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THE ADULT AND THE CINEMA
When she has seen 'a good film' she and her sister come home and re-enact scenes and sequences to the delight of their family, not to mention their own enjoyment and thrill. She is very fond of acting. She 'thinks' also about films before she goes to sleep, for instance whether certain decisions and problems as seen on the screen were right or wrong.
Mrs. B. regards film as an educational instrument. Films also take her 'out' from her social surroundings. She very much liked They Were Sisters, this being a film which showed life as it might happen in her own family. She disliked The Fifth Chair. This type of American humour is 'too sophisticated'. She prefers British comedians.
Mrs. B. also admits — this on interrogation — that when faced with a decision, she might ask herself 'what would Bette Davis or Greer Garson do in such a situation?' Her male screen idol is Robert Taylor 'because he has such an expression in his eyes' (I wonder what her husband looks like).
It is obvious from these notes which I am writing down a few hours after our conversation that all the main trends of my Picturegoer documents recur. Whether you live in Wales, in Scotland, in Bath or Ipswich, your personality is shaped by film. Mrs. B. may think very rightly that she discovers her own personality by seeing a film. In reality her personality conforms to a type of film star; in this case Miss Davis and Miss Garson. This process must ultimately lead, and has already led, to a pauperisation of the human race which is terrifying.
It would be a fascinating task to make an attempt of a contemporary 'anthropology'. Take Robert Taylor, M. Boyer, Mr. Laurence Olivier, and take Miss Durbin, Miss Garson, and Miss Davis and a few more film actors and actresses, and you may be able to arrive at a complete anthropological typology of which no La Rochefoucauld, Pascal or Jung could ever dream.
Another question may perhaps be raised with regard to our documents. Why have you asked the question about dreams?
I am, of course, fully aware that accurate dream observation by laymen is exceedingly difficult to obtain. Yet I thought that I should risk some degree of inaccuracy, as the advantage of gaining some help on the more obvious psychological material might be considerable.
In addition, film reactions without an appreciation of the relevance of day-dream and Einschlaftraum and ultimately dream itself
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