The Cinema
WE ought all to have guessed when we saw the first film made with a nice romantic love-story set against a background more or less representing the period 1914-1918 that it would be followed by scores of others like it. But it is difficult for anyone truly to appreciate the sheep-like nature of those who make films, and their considerable lack of inventiveness. And so regular film-goers have only gradually realised how much the War has become lately a perpetual stock-in-trade. Nowadays one out of every ten new pictures seems either to begin with the hero returning victoriously home after the Armistice, or to end with his dashing off to make a man of himself by joining up." Even Tom Mix in his cowboy films does it ; and of course, up to a point, this new film fashion is so far quite successful, though there are signs that audiences are beginning to tiro extremely of so much martial trimming.
Discussing the case for and against war films the other day, a producer asserted most emphatically that one reason why they were liked, and why there would for many years be a fair proportion of pictures introducing war scenes, was that the majority of those who go regularly to the cinema are young people curious to see what the War was like, and who regard it as a recent but definitely romantic episode in history. To them, then, a world seething with men in khaki, horizon- blue, field-grey and -other suitably toned uniforms is really quite interesting. To them " the late War " was a romantic occasion for a young man to utter a romantic speech, and for a romantic heroine to fight back her tears and draw herself up bravely, saluting her departing lover, who everyone knows may be wounded, may be missing, but will, like the old soldiers, never die. One asks oneself of what use is it to speak of the horrors of war to a generation growing up to regard war exactly as one regards the prettily uniformed troops in a Ruritanian musical comedy ?
People from time to time have alleged that these films are excellent anti-war propaganda. Nothing more ridiculous has ever been suggested. On the screen war has no horrors ; it does not show men engulfed alive in mud, blown to bits with explosives, choking to death with gas. It only shows the hero being incredibly brave in the most unsoldierly way, or, as in The Big Parade and What Price Glory? permits him to utter one or two literary phrases against the evils of war, while continuing to display him, nevertheless, as the conventional hero, returning to the arms of his loved and admiring ones later on. As a matter of fact one would judge that these war films are about as good propaganda for war as peace-time has ever known.
There is another aspect of them which I think the more observant and reflective of film-goers must have observed, not without amusement. That is, since almost all the pictures we see are made in American film studios, the people who go to the cinema are principally familiar with the American film-maker's attitude to the War. As far as I know, neither the French nor the Italians have made any war films ; so that I suppose it would be hard to persuade young film enthusi- asts to-day that they ever really took any considerable part in the hostilities. No one cares, anyway. In fact so far as the screen goes the War does not generally begin until 1917— just in nice time to give the hero opportunity for some strong stuff behind the lines and a taste only of real fighting. The Germans were poor fighters, and one notices they only appear
in small numbers and fling up their hands as soon as the camera lights on them. The others had all run away, apparently, in order to leave room for the Allies to plough up a quantity of waste land with their explosives. And if we receive here one particular film which has already been shown in the States we shall learn how the American navy helped the British navy to defeat the German navy in the North Sea in one nice big effort. Hollywood must really be the most naive city in the world.
Several times lately I have noticed men who look to be between the ages of 85 and 45 laqghing joyously as they watch one of these war films ; which is very nice of them
indeed. I fancy they can hardly have imagined ten and twelve years ago that they would come to be regarded, as one
feels they must be now, as a sort of comic fossil surviving from that jolly old war-time. " What did you do in the Great War, Daddy ? " has been answered for them by the picture• The war-record films like Ypres and Mans, which have hoe" made in England, had quite a different aspect ; they did not and could not show the horrors, but they did show something true, and by implication were sincere though very one-sided anti-war propaganda. But we in England too are making
many, far too many, romantic pictures with a little dash of
war to ginger the story up. Those who make them know that patriotic appeal is as sure to-day in the cinemas as it was in the good old melodramas ; and they consequently exploit it for what it is worth. If the effect on others is what it most definitely is on the part of the writer, then to many folk' patriotism itself is now an emotion of which one ought to be profoundly ashamed. It is the strangest experience to see the German film which has just been running at the New Gallery—The Err+des• Here we are shown, very tactfully and with almost embarrass- ing fairness, how that brave pirate cruiser " did its bit tot
our late enemies in the Indian Ocean ; with little glimpses Of heroism on the part of sailors in both British and German navies. We feel impelled to applaud both sides. It is a poorly made and poorly photographed picture but strangely interesting, the only glimpse of a war occurring between 1914 and 1918 which appears to have been one in which any sensible individual on either side could have taken part with- out humiliation. The other war, as I have seen it on the screen, appears to me to have been a lot of pompous nonsense which no doubt one will live to see repeated, and then later still re-fought in future film studios to entertain the charming
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