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CHAPTER r
Perspectives of a Sociology of Film
It is by now a commonplace that more than 50 per cent of the inhabitants of this country — children, adolescents, and adults alike — attend cinema performances once or twice a week (or even more often). In the U.S.A. the percentage of the cinema-going public is even higher. Why do these millions go to the picture houses? And what is the effect of films on people's minds? While psychologists have offered us an answer to the former question — if it is an answer — that our modern populus seeks escape from the dreariness and mechanisation of our rationalised lives, the latter question, if asked at all by social scientists, has so far produced only negligible results.1
The present author is engaged in a sociological study of audience reactions, which he hopes to submit to the public in a few months' time. From the result of these investigations it will become evident that films, to be more precise, feature films, exert the most powerful influence in our lives, an influence which in all probability is stronger than that wielded by press and radio. The nature of this influence which is exerted on all classes of British society — though there seem to exist significant differences in class reactions — is a moral one. Value patterns, actual behaviour, the outlook on life generally, are manifestly shaped by film influences.
Naturally, there are still millions of us who derive their philosophies of life from other media: family, friends, church, school, university, club, book, newspaper, radio, etc.; but the majority of our contemporary society is, though not film-made, yet influenced by films.
All these problems will be documented and analysed in the above-mentioned study on audience reactions. So far, the reader of this paper must take my word for it that such a moral influence of films exists.
1 Cf. my review of Manvell's book, Film, in the Political Quarterly, London, 1944.
B I^ M.S.F.