shows one of the infinite possibilities of the screen to satisfy every kind of emotional need." In speaking of the beneficial influence of the motion pictures on the individual Dr. Brill discovered that people had an instinctive feeling for the type of picture that appeals to them, and that, as a matter of fact, almost any program of pictures strikes some familiar, and pleasant chord in the audience. Dr. Brill was the first to recognize in the movies the same great human device for the relief and the release of the inhibitions being forced by civilization on human beings, that the Greeks, and especially Aristotle, saw in the drama. "When we were restrained by the necessity of living, harmoniously together to give up most of our primitive impulses, we did not give them up altogether," Dr. Brill points out. "We created by-paths or substitutive ways of living through these primitive urges. One of the ways of living Above, Dr. A. A. Brill, noted authority on human behavior, and chairman of the Notional Board of Review of Motion Pictures. through these impulses is to make believe we live through them. This we have done in plays, and now are doing with movies. Baseball is another outlet, which exercises those primitive mechanisms which are dormant in all of us and which may spill over some time if we dam them up altogether." Dr. Brill has been for many years interested in the work of the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures in fostering a demand for better contributions to the jj screen. This demand paid for vat the bsx office will do more for the permanent improvement of the screen than all of the screen censorship could possibly do is the policy of this large organization, which functions through "Better Film" committees everywhere. The National Board is ? one of the oldest and most persistent forces for the encouragement of a broad, tolerant ' and patient attitude towards "the screen. Through weekly reviewing groups, every* picture released is seen and is classified and rated according to excellence and audience suitability. Dr. Brill has recently been made chairman of this body to succeed Dr. George Kirch wey, the sociologist, and Dean of the Law School of Columbia University. "I feel that much of the criticism on thfi part of the intelligentsia concerning the artistic standard of the movies is unfair," Dr. B'rill believes. "The producers of pictures have accomplished miracles against great odds. "I do not believe," states Dr. Brill, "in the necessity of censorship — because I feel that we all have within us a censorship of our own that is equal to our own problems. Children come under a little different heading than adults. It would be well if they could always go with their parents — but since they cannot, great protection is being offered them by the lists of suitable films provided by the National Board and other groups, which are being used widely by exhibitors. I have heard it said frequently that certain cases of juvenile crime have been traceable to the movies, but have never found it proved true." It was now time for me to go, and I asked the pleasant grey-eyed psychiatrist with his small, pointed beard, and his interesting accent, if he would tell me in a word his idea of the movies for which he has such a profound admiration. "They give us the world," he replied. And his eyes twinkled through his glasses. 78 SCREENLAND