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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2024
The purpose of this article is to give some idea of the way in which Catholics in Belgium are attempting to deal with one of the most influential forces of our time—the Cinema. Under the stimulus and direction of the Dominican Father Felix Morlion, they have evolved a method which is at once intelligent and eminently successful. In England very little has as yet been done; and this brief survey may be of interest to those who realise the importance and urgency of the problem.
The rise of the film to its present status of universal predominance is surely unique in its rapidity. Between 1887 and 1889 Edison invented a toy, the Kinetoscope; you looked through its peephole and saw a series of pictures of somebody who was moving, awkwardly moving, it was true, but moving. The toy became popular; but it had this limitation, only one person could peep at a time. This restriction inevitably provoked the idea of projecting the pictures on to a screen by means of some sort of magic lantern, thus making them visible to a roomful of people. The instrument was made, and the first Vitascope was shown on Broadway in 1895. It met with immediate success: the Cinema, as we know it, had begun.
1 If, as seems doubtful, the recent success of ‘Non-stop Variety’ is no more than a last convulsion.—Ed.
2 It should be explained that these ‘censorships’ aim at somethine more constructive and positive than do the activities of such an institution as the British Board of Film Censors. Their primary function is to classify films according- to the audiences for which they are suitable, and this not onry from the moral point of view, but from those of intellectual and popular appeal. It is instructive to note the chief cateqories under which films are classified by DOCIP: I, Les films classiques (films of real artistic merit); II, Les films sérieux (films which combine a treatment of the graver aspects of life with some technical excellence); III, Les films d'agrément (entertaining films which tax hut little the intelligence of the beholder); IV, Varias (‘interest’ films, etc.) These categorirs are subdivided according to the audiences to which they should appeal—pour tous; pour adultes: pour personnes formées (i.e., critical); pour intellecfuels. It is a rule never to give gratuitous advertisement, to immoral or salacious films by announcing them to be such.
3 Quoted in De Standaard, July 31st, 1932.
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