FUNCTION OF THE FILMS
Sir-I have read the article by Samuel Goldwyn in your issue of July 6. It is a commonplace now thatthe film is the-most powerful conditioning mechanism in modern society. The power vested in Mr. Goldwyn and his colleagues is therefore plenary, incalculable. What qualifications has he for bearing this enormous responsibility? I say, unreservedly, none. His article is a piece of sententious humbug. "A picture’s first function is to entertain." Mr. Goldwyn deceives himself. As it is, in Hollywood the first and last function of the film is profit-making. Entertainment? Certainly, because without it, no audience, no profit. The film has a single problem: to. render through its photographic technique a vision of life, and.to render it truly. It sounds dull fare, no doubt.. What of entertainment? I say simply. this: that whatever is truly. and artistically. rendered through any medium, must’ of its nature be entertaining. The present" limited meaning given to entertainment as something merely amusirig or diverts» ing is a debased usage. And Mr. Gold-~ wyn’s less than adroit rationalising about direct entertainment and indirect educa--tion does not bear close scrutiny. If the entertainment is true, it must be educational also, in the purest and ‘most complete form. But Hollywood, for the most part, is not interested in truth unless it pays dividends. Taken as a whole, its values . ate commercial and rankly materialist. Why, then, are they accepted with such avidity? Because society itself is commercial and rankly materialist. The film mirrors, a it rarely States, = Sette or frustrations of inc in decay. on Se like ‘to ee lieve in Mr.. Goldwyan’s eloquent plea for. .
"honest" films. But he states that Amerie cans may learn about English ‘courage from, Mrs. Miniver and The White Cliffs of Dover, about history from Wilson and Gone With the Wind, and I therefore find it impossible to take him seriously, _ And yet he must be-taken seriously, for Samuel Goldwyn is. a movie mogul, inheritor of the earth, a czar of the universe.
BRUCE
MASON
(Wellington). —
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 319, 3 August 1945, Page 5
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339FUNCTION OF THE FILMS New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 319, 3 August 1945, Page 5
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