EYE-OPENERS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 94, 25 August 1913, Page 5

EYE-OPENERS.

THE CINEMATOGRAPH. SCENIC HORRORS. A strong indictment against the cinematograph show in England is made in the July number of tlie "Hibbert Journal" by Canon Rawnsley. There appears, he says, to be passing over tiie land a real craving for scenes of horror. This is shqwh by some of the hoardings. The public are invited to "nerve-thrillers," "eye-openers"; "Dante's Hell," a devil film with a huge invitation beneath it, "Don't mis.-, tms opportunity of seeing Satan — Satan and the Creator j Satan and the saviour, -1.000 feet in length" ; "dogs killing rats in a rat pit," "a public execution in the East," etc. Many of the films are direct incentives to crime. Regarding the hell film, the canon says that a polico officer reported to the Mayor that he could see nothing wrong with it—a fact which gives the canon the opportunity of saying that neither the police nor the agents of the cinematograph firms who are sent out as exhibitors are sufficiently educated to know what is horrible and what is not.

A clerical correspondent who "went to see the devil" describes the seem; thus: —"The lights were suddenly lowered, and the first picture to appear on- tho screen was our dear and holy Saviour kneeling in His agony in tho garden, and Satan jumping out of the earth in a puff of smoke by our Saviour's side, like a clown shooting up through the stage at a pantomime. Can that sort of thing be right? In another scene, when Satan brought a bad ease—a case whom he himself had possessed—to test whether our Lord could not perform the miracles He claimed the pWer to do, Jesus cured the man, and, brethren, some of the audience in the pit clapped him! I don't blame them so much as those who are responsible for presenting the Son of God Incarnate in such a position upon a modern stage that it is possible for people to clap him."

The canon has also some strong words against many of the picture which are vulgar and indecent. In his indictment he is supported by the headmaster of Eton. Both writers admit tho value of the cinematograph for educational purnoses; but insist that censorship is too lenient.