Who is Dante? The worst type of cinema film that I have seen is one about which, if we were to take a vote amongst audiences, the verdict would be that it is harmless. That is something of a paradox. There are plays and there are pictures which shock the right-minded; they are of their own nature provided with their own antidote; only the pornographic mind will seek for these things or take any pleasure or delight in them. The ordinary healthy mind recoils from them. It is the veiled presentation of vice, with this seductiveness of artistic treatment, that constitutes the danger. Now, not everyone is able to appreciate art with that detachment such as to secure escape from the evil effects in the moral domain. There is a sort of position that men acquire by the training of themselves very much like what the doctor has with regard to disease. He moves unscathed through hospitals and fever dens, and he is a denizen for a large part of the week in the slums, and there is something in the training, his own mental constitution, that has procured for himself a certain amount of immunity, so that for one type of mind or developed character a thing is not immoral which is highly immoral for another. Now, I can conceive of one of these highly trained, highly immune people being appointed Censor, whose liberality and breadth of mind, due either to his appreciation of the photographic art, possibly, in the making of films, or in histrionic art developed by the players, would make him pass this for audiences made up of men like himself. It would deserve to be passed.
For a general audience it would be utterly wrong. So I merely underscore the point made by Deputy Johnson with regard to the words in one section of the Bill. That is Section 2, which says, "The Minister shall appoint a fit person." Everything depends upon the fitness of the person, and then in the second stage on the fitness of the Board of Appeal, which, by the way, though nominally five, will be effectively three. Now, just as I can conceive a man broad-minded and tolerant being appointed Censor, I can equally readily conceive of some narrow-minded Puritan—a man who sees evil suggestions in the most harmless thing, and is terribly afraid of everything that has not the false representation of life, which I refer to as the "goody-goody" representation, which will mislead the young and leave them absolutely at the mercy of people whom they have been taught to regard, because they are attractive and charming in their personalities, as therefore good. I may be a crank in this matter—possibly I am —but to me the most reprehensible of the film types that are now being exhibited here is just the type that no one appears to find fault with. I can claim to have a very extensive experience of the films in this city. It is the only form of recreation that I have the time or the inclination to indulge in. I do not claim to be a specialist in it, but short of being a specialist in it, I can claim to have seen most of the latest films and to have been pleased with them.
There is a type of alleged harmless story which comes to us from the American producers. As I view it, it is calculated to sap all that we hold by in ordinary life here. There is the flapper and the corresponding youth—two lovers. The invariable end of the story is, they elope in a motor car, pursued by the police scouts, who are observing not that they are breaking the moral code or the moral conventions, but that they are breaking the laws with regard to the speed limit. They are not fast, I should say, in the moral sense. That is why the public are not aware that the thing is objectionable in its influence. They always find an obliging clergyman or Justice of the Peace round the corner. Usually the clergyman spends his twenty-four hours in his canonicals, with his book open, ready to marry the first-comers without inquiry. The sequel always is on the return, when the fathers or parents of both contracting parties turn up in another motor car and barely escape collision. They all embrace, and all is well in the best of all possible worlds. Ninety per cent. of the audience looking on at that are lovers. The amusement of their elders, their appreciation of the humour of the situation is a silent endorsement—I hope that is not a bull, because their smiles are sometimes audible. It is an endorsement, or taken as an endorsement, by the young. "If Eddie So-and-So and Mabel Something-Else may do such things, and if it is not wrong in their case, why should it be wrong in ours?" The whole idea of parental control, all that we associate with the sacredness not merely of matrimony, but of the associations leading up to it, are sapped by those things. There are all sorts of films of that kind that appear not to be reprehensible, but they are so. We may have a Censor who will allow that pernicious sort of stuff to pass unchallenged, and you may have a Censor who would not allow them to present Shakespeare's "Othello." That is the difficulty. Now, just as we prefer a jury of twelve to a jury of three, or, above all, a jury of one, although any two of the twelve men may be pretty much alike both in their experience and their qualities of mind and heart, yet we prefer the large number. Experience has shown us that there is a corrective in the number.
My objection is in the main to a single Censor being all that the Bill proposes to appoint. In the applications that the Minister was good enough to read to us, made by deputations, I think I heard a National Board of Censors asked for. I think that would meet the requirements of the case better. Common agreement could be arrived at, even though in the making of the compromise the public might lose a splendid film, but I think on the whole there would be a decided gain. What we are apt to forget is the type of audience to which these things are addressed.
I mentioned a moment ago the film of "Dante's Inferno." That was a film produced, as it was advertised, at enormous cost; but, what is more important, it was produced with the most marvellous taste. Every scene in it was a thing of beauty; the spirit of the original poem was preserved. It was necessary to go to Camden Street, I think, to see it. The audience roared with laughter at each successive picture. When Virgil, by a species of indescribable aviation, brought Dante across the burning pool, the flight raised the audience to the highest pitch of delight. They howled their amusement in fact; but that was not the climax. The climax was reached when you came to the Eternal Ice of Jiudecca, and when the gnawing of the skull incident was introduced. That was treated pretty much as one of those comic somersaults of Larry Semon or some other acrobat would have been received. I mention that to show you that what the audiences in very many of these theatres want is not high art, but simple amusement. Now, simple amusement and vulgar amusement are not quite the same thing, and one Censor may be a person so fastidious that he would regard what, after all, is good enough and healthy enough for ordinary people like me as vulgar, and would think that it sapped social order and would interfere with the proper regard for the amenities of life. In other words, if you go into the thing theoretically, it would be impossible to get any man so free from vagaries and prejudices and prepossessions that we could depend upon him; in fact, it would be almost better to leave the thing to drift as it has been left hitherto, and let it bring about its own solution. We have tried the one alternative—we have tried the uncensored film. I am bold enough to say the situation at present is one of the uncensored film.
I have seen within the last month films produced in the leading cinemas of the city, and they were objectionable in the last degree. They were an outrage. One of them at least was an outrage upon public morals, and professedly it had been censored and passed. I say we have tried what is practically the uncensored scheme. The other alternative —to appoint one Censor—would not, I think, work. There is one aspect of the matter I would like to dwell upon. You would require a man not merely with all the qualifications that Deputy Johnson and I tried to outline, but he would require to have enormous courage. One of the great things in democratic government is that you govern with Committees in order to spread the responsibility for decisions over a number of men, and help to make it possible for them to come to an honest decision. That is where I find a merit also in having a Committee of Censors rather than setting up one Censor. I have just one other objection to make, and that is that this does not go far enough. It does not go far enough as regards its penalties. A publican who sells drink during prohibited hours can be fined £10 and have the fine endorsed on his licence. If the licence is endorsed three times it is forfeited. Selling a bottle of stout or a glass of whiskey a minute or two after closing hours is a very small offence against public decency and public order as compared with some of the offences that are committed every day in the cinemas. Let me draw your attention to the penalties set out in Section 6, where it is stated: "shall be guilty of an offence under this Act and shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £50, and in the case of a continuing offence to a further fine not exceeding £5 for each day during which the offence continues." Anyone who is acquainted with the enormous takings of one of these picture houses will realise that a fine of £5 a day will not suffice to check the repeated presentation of a film. There was a film shown in Grafton Street some years ago called "The Isle of Love." It was diabolical in its naked indecency. It had crowded houses. A man who is sufficiently unconscionable could easily pay his £5 a day penalty and make well on it. He would not be deterred by that. I should like to see here a provision for the withdrawal of the licence from such a cinema as has been fined more than twice. There should be within the Free State a complete withdrawal and a prohibition from whoever is the managing director or the board of directors responsible for its misdirection of any right to apply for the opening or the running of a cinema again. I am speaking in this case of what I know. There are thousands of people not able to read the worst French novels or the latest developments of grossness that come to us through other literatures. They do not require to read. They simply sit in a cinema and the thing is actually portrayed before them. There is not a boy or girl of 14 or 16 years of age who need not at the end of a year be a past-master in every detail of every form of vicious life in every quarter of the globe by merely going through this education of weekly seances in one of our most respectable cinemas. It is very easy to overstep the line with regard to youth. I am assuming that old people are past praying for in some of these cases and there is no use in trying to save them, but it is our duty to come to the assistance of youth and protect them from what they may unknowingly be tempted into the evil influence of The penalty is not enough. I might be thought a fanatic in the matter, otherwise I would propose that anyone fined repeatedly for these offences should be deprived of citizenship altogether. We punish men with death for robbery under arms. That is nothing in comparison with the ruin of a whole life that sometimes ensues from getting one's standard and valuations depraved. One is afraid of being thought puritanical, and does not in public speak one's mind upon these things. I claim that I am not puritanical. I am afraid I would make a bad Censor, because I would be too indulgent as regards the presentation of high art and the finer pieces of literature. It is just because I should be so lenient with regard to plays of the type of "Hamlet" or "Othello" that I would wish to put it out of the power of anyone, under the name of presenting art, deliberately to set himself to lower the moral currency in our country. I have seen what to me appears unmistakable evidence of deliberate propaganda worked through the cinema. For two consecutive months, about two or three years ago, I saw in the same picture house an admirably contrived series in point of plot construction as good as any dramatist ever produced. The effect of that was that the churches were bankrupt and that the various religions are failures, and that fraternity and brotherhood are better than them all. That was not declared to be the moral of the piece, but you could not help feeling, in spite of your own conviction that Christianity was not a failure, that fraternity, apart from religious sanction, was the only thing worth while. I saw another admirable piece of propaganda in which the object was to show that the Jew, though to the outward vision a man despised, in search of small gains through various bad channels of enterprise, was really a man and a brother, and not only that, but in moments of great national emergency could rise to high sacrifice. I have no doubt that the Jewish promoters of that picture had that in view to inspire the public with a better conception of what the Hebrew is, that he is not a man immersed altogether "in old clo'," or transactions allied with it, and that he has a soul. Just as this propaganda can be carried out, there are others of a far opposite character, and to be on the watch with regard to these things, and in respect of myriads of films that come under his notice, it would not be possible for any one individual to discharge his duty, even though he sought to do it.
If I am not hypercritical, I would like to draw the Minister's attention to one other point. The Bill is "to provide for the official censoring of cinematograph pictures and optical effects," but there is provision made only for the optical effects that are done by cinematograph agencies. If I may direct attention to Paragraph 9, the meaning of the exhibition of pictures is given as "an exhibition by means of a film produced," and so on, and in an earlier clause, Paragraph 5, it is stated that "no picture shall be exhibited in public by means of a cinematograph or similar apparatus." It is possible to produce photographs giving the optical effect of what are popularly called living pictures without a film or without a camera. When they were first put upon the market, as well as I remember, they were called kinetiscopes. In the Paris Exhibition of 1900 they were everywhere. Edison had provided an ingenious scene where, by means of mechanism, the band actually played through the instrumentality of a gramophone attached. I am not asking the Minister to bar gramophones, but I am asking him to bar the uncensored optical effects produced by mechanism or contrivances which a lawyer would be able to convince the Court did not come under the heading of similar representations. I have dwelt upon those things as in a sense raising objections. I should like not to be taken as opposing the measure in any sense. On the contrary, I think the Minister deserves the highest credit and the drafters of the Bill the highest credit for providing the Saorstát with an agency like this, which helps to realise our Gaelic traditions. Purity of mind and sanity of outlook upon life were long ago regarded as characteristic of our people. The loose views and the vile lowering of values that belong to other races and other peoples were being forced upon our people through the popularity of the cinematograph. One is apt to lose sight of this fact that just as the novel supplanted the drama in its time, so all reading, even novel reading, is being supplanted by those theatres. So it becomes one form not merely of enlightenment and enjoyment that is within the reach of the people by way of expense, if by way of nothing else, but it is replacing reading, and this is in an indirect way securing the protection of the growing citizens of the Free State from the unhealthy influence of the outside world. In that way it is helping all the objects of the Gaelic League, because it is exactly like gardening. You have to attend to the pests and plagues that beset your growing vegetation as well as to cultivate the ground.
