takings in 1917 were estimated at 20 millions sterling per annum, and are now estimated at not less than 30 millions. The Exchequer profits by some 3 millions per annum in entertainment tax. There are some 25,000 boxes of films travelling about the country on railways at any one time. Figures compiled in various representative districts seem to show that the very great majority of elementary schoolboys 'go to the pictures' at least once a week, and 40 per cent. go twice a week. Though the amusement, compared with others, is extremely cheap, it is not merely a poor man's relaxation, but is popular with all classes of the community. Technique in all its branches has reached an extraordinary degree of proficiency, and the patron gets astonishing value for his money. The public, especially the American public, becomes exacting in proportion as it is pampered, and the three or four great producing corporations in the United States wage a war of competition which, the more furious it becomes, involves an increasingly reckless expenditure of money. 50,000l. is no uncommon sum to be spent on the construction of a single picture. At the present time the competition is so intense that the octopus' firms are frantically buying up theatres all over the United States in order to find an outlet for their films. The exhibitors are threatened with extinction, and have recently combined to resist the depredations of the great producers. The issue of the battle is still extremely uncertain. In the view of most intelligent persons, the 'artistic' content of the great majority of films reaches the nadir of puerility. Yet few would be so severe as to condemn the whole institution on that account alone. Whether artistic content and moral content are necessarily interdependent-whether bad art eventually means bad morality-is too old and too controversial a problem of æsthetics for present discussion. But of overt immorality at least, in the ordinary sense of that term, the cinema may be acquitted. Openly indecent films are practically unknown in the English-speaking countries, and by universal admission would not be tolerated either by public or by producers here. Yet the moral dangers of the film are so obvious that some kind of control is plainly necessary. In this country the actual legal control is remarkably slight. The subject is governed by two Acts of 1909 and 1922, and by Statutory Rules and Orders issued by the Home Office under these Acts. The policy of this legislation is almost entirely confined to public safety and the prevention of fires. No public exhibition of inflammable films can take place without a licence granted by the local authority-the county council or its delegate, e.g. committee, district council, or justices in petty sessions; and the local authority may attach to the issue of the licence such terms and conditions as it thinks fit. After the passing of the 1909 Act, it was thought that the 'terms and conditions' imposed by local authorities must be confined to provisions for public safety, since that was the tenor of the principal Act; but this view was rejected by the High Court in 1911. * Conditions of a much more general character are now commonly imposed, e.g. rules as to hours of performance, and opening on Sundays; but they are limited to what the High Court on appeal may consider fair and reasonable. For example, conditions restricting the admission of children after certain hours or under a certain age have been held ultra vires and void; † and a blow has been dealt at the censorship by a recent decision declaring unreasonable a local regulation that no films should be exhibited except those which had been passed by the British Board of Film Censors. ‡ The censorship itself is entirely unofficial. The trade as a whole has always been in favour of some control of this kind, but negotiations with the Home Office for an official censorship broke down in 1917. The present staff of examiners, therefore, have no legal status, and no exhibitor can be restricted to films which have been examined and passed. Nevertheless, the majority of the trade abide loyally by the unofficial censorship, and a very large proportion of films are examined before exhibition. After many difficulties and experiments, a code of censorial rules has been evolved, which cover all the more obviously objectionable elements of actual or suggestive indecency, cruelty, irreverence, the details of *L.C.C. v. Bermondsey Bioscope Co. (1911) 1 K. B. 445. crime, offensive personalities, disloyalty or sedition, and vice in its grosser forms. It may safely be said that a person of any age may go to the cinema without the risk of seeing any flagrant violation of the decencies of life. Moral standards, however, may be corrupted not only by flagrant violations of decency, but by suggestions which are the more insidious because, while appearing innocuous in themselves, they fill the unreflective mind with false notions of life and conduct. The standard formulas of the films contain constantly recurring themes which cannot but affect the imagination prejudicially. One of the most persistent of these is physical violence. Exaggerated action is the inevitable method of mime. Hamlet's injunction to use all gently' is impossible when the appeal is made solely to the eye. The modesty of nature is constantly, almost invariably overstepped. When men quarrel, they do not merely fling reproaches at each other, but instantly knock each other down. Horseplay of the wildest kind is the stock material of humour. The practical joke is the only kind of joke. At all costs the story must have pace, and any violent expedient is good enough to hurry it along. Lethal weapons crowd the screen, and in the midst of life every film actor is in death. Not only is the emphasis constantly laid on primitive emotions, but the camera is peculiarly adapted to emphasising even the emphasis. Painful scenes can be dwelt on by all kinds of mechanical devices, especially the 'close-up.' I recall one celebrated film in which a brutal ruffian, inflamed with drink and disappointment, comes home to 'take it out of' somebody-anybody. The particular object of his displeasure is the little foundling girl whom he has 'adopted.' The child, to escape his murderous wrath, locks herself in a room. We are then shown, on one side of the door, the child in the extremity of terror, and on the other side the ruffian in the ecstasy of rage: both passions portrayed with vivid, but sickening histrionic power. The child is dragged forth and thrashed to death, and we are treated to the whole edifying spectacle except the actual coup de grace. In justice to the patrons of the cinema, let it be said that a good many women in the audience covered their eyes. Anybody, man or woman, who kept them open can only have done so from instincts which are animal and disgusting. This is perhaps an extreme example: yet the film in question had a high reputation and an enormous popularity. Another aspect of the same ingredient is the absence of all the ordinary restraints of life. I do not mean the more obvious restraints of morality and decency, but the tendency to meet all situations and solve all difficulties by ignoring prudential restraints and taking the easiest available course. The man who is angry, strikes. The man, or more often the woman, who is tempted, succumbs with scarcely a struggle; probably he or she is redeemed afterwards with miraculous facility; but the descent to Avernus becomes a kind of helter-skelter. The man who is impeded in the pursuit of an objective— generally either riches or a woman-immediately sets about removing the impediment by any desperate means in his power. The man who is in a difficulty unhesitatingly finds 'the way out' in the revolver or the poisoned chalice. In the consequences of this violent conduct, the logic of real life is persistently ignored. There is no need to dwell on the outrageous unreality, improbability, and sentimentality of the average film story. They can scarcely be exaggerated. In the film world, the wildest and weakest wickedness can always be undone, not by expiation, but by a hasty dénoûment of tearful repentance in the last hundred feet or so of the reel. This mechanical absolution and remission of sin makes sin itself a mere incident without moral significance. The romance of lawlessness is a very favourite theme, particularly popular, as might be expected, among boys. It is true enough that the screen and the stage never present crime as admirable in itself. But the criminal is shown as a clever, daring adventurer commanding all the sympathy which we instinctively feel for the person who is playing a losing game against heavy odds. Sherlock Holmes ought to win; it is expected of him to win; but Professor Moriarty-what a gallant gamester! And the crook often has the dangerous habit of possessing personal charm. The devil is a gentleman. Your film criminal is often a 'good fellow at heart,' capable of pretty gestures of generosity and self-sacrifice, forced into crime by accidental circumstances or a fit of pardonable petulance. Not infrequently he undergoes a lightning reformation and lives happily ever afterwards. Here again we forsake the logic of life. Arch-criminals with hearts of gold are not, we believe, common in the annals of Scotland Yard, Revenge is another standard ingredient of the filmdrama. The danger of this theme is that revenge, being, as Bacon called it, 'a kind of wild justice,' carries in itself a specious extenuation. Reason condemns it, and human frailty condones it. On the screen, it covers a multitude of sins; it is scarcely ever questioned that vindictive retribution is the natural and pardonable answer to provocation. Vengeance is mine, saith the scenario-writer. It is true that the avenger rarely carries retaliation to a naked conclusion. Generally, when within reach of his savage desire, he is converted to a spectacular magnanimity through the opportune intervention of a Pure Woman or a Little Child. But this hardly counteracts the effect upon impressionable minds of the reiteration of this primitive incentive to hatred and violence. Other undesirable elements in the strange world of the cinema need but a passing glance, for they are very familiar to anybody acquainted with the ordinary film programme. The everlasting representation of luxury in its most vulgar and ostentatious forms holds up the dollar to millions of simple minds as the only standard of success and happiness. Is it any wonder if the resentment of the 'have-nots' against the 'haves' becomes daily more bitter? Whether the feeling aroused among the have-nots' be unhealthy covetousness or healthy reprobation, the peace of society is equally prejudiced. Again, the course of justice is frequently travestied as a display of freakish, undignified, and shallow sentiment; and though this view may be sufficiently true to life in a country where the 'unwritten law' still commands respect, and where courts of justice seem to be primarily regarded as places of entertainment, it is profoundly distasteful to our more prosaic view of the law and its function in society. Finally, although, as has been said, open indecency does not exist on the films, the less edifying aspects of sex are hinted at with damnable iteration. A glance at the titles of any miscellaneous assortment of films, or at, the posters which advertise |