AMERICAN FILMS.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 115, 7 January 1926, Page 4

AMERICAN FILMS.

“ BENEATH CONTEMPT.” “ There is one aspect of the cinema which may fitly find a place in this volume. I am told on good authority that no influence is so steadily sapping British influence in India as the film, mostly manufactured in America, among what surroundings we all know, which traffics in the sordid immoralities of the English rich. It is quite certain that these films are also doing incalculable harm among the working classes, illustrating, as they seem to do, the budget of immorality provided for their reading in the Sunday newspaper. There is a censor in Ireland who will not permit these films to be exhibited to the public, and who bas therefore incurred the fierce anger of those commercial interests in the United States which frankly deal with life in a pornographic spirit ; but our censorship takes a more lenient view of these things, and neither the Church nor the rich nor the press, so far as I am aware, makes any continued protest against this wholesale corruption of the public mind. I need not say, of course, that from an intellectual point of view the American film is beneath contempt, and therefore an influence on the side of stupidity.”— “ A Gentleman With a Duster,” in “ Declension.”