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THE ADULT AND THE CINEMA
Modern Man in Search of a Soul, which was first published in 1933, writes one sentence on the influence of the cinema: 'the cinema . . . like the detective story, makes it possible to experience without danger all the excitement, passion and deliriousness which must be repressed in a humanitarian ordering of life.' In this single sentence, it would seem, the eminent psychologist takes the 'aggressiveness5 of human nature for granted, an assumption which presupposes an 'anthropology' which I cannot accept. Jung also stresses 'the ideal of internationalism or supernationalism which is embodied . . . in the cinema. . . .' Both statements seem to me highly superficial and problematic.
Mr. Loewy, a distinguished Czech scientist, whose book Man and His Fellowmen, Modern Chapters on Social Psychology appeared when our investigations were already well under way, comes to just the opposite conclusion : 'Pictures, whilst satisfying the psyche for two hours, operating after the fashion of alcohol or a sedative drug, may drop into the mind the additional seed of the desire for the unattainable, instead of solving the difficulty'.1 And what about Dr. Jung's idea of internationalism? As long as the majority of distributors and exhibitors refuse to show us Soviet films whilst they take delight in showing us every third-rate American detective film or musical, no healthy internationalism nourished by film can be said to exist.
Last, but not least, I should like to refer to Miss Margaret Phillips' book on The Education of the Emotions through Sentiment Development. This book was published in 1937. We have already referred above to a representative protocol which Miss Phillips reproduces. Here follows her general comment: '. . . dramatic art may serve that compensatory purpose which has by now become so familiar to us. It may offer experience not on another level but, occupying another area, than that which one's own life occupies; it may satisfy in fantasy needs still of an urgent, personal, instinctive kind, but which are deprived of satisfaction in actuality. In the eyes of many the art of the cinema is specially adapted to meet this need, and my most representative protocol of this type does, in fact, describe a sentiment of the cinema. The object of the sentiment is life, as lived either in actuality or on the screen. The latter may supplement the former, but there must be no change of quality, no artistic transformation. The cinema must provide more and more intense emotional experience of the same kind as real life
1 1 reproduce Dr. Loewy's important psychological interpretation of film in Appendix III of this book.
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