KINEMATOGRAPHY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 29, 4 October 1913, Page 7

KINEMATOGRAPHY.

REPLY BY THE PROFESSION. States the. Australian Kinemato- 1 graph Journal of Thursday, 25tn' lilt: — Commenting in its leading columns recently upon a circular recently issued in England by Cardinal Bourne, the Bishop of Birmingham, and others upon the use and abuse of the cinematograph, the Melbourne Age fell into a very singular error. “The most numerous patrons of the moving picture,” said the Age, are “children, and the taste of children is naturally and ‘notoriously savage.’ ” , It is absolutely incorrect to state that j children predominate in picture audi- j ences. On a recent Saturday night ; 7600 persons paid for admission atpj West’s and Spencer’s Pictures in Mel- i bourne, and fully 00 per cent, were adults. Of the 10 per cent, (and this is above the proportion) of young people, the majority are accompanied by their parents, and it is surely a j reave reflection upon the men and Women of Australia that they are ac- j cased of taking their children to ihi- j proper spectacles. Then the Age out- j Herod’s Herod in its allegation that the majority of films are “sensational and vulgar.” Other terms employed are “crude and reckless.”- Surely the writer of the article in question can rarely have visited a picture theatre. One by one the greatest rotors of all countries have proved their admiration of cinematography by toting for the moving picture,camera.;, To accuse artists such as Sarah Bern- | inrdt, Beerbohm Tree, Rejano, Na- j oierkowska, Seymour Hicks, Forbes , Pobertson, Gertrude Elliott, Marion Leonard, Mrs Langtry, Ravet, and others too numerous to mention and •)f equal world-wide reputation, of contributing to entertainment, which incites “juvenile thefts, excessive larrikinism, coarse behaviour, and brutal sexual offences,” is to betray either prejudice or ignorance. Of course, there is no such direct accusation, but the mere fact that such hinguage is indulged in is sufficient o cast a stigma upon everyone connected either with the production or exhibition, of moving pictures. There is never a picture which offends decency as do many of the ordinary theatrical and musical productions against which such arguments are rarely, if ever, levelled. The Age falls into the common error of taking mere hearsay as facts. Because an insignificant society in an unimportant American city condemned 40 per cent, of 290 .'iliiis which it examined and- stated that 20 per cent of those who saw the alms were children, the Age catae to the conclusion that the first part-of f his criticism of a small society of busy-bodies' must bh taken W'KOfepel;| and it multiplied the 20 per of children into “the most numerous, patrons of the moving, are children.” Why not give the other and the official side. The English police authorities attiihnte the decrease last year in the national exoenditure upon alcohol in Great Britain of £1,243.899 to the direct influence of moving pictures, and they point out that wa.fjngne of unexampled prosperity when, 'under ordinary circumstances, the- jbib ought to have gone'up by leaps and bounds. Finally, the most ,complete reply to the Age is contained in the ’olio wing extract from the Manchester fuiardian, one of the greatest Liberal n-gans of the United Kingdom “If he cinematograph drama is accepted is an established fact, it is equally certain that it must be a drama where iornothing happens, and goes on happening, with some poignancy and

’ores'. It can never resemble that branch of the legitimate drama of the lay, where (according to adverse Titles) the characters simply sit round uid discuss their’ own states of mind md delicate emotional situations for three unenterprising acts. And out ol a considerable number of films seen on a tour of inspection, there was only one or two which one would unhesitatingly describe as sensational stupidity exploited for its own‘sake. Nothing approaching a demoralising 11m was discovered—the cinematograph drama, however fast and furious its immediate, thrills, is thoroughly on the side of the angels, and virtue does not find a more satisfying ultimate reward, nor vice a sounder trouncing in the old-fashioned melodrama.”