THE FUTURE CHALLENGES THE MOVIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 315, 6 July 1945, Page 18

THE FUTURE CHALLENGES THE MOVIES

"They Must Educate As Well As Entertain And The Two Roles Do Not Conflict"-Says

SAM

GOLDWYN

in ,this article from the New York "Times," made available to us by the American Legation, Wellington. PS eae Oe ~~ Oe es Se Se oe eC

recently, I had a new feeling about what movies can mean. For many years my job has been to present drama. Now the drama was being presented to me I watched. I saw what a V-bomb had done. I saw the look on the faces of women who had lost their children. I came home with the idea that delegates to the United Nations conference in San Francisco ought to see a motion-picture record of the war, and refresh their memories, before they sit down to talk. to around England I saw other things over there that I won’t forget. Of course I had always known the part that films play in people’s lives, but I don’t think I had ever before realised how important the movies are to the morale of soldiers. They don’t want war pictures. Some day they will, but the great films about this war will not come for about five years, just thé way pictures like The Big Parade and All Quiet on the Western Front did not come for years after the first World War. In the meantime they want what it is fashionable to call "escape" pictures. Here at home the situation is different, though not entirely so. The war newsreels and the great documentaries bring the war home as nothing else could. But I do not apologise for the "escape" pictures here at home, either. I believe in them, Because a picture’s first function is to entertain. I do not mean by this that they cannot also be educational. Many of the best of them are, indirectly. I do say that the public does not pay to be educated in film theatres. In fact, if you think about it, you realise that the best of the educational pictures, apart from the ones made for schoolroom use, are first of all designed as entertainment. Going My Way gives its audience two happy hours. It also gives them a study in the humanity as well as the religion in the church’s service to a neighbourhood. No picture I have ever made gave me greater satisfaction than Dead End. I made it to make money and to entertain people. It did both. But along with that, it was a fine lesson in youth-training. Education by Stealth This is a big responsibility, this indirect education, and it is going to be even bigger in the post-war years. I think the screen’s responsibility is so great just because pictures are both vivid and subtle-because they teach when they are pretending not to. A thing that pleases me especially is that Hollywood has learned to be international. This is right, and smart. It has made mistakes, naturally. It has offended people. But you could hardly exaggerate what it ha« done to create international goodwill and understanding. Could any medium e

i i i i i i i i i i do better? Think of films like Walt Disney’s Saludos Amigos and. Three Caballeros, or of what the average American learned about English courage from Mrs. Miniver and The White Cliffs of Dover. The schools could hardly ask for a better partner than Hollywood has been in many pictures-pictures that were made first of all, remember, to entertain, the way a newspaper is published to give news. If I were teaching history, I would be very glad that my students had a chance to see films like Woodrow Wilson, Northwest Passage, Gone With the Wind, Union Pacific, and Abe Lincoln in Illinois. If I taught science or literature, I would be glad that boys and girls had their interest stirred by movies like Pasteur, Mme. Curie, Yellow Jack, Wuthering Heights, the Dickens and Mark Twain novels, and a lot of others. These were good, and the ones to come will be better. Among other things they will be better to look at, because in a few years there will be no more black-and-white films — nothing but colour. Hollywood keeps learning. A good many people don’t think so. They are mistaken. They remember the flood of gangster pictures and how the movies were supposed to create gangsterism. The movies only reflected a situation, the way the newspapers did. Entertainment Comes First! I don’t think anybody can deny that Hollywood’s thinking has grown up a good deal. Long before Pearl Harbour, Hollywood was warning the public in films like Escape, and Confessions of a Nazi Spy. These were not documentaries, They weren’t even essentially propaganda. They were "escape" films, and they wete dignified and brave. Do you remember that Hollywood was once accused of making war-mongering: films? What is more important to remember is that it never made one that anybody could call a fascist film. Hollywood wasn’t afraid to face ugly truths in our own backyard either. It did in one of its greatest productions, The Grapes of Wrath. Educational! Of course, it was, but first of all it was an absorbing story about people. I will say it again: entertainment comes first. ; The best of what we have learned will carry over into peace. There are other factors we can’t yet know very much about. Hollywood will have to adjust itself to them as they arise. For instance, when the soldiers come back what are they going to expect of the movies? I think I know now that they are going to want honest pictures. They (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) won't stand for being kidded. They have ‘grown up a lot, they are older than their years say they are. Even so, the movies can help to educate them, I would like to see the movies, both the documentaries and the entertainment pictures, tell them a good deal about the world. There will be a better peace if the soldiers who come back understand the European viewpoint as well as the American. If they don’t already know, they should know how a Pole and a Frenchman and a Russian feel about things. And the movies, along with other mediums, can help them. To a lot of men and women who haven’t the chance for a formal education, that will mean the difference between ignorance and sensible thinking. These, then, are the screen’s two jobs, both of them calling for intelligence and skill and with no conflict between them; to entertain and to educate. On the basis of the record, the films can claim to have done so in wartime. I think they will perform an even greater service to e peace. . , -_-_-_-_-____ rc