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PERSPECTIVES OF A SOCIOLOGY OF FILM almost unknown. They have to be studied, and they are being studied. In this respect, the greatest attention has to be devoted to the study of the reactions to films of the younger age-groups — from five to the years of adolescence. The Soviet cinema can serve in this respect as a guiding example. It is not only that the Soviet film organisation has a considerable number of permanent special children's cinemas to which grown-ups are admitted only 'when accompanied by children'; the children all over the Union of the Soviet Republics have also a living and constructive contact with the film producers and directors. In schools and youth clubs, films are discussed and criticised, suggestions for new films come from the children themselves and are not imposed on them from above.1
Such studies in film reactions ought to be co-ordinated with film appreciation in all types of schools. Furthermore, in order to enable our teachers to provide such lessons in film appreciation the teachers themselves must be taught. Consequently, film appreciation should be taught at universities. (The present writer acknowledges with gratitude the debt he owes to the authorities of the London School of Economics and particularly to his chief, Professor H. J. Laski, who have allowed him to hold a seminar on sociology of film during one term of last year's session. The experiment has borne rich fruits.)
In addition to all kinds of youth clubs, the W.E.A. ought to be enlisted to help in educating a critical film audience. Perhaps our film critics in dailies and periodicals would then express to a lesser extent their personal likes and dislikes, but would consider films more from the point of view of the wants and needs of film audiences.
I admit that it is not easy to teach film appreciation if there is no accepted doctrine to teach. But doctrines are developed by teaching: by nothing else. In this context I should like to indicate only one set of problems on which, up to now, no serious work has been done at all. What ethical values do films teach and how are these value patterns related to the actual norms according to which modern men live? Moreover, what is the relationship of both, film norms and actual norms, to absolute value standards? To ask these questions shows, perhaps, that we know just nothing about the ultimate directives which guide, though to a large extent inexplicitly, our lives. Previous ages had a very explicit knowledge of their respective value patterns, as anyone who read? 1 Cf. Tschernjawski, Der Sowjetfilm. Moscow, 1941..