CHILDREN AND HISTORICAL FILMS
By SIR. CHARLES GRANT ROBERTSON (Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham University)
BY " children" is meant boys and girls under the age of sixteen, and, therefore, theoretically under the restrictions applicable to A and U films. By a " historical " film is meant a presentation on the screen of any episode in the past of which the children can have no first-hand knowledge.
If, as an adult, you go to a historical film and endeavour at the time, and subsequently, to measure the influence of what has been shown on the children's minds you will probably arrive at three conclusions : First, the intensity of the effect will be in proportion to the skill and vividness of the presentation ; secondly, the choice of the subject will be directly related, in its effect, to the skill and vivid- ness of the film ; and thirdly, the inexhaustible capacity of the film to re-create a (not necessarily the) past, and to visualize that past through the producer's and the actcri' eyes and not through your own eyes. Then, whether you are a teacher or not, endeavour to teach the children who have seen the film the same piece of history simply by talking, by a book, by an atlas and by a blackboard—and measure the result.
The talking films present history through the eye and the ear in combination. So, of course, does the historical play. The historical novel presents history through the printed word. But the film has obvious innumerable advantages over the historical play, due to the difference in technique and the mechanical apparatus at its disposal. There is, also, one obvious and fundamental difference. In the historical• play, the interpretation is that of a dramatist, in the film it is that of a producer. All the elaborate and scientific investigations in the last few years combine to emphasize not only the immediate but the lasting effect on children of what they see on the screen, though that effect may not be measurable or even apparent at the time. Add to that the almost in- exhaustible range in the field of influence, reckoned in numbers. Whatever may be the figure of those coming under the influence of a successful book or play, it must be multiplied by 50 or even 100 for the film.
It is plain, therefore, that psychologically, education- ally and also " morally," historical films (quite apart from ordinary recreational films) can be of infinite import- ance in the making of a child's mind, and if they arc multiplied and also very successful, of inexhaustible importance. An epigrammatist might, . indeed, be well tempted to say : " Give me the making of a nation's historical films, and I will give you the making of the nation's laws or of anything else of national value."
Historical films (like historical plays or novels) are by the nature of their being and making vulnerable to different critical tests. They may, for example, be " archaeologically " wrong, e.g., in details of scenery, architecture, costume, speech and so forth ; the incidents of the " plot " may be so misplaced and combined as to be absolutely false in fact ; the events may be so ignor- antly or deliberately selected as to place the stress on the trivial and the vulgar and to omit or minimize the fundamental, resulting in an interpretation false in the worst sense of the word ; if the story is grouped round a central figure or group of figures in a critical period of world or national history, background, episodes and leading figures may be so handled (and yet be "pictur- esque ") as to make the film a grotesque or a degrading caricature. It would be the easiest thing in the world to select the tremendous era of the Puritan. Revolution and show Charles I as a wastrel, half-witted fanatic in a spectacular pantomime, or turn Cromwell into a canting half-bully, half-buffoon. And when you wish to suggest causes of world-shaking changes, you could (most pictur- esquely) reduce the Persian invasion of Greece to a curtain lecture by Atossa, or the English Reformation to " the Gospel light that dawned from Bullen's eyes." If the picturesque is mostly what we want in making a historical film, omission and falsification of the truth, singly or better still in combination, become positive merits—and the box office will subsequently clinch the conclusion.
Concurrently, the teacher (or the parent) striving to bring-home to the children the meaning and value of their national heritage will have to wrestle with the visible and invisible barbed wire in the child's mind. The child has seen the producer's Anne Boleyn or Cromwell ; what he . is told or reads in class withers into a bloodless statement that fades before the picture burned into his imagination. If you doubt it, try to convince by scientific argument a child who has seen a vampire on the screen,. that " that thing " will not come upon him in the silent darkness of a sleepless night.
The real issue at stake in historical films (as in historical plays) is not the attainment of professor-proof accuracy in detail, or chronicle-proof accuracy in the order of incident, but of interpretation, i.e., of values. Take (if you could) 50 children to a first-rate representation of Shakespeare's Richard II ; follow it next afternoon by Richard of Bordeau,v; follow it next afternoon by an hour's lesson on the reign of Richard II as an organic episode in our national evolution and follow it by a lessor-- hour next day of questions from the children. (An hour • would not be enough to deal with the hail-storm that the children would hurl at you.) And then finally note the result. Conversely, how easy to construct a scenario of " the private life of Charles II " or " of Louis XIV " with Lucy Walters, Nell Gwynn, Barbara Cleveland and all " the other chargeable ladies of the Court" (or of a similar galaxy at Paris and Versailles), with accurate scenery, gorgeous clothes galore, cloak and sword, " sex-appeal " by the ton, comic business to keep a dozen George Robeys on the romp, and close-ups of passion long drawn-out— and I would defy any teacher or parent, after the children had seen such a film, ever to get out of their, heads the " lesson " burnt in by the film, or get into their heads the real significance and values of the national issues fought out in England or France between 1660 and 1685. And when these children have become men and women, British or French citizens, what then ?
Many of us in the last ten years, under the yoke of Hollywood, have felt the lamentable neglect of the superb and inexhaustible material in the quarries of our national history and have dreamed of the aid that the historical film could give in the education and culture of our people. Comedy and tragedy, laughter and tears, selfless ideals and selfish sensuality, carnal appetites and the visions of the spirit—all these and how much more— are the warp and woof of the drama of the past, and the creative imagination of the artist can weave them on the loom of the present for the comfort of the future ; but this same stuff can also, and only too easily, be made the shoddy pastime of a shoddy day, preparing for the shoddy pastimes of a shoddier future. In the last two years the producers of films have begun to discover the free gifts of history to librettist, photographer, producer, actor and actress, and also the money that awaits the skilful exploiter. Do they also realize their responsibilities ? Does the public realize its responsibility ? Is the box- office test of a successful historical film identical with the test of truth and of national interest ?
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