Forgotten shadows; the birth of the cinema; The...

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UNESCOWINDOW OPEN ON THE WORLD

1955

(8th year)

Price : 7d (U. K.)30 francs (France)

FORGOTTENSHADOWS

The birth of the cinema

BOATING BY MOON¬

LIGHT. Chinese art is

noted for the remarkable

effects achieved with a

minimum of brush strokes.

Here, the great master Ma

Yuan (I I 90-1 229) has shornhis painting of all but theessentials. The mountain is

depicted only by its summit..The rest is shrouded in mist

and mystery, creating anatmosphere of romantic rev¬

erie and yet great simplici¬ty. This work is now in the

British Museum. (See p. 22.)

The

uKlscü

Number I - 1955

8th YEAR

W .«,**

4.*? «ft* «ft

Unesco Courier. Nr 1. 1955

FORGOTTEN SHADOWS

With this photo a man sneezed his way intocinema history. In 1893 Fred Ott, a former

comedian working as a laboratory mechanicfor Thomas Edison, was filmed in the world's

first studio, in New Jersey, doing his sneezingact. Because of this Ott has been called the

world's first motion picture actor, but his

right to the title has been sharply disputed.

CONTENTS

PAGE

3 EDITORIAL

5 THE CINEMA AND ITS ORIGINS

By Jacques Guerif

17 NEWSREEL CAMERAMEN OF YESTERDAY

12 THE CINEMA TODAYA WORLD PICTURE

By James Douglas

20 DREAMING WITH EYES WIDE OPEN

By W.D. Wall

MAGIC SHADOWS-A PHOTO STORY

6 Plateau's Magic Discs

8 Zoetropes and the Optical Theatre

10 A Century of Clicks

11 A S25.000 Bet on a Horse

13 Marey's Camera Gun

15 EdisonMotion Pictures' Public Debut

16 LumièreThe Screen's Premiere

1 8 They Turned a PageMéliès, Griffith

OTHER ARTICLES AND FEATURES

22 THEY PAINTED WITH KNIFE AND BRUSH

Chinese Art 2,000 Years AgoBy Chou Ling

26 TWENTIETH CENTURY GULLIVERS

By Alain Gille

28 MICROSCOPE QUIZ

33 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

34 FROM THE UNESCO NEWSROOM

Published monthly by

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MC. 54.1 88. A

A few years ago the National Library of Peru, in the-heart of Lima, created a traffic jam which was repeatedevery day for more than two weeks. Outside the library

the street was crowded with adults and children. As they

filedjpast the entrance, the visitors were counted by a photo¬electric cell flicking monotonously at a rate which went ashigh as five thousand a day. The attraction was a travellingexihibition, intended to explain very simply the newestdevelopments in science, to take science out of the bewil¬dering maze of the laboratory and bring it to the public.

That exhibit which dealt with physics and astronomy wasseen throughout Latin America and is still travelling. It wasfollowed by three other science exhibitions which havealready been seen in 26 countries by about 1,500,000 people.But in the files of Unesco there is something even moreimportant than the itinerary of the travelling exhibitions,more important than the names and number of the countriesvisited. It is the evidence of the incalculable enrichmentthese exhibitions and others on education and the arts have

brought to the lives of countless persons in small townsas well as large cities on every continent.

One day, for example, a Unesco exhibition on modern artarrived, at a place called Tizi-Ouzou, a small, rarely visitedtown in the rugged hills of Algeria. It was on a tourorganized for overseas areas by the French National Com¬mission for Unesco. From miles around villagers flockedinto Tizi-Ouzou to take a look. Some -came, scratched theirheads and with a shrug went away. Many others, like theschoolmaster from the distant mountains of Kabylia, lookedfor à long time and then sat down and wrote Unesco theirimpressions.

"I was passing through Tizi-Ouzou," the schoolmaster said,"and was privileged to be able to see the Unesco travellingexhibition on modern art... Until now I had no chance to

see modern paintings at first hand and your exhibit revealedto me a form of art I knew nothing about and the veryexistence of which I barely suspected."

There are numerous examples of whole communitiesjoining together to buy a duplicate set of a Unesco exhibitionin order to be sure that it would always be on display orin circulation in the country. After one exhibition had beenshown at the Perth Art Gallery in Australia, a publicsubscription was started to which students, teachers, artistsand other citizens contributed one hundred pounds for thepurchase of a duplicate set. And the curator of the Perthgallery wrote : "The exhibition proved a great stimulus tothe art-loving public and created considerable interestamong those to whose notice it brought the work of somecontemporary artists for the first time."

At present, travelling art exhibits on the Old Masters,Modern Art, Leonardo da Vinci and old Japanese woodcutsare touring the world. Other Unesco exhibitions have includ¬ed a broad range of subjects such as the emancipation ofwomen, freedom of information, music and the cinema,children's books, education and peace, school architecture,man's fight against the desert and the jungle, the historyof human rights, and the protection of nature.

This issue of the Courier has been inspired by threerecent Unesco exhibitions. Two Thousand Years of Chinese

Art, Man Measures the Universe, and Horizons of theCinema. Only limited aspects of these, of course, could bedealt with in these pages. "Horizons of the Cinema" wasfirst erected at the International Film Festival at Venice in

1953, and is now a permanent exhibit at the Paris Institutdes Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques. A smaller version(on the origins of the cinema) is touring or has completedtours of cities and towns in 12 countries. It has been

shown at educational conferences in Egypt, Spain andCanada. In Canada it has also served as the basis for an

important television programme.

It is now sixty years since the motion picture was invent¬ed. The following pages are a salute on the part of Unescoto the artists and technicians who have contributed to it

as a means of human expression.

THE BIRTH

AND END...

...OF AN ERA

Unless otherwise indicated, all photos inthis issue on the origins of the cinemaare published with the kind co-operationof the Cinémathèque Française, Paris.

These two pictures mark the beginningand the end of a great era 33 years inthe history of the cinema. Above, a

scene from the first film ever seen by apublic audience, "La Sortie de l'Usine"

(Leaving the Factory) projected by theLumière Brothers in Paris in 1895.'

Left, the end of the silent film days issounded in 1927 by AI Johson in the

first talking picture, "The Jazz Singer".

Unesco Courier. NM. 1955

If it weren't for the fact that a strip of film is quicker thanthe .eye the retina, to be exact the cinema wouldnot even exist.

Hollywood and Elstree and the two-gun cowboy hero andthe most stupendous epic ever made and the Saturday nightsof hundreds of millions around the world all depend on theretina's ability to hold an image for a scant tenth of asecond after it has vanished.

During that tenth of a second, you actually see what isn'tthere any more. If the vanishing images flash in frontof your eye quickly enough, they merge together in a streamof movement. And the retina is unable to tell the dif¬

ference between a movement broken down into a series

of still pictures and the actual movement itself.

Ever since antiquity, men have known about this retinatime lag. In the 17th Century, the magic lantern . made itsbow along with a host of gadgets intended to createan illusion of movement. But they seemed destined toremain as parlour toys. Even the invention of photographydid not change matters at first because the pioneers of thecamera, after all, were trying to break down or stopmovement, not to create it.

Then, a long ' step forward was made when, in 1877,an English photographer in California, Eadweard Muybridge,rigged a set of cameras side by side next to a race track

.and was able to take a series of 24 pictures breaking downthe movements of a galloping horse. Then a Frenchscientist, Etienne Marey, built a camera capable of taking

Jacques GUÉRI F, former foreign desk editor of the French daily" Le Monde ", is now a member of the press staff of Unesco."

several photos a second to help him study birds in flight.

Photography had now proved capable of recording move¬ments which the .human eye could not catch. At the sametime experimenters were able to show that the eye couldbe fooled by pictures flashing before it at a speed of fromsix to forty images a second. Now the problem was totake that many pictures in so short a time. As long asphotographers were limited to glass plates, it seemed in¬soluble. Then along came the invention of celluloid roll

film, in 1889. Things happened quickly after that.

Although there is still much dispute over which of themany film inventors first succeeded in showing his pictureson a screen, both Thomas Edison and the Lumière Brothers(Louis and Auguste) share the glory of having made the"cinematograph" a reality. (The world itself was coinedby the Franchman Leon Bouly in 1893 when he patenteda moving picture machine under this name. Other in¬ventors achieved success with astounding simultaneity:C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat in the United States,Robert Paul and William Friese-Greeh in England, Le Prince,in France.)

Edison began his basic work on moving photographs in1887. . Two years later, on October 6, 1889, he gave thefirst demonstration of the Edison Kinetoscope. His movingpicture films, though they lasted less than a minute, usheredin the era of cinema production. Their eyes glued to theviewers of the peepshow Kinetoscope (photo page 15)spectators were able to glimpse a favourite vaudeville artistor penetrate the secrets of an opium den or even relivethe execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.

(Continued on next page)

FOHGOTTEX SHADOWS (Continued)

For several years the Kinetoscope was a popular noveltybut it did not project an image on a screen. In 1895 LouisLumière and his brother Auguste, sons of a French manu¬

facturer of photographic supplies, patented the "cinéma¬tographe" machine for taking and projecting motionpictures. On December 28 of the same year, the first timein history, a true audience 120 persons jammed into theGrand Café on Paris' Boulevard des Capucines was ableto watch a moving film pictured on a screen. The film inquestion was only a small documentary' shot by Lumièreshowing factory workers going out to lunch. The sameprogramme presented the home life of his family completedown to the goldfish bowl and a train entering a station.The critics hailed them as "a slice of real life".

Destiny decided that the Grand Café audience of 1895included a certain Georges Méliès, a music-hall magicianwho had been baffling audiences for over eight years with

his sleight-of-hand. He saw ' immediately that this wasmore than a new scientific marvel ; to him it was a newkind of magic, and he determined to make films himself.One day he accidentally discovered double exposure cinema¬tography and realized at once that he could use it to createany visual illusion on the screen. ..and that films could beturned into a new entertainment medium and a new art.

In October 1896, two years after Edison had' completedthe first film studio, the Black Maria, Méliès beganconstruction of his own studio in the suburbs of Paris. Even

a producer of 1955 would recognize it with its stages, flood¬lights and a movable cabin for shooting. There Méliès wasable to invent many of the tricks of the trade which film¬makers still use today dissolves, shooting against a blackbackground to bring out relief, and the use of one actor toplay two or even more roles. Like Edison and others before

him, he also dabbled in talkies, trying to find a way ofsynchronizing a phonograph with his silent films.

Méliès alone shot some 450 films between 1896 and 1914.

The film industry had come into the world and it proved alusty infant. In 1902, a theatre built specifically for filmshows opened in Los Angeles, California, and it was followedby thousands in the United States and Europe. Even inthose early days, films were already printed by the hundredsand distributed throughout the world.

And the public loved it... but it .constantly clamoured forimprovements. Audiences flocked to the films which offeredsomething new and different. The Herculean task of the

inventor had only begun. The public was fed first sound,then colour and now relief and cinemascope and the publicis still waiting for something new again.

THE MYSTERY

MACHINE was the

name given to magiclantern by pedlar show¬men of 18th century.It was usually simply awooden box with an

opening through whichpeople were able tosee images projectedon a transparent screenby a lantern. Mountedon wheels, the boxwas a source of amuse¬

ment and wonder at

town and village fairs.

In this eternal chase after new techniques, hundreds fell

ruined by the wayside but thousands of others continued onto wealth and fame. The spectators watched and revelledin the struggle which had only one rule : sooner or later,the new had to win over the old.

The film industry had to adapt itself to the struggle byconstantly experimenting and making use of the new dis¬coveries. The result is that the history of this art is a longtale of adventure where unexpected victories are followedby startling defeats and where the only certainty is change.

It was round about 1914 that technical improvements andart really met on the screen. Charlie Chaplin began makinghis early films, astonishing in their wealth of sentiment andgenerosity and always true to the mark in their. social satire.

But the momentous year for motion pictures was 1915for it witnessed the production of a film D.W. Griffith's"Birth of a Nation" which marked' the founding of the-modern film. Despite its racial intolerance, it was and stillremains a masterpiece of cinematographic art. It is con¬sidered one of the three most famous of all films the other

two being Carl Meyer's "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari" (Ger-

Unesco Courier. W 1. 1955

Pre-M©vie Toys

In 65 B.C. the Roman poet Lucretiusdiscovered what is called persistance ofvisionthe ability of the retina to holdan Image for a fraction of a second afterit has vanished. Scientists in later times

proved Its existence experimentally, butit was not until the early 1820's in England,that it began to be closely studied, par¬ticularly in relation to the possibility ofmaking pictures " move " Dr Peter MarkRoget now remembered as the author ofthe " Thesaurus of English Words andPhrases " was one of the first pioneers Inthis field. His paper "Persistence of vi¬sion with regard to movement " publi¬shed In 1824 laid a foundation for allfurther work.

The following year Dr. W.H. Fitton andDr. John Alrdas Paris invented a paper

toy called the.Thaumatrope which madeuse of the Idea of persistence of vision.This consisted of a circular card with

strings fastened to two opposite sides(upper photos). On one side was drawna picture of a bird on s perch and on theother a cage. Whirling the card aboutgave the impression that the bird wasinside the cage.

In 1833, a Belgian, Dr. Joseph Plateau,invented the Phenakitoscope (photo,lower left). It consisted of a disk of card¬board pierced at Its circumference bysmall holes, with painted figures on ItsInside surface. When the disk was turn¬ed in front of a mirror, a glance

through one of the holes revealed theillusion of the figures In motion.

Other variations of such devices were

developed but all remained little morethan Interesting toys, and no real progresstowards the cinema was made until

photography was in common use.

One of the oldest optical spectaclesShadow Theatres came from China

and was known in Europe during theMiddle Ages. It gained a new lease oflife towards the end of the 19th century.

Operators of the shadow theatres thenworked only with their hands and a fewsimple accessories. For the projectionof the shadows they used the magiclantern. The most noted of. them atthis time was the conjuror, Trewey.

(Photo, lower right.)

many, 1919) and Sergei Eisenstein's "Potemkin" (Russia,1925).

By the 1920's, films had become a staple necessity likebread or newspapers and rapidly became standardized intotypes. There were the grandiose spectacle films, melo-

1 dramas, comedies, westerns, crime and racketeering pictures.But the same period also saw the rise of new pioneers indifferent countries who sought to turn the art of the cinemainto new channels of aesthetics and expression : René Clair,in France ("Entracte"), Louis Bunuel of Spain ("Un ChienAndalou"), V. I. Pudovkin in Russia ("Mother"), and CarlDreyer in Denmark ("The Passion of Joan of Arc").

Dreyer's film, produced in 1928, marks one of the lastauthentic products of the silent era. The silent film hadbrought an image of life to the screen ; the talkies gave thisimage a voice. Its coming swept like a broad broom, revo¬lutionizing the whole film industry. Even Charlie Chaplin,whose pantomime for long stood as a passionate challengeto the spoken word, admitted defeat in 1936 with his filmappropriately entitled "Modern Times."

The new era of the talking picture broke on the world onthe evening of October 6, 1927 with Warner Brothers "TheJazz Singer" starring Al Jolson. A year before, though, asilent film "Don Juan" had been produced with a syn

chronized musical score, and Fox had launched the Movie¬tone Newsreel in May 1927 using a sound track. It was notuntil 1941, however, that talking films reached a landmark

comparable, to Griffith's work in the silent medium. It camewith Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane".

As it developed, the sound film became not only a richermedium of entertainment but the voice of many causes.With more or less happy results it assumed a role aspamphlet, sermon, textbook and political propaganda voice.The camera, when it took sides, could be middleclass or

proletarian, socialist or anarchist, exalting or satirical.Pacificism ("Maedchen in Uniform"); criticism of standard¬ized mechanization ("A nous la Liberté", "Modern Times");the sufferings of the disinherited ("Grapes of Wrath","Beggar's Opera", "Bicycle Thieves"); maladjusted rebels("Pepe le Moko"); national or revolutionary epics ("Peterthe Great", "The Peasants") : such were the themes whichinspired directors and brought many stars to fame.

In little over 50 years the film has carved out a uniqueplace for itself as a work of art and a medium of entertain¬ment, produced not by a lone creator but by a collectivegroup who number in the hundreds and thousands. Of allthe art forms it is undoubtedly the one that reaches thelargest audience in history.

FORGOTTEN SHADOWS (Cont'd)

WILLIAM HORNER'S ZOETROPE (1834).

;'

"1 fj Í S?*#^^i^B i&fa-Stt

tr f *fef Vi ! jp\

¡T irM af S

! Y 'T^ftaHHi^

ÚL ! Í wii^

\*$ANSCHUTZ'S ELECTRICAL TACHYSCOPE (1889).

Unesco Courier. N' I. 1955

I

I

Emile Reyiiand :

the Walt Disney

of 1892

In the first years of this century, prize-winningschoolchildren were often rewarded with a toy

which once delighted grown-ups too: the Zoe-

trope. It was a device which looked like asaucepan mounted on a short pedestal withregularly spaced slots cut In the sides. Insidewas a paper band with images which brokedown the various stages of an object or personin motion. When the "saucepan" was spun

round by hand a peep through the slots createdthe illusion of movement. The Zoetrope was

thought up in 1834 by a mathematician fromBristol, England, William Horner, and it was agreat improvement on Plateau's magic disks.

(Photo from the film "Naissance du Cinéma".)Plateau's device also inspired a German inventor,Ottomar Anschütz, in 1889, to build his Elec¬

trical Tachyscope, which was one of the great

attractions of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

The Tachyscope was an iron wheel worked byhand which used the flash of an electric tube to

immobilize in appearance a moving image. Thediscovery of the value of the flash, which is oneof the fundamental bases of the modern motion

picture projector, was originally made by SirCharles Wheatstone of England.

About the same time, a Frenchman, Emile Rey-

naud, became the first moving picture showmanof modern times with his "Theatre Optique" in

Paris. (Photo taken from the film "Naissancedu Cinema") This was the first popular motionpicture theatre but hand-drawn instead ofphotographed pictures were used. The draw¬ings were on celluloid bands whose performanceslasted up to 15 minutes. Between 1892 and1900, some 500,000 spectators saw Reynaud's

shows (12,800 of them) in the Musée Grevin.One of the reels was used twice daily for sixty-

two months. Reynaud was an impresario whostood between the shadow plays and panto¬mimes of the ancients and the modern cinema.

A POSTER FOR REYNAUD'S THEATRE.

REYNAUD'S OPTICAL THEATRE (1892). MODERN RECONSTITUTION, LEFT; OLD DRAWING, ABOVE.


A centuryof clicks

A FAR CRY from the reporter-photographers of 1 874 (shownabove) whose "portable" equipment included a tent, folding table,chemicals and a massive camera, is the modern amateur photo¬

grapher armed with a pocket-sized apparatus featuring fast lenses,multiple dials and a host of trick attachments. Photography, oncedescribed as the most typical art of the 20th century, has grownfrom the achievements of many men in many countries. Its realbeginnings were in France in the early I 800's when Joseph NicéphoreNiepce produced on glass an image formed by a camera obscura.Modern photography, however, began with the "daguerreotype",produced by Louis Daguerre, a French artist working with Niepce.It was so successful that a French cartoon soon complained thathalf of mankind had become "daguerreocrazed" while the rest was

"daguerreomazed". Everything on sight was caughtfrom VictorHugo's hand to the sedate family group. But until well on into the

1 9th century equipment was cumbersome and methods werecomplicated. To take his famous American civil war pictures inthe I860's, photographer Matthew Brady required a lumberingvehicle, nicknamed by soldiers the "What is it waggon".- (Phototaken from the film "Naissance du Cinéma".)

HAT TRICK CAMERA was one of the novelties that delighted the

growing legion of amateur photographers in 1885. Drawings ofthat time suggest the seriousness with which these keen picturesnappers went to work. Despite the handicaps of the early days,a group of distinguished and devoted amateurs persisted at theirhobby. Among them was the Oxford mathematician CharlesDodgson (who, as Lewis Carroll, wrote "Alice in Wonderland"),novelists Charles Kingsley and Samuel Butler, and U.S. Justice, OliverWendell Holmes, who called the camera "a mirror with a memory".

10

1 Unesco Courier. Nr 1. 1955

A ^25,000 beton a horse

A $25,000 bet on a horse at a racetrack was

responsible for a major event- in the history ofthe cinema's beginnings. It led to the firstsuccessful attempt at breaking down- motion

by direct photography. Leland Stanford, rich,one-time governor of California, made the bet

in 1872 during a dispute as to whether or notall the legs of a horse running at a full gallop areoff the ground simultaneously. Horsemen werenever entirely satisfied with the way artists had

muybridge painted or drawn horses in motion with theirfour legs spread out in a large arch and actually . touching the ground.He called in an English photographer, Eadweard Muybridge to get pho¬tographic proof to settle the dispute. Muybridge began work with asingle camera at first but his results were not entirely conclusive.

About 1870 Etienne Marey the great French cinema pioneer haddetermined how a horse runs with a recording device attached to its

foot. Drawings made showed that a galloping horse supported itselfon one hoof, then on three, then on two, then on one. But he had

no photographic proof of his findings.

When these drawings reached California some years later, Stanfordcould hardly believe them. In 1877 Muybridge and an engineer, John D.Isaacs, set upa battery of 24 cameras beside a specially re-built racetrackon Stanford's ranch. From the lens shutters a wire thread was stret¬

ched across the track. As the horse raced by, it broke the thread,tripping the shutter of each camera in turn. Muybridge thus obtainedthe first series of photographs showing a horse in full gallop (photostop centre).

Marey was delighted to hear of the results of Muybridge's work andwas the first to synthesize motion from the photographs by mountingthem so that the action could be reconstructed. Marey, one of the

first great physiologists, gave a strong impetus to the photographingand projection of motion pictures through his desire to learn moreabout movement, the movement of lifeanimals, birds and men. Muy¬

bridge had photographed his subject on awhite background so that one exposure des¬troyed the sensitivity of the plate. Using a jet blackbackground Marey foundthattheonly impressionmade at each exposure was the impression of themodel, the rest remaining, black. This enabledhim to take several photographs on the same

plate without any difficulty His famous "Manin White" (photo bottom left) was taken thisway. Photograph below shows a man's walk asit was analysed by Marey, in 1882.

II

The film today

a world picture by James Douglas

Faced 'with ever-inci easing competition from the tele¬vision screen, films have not yet suffered thedecline which many people forecast a few yearsago. By the use of new techniques, such as cine¬

mascope and by a greater concentration on the pro¬duction of realistic documentary featurestwo .goodexamples are "The Wages of Fear" and "On the Water¬frontthe world film industry has managed success¬fully to attract the same millions who have frequentedthe cinema in the past.

However, in the field of feature filmproduction and distribution therehave been some significant changes.Taking a world view it is abundantlyclear that the U.S.A. still continues to

dominate the motion picture field.There are few countries today whichdo not draw the bulk of the featurefilms shown on their screens from

Hollywood. Generally speaking, itwould be true to say that most filmimporting countries' in the worldobtain between 50 and 60 % of allfeature films shown in their cinemas

from the U.S.A. The impact on theminds of millions of people producedby what Hollywood thinks of history,art and everyday life remains anenormously important fact today.

Despite the U.S. predominance there has been, never¬theless, a noticeable trend towards what might be term¬ed a decentralization of the film production industry. Inthe last few years Asia has come very much to the fore,and in 1953 Japan produced no less than 302 feature films

some 00 less than the U.S.A. itself, thus jumpingahead of India which until 1952 was the world's second

largest producer.The Indian film industry, which is one of the largest

in the world, turned out 259 features in the same year.Both Japanese and Indian features are now being shownin European cinemas. One can visit a cinema in Greece,"for example, and see a Japanese film spoken in Japaneseand carrying Greek sub-titles an unheard of thing a fewyears ago. In the Far East the demand for films in Chi¬nese has remained high, and to cater for this demand theHong-Kong film industry has, almost overnight, becomeone of the world's largest.

In one three-month period in 1953 the seven film pro¬duction companies in Hong-Kong made no less than 50feature films. The year's total came to just over 200.

It cannot be said that Europe has lagged behind in theproduction effort, and if the U.S. films shot in Europeancountries are taken into account (many have been madein the past three years) Europe is found to be providinga large proportion of the total world film production.Italy, France, the United Kingdom and the Federal Repub-

THE " BIG EIGHT » OF

FEATURE FILM

PRODUCTION IN 1953

U.S.A.

Japan"India

Hong KongItalyU.K.

France

Germany Federal Republ

360

302

259

200

150*

138

111*

c 101

* Including co-productions

JAMES DOUGLAS has spent the past 20 years of his life in Infor¬mation and news services, as editor, writer and journalist. He hasworked with the BBC, the British Foreign Office and the UnitedNations. Certain facts and figures in this article will appear laterthis year in a revised edition of Unesco's study "World Commu¬nications-Press, Radio, Film, Television" which Is now beingprepared.

lie of Germany are the main producing countries butinteresting developments have also taken place in Norway,Spain, the U.S.S.R., Greece and Turkey.

The Soviet Union has adopted the somewhat revolu¬tionary step of bringing the entire Soviet .feature filmproduction output to the television screen. All films madein the U.S.S.R. are automatically shown on T.V. Witha total of some 700,000 television receivers this may nothave a great effect at the moment, but with the rapid

growth of television the policy- mayhave some important long-term con¬sequences.

In Greece and Turkey there hasbeen a considerable upsurge in filmproduction, and the Greek quota hasmore than doubled in the past twoyears. Turkish studios ,put out some100 features in 1954. In both coun¬

tries the popularity of the locally-produced film has tended to diminishthe box office returns on foreignfeatures : Turkish and Greek cine¬

mas usually play to capacity audi¬ences when domestic films are beingshown. NoAvay, a country whichuntil 1953 had made only a verysmall number of films, turned out 12new feature films in 1954. The Nor¬

wegian Government is lending a cer¬tain amount of assistance to the local film producers andthis also applies in Spain where 44 features were producedin 1953. Most of these were exported for exhibition inLatin America.

Apart from films designed for entertainment, newsreelsare now being increasingly produced in Europe. Coun¬tries such as Hungary, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria,Switzerland and Yugoslavia all produce their ownnewsreels and the erstwhile monopoly of the U.S., Frenchand British newsreels has declined.

In Latin America there has been little change in film¬making. Argentina and Mexico still remain the only twocountries turning out large numbers of feature films,although Brazil has been producing a number of docu¬mentaries and shorts. Argentina produced 39 features in1953 and Mexico 99 in 1952. Both countries export mostof their output to the other republics in Central and SouthAmerica. One Mexican production, screened during1954, drew larger audiences than any foreign film shownin Mexican cinemas a surprising fact when one consi¬ders the easy availability of U.S. films.

If we turn from film production to film exhibition itcan be a matter of little argument that cinemas generallyhave improved, particularly so as regards seating, con¬struction and visibility. This is pronouncedly the case inLatin America. Guayaquil may not be a town well-known to the average person it is in fact Ecuador's chiefport and industrial centre but it is of some interest tonote that a new cinema has just been opened there withevery modern facility and seats for 2,500 people. InVenezuela 11 new cinemas were opened in 1954, andowing to the big increase in popularity of European films

(Continued on page 14)

12



1 É'

O^*^ *â

Inspired by a photographic revolver (heavier thana small cannon) Invented by the Norwegian as¬tronomer Jules Janssen in 1874, Marey devisedhis photographic rifle (far left), the world's firstportable motion picture camera. Pressure onthe trigger exposed a series of sensitive platesin the breech of the rifle and made them rotate.

In this way Marey photographed gulls in motion(above). Marey also built a zoetrope of his own(left) in which he replaced the pictures usuallyused in this apparatus by models of a gull insuccessive stages of flight. When rotated it gave

a perfect illusion of a flight of gulls following eachother round and round in a closed circle.

WltäS8äa&Umm?,_ , ^|f''*fc''*^ffr**M ii i f-*^*^*^^r*^-* ~-**&m)mm&. . i ,** ^¡¿¡

13

The film today (Continued)

a Venezuelan cinema- combine will be purchasing 80European feature films for exhibition in .local cinemas.

In North America the United States has the immense

total of 17,000 permanent cinemas, 4,000 of these are"drive-ins" where your seat is your motor car. No fewerthan ten million people can be seated at one time in allU.S. cinemas a staggering figure. However, despitethese large totals some shrinkage has taken place, anddue primarily to increasing competition from TV, some0,000 cinemas have closed down since 1940. .

On the other side of the 49th parallel 10 million moreCanadians are going to the cinema than was the case fouryears ago. Whether this trend will continue in Canada,where television has spread across the country from eastto west, it is difficult to say. Although Canada imports,large numbers of U.S. features it also provides the bestoverseas market for British films.

In Asia the increase in the number of cinemas has

also been remarkable. Japan has 3,750, India 2,000 andcountries such as Indonesia, Burma and the Philippineshave also shown marked increases. Perhaps, however,the growth in cinema attendance has been most noti¬ceable in the smaller territories where only a few yearsago permanent cinemas were a rarity. The Fiji Islandswith 30 cinemas and Guam with 10 are cases in point.

In common With the growth in the number of cinemas. .in the smaller countries and territories goes the tremen¬dous increase in the number of films imported. Trinidadand Puerto Rico, to take two 'examples, both import some2,000 feature films annually : an amazingly high figurein relation to the population figures. Another case inpoint is Singapore where the cinema attendance rate isone of the world's highest. Singapore imports upwardsof 700 films annually.

Australia and New Zealand have also seen increases in

cinemas and attendances. By reason of the large influxof European migrants into the two countries the demandfor the exhibition of European films has enlarged, withthe result that, in a limited manner, there is a new andactive competition to U.S. dominance.

The pattern of film attendance in European countrieshas remained relatively stable with the exception of theU.S.S.R. where latest reports speak of some 31,000 cine¬mas of all types, with an annual attendance at an.astronomical 2,000 million. A certain decline in atten¬dance has been noted in Scandinavia, the Low Countriesand the U.K. In the latter country it is perhaps signi¬ficant that the number of private cinema owners hassteadily diminished with the result that the great majorityof all U.K-. cinemas are controlled by the large cinemacircuits. Two large groups between them control overone thousand cinemas.

The question of group cinema control and the conse¬quent lack of independent choice in the exhibition of filmsleads to another important aspect of the film industry :the realm of the documentary and educational film.

The true documentary film was first conceived in Bri¬tain in the early thirties by a brilliant group of peopleworking under Sir Stephen Tallents and John Grierson.Since that time documentaries have spread throughoutthe world and today few film-producing countries do notmake a quota of these films. With spread in productionthere has also been a vast increase in exhibition. Britain

could, with justice, still be regarded as the main docu¬mentary producer but the U.S.Av, Denmark, Canada,France, the U.S.S.R., Poland and Czechoslovakia also turnout large numbers. An interesting case is that of Canadawhere the documentaries produced by the Canadian Na¬tional Film Board are dubbed in five different languagesand exported throughout the world.

By means of the mobile film units, educational anddocumentary films reach their audiences in the depths ofthe jungle and the middle of the desert. In the. BelgianCongo, Mozambique, the Cameroons and the Sahara themobile cinemas find their way into the smallest villages


GEORGE DEMENY, a long associate of Marey was interested inphonetics and thought the deaf could learn to talk through photos ofspeech. He developed the Phonoscope in 1891 decomposing themovements of speech. (Photo shows him saying "Vive la France.")It was a modified version of Marey's camera and a dozen other instru¬ments. Concerned more with education than cinema technique, hepatented it without realizing its importance. He later developedanother camera which eliminated the jerks and tears of the film.

EARLY PANORAMIC SCREENS. The two strange-looking con¬traptions shown here are early attempts at large screen projection.The Cyclorama (above) by a Chicagoan named Chase was tried outunsuccessfully in 1894 with a 150-foot circular screen. Mechanismwas on circular platform. The Cineorama (below) a multiple cameradevice developed by a Frenchman Grimoin-Sanson two years later hadthree performances before it was stopped as a fire hazard at the 1900Paris Exhibition. Visitors were invited for an imaginary balloon flightand a real balloon was attached to the platform where several hundredspectators were grouped in centre of 300-foot circular screen. Theinventor, ruined by the police decision, abandoned the cinema forever

14

Unesco Courier. NM. 1955


WORLD'S FIRST FILM STUDIO, known as "Black Maria" because it was painted black inside and out, wasbuilt by Thomas Edison in 1 894. It had revolving base on which it was turned towards sunlight. In this studioEdison made hundreds of brief films for his Kinetoscope, the first successful moving picture machine marketed(below). Picture strip shows professional strong man Eugene Sandow displaying muscles for the camera.

The peepshow sensation

on Broadway

Edison came to the motion picture

through his" Talking Phonograph. Hewas looking for a device that would

combine the voices of the phonograph

with the sight and movement of a picture.Late in 1887 Edison started work on

what was to become his Kinetograph

camera and Kinetoscope peepshow film

device. The world premiere took place

on April 14, 1894 at a Kinetoscope

Parlor opened on Broadway in New

York City. The Kinetoscopes were a great success. S 120 was takenin the first night. The original show of films was a kind of "doublefeature" in that the spectator was charged 25 cents to see the secondline of five Kinetoscopes. The films included "Fred Ott's Sneeze" (seefront cover). This was one of the most significant days in cinema

history for it brought the motion picture to the public for the first

time and from Edison's Kinetoscope and his Kinetograph modern .

motion picture devices evolved. Edison was aided in his experiments

by William Laurie Dickson. At first the "Wizard of West Orange"

used coated glass plates and later celluloid for taking pictures.' Then jin Eastman's flexible film roll he found an ¡deal material. Edison was ;

the first to perforate the two sides of each picture or frame to keep them j

passing evenly through the camera and his perforated film is still used today, jEdison's first camera was a power-driven machine as heavy as a piano. |With it he turned out short films, fifty feet of which provided aí

I 3-second show. The Kinetoscope immediately became a world sensa¬

tion. But Cdison at first only developed and exploited his device as a

peep-show machine. Not until April 1896 did he project hjs firstfilm on a screen publicly. The projector used was developed by a;

Virginian, Thomas Armat, and manufactured by the Edison Company,

which called it the Vitascope. Other inventors patented different projec-

tion machines and for many years a bitter patent war raged betwean

Edison and the rival companies which had by developed by this time.

15


Th screen s

world premiere :

receipts 33 francs"At the time when Edison's Kinetoscope beganto arouse public curiosity," wrote AugusteLumière in his memoirs, "my brother and Ithought how interesting it would be if we couldproject . moving scenes on a screen." TheLumière brothers, owners of a photographicmaterials factory in Lyons, began experimentingwith the idea. In February 1 895, they obtaineda patent on their camera-projector device, the"Cinématographe Lumière." Ten months later,on December 28, they gave their first publicprojection (admission one franc) in the basementof the Grand Café in Paris. Only a few dozencurious people paid to watch the films on thefirst day and the receipts amounted to only33 francs. But word of the spectacle soonspread through Paris and within a few weeksthe Lumière films were playing to a standing-room-only audience averaging 2,000 admissionsa day. "The show left us dumbfounded, struckwith amazement," one early spectator wrote."At the end of the performance though therewas wild enthusiasm." Thus at last the motion

picture screen was revealed to a large public.The hesitant steps of the past were now tobecome a firm stride as the motion picturedeveloped In many lands into a great industry.Photos show Louis and Auguste Lumière, one. ofthe Grand Café posters, shots from two ofthe early films that they made "A TrainArrives at Ciotat Station" and "Baby's Meal."

16

Unesco Courier. N' 1. 1955

The motion picture industry start¬ed on its world career as anentertainment medium with the

presentation of topical events orwhat we would today call the newsreel.The chief aim of the earliest produ¬cers like Edison, Lumière, Pathe andGaumont was in fact to give theiraudiences films taken from life, fromeveryday events in the street, in .railway stations and wherever therewas movement or activity.

Thus Lumiere's first films, showingthe arrival of a train and workmen

leaving the factory, were in a sensenewsreel subjects. The first realnewsreel was made by the Lumièrebrothers even before they gave theirfirst public showing in Paris. TheCinématographe was to be shown atthe Congress of the National Union ofFrench Photographic Societies inJune of 1895. There the Lumières

created a veritable sensation when

they filmed the delegates arriving forthe opening meeting on June 10, de¬veloped the film and showed it on ascreen before the conference ended on

June 12.

From this point on it was only ashort step to the regular filming oftopical events, and . film producerswere not slow to take it. On January5, 1896, the Lumière brothers engagedan Algerian photographer, Felix Mes-guich, who was to become the world'sfirst film reporter. For years he trav¬elled all over Europe and the rest of .the world. Other producers followed :the -Pathe brothers and Léon Gaumont

in France, Oskar Messter in Germany,Edison and later his rivals the Bio-

The Newsreel

Cameraman

of Yesterdaygraph and Vitagraph companies in theUnited States.

By 1897 Biograph and Lumière hadboth filmed the Jubilee of QueenVictoria ; Tilden and Rector in theU.S.A. the Corbett-Fitzsimmons boxingmatch; Pathé the Czar's arrival inParis ; and Gaumont the arrival ofthe French President. Edwin S. Por¬

ter, the pioneer of the story film andmotion picture editing, was equallybusy at this period with newsreelshorts (President McKinley's Inaugura¬tion, McKinley's Funeral Procession,etc.).

Georges Méliès, the genius who de¬veloped the film as entertainment, wasalso interested in current happeningsbut only in order to "reconstruct"such notable events as the coronation

of Edward VII in 1902. Early filmmakers were often compelled to re-enact news events since the camera in

those days was 'not" admitted every¬where as it is today.

Thus when the Spanish-Americanwar broke out in 1898, cameramentried to get to the front in Cuba butwere turned back by the military au¬thorities. Edison, Biograph and othersreconstructed the battle scenes them¬

selves. The most sensational re-

enactment, however, was the accom¬plishment of Edward H. Amet after the.Spanish fleet was destroyed. Workingfrom photographs, he built a plastercopy of Santiago Bay in the garden ofhis villa. Here (not in his bathtub asis generally supposed) he. placed small,but exact functioning replicas of theSpanish and American armadas andfilmed the battle in all its detail. The

completed film had such tremendoussuccess that the Madrid Government

even bought a copy for its militaryarchives. This same Amet againcreated a sensation by staging onwaste ground in Brooklyn realisticbattle scenes from the Boer Warwhich broke out almost immediatelyafter the Spanish-American war.

An important event for the futureof motion picture photography camewith the introduction of artificiallighting. Newsreel producers wereresponsible for it. On November 3,1899, the Jeffries-Sharkey boxingmatch was held at -the Coney IslandClub in Brooklyn, The Biographcompany obtained the exclusive filmrights for this event and installed abattery of 400 arc lamps in the hall.(They gave off such heat that at the

end of each of the 35 rounds the

boxers had to seek cover under a pa¬rasol!) Rival Vitagraph techniciansthough were hidden in the audienceand as the fight began they crankedtheir film by the light of the lamps,protecting themselves with "shocktroops". Both films were greatsuccesses financially but the Biographattained a record for the longest filmmade in the 19th century (5,575 feet).

In the early days of the cinema, thenews was not presented as it is today

in -journal form. Until about 1907,cinema programmes were made up ofcomic, dramatic or news shorts. Atfirst their maximum length . was 65feet but gradually increased. (A five-minute film needs a minimum of 4,800images.) The exhibition of films wasmostly in the hands of travellingshowmen; films were not rented asthey are now but sold to exhibitorswho screened the prints until theywere worn out.

The birth of the .first newsreel

journals coincided with two revolu¬tionary changes in the industry. Onewas the change-over from travellingshows to permanent halls where,since the audience remained largelythe same, the programme had to berenewed frequently. The other change¬over was from outright sale to film-renting. This occurred sometimearound 1905 in the United States, andaround 1907 in France. Also in 1907Charles Pathé created his Journal. He

was followed in 1908 by Léon Gau¬mont and the Société Eclair. In 1909the Pathé brothers went to London

and pioneered newsreels there withPathé Gazette.

The modern newsreel was born. It

remained as a branch of film produc¬tion and kept growing steadily, firstwith the advent of "talkies" and nowwith television.

17

A page is turned

GAG KING of early comedy producers In the U.S. wasMack Sennett who sometimes appeared in his own films. In"Murphy's I.O.U." he here plays the part of a waiter.

In the first two decades of the twentieth

century many new cinema pioneers tookover the development of the film from

those who had discovered how to make

moving pictures, and began a great era ofsearch and endeavour.

In France the work of George Méliès

permanently enriched the technique andscope of filmmaking by introducing it tofancy and to fantasy and by forcing it totell a story. Méliès was the first to createvisual illusions on the screen, and in 1900

he made the first series of fairy tale subjectswhich embodied a rich succession of trans¬

formations, tricks, fantasies and illusions.

His most famous picture "A Trip to theMoon" was made in 1902 and his last "big"

film "The Conquest of the Pole" in 1912.During this period, a flexible form of narra¬

tive film was shaping in America, In whosedevelopment one man, David Wark Griffith,stands out above all others. In 1915 his civil

war epic "The Birth of a Nation" establishedhim as the foremost U.S. producer. Still

more important, the film induced millions ofpeople to take the cinema seriously. AnotherAmerican producer, Mack Sennett, becamethe master of film comedy. His use of gags,

slapstick and unexpected situations revealedrich sources of humour.

Thus, after its primitive, hesitant begin¬nings, the cinema industry quickly expandedand its enormous entertainment possibilities

and popular appeal were firmly established. CINEMA "TRICKS "WERE FIRST DEVISED AND

INTOLERANCE

a 1916 superpro¬duction by DavidWark Griffith. Its :

settings and crowdscenes have since

been models for

all "super" films.

18


) USED ON A LARGE SCALE BY GEORGES MELIES OF FRANCE IN SUCH FILMS AS "JOURNEY INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE" (ABOVE) MADE IN 1901.

I

CAB1RIA, an am¬bitious film made

by the Italian pro¬ducer Pastrone,included the first

panoramic .shotstaken with camera

on wheels (1913)

APOCALYPTIC

HORSE and astral

carriage dream¬like devices used

by George Melles,an early exponentof theatrical fanta¬

sy in film-making.

19

DREAMING

with eyeswide open

by W. D. Wall

From its earliest beginnings, the cinema has been fearedas potentially the most universal and powerful meansof mass influence. It has only recently been replacedas the bogey of the moralists and educators by the

latest form of popular entertainmenttelevision.

Much the same note of angry alarm was struck by hostilecritics of the drama in 17th-century England and else¬where, and in the 19th century by those who disapprovedof illustrations m newspapers. Jeremy Collier slated thedramatists of the Restoration in his "Short view of the

Profaneness and Immorality of the "English Stage" andWordsworth wrote an indignant sonnet on "the vile abuseof pictured page" saying that "discourse once deem'd man'snoblest attribute" would die under its influence.

In spite of the indictments of the moralists, the general

public continues to regard the cinema primarily as a dis¬traction just as it has accepted the theatre and the illus¬trated newspaper.

The surprising thing is that relatively very little is knownin any objective or scientific way about the influence which

the cinema exerts or the daily lives of people. Yet this is a .fascinating field of study which leads right to many of themost important psycho) ^gical and social problems of modernman and his society. Much has indeed been written andsaid. on the economic, social and cultural influences whichappear to operate in the production of a particular film orwhich govern the choice and handling of themes by sectionsof the industry.

Many have speculated on the way the cinema makespeople more or less contented with their lot, acts as anexcitant to crime, influences the purchase of clothes, motor¬cars or refrigerators. Apart from the work of a handful ofsocial scientists in Europe and North America, such pro¬nouncements are relatively partisan, concerned with attack¬ing or defending the cinema industry. Few have recognizedthe cinema as probably neither good nor bad in itself, but asat once a shaping force and a symptom of the age andculture which have given birth to it.

For want of objective studies we cannot even answer _sucha simple question as "Is this a good film for children?"In spite of great technical improvements, the progress ofthe cinema as an aesthetic, educative and recreationalmedium is at the mercy of trial and error. This may beexcellent when it is the product of genius; and when cir¬cumstances as for example in the 17th-century drama, inEngland or France permit the inspiration of the drama¬tist to dominate his medium and to know his audience. In

modern film production, however, circumstances are entirelydifferent. A film is a collective phenomenon resulting from

Dr. W.D. Wall, psychologist and educator, has devoted manyyears to research in Great Britain on the reactions to films ofchildren and adults. He is the author of " The Adolescent Child ",and numerous studies and articles on this question.

an only partly controlled inter-play between producer,author, cast and a multitude of technicians.

Moreover, the lack of continuity in the actual production,the isolation of the film-making community from dailycontact with its audience an isolation which is as much

economic as geographical is likely to emphazise the ele¬ments of collective fantasy and remoteness from dailyreality, without permitting an individual genius to dominateand refine them into a work of art.

Another circumstance of fundamental importance, psy¬chologically and socially, is that of all forms of expression,the film is the one most capable of producing illusion andthe least dependent upon an active, imaginative effort inthe spectator. The fancies which for long have charmed orterrified the imagination of mankindghosts, fairies, flying

spirits, giants,witches, the ma¬terialization and

the dematerial-

ization of "solid"

human beings,

magical transfor¬mations of the

physical environ¬ment can be

reproduced withan actuality far

outstripping thelimitations of the

stage or of lifeitself. Films make

the most dream¬

like events seem

real and can up¬

set all the phy¬sical laws or laws

of consistency ofcharacter which

actually operatein the real and

everyday world.

Most of us unconsciously or subconsciously are hauntedby. "magical" wishes, fears and anxieties which rise to the

surface usually only in moments of fatigue or in dreams.Much of the appeal of art is to these at best barely consciousaspects of our emotional lives. At least some of the pleasuresof literature and of the theatre are those which arise from

the stimulation of fantasy and day-dreams. But the printedpage, the illustration, even the actors on a stage, aresufficiently remote from actuality for us nearly always to beaware of the gulf.

The darkened cinema, and the moving shadows cunninglycontrived may produce a situation akin to that between

sleeping and awaking. Thus the instinctive elements upon

20

Unesco Courier. Nr I. 1955

which our emotional life is deeply based such as fear, eroticdesire, self-assertion, aggressiveness and the like may bedirectly stimulated without our realizing that what we areseeing on the screen is not really true.

It is perhaps in this peculiar combination of the circum¬stances of film production and of an almost direct appeal .

to mental activity below the level of consciousness, thatwe have the central problem of the cinema and of its socialinfluence. It is one of the most difficult to investigate

directly, though attempts have been made by a series ofindirect approaches.

We know, for example, that cinema audiences' in Englandand probably elsewhere in Europe are not a represen¬

tative cross section of the population: they are in fact apsychologically more vulnerable group. Adolescents of bothsexes and young men and women-attend more frequentlythan married couples ; the peak of attendance is betweenthe ages of 16 and' 19. It has therefore been argued thatthe plots chosen and treated by producers are directed tothe needs and wishes of an audience which is not fullymature.

It has, however, also been pointed out that the compositionof the audience might be changed if films stressed differentaspects of life. This might well be so, though it is not quiteas simple as itseems since other

factors play a partin cinema attendan¬

ce. We know that

attendance at the

cinema tends to

rise when peopleare emotionally dis¬

turbed, as theywere during the

war ; maladjustedand unhappy indi¬viduals go more

frequently than theaverage; and, amongEnglish adolescentsat least, attendanceamong the less in¬telligent students ishigher than amongolder and more able

groups.

More striking still

perhaps is the factthat among children .and adolescents over the age of ten roughly three-quartersgo to the cinema at least once a week, and about a quarter,as much as twice to four or even six times weekly. Figuresfor adult attendance are more difficult to obtain but it

seems probable that, of city and town dwellers, about halfgo habitually once a' week ; and relatively few do not goat all.

Such a level of attendance must mean that sooner or later

every film generally released in a country will be seen bythe majority of the young adult population. Such conti¬nuous exposure, to a large number of films often withoutany discrimination being exercised is worth examining.

Between 1945 and 1949, I personally carried out a seriesof investigations on the psychological effects of the cinemaon children. In the course of one study, I had to see andanalyze some 30 films, in a 14-day period. My attention wasthus concentrated upon the plots and incidents of each film.In spite of this! at the end of the period I could recall littleexcept isolated images and occasional incidents. I couldn'tremember the titles or even the stories. It may be that, forthe frequent filmgoer, the immediate distraction is all, andnothing remains. The film passes like a dream.

That this is not wholly true is shown by a curious pheno¬menon first pointed out by an investigation made witheducational films in the thirties. It was noticed that when

children wrote essays about what they had seen, theirdescriptions were episodic and tied to particular strikingimages ; there was more detail and less generalization orlogical continuity. The same kind of result occurred in writ

ings by adolescents in 1947 on "My favourite film." Certainvivid incidents, appealing to such emotions as fear, self-assertion, sex, sympathy for others, stood out, whilst theplot may have been forgotten or misunderstood.

Yet in many subtle ways these general themes may rein- 'force or counteract the attitudes of the spectators. In thewritings of adolescents and even in those of adults thereis a strong tendency to identify oneself with the hero orheroine or with one of the characters portrayed. Sometimesthe identification is with the star rather than with the part

played, or with the attributes like physical beauty, wealth,ability to ride a horse, travel or with the sex role playedvis-à-vis another star. Such identification, especially among

the immature, may well lead to an acceptance of certainimplied moral values of a particular pattern of behaviourand of attitudes towards others and to life in general.

' Analyzing the various plots and the values which filmsportray may therefore give us an important clue to the waythe cinema industry may be shaping our communities.Several such analysis were undertaken from the mid-nineteen-thirties until the immediate post-war years. Ingeneral the result is what might be expected. Films on citylife predominate and deal with people in a slightly highersocial or financial bracket than the one most audiences

belong to. Over halfthe leading charac¬ters are cast in roles

that are . egoisticand, in some cases,morally doubtful if

not frankly hostileor contemptuous ofsociety. The love

themes which pre¬dominate accentuate

physical attractionât the expense ofmutual understand¬

ing and friendship.

Very few films,proportionately, dealin any deep or pe¬netrating way withthe great social,moral or interna¬

tional problems ofour time or tend

to provoke seriousthought : and rareindeed are those

which do not finally preach some rather banal philosophyof contentment with things as they are.

One is however moved to ask whether the cinema is anydifferent in this respect from the stage or from the generalrun of printed matter in this or any other age. All tendto reflect popular thinking and popular values ; they alsotend to hold a slightly distorting mirror up to nature andto emphasize some aspects at the expense of others, In thecase of the cinema, at least, the pertinent criticism is notthat it depraves and corrupts but that it does not edify.

Does the audience, however, merely accept passively thevalues and attitudes that are presented on the screen ? Asfar as adolescents are concerned and they are the most

impressionable group the answer is that they do not.In a study of a dozen films of the usual types, I found thatboys and girls between thirteen and sixteen exercized con¬siderable discrimination. Films like Odd Man Out, The Root

of all Evil, The Green Years and Razor's Edge were con¬sidered by some two-thirds of nearly a thousand boys andgirls to be true to life a judgment with which in a gene¬ral sense, one must concur.

Other films like Monsieur Beaucaire, Time of their lives,

Kid from Brooklyn, were enjoyed but not taken seriouslyor considered true to life. Uncertainties arise over, .films

like The Magic Bow a romanticized and not very accuratebiography of Paganini. It seems to be true to say that whenadolescents and young adults are presented with situationsand circumstances which they can compare with their own

experience they do draw a distinction between the fantasy

(Continued on page 32.)

21

CHINESE ARTISTS

2,000 YEARS AGO

Theypaintedwithknife and brush

by Chou Ling

TWO thousand years ago the Chinese developed anunusual form of art. They engraved paintingsdirectly on stone. From this ancient art anotherevolved, called stone "rubbings" which achieved

exquisite, highly delicate results on paper and silk. Sincelittle of this art is known outside of China, Unesco has

prepared a travelling exhibition containing high-fidelityreproductions of 20 of these stone paintings and rubbingsas well as 40 other masterpieces in colour of ancientChinese painting. Making the reproductions was suchexacting and delicate work that it took a Parisian publisher(Editions Euros) eight years to complete the job. Worksoriginally painted on silk were reproduced on silk. Theoriginals were collected from museums the world overincluding the Chinese Government Museum, Tokyo Mu¬seum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the British Museum,the Musée Guimet in Paris and the National Museum

in Stockholm. Twenty identical sets of Unesco's exhi¬bition, entitled "Two Thousand Years of Chinese Painting",are now beginning a world tour of Unesco member coun¬tries. They will be displayed in art galleries, museumsand centres for youth and workers groups in rural andurban areas. The UNESCO COURIER has asked Dr.

Chou Ling, art historian, critic and lecturer, who hasdevoted the past 15 years to the colour reproduction ofChinese paintings, to describe his country's stone gravingsand a few other aspects of ancient Chinese art.

EAGLE. CARVED STONE PAINTING OF THE HAN

Many are the paths that lead tobeauty. The Greeks, in thetime of Pericles, chose that ofsculpture and . found their

ideal artistic expression in the art ofstone-carving-. The Hindus, withIheir lofty sense of religion, preferredthe spiritual path and achieved theirclosest approach to beauty throughmysticism. The Chinese, who tendedtowards abstract thought, have fromtheir earliest times been charmed bypictorial art.

This choice is no accident. Paint¬

ing, which is to some extent abstract,lias an extraordinary power of sug¬gestion and description. Form andmovement can be expressed in a fewfirm, lively strokes. To depict thethree-dimensional world on a flat'

surface is no matter of accident

either it is merely one of thosehuman possibilities which the Chi¬nese regard as a kind of discovery,and the secret of which they longkept to themselves.

TIGER AND LEOPARD. CARVED STONE RUBBINGS DATING FROM HAN PERIOD, DISCOVERED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

22


PERIOD (206 B.C-220 A.D.). PROCESSION OF CHARIOTS. A RUBBING NOW IN SZECHWAN PROVINCIAL MUSEUM.

The distant origins of Chinesepainting are known to us chiefly,from written descriptions, for theworks themselves have perished.The engraved bones, the prehistoricpottery, and the decoration of thebronze objects of the Chou period-(400 B.C.) already reveal the existenceof considerable pictorial skill amongthe Chinese; but in painting, themost striking evidence is provided byan important group of engravedstones belonging to the Han period(206 B.C. 220 A.D.).

These are tombstones or funerarymonuments, and the process is akind of engraved painting. They arenot bas-reliefs, as might be supposed;they are reaf paintings, in which thefeeling for composition and the pic¬torial sense are fully evident. Onlyinstead of using a brush, the Chineseof that period preferred to engrave^their compositions directly on thestone with. a knife.

(Continued on page 2S)

.*" v \ » ' ' - " * C- '

? v ' mWESi

1 "*iv.v.v 'VvilBHORSEMAN BETWEEN TWO TOWERS. FUNERARY RELIEF, HAN PERIOD, DISCOVERED 1920.

23

LAKESHORE IN WIN¬

TER. Painting on silk byan unknown master typicalof the Sung dynasty (12th-

1 3th century) which pro¬duced one of the greatestlandscape schools the worldhas ever known. Artists

sought only essentials inlandscapes, discarding alltrivial and accidental effects.

This masterpiece, measuringAy2 feet by 3 % feet, isnow in the British Museum.

THE POET LI T'AI-PO.

A masterpiece of purityby Liang K'ai, one of thegreatest artists of the Ch'anschool (a group of painterswho rebelled against theacademic school of their

time). Liang K'ai workedaround I 200, and launchedthe fashion for monochrome

(wash-tints). Depicting thepoet, he makes no effortat a set background butconcentrates on conjuringup an inner atmosphere.

24


THEY PAINTED WITH

KNIFE AND BRUSH

(Continued)

Later on, a method of "pressing" was invented. inChina, making it possible to take a kind of rubbing ofthese sculptural compositions and transfer them directonto paper. As a result, these engraved paintingsreached a wide public as the centuries went by and hadan undoubted influence on painting itself.

These engraved stones were particularly numerousin three large districts the provinces of Chang-Tong.Honan and Szechwan. They deal with a wide varietyof subjects, including scenes of domestic life, hunting,palace life, battle, and entertainments (both popular andritual). Throughout the different regions and epochs,they preserve a most remarkable similarity of style;they are free and direct in expression, full of move¬ment, and often convey a feeling of great liveliness.

The earliest actual paintings which have come downto us date from the fourth century A.D. Reaching theTang period (018-907), we find in the towns along theWestern frontier, on the borders of Central Asia, aprecious store of frescoes which are still preserved incertain Buddhist caves. These frescoes convey valuableinformation to art historians, for they reveal theinfluence of Indian and Persian painting. This was theperiod immediately following the introduction of Bud¬dhism into China, when certain monks made longjourneys from China to India or from India to CentralChina, fostering, in their comings and goings, a wideinterchange of artistic knowledge between China andthe other countries of Asia.

Aller these transitional years, the Sung period (900-1270), during which China established its aestheticcriteria, began to work out its own laws of beauty. Thisperiod produced many admirable pictorial works inChinese ink touched up with gouachemisty land¬scapes, restrained and rapidly executed portraits, anddelicate, elegant, thought-provoking drawings. It wasat this juncture that Chinese painting- took the finalform which it retained for nearly a thousand years,until modern times. It is notable for its lyricism,naturalistic style and quality of line. It also revealsa unique concept of painting, volume being renderedsolely by means of very firm outline, with no shadowsto destroy the- ethereal effect of the painted surface.These characteristics of the great Sung period havepersisted, despite the various changes of style whichoccurred during the Yuan period which succeeded it(1276-1368)when China, under Mongol domination,developed a keen interest in hunting scenes and thebeauty of horsesand the subsequent Ming period(1308-1644), which saw a deliberate return to the strictlyChinese manner and an attempt to recover the earlierhighly stylized and calligraphic form of beauty.

Not until fairly recently did Chinese art begin to beknown in other countries. From the eighteenth centuryonwards, missionaries began to spread a knowledge ofit in Europe and America, and there was a vogue forminor works of artengraved stones or embroideries,decorated with fantastic beasts or flowers. Only atthe beginning of the present century did furtherresearch lead to the discovery that Chinese art had moresubtle and more powerful aspects ; and today werealize that, through all the stimulating variations ofits two-thousand-year history, it has preserved a unityof style and an aesthetic aim which is peculiar to theChinese people.

RAIN. One of the simple but delightful little engravedpaintings found on the tombstones of ancient Chinesenotables, often depicting earthly life or a future one.

25

20th century

Gui 1 i v ers

by

Alain

Gille

YARDSTICKS

FOR OUR UNI¬

VERSE. Man mea¬

sures the universe

of the infinitelysmall and infinitelylarge with an ama¬zing variety of ins¬truments. Diagramshows several of

these, and mea¬surements obtai¬

ned in metres. Dot¬

ted lines indicate

still unexploreduniverse.

he natives of Lilliput inSwift's Gullivei-'s Travels

stood knee high to a grass¬hopper, measuring no more than sixinches in height, while the giantBrobdingnagians were 60 feet tall.Since then, modern Gullivers havebeen exploring and measuring Lilli¬putian worlds a million million timessmaller and giant Worlds many,billions of times larger.

These figures stagger the imagi¬nation. What, we may ask, canman actually measure that is soincredibly tiny, or so immense ?

ALAIN GILLE Is the Unesco specialist whoplanned and prepared the travelling scienceexhibition described in this article eis well asothers organized by Unesco, now touringmember states throughout the world.

26

At the smallest end of the scale of

measurement, exploring within theatom, man has measured, the dia¬meter of elementary particles such asthe proton. In the world of theinfinitely; great he has measured thedistance to the remotest galaxy olstars known today.

Nowadays, we know that manyanimals have some knowledge of sizeand distance. When a hermit crab,for example, outgrows its shell"hideout" and looks around for

a larger home, it prospects a newshell by exploring it all over with itsclaws and feelers. Only when it issatisfied with the dimensions does it

"try on" the new shell for size.

But this is a confused sort of

knowledge. While there are manykinds of animals capable of counting,there is not one which has the idea

of measuring or of systematicallyplacing the living creatures andthings around it in their properrelationship to one another.

It was when our ancestors learned

to measure things around them thatthey Were better able to cope withlife. And they learned to measurethings as we do today by comparingthem with other lengths which theytook as standards or units. The first

such units were derived from thingswith which man was most familiar:

the foot, the inch (from the thumb tipto the. first joint), the cubit (derived


Unesco Courier. N' 1. 1955

2700 M.les

USIS

27

Gullivers

(Continued) Among the giantsfrom the Latin cubilas, elbow, it wasthe distance from a man's elbow to

the tip of his middle finger), andothers. The Egyptians used theoutstretched arms as a unit, and theGreeks the length of a stadium (about007 feet).

With his senses alone, man couldexplore only a tiny fraction of theuniverse. But, using his intellect, hehas designed and built tools andinstruments 'which have taken him

far beyond the world directly acces¬sible to his senses. Willi their helphe has carried his investigations intothe realm both of the infinitelysmall ' and of the infinitely large.During his search for new know¬ledge he has discovered unsuspectedmarvels that have enriched his ideasof the world, and in this process hehas developed new means withwhich to transform his existence.

Exploring tiny specksUntil the 17lh century, when the

magnifying glass and the mi¬croscope were invented, man

had practically no other instrumentfor studying the infinitely small.The lower limit of his universe was

the power of his own eye, i.e. itscapacity to distinguish two dots aboutone-tenth of a millimetre (three,thousandth's of an inch) apart, andplaced about ten inches from the

' eye.With this human limitation it was

as if the entire world had been pass¬ed through a sieve having a mesh ofone-tenth of a millimetre. Then,suddenly, the new optical instrumentsenabled man to peer into a mysteriousrealm the "microscopic world"and led him to the discovery of cellsand microbes, and thus to the proofthat-life also existed on this new and

tinier scale. With improvements inthe new research tools scientists

using the optical microscope even¬tually were able to distinguish twopoints 0.0001 mm apart the meshesof the sieve had come a thousand

times closer together.

About two decades ago came ano¬ther great advance the inventionof the electron microscope. Withthis powerful instrument it was pos¬sible to distinguish two points a mil¬lionth of a millimetre apart. Thusthe meshes of the sieve had closed in

a further hundred times, and sciencemade a fine haul, bringing in viruses

the simplest form of life we knowand large organic molecules.Then the discovery that X-rays' dif¬

fract (break up) on crystals broughtatoms into the microscopic instru¬ment "net". Atoms were found to

be arranged in regular geometricalpatterns inside molecules, some tenmillionths of a millimetre apart. Onthis level of the microscopic worldno form of life was found.

The achievement of measuring dis¬tances between atoms in molecules

and crystals encouraged scientists toaccept the next challenge how tomeasure the distances between the

particles which make up the atomsthemselves. Science and technology,showing themselves equal to thischallenge, produced new instru¬ments. One of these was the Wil¬

son Cloud chamber (a device whichmakes it possible to see and photo¬graph the path of electrically chargedparticles). Another was the Geiger-Muller counter which detects and

counts elementary particles emittedby radio-active substances.

Now the meshes of the sieve had

become a million times more closely-knit than before, catching elementaryparticles electrons, protons and.neutrons and giving man power¬ful aid in his efforts to learn all thebasic secrets of matter.

Primitive man had a limited sense

of great distances. His life was.taken up with the search for food.For him major distances were thosewhich took him to the limits of his

hunting-ground. Bis life was atwo-dimensional one. Sometimes

he must have looked up at the nightsky to admire the stars, and wonder¬ed how far a\vay they were. Butto know how distant an object is onehas to be able to reach it ; and primi¬tive man's only means of reachingskywards was to climb trees. Hetherefore concluded that all heavenly^bodies Were the same distance away,from him.

This view prevailed until the 0thcentury B.C. Then the AncientGreeks made two important measure-ments: the circumference of the

Earth and .the distance from the Earthto the Moon. Their other measure¬

ments, however, were little more thanimaginative inventions. It was Co¬pernicus in the 10th century who firstworked out the exact order of distri¬

bution and distances of the main pla¬nets.

Reaching for the stars

The invention of the telescope, in1 the 17th century, gave man a

powerful instrument to reachbeyond the limits of this visualcapacity. Until then, astronomershad only studied the planetarysystem. But with the 18th century,scientists began to take an activeinterest in the stars, and devisedtechniques and instruments formeasuring their dimensions and dis¬tances method of trigono¬metric parallaxes, the spectrophoto-metric method and others. In 1838,just over a hundred years ago, thefirst stellar distance was measured

that of Star 01 from Cygnus (11

(Continued on page 31.)

28


0 %0

:$P£"*^

m

r

\

f i

Messages fromouter space

High on the flat top of Mount Palomarin southern California stands the world's

largest telescope with a mirror over 16feet in diameter (above). It can penetrateinterstellar space 500 million to a thousandmillion light years away. Science is nowdeveloping another and more extensive

" window " into outer space by capturingradio waves transmitted by the stars witha new instrument, the radio telescope,

which uses large radar aerials shaped likeconcave mirrors. It is unhampered by

climatic conditions, operating day or night,and has revealed previously unsuspectedradio stars which may well be as commonin the universe as visible stars. Britain

is completing a giant 250 foot radio tele-cope, to be the world's largest (model is

shown on left). Remarkable photo on rightis the " Dumbbell " planetary nebula, aluminous cluster of stars 650 light yearsaway (3,815 million million miles), takenby French observatory.

25

Gll'lliverS (Continued)


Strange patterns fromthe microscopic world

(Continued from page 28.)

light-years) Distances were at thattime measured in thousands of mil¬

liards of kilometres

Since then, instruments have beensteadily improved. ' Attention wasturned from individual stars to gal¬axies. At the beginning of the 20thcentury, the distances measuredwere no further than a hundred light-years or so ; but the largest telescopein the world today (on Mount Palo¬mar in the United States) with its5-metre mirror, enables scientists toobserve galaxies nearly a thousandmillion light-years a\vay.

Measurement of

length and dis¬tances is onlyone part of theprogress made inthe field of mea¬

surement in ge¬neral, coveringthe smallest and

largest masses,time, energy, tem¬perature and ma¬ny other magni¬tudes. In all cases

man has design¬ed and producedmany instrumentswhich have en¬

abled him to reach

out beyond theworld directly ac-

What are they?The seven photomicrographs

on these pages present some

of the inhabitants and objects

found in the microscopic world

and are shown here as they

appear through powerful elec¬

tron microscopes. They inclu¬

de: water plants, aluminium,

blood pigment, paraffin, cellu¬

lose and varnish. Can you tell

which is which ? They are iden¬

tified on next page.

cessible to his senses to an infi¬

nitely small and infinitely largeuniverse of ever receeding limits.

Our present knowledge in this fieldis shown in.a Unesco travelling scien¬tific exhibition " Man Measures the

Universe", which is now touring thecountries of Western Europe., t

The exhibition explains nine ma¬jor scales of magnitude and employsa large collection of scientific instru¬ments to demonstrate methods ofmeasurement used in each case.

They cover the entire range of sizebeginning with lengths that are near

the human scaleand measured in

yards, feet andinches, thendownward to the

smallest knowndimensions of the

particles insidethe atom.

Reaching out¬ward, the exhibi¬tion shows the

methods of mea

suring g

phical dthe solar

distances

the stars

distances

remote gmeasured

sees (19miles).

e o g r a-istances,system,

botween

and the

o f th e

alaxies

in par-billion

31

Dreaming with open eyes(Continued from page 21)

world of the screen and the realities of their own lives.-But when the realism of the screen bears upon somethingbeyond their experience, they either reject it entirely asfantastic or untrue as is occasionally the case with picturesof rather luxurious American lifeor their judgment isuncertain.

We may also ask how far films arouse discontent andlongings which in the nature of things cannot usually besatisfied. It is often alleged that, for adolescents at least,

the highly coloured world of the film makes life seemwanting in excitement and makes them long for moremoney. My personal findings show that rather less thanone-third of the group I studied felt that their own liveswere dull by comparison and only about one in twentyacknowledged a longing for more money. Certain films,'however, are an exception. The Outlaw (Jane Russell) awestern with a strongly erotic and sensual theme, madehalf the boys and three-quarters of the girls who saw itfind their own lives dull ; and in other ways it appeared tohave a very powerful effect on their emotional life.

The principal effects, however, at least of the twelve filmsI studied, all of which were at the time extremely popular,seem to be laughter and a relatively enduring happiness andsatisfaction ; and the consensus of opinion of the adolescentaudience was that the forces of good win in the end.

Another way of estimating the possible influence of thecinema is to study its impact on people's behaviour. Dofilms influence the ways people talk and dress, the kind ofamusements they seek, the way women do their hair or usecosmetics? Direct and indirect influences here are exceed¬

ingly difficult to disentangle.

Such scanty evidence as we have suggests that foradolescents and particularly for girls, the cinema providesa school of manners, deportment and style, which theyknowingly try to imitate. Nearly half a representativegroup of boys admit that ways of talking, of amusing them¬selves, hair style and techniques of approach to the oppositesex, are the things they imitate most. On the whole moregirls than boys admit to being deeply influenced by thecinema. Between two-thirds and four-fifths of the group

of adolescent girls studied in the course of personal investi¬gations admitted to being influenced by the screen in makingup their faces, doing their hair and dressing themselves.According to nearly six out of every ten of those questioned,ways of talking and of dancing are imitated too. As with

MICROSCOPIC BODIES

KEY TO

PHOTOS

ON PAGES

30 AND 3 1

1. Aluminium (highly polished), magnified 23,000 times2. Paraffin cristal, (during growth) magnified 34,000 tjmes3. Sea plant (diatom), enlarged I 3,600 times4. Cellulose (synthetic fibre), magnified I 2,000 times5. Blood pigment (snail) enlarged 90,000 times6. Sea plant (diatom) magnified 270 times7. Varnish surface enlarged 21,000 times

Photo credits. I and 7, University of Paris ; 2, Glasgow University ; 3 and S, Max Planck.Institute; 4, M. Besse; 6 and back cover, J.B. Le Poole.

the boys, one-third of girls admit that their "ways of makinglove' are also modelled on what they see on the screen.

As youth grows out of adolescence into man and woman¬hood, however, the cinema's influence is balanced by otherthings ; reasonably happy and satisfied adults recognizethe gulf there is between the realities of their own livesand the world of the screen." Nevertheless, some aspect ofa film "can affect an individual spectator more deeply even

than he may realize himself and the continual presentationof slightly displaced values may have a cumulative effect.

Within certain limits, we tend to find in any film thethings we look for, be it consciously or otherwise ; and atleast some of the pleasure a film gives us comes from thefact that it mirrors and excites our wishes and desires. If

this is so, then the cinema's influence upon us and uponour lives will be limited to intensifying and shaping what is

already there, at least in a latent form. The spectator isnot in fact passive ; far from it. The fact, however, thatthe film relies primarily upon the large projected image ;that it takes place in a darkened auditorium; and that

rapid visual stimulation coupled with relaxed physicalcomfort closely resembles the conditions which inducehypnosis, probably means that its emotional appeal is moreprimitive, direct and effective than that of any othermedium. Few films arouse conscious effort from the

.spectator. Hence even when a film or an incident in a filmis not understood, a subconscious meaning may well beconveyed. One may even reject a film's message and yetaccept at least some of its meanings subconsciously.

It is in some of these senses that films may be held

responsible for juvenile delinquency or even adult crime.Probably no one who is well-balanced emotionally has everbeen driven to crime by a film. On the other hand, personswith delinquent tendencies springing from deep, emotionaland social maladjustments find immediate motives and themeans to crime in particular sequences of a film. Lessdramatically and probably more commonly, films may tendto reinforce maladjusted tendencies in those who are alreadyunbalanced.

Enough has been said to indicate some at least of theproblems raised in the mind of a psychologist by the cinemaand the fact of almost universal attendance by children,adolescents and adults alike. Mr. Everyman takes his flicks

as a harmless entertainment. They probably are for the

most part. Nevertheless, as well as giving entertainment,they may be deeply shaping the society we live in; on theother hand, they may merely be a reflexion of the way^it isdeveloping. The cinema industry could be a greater forcefor good or for ill if more were known about the psychologyof the spectator and of the particular mechanism of hisresponse to the films he sees.

Here then is a vast field of research on which only themerest and most superficial start has been made. The mostimportant questions are still untouched, and have been forthe past fifty years or so since the first public cinema hallswere opened.

32


Letters to the Editor...Sir,

In my double capacity as Inspector-General of Penal Institutions of Argen¬tina and Professor of Penology at theNational Penitentiary Training School,I have read from cover to cover yourHuman Rights issue of the UnescoCourier devoted to the preventionof crime and the treatment of delin¬

quents... In your notes on the SevenApostles of Prisoners Rights, Spain isrepresented by Manuel Montesinos whoyou say lived in the 19th century butyou give no exact dates... Don Manuelde Montesinos y Molina was born inthe city of San Roque near Gibraltar in1792 and died on 3 July, 1862. A bio¬graphy of his life by José Rico deEstasen ("Colonel Montesinos - A Spa¬niard of European Prestige") was pu¬blished in Madrid in 1948.

J. Carlos Garcia Básalo.

Inspector-Generalof Penal Institutions

Argentina.

Sir,

Although my sympathies are firmlywith Unesco, I have not renewed mysubscription to the Unesco Courierbecause most of its articles seem tooimpersonal and too "restained" toarouse any deep interest despite thegreat competence of the authors.

I am not the only one to voice thiscriticism a friendly one, howeverregarding the Unesco Courier andother Unesco publications. Perhapsthis shortcoming is unavoidable in apublication aimed at a wide publicwhose opinions are manifold and oftencontradictory.

Pierre Burney.French Institute.

Athens, Greece, .

Sir, , '

You and your staff are certainly tobe congratulated on the issue of theUnesco Courier devoted to crime and

justice. Of all of the recent publica¬tions in the popular press on this to¬pic, I have found yours to be the mostinformative and boldest in conception.The article by Carlo Levi is particularlyto be stressed for its magnificent state¬ment of the necessity to distinguishbetween the manifest improvements inpenology and the basic and continuingdisposition of society.

The Marquis de Sade was, I think,the first to understand this distinction,and I flatter myself that in my book"Stone Walls and Men", Odyssey Press,1946, this point was central to mythesis.

As one familiar in this field, I was

rather disappointed in the articles byDr. J.R. Rees and Sir Cyril Burt. Itseems to me that neither of these

gentlemen properly understands the re¬lationship . between the phenomenon ofdelinquency and the current stage ofcivilization. Did they do so, they wouldnot be able to write so glibly of "cau¬sative" superficialities : it is only inrelation to the world scene that the

tendency toward violence among youtheverywhere can be ' apprehended. Ne¬vertheless, my congratulations for anexceedingly well-done job.

Dr. Robert Lindner.

Baltimore 2,Maryland.

Sir,

It was extremely gratifying to readthe excellent article "Biting The HandThat Feeds Us" in the Unesco Cou¬

rier (Nos 4-5, 1954), stressing the needfor wise use and protection of our na¬tural .resources, on the principle thatwe must live in harmony with nature,rather than combat her. Many believethat human survival on this planpt ispredicated on that philosophy.

We were pleased also to read the finetribute paid to the International Unionfor the Protection of Nature. Unesco

may well be proud of the Iupn for itwas founded under the aegis of Unesco,and is one of the most practical andproductive of international organiza¬tions. The National Parks Association

is proud of its membership in theUnion.

One of the captions stimulates a com¬ment. There is a common impressionthat the solution to water __ problemsis basically to impound water, eitheron the mainstreams or on the tribu¬

taries. That experience in the United 'States has taught us that such damsmay do serious harm to paramount va¬lues, unless they are carefully plannedto co-ordinate with related programmesof upland soil control, wise agriculturalpractices, sound forestry, and watershedand wildlife protection. Too much ofour water development programme hasbeen based on engineering considera¬tions alone, with no attempt to studythe ecology of the drainage basin as awhole.

Fred M. Packard.

Executive Secretary,National Parks Association,Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

Sir,

In the article on "The TranslatingMachine" published in 1954, Dr. LeonDostert is described as "one of the

experts particularly responsible for set¬ting up the "simultaneous translation

system now currently used by interna¬tional organizations."

I think it might interest your readersto know that the simultaneous transla¬

tion system to which you refer has beenused since 1924 by the InternationalLabour Organization, whose permanentsecretariat is the International Labour

office in Geneva, at the plenary sessionsof its annual conferences.

The initiative for using, this systembelongs to Mr. E.A. Pilene, of Boston,U.S.A. whose financial aid enabled the

first experiments to be made during theInternational Labour conferences in

Geneva in 1924/25. By 1928 regular useof the system was being made at all ses¬sions of the Conference held in

Geneva.

When the League of Nations head¬quarters was built in Geneva in 1936 itwas equipped, at the request of theI.L.O., with a simultaneous translationsystem which is still used for the annualsessions .of the International LabourConference and the World Health

Assembly.

These facts in no way diminish thecredit due to Dr. Dostert in connection

with the wider adoption of the systemwhich has become a basic condition for

the . smooth working of internationalconferences in view of the increased

number of languages now employed.

Henri Reymond.International

Labour Office,Geneva.

Sir,

What makes your magazine reallyinteresting to follow is that it dealswith essentially human questions at aninternational level. I find it full ofinterest and consider the cost of sub¬

scription a reasonable one... Nothingbut benefit can come from reading aninternational publication so unswerving¬ly concerned with man and his rights.I shall do my best to introduce theUnesco Courier to others.

Max Vialis.

Ecole de Maubec,Vaucluse, France.

Sir,

The Unesco Courier is an unequalledpocket battleship of international cul¬tural activity and goodwill. It stimu¬lates readers to seek more understand¬ing of other people, and our almost cli¬nical impatience towards anything thatis strange to our way of life becomesamended in exact ratio to our increasedknowledge. Every home is poorer thatis without it.

Oscar Edwards.

Sydney, Australia.

The fililí today (Continued from page 14)and bring the film to millions every year. What is truefor Africa is also true for Asia and the Americas. China,for example, has 1,200 teams touring the villages in theinterior of the country and giving educational film showsbefore audiences. which may vary from a hundred or soto a thousand. Afghanistan has just purchased three ofthese mobile cinemas which carry out similar tasks in theremote mountain villages.

In the last few years the educational film has becomean accepted part of the school curriculum in most coun¬tries. In thousands of schools in Europe, Asia and theAmericas the film is an. integral part of the weekly workin the classroom. Let us take one example which is inits way typical of hundreds of others. The Latin Ame¬rican Republic of. Peru has, since 1947, distributed. 150.

10 mm sound projectors to Peruvian primary and secon¬dary schools throughout the country. In 1953 the numberof schools performances given amounted to 018 and thenumber of pupils who attended to 128,000. There can belittle doubt that the effect of a new educational medium

on these 128,000 Peruvian scholars has been considerable.

From entertainment to education the world of the film'

has many facets. As the industry continues to progressit must at the same time submit to change. These chan¬ges are seen today in the shift in production emphasisfrom the U.S.A. to Asia and Europe ; the evolution of newtechniques in the U.S.A. itself and the practically unli¬mited spread of entertainment and educational filmsthroughout every part of the globe. The final challengeof television may still lie in the future, but in the mean¬time entertainment for the majority of the world's popu¬lation means in simple terms "a visit to the flicks".

33

From the Unesco Newsroom...

UNESCO EXECUTIVE APPOINTED

Dr. Malcolm Adiseshiah, of India, be¬came Assistant Director-General of

Unesco in January 1955. His appoint¬ment followed that of M. René Maheu,

of France to a similar post in July 1954.

Dr. Adiseshiah ' previously directedUnesco's world-wide technical assistance

operations. He will now co-ordinate theorganization's entire programme, butwill' act as special technical aid adviserto the Director-General, and as repre¬sentative to other U.N. Agencies.

Born in Madras in 1910/ Dr. Adises¬hiah studied at Madras University, theLondon School of Economics and King'sCollege' Cambridge. From 1939 to 1946, he taught economies atMadras University, and prior to joining Unesco in 1950, he served asAssociate Secretary-General of the World University Service.

KNO LAND LUBBERS.

WANTED : Landlubbers at the

University of London would dowell to take shelter on the lee

side. For the University isfloating out to sea in the fo'c'sleand bunk cabins of over 1,600tankers and merchant shipsnow sailing the seven oceans.As a result of an arrangementconcluded by the BritishSeafarers Education Service

merchant seamen are now

enrolling by the boatload asactive students at London

University and are taking theirexaminations while afloat. A

quarter of a million textbookswere shipped to merchant vesselstudents during 1953, the Sea¬farers Education Service reports,and a record cargo of writtenhomework is being returned toport.

THE LADIES ARE WIN¬NING: The word teacher is

rapidly becoming a femininenoun in Turkey as the resultof a powerful nation-widecampaign to increase wo¬men's opportunities for em¬ployment. A report fromTurkey announces that wo¬men now outnumber the

men for the first time in cityprimary schools and are nowrapidly catching up in ruralareas as well.

Sc.-JCIENCE EXPLORERS :Preparations are now underway all over the world for oneof the most gigantic inter¬national projects ever attemptedfor exploring the mysteries ofour planet. Thirty six countrieshave already agreed to joinforces though scientists from allnations are expected to

-participate. The co-operativeventure, scheduled to take placefrom July 1957 to December1958, will be known as the Inter¬national Geophysical Year andwill cost an estimated$ 100,000,000. Studies and ex¬periments are to be conductedon the earth's magnetism,cosmic rays, the circulation ofthe atmosphere, the aurora,solar activity and the movementof glaciers. Spécial observation

stations will be set up in select¬ed regions; rockets to explorethe upper atmosphere will beshot from aircraft or other

points. Installations will be suchthat scientists expect to beprepared for any unexpectedphenomenon such as a suddenviolent eruption in thé sun.

MUSIC WHILE YOUREAD: Book lovers in In¬

dia's Delhi Public Libraryare now enjoying soft mu¬sic piped through to them inthe reading rooms. The li¬brary, created three yearsago as a Unesco-India pilot-project, has found the musican aid to concentration in¬

stead of a distraction. The ex¬periment is proving extreme¬ly popular with young andold readers alike. Unesco

reports that an average of2,200 people now use the li¬brary which has 20,000 re¬gistered borrowers and 60,000books in Hindi, Urdu andEnglish. Social activities ofan educational nature have

attracted over 190,000 peoplein the past three years.

JE EOPLES OF MELAN¬ESIA: In its issue on "LastFrontiers of Civilization", (N°.8/9, 1954) the UNESCOCOURIER published on page 28two photographs (a Wogeo manand two women of Guadal¬canal) to illustrate an article

on the peoples of Melanesia by.Dr. Margaret Mead. Creditshould have been given to Mr. H.Ian Hogbin of the University ofSydney's Department of Anthro¬pology who took these 'photosand mention made that they arecopyright by Asia Press Inc.,publishers of Mr. Hogbin's book,"Peoples of the SouthwestPacific",

THIRTY MILLIONTEXTBOOKS: All children

in war-shattered Korea maynot be too happy about it buttextbooks are back at their

newly rebuilt schools throughthe combined efforts of theUnited Nations Korean Re¬

construction Agency (UN

KRA) and UNESCO. The

most modern printing plantin the country the NationalTextbook Printing Planthas now been completed.The plant is capable of pro¬ducing 30,000,000 textbooks ayear. The two UN organiza¬tions contributed $238,000 formachinery and other equip¬ment.

s<»CIE N C E LIAISON:

Story of the work of Unesco'sscience co-operation officesspread across the world. Tellshow equipment and researchmaterials ranging from seedsamples and rare chemicals toanimal skeletons have been sup¬plied to scientists and institu¬tions by Unesco's network ofcentres in Montevideo, Cairo,Istanbul, Delhi and Jakarta.(Illustrated.)

YOUTH AND FUNDA¬MENTAL EDUCATION :A guidebook that tells howyoung people can join in thepresent world-wide battle toraise standards of livingthrough better health, farm¬ing and education. Offersconcrete, practical examplesof how and where youth vo¬lunteers can do effective workthat is often literally a mat¬ter of life and death. (Illu¬strated, $ 1.75; 9/6; or 450 Fr.fr.)

with the most up-to-date micro¬film recording instruments inuse today, is being set' up byUnesco in Egypt. It will serveworking scientists throughoutthe Arab region in the MiddleEast. An American expert inmicrofilm photography, CosbyBrinkley, is now in Egyptorganizing the new centre.Similar Unesco institutions now

exist in India, Yugoslavia andMexico.

TREASURE HUNT:Scientists have begun one ofthe greatest hunting expe¬ditions in Pakistan's historyto uncover hidden mineralresources which are known

to exist in large quantitiesin 'the country. The ex¬pedition plans to explorethousands of square milesof Pakistan territory and isutilizing new scientific tech¬niques including magneticprospecting methods, espe¬cially effective in locatingiron ore and other min¬

erals. A Unesco expert.Dr. Karl Weinert of Austria,was sent to Pakistan to train

a team of scientists in thesenew techniques.

Di

A. RAB MICROFILMCENTRE : A science informa¬tion centre and library, equipped

'EVELOPMENT OF PUB¬LIC LIBRARIES IN AFRICA:

Publishes papers and conclu¬sions of a Unesco seminar on

this subject held in Ibadan, Ni¬geria during 1953. An impor¬tant study for all those interes¬ted in library developments Inunder-developed countries. (Il¬lustrated. $ 1.75; 9/6; 400 fr. fr.).

UNESCO PUBLICATIONS

Films on Art: Panorama 1953Contains a 53-page catalogue of films on art which

gives technical data on 729 films from 31 countries. Thefilms listed in previous editions of Films on Art areincluded.

$.65 4/- 200 fr.

The Entertainment Film for Juvenile Audiences

by Henri StorckAmong the most urgent problems of the cinema is the

production of entertainment films for juveniles. This booksurveys the position in countries where the production ofsuch films is particularly developed and includes a list ofspecial films available for children.

$1.25 7/6 375 fr.

Bibliography on Filmologyas Related to the Social Sciences

A bibliography intended for research workers and studentsof the problems of filmology as related to the socialsciences, particularly psychology, sociology, psychiatry, phy¬siology, anthropology and philosophy. In compiling the biblio¬graphy, the author used as his criterion of selection thescientific intention or implication of the studies or simplythe interest they have . for the scientific history of thecinema.

$.40 2/- 100 fr.

34

Window open on the World"

The Unesco Courier

COMING IN NEXT MONTH'S ISSUE

TO SUHSCHIIÎE

Iii the United Kingdom send yourremittance to II.M. Stationery Offi¬ce P.O. Box 569, London S.E. 1.

In other countries write to National

Distrihutors listed below.

If your country is not listed writedirectly to Unesco Sales Division1Í), avenue Kléber, Paris, France.

The Awakenin

ContinentA report on Latin America

and new forces changing old ways

Anew policy for the Indiansof the Andes

Birth of a Costa Rican Valley

* Colombia's amazing radiopriest

Previous issues you

may have missed :

N° 12 - 1954 - The Promise of Atomic

Power and the Beneficent Atom.

N° I I - 1954 - Rare Masterpieces ofWorld Art

A special Issue with 6 pages of full colour plates.

N° 10 - 1954 - Prisoners Are PeopleThe Right to Human Treatment.

Unesco's National Distributors from whomthe English edition of THE COURIER can beobtained are listed below. Other Unesco

Distributors are listed in the French and

Spanish editions of THE COURIER.

Australia : Oxford University Press, 346,Little Collins Street, Melbourne.

Austria : Wilhelm Frick Verlag, 27, Gra¬ben, Vienna I.

Burma : Burma Educational Bookshop,551-3 Merchant Street, P.O. Box 222,Rangoon.

Canada : University of Toronto Press,Toronto.

Ceylon : Lake House Bookshop, The Asso¬ciated Newspapers of Ceylon, Ltd., P.O.Box 244, Colombo I. Rs. 5.

Cyprus : M. E. Constantinides, P.O.B. 473,Nicosia.

Denmark : Ejnar Munksgaard Ltd., 6 Nor¬regade, Copenhagen, K.

Egypt : La Renaissance d'Egypte, 9, AdlyPasha Street, Cairo.

Ethiopia : International Press Agency,P.O.B. I 20,. Addis-Ababa.

NATIONAL DISTRIBUTORS

Finland : Akateeminen Kirjakauppa, 2 Kes-kuskatu, Helsinki.

Formosa : The World Book Company Ltd.,99, Chung King South Rd, Section I,Taipeh.

France : Sales Division, Unesco, I 9, AvenueKléber, Paris- l 6e.

Germany : Unesco Vertrieb für Deutsch¬land, R. Oldenbourg, München.

Greece : Librairie H. Kauffman, 28, Rue

du Stade, Athens.Hong Kong : Swindon Book Co., 25 Nathan

Road, Kowloon.India : Orient Longmans Ltd., Bombay, Cal¬

cutta, Madras : sub-depots : Oxford Book& Stationery Co., Scindia House, NewDelhi; Rajkamal Publications Ltd., Hima¬laya House, Bombay 7. Rs. 4.

Indonesia : G.C.T. van Dorp & Do. NV.,Djalan Nusantara, 22, Djakarta.'

Iran : Iranian National Commission forUnesco, Avenue du Musée, Teheran.

Iraq : McKenzie's Bookshop, Baghdad.Israel : Blumstein's Bookstores Ltd., 35,

Allenby Road, P.O. Box 5 154. Tel-Aviv.Jamaica : Sangster's Book Room, 99, Har¬

bour Street, Kingston; Knox EducationalServices, Spaldings.

Japan : Maruzen Co, Inc., 6 Tori-Nichome,Nihonbashi, Tokyo.

Jordan : J.I. Bahous and Co., Dar-ul-Kutub,Salt Road, Amman.

Korea : Korean National Commission for

Unesco, Ministry of Education, Seoul.

Liberia : J, Momolu Kamara, Gurley andFront Streets, Monrovia.

Malayan Federation and Singapore :Peter Chong and Co.; P.O. Box 135,Singapore.

Malta : Sapienza's Library, 26, Kîngsway,Valletta.

Netherlands : N V. Martinus Nijhoff,Lange Voorhout 9. The Hague.

A/S Bokhjornet, Stortingsplass, 7,

New Zealand: Unesco Publications Centre.

I 00, Hackthorne Rd., Christchurch.

Nigeria : C.M.S. Bookshop, P.O. Box 174,Lagos.

NorwayOslo.

Pakistan : Ferozsons Ltd., Karachi, Lahore,Peshawar. Rs. 3.

Philippines : Philippine Education Co.,Inc., 1 1 04 Castillejos, Quiapo, Manila. 3.00

Surinam : Radhakishun and Company Ltd.,(Book Depc), Watermolenstraat 36, Para¬maribo.

Sweden : A.B.C.E. Fritzes Kungl. Hov-bokhonde', Fredsgatan 2, Stockholm 16.

Thailand : Suksapan Panit, Arkarn 9,Rajdamnern Avenue, Bangkok. 20 ticals.

Union of South Africa : Van Schaik's Book¬

store, Ltd., P.O. Box 724, Pretoria.

United Kingdom : H.M. Stationery Office,P.O. Box 569, London S.E.I.

U.S.A. : Unesco Publications Service, 4755th Ave., New York 17, N.Y.

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Forgotten shadows; the birth of the cinema; The...

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