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THE CONTENT OF FILMS garding the possible influence of certain types of motion pictures on children and youth are merely inferences from the evidence before him, and are not conclusions based on a scientific investigation. The reader is urged to work out his own interpretations of the data, by relating it to the findings of other investigators who have studied the actual reactions of children and adolescents to films.
Towards the end of his introductory chapter, Mr. Dale summarises the aims of his study in this way: I. 'to devise a technique for analysing the content of motion pictures'; and 2. 'to discover by this technique what the content of motion pictures has been'. To the reader of 1945 the words 'has been' will suggest a more serious doubt as to the continued applicability of Mr. Dale's findings than to the readers of 1935, when his book first appeared. Even in 1935, many features which characterised the typical motion picture successes of the years 1925-31 were fast disappearing, and indeed the whole tone of the cinema was in the course of transformation. This break was occasioned to a considerable extent by the operation of the newly established Hays' Code, but it was probably caused, in a more fundamental sense, by a general reaction in public opinion of which the Hays' Code was only a symptom, and which must be explained in terms of sociology. Between 1935 and 1945 many more striking developments have been apparent in the unformulated but widely influential Weltanschauung of Film, this implicit outlook which binds together the typical motion pictures of any 'period'. Moreover, in 1936, the Hays' Code was considerably amended, and this inevitably affected the films produced between that year and the outbreak of war in 1939.
The type of film which served merely as a setting for the antics of an exotic vamp or femme fatale, and which was, in its general feeling, a throwback to the decadent romanticism of the 90's (e.g. Aubrey Beardsley, Wilde, etc., in other medias) had, by the late 30's of this century, almost disappeared from the cinematic scene. This trend is exemplified by the fact that the last representative of the type, Greta Garbo, abandoned the siren roles which had made her famous and began to make light comedies — e.g. Ninotchka.
The qualities which films now appeared to strive after were speed and slickness of action, wisecracking dialogue, and whatever is connoted by the American word 'cute'; all of which was in striking contrast with the languorous, hot-house atmosphere of the epics of the vamp era. The coup de grace may, perhaps, be said to
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