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The Social Legislation of
Motion Pictures

This rare book contains some of the recommendations from
the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures for cuts to
be made to some unnamed films. Donald Young, later pro-
fessor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, was no
admirer of this private organization which made censorship
recommendations which were not legally binding and could
be ignored locally. Young was the author of Motion Pictures:
A Study in Social Legislation. Published in 1922, this PhD
thesis must be one of the first doctorates to be awarded for
the study of motion pictures.

Young's subject is the influence of motion pictures upon
the American people, particularly children. As a piece of
supposedly scientific social investigation it is remarkably
partisan. It takes as read reports conducted by various groups
with an interest in the morals of society which found motion
pictures to be generally pernicious in their effects, and comes
down on the side of legalized state censorship (by 1922 eight
American states had instituted film censorship laws). A Na-
tional Board of Censorship, later the National Board of Review, had been instituted in 1909, but its recommendations carried no legal weight. This is therefore not the social study that it claims to be, but rather an expression of fear, albeit one that is artfully and authoritatively expressed. Under the guide of social investigation, it looks for ways to control the medium whose malign tendencies are taken as a given.

The value of the text is firstly the period attitudes that it demonstrates, with the evidence that it calls on to support this. Secondly, it provides a rich picture of the various forms of municipal and state regulation that existed, their operations and aspirations. Thirdly, there are the several appendices with useful information, including the numbers of cinemas across America, state by state; figures for the importing of films from other countries; the rules of the British Board of Film Censors; the Standards of the Pennsylvania Board of Film Censors (the first US state to have censorship laws); and samples of eliminated scenes by the National Board of Review. [*The Bioscope*]
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Positive paper print from lantern slide used in motion picture theaters as announcement. Each text superimposed on humorous photograph, and the whole shown in a fancy carved frame. [[US Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division]

## A STUDY IN SOCIAL LEGISLATION

The motion picture industry is avowedly attempting to present the types of pictures which the audiences wish to see.

This is evidenced by the fact that the different types of houses show different types of pictures. For example, the motion picture houses are divided into two classes, the neighborhood houses and downtown houses. Neighborhood houses include all those which are in outlying parts of cities or in the smaller cities and villages. " Million dollar spectacles " are shown primarily in the downtown houses, i. e., those centrally located in large cities, because it has been found that if they are to be successful, such pictures must derive most of their income from the audiences which frequent the downtown houses. Many actors are known to be excellent drawing
cards in the neighborhood theatre, while in the centrally located theatre, their pictures are failures. In reporting on the drawing ability of a picture, the exhibitor is usually asked to mention the type of audience to which it was shown. The president of one of the largest chains of theatres in this country remarked recently to the author that "the downtown audiences will stand for a lot more sex stuff than the neighborhood audience, and they expect it, too." We may safely say that the industry is trying to give its customers what they want, even though they may want questionable products.

## CONFORMITY OF MOTION PICTURES TO THE ACCEPTED SOCIAL STANDARDS

During the one year period from the first of November, 1917, until the first of December, 1918, in the city of Chicago, in which city practically the same pictures are exhibited as in any other city in the United States, the acting censor deleted 55,604 feet of film from that submitted to him for approval, or a total of 974 subjects. The brief official statement of the reasons for the deletions is given in the following table, as is the relative frequency of their occurrence:

NUMBER OF CAUSES OF SUBJECTS ELIMINATION FT. DELETED (PER CENT.) :

• 467 Unlawful 31,040 47.9

• 220 Immoral 14,135 22.5

• 183 Indecent (Comedy) 6,539 18.77

• 42 Indecent (Drama) 1,978 4.2

• 36. Nude 1,093 3.0
• 17 Obscene 400 1.7

• 6 Race 254 0.6

• 3 Creed 165 0.3

While the assigned causes of the eliminations are extremely vague, it is possible to see in them the previously mentioned sexual, property, personal, religious and state offenses. Combining the immoral, indecent (both in comedies and in dramas), nude and obscene, we find that over 50.0 per cent, of the offenses were against sexual standards. Offenses against race and creed are in a very small minority, as is to be expected from our previous analysis of standards. The term "unlawful" is the most vague of all. Still, although it has been impossible to obtain any exact statement of what is meant, it is not difficult to reach the conclusion that it refers to scenes that would be likely to incite unlawful acts through the portrayal of crimes and brutality. This heading includes most deleted subjects not included under the general heading of sexual offenses.

At that, it is a very close second, lacking only 3 percent, of being equal to the latter type of offense.

A committee of four hundred women from the Chicago Political Equality League presented the results of the most extensive, representative survey of motion pictures ever completed in the United States to the New York Biennial Convention of the General Federation of Women's Clubs. One thousand seven hundred and sixty-five plays were surveyed. About 21 percent of these were classed as bad, and nearly 30 percent, for example, showed criminal scenes. Only 20 percent were classed as being likely to have a positively beneficial effect on the audiences. The majority, or 80 percent, were either of a harmful nature or "not worthwhile."
Surveys similar to those made by the Chicago Political Equality League were made by Members of the Women's Federation in Michigan, Arkansas, South Dakota, West Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island. These were made on plans based on the methods used by the Illinois organization. Mrs. Bessie Leach Priddy, Chairman of the Federation's Department of Civics in 1919 is authority for the statement that these latter investigations "practically corroborated" the previous findings. It is, therefore, unnecessary to quote from material that, gathered under very nearly the same conditions as the Illinois material, leads to identical conclusions.

Number of plays under observation (1765 100%) NO / PER CENT.

• classed as good 348 / 20

• classed as bad 367 / 21

• "Not worth while" 1040 / 59

• plays showing domestic infelicity 282 / 16

• clandestine appointments 229 / 13

• drinking or bar room scenes 485 / 27

• scenes suggesting criminal acts 588

• gambling scenes 210 / 12

• lewd actions 193 / 11

• objectionable close-up filming 158

• risque or immoral scenes 229 / 13

• tending to create contempt for law, etc. 123 / 7

• contribute to delinquency 353 / 20

A survey of sixty-two motion picture houses in Minneapolis in September 1920, by the Women's Co-Operative Alliance while not so extensive as that by the Women's Federation, is probably more
accurate and reliable in that it was completed by two workers who were acquainted with the methods of previous surveys, such as that by the Chicago Political Equality League, and who had used all possible precautions to standardize their judgments.

The features that the Federation considered objectionable were elaborated upon. A comparative study of their judgments later showed that they had been reasonably successful in reducing the personal element to a minimum. Since, however, their investigation was of an intensive rather than an extensive nature, its results cannot be considered representative or of any great value in a general discussion of motion pictures unless discussed from the point of view of their agreement with other material of a more general nature. In other words, so limited a sample may fairly be used only in conjunction with other samples.

Although made about five years after the Illinois survey, a note-worthy correlation is readily observable between the results ob-tained by the two investigations. The Illinois study found that 27 percent of the plays showed drinking or barroom scenes; the Min-neapolis study found that in 19 percent of the plays that came under their observation, there were objectionable drinking or bar-room scenes. The former found that 9 percent contained objec-tionable close-up scenes; the latter found 12 percent contained objectionable close-up filming. The former found that 11 percent showed lewd actions; the latter found 12 percent to be the cor-responding figure for this item. Other items are possibly not en-tirely comparable due to the investigators' different working bases. It is sufficiently evident, however, even to the casual observer that there is no significant inconsistency between the two reports.

The above quoted examples of investigations of motion pictures confirm not only each other in their conclusions, but also bear out numerous less pretentious investigations and a large amount of the
individual criticism which has been directed at the industry for the
admitted purpose of many of its members of giving the people the
things they believe they want, irrespective of the social effects of
such a course of action.

PERCENT. DID THE PLAYS SHOW (YES / NO)

• Habit-forming drug using made attractive 4 96

• Objectionable bed-room scenes 4 96

• Criminal methods in a way to give instructive ideas. . . 6 94

• Prolonged objectionable love scenes 6 94

• Gambling made alluring or attractive 8 92

• Race friction 9 91

• Any objectionable close-up filming 12 88

• Any risque or lewd actions 12 88

• Religion or law ridiculed or held in contempt 12 88

• Any irreverence depicted 14 86

• Suggestive or objectionable exposure of person 16 84

• Gruesome subjects or death scenes, objectionable 16 84

• Objectionable drinking or bar room scenes 19 84

• Infidelity or disregard of marriage vows 20 80

• Underworld scenes or objectionable dancing 24 76

• Any obscenity, immorality or vulgarity 36 65

• Any sex problem handled in an objectionable manner 8 92

[...] It is perhaps worthy of noting that the investigations that have been considered are not representative of those against which much well-directed criticism has been aimed on account of the haphazard method of procedure and the use of questionable standards of conduct as the basis on which the judgments were built. An example of this type, which may be entirely accurate but is
nevertheless inconclusive and likely to raise suspicions of bias, is
one which was brought to the attention of the Committee on Ed-
ucation of the House of Representatives at its hearings on House
Bill 456 for the creation of a federal motion picture commission, in
1916, by Doctor W. F. Crafts, superintendent of the International
Reform Bureau. According to Doctor Crafts a state superinten-
dent of schools of West Virginia studied the "real character of cur-
rent motion pictures, " and found that 25 per cent, of the pictures
were "good" and "not bad", and that 75 per cent, were bad" and
"very bad." Cigarettes were shown in 35 percent, drinking in 50
percent, and gunplay and murder in 50 percent. "Deceit, intrigue,
jealousy, or treachery was a leading feature in at least 40 per cent,
of the programs presented."

Following the results of the surveys that we have reviewed, we
may say without exaggeration that approximately 20 percent of the
films shown in this country tend at least in part, to have a harm-
ful effect if moving picture audiences are in any way influenced
by that which is continually put before them. The fact that pos-
sibly 50 percent of the motion picture films will likely have some
beneficial effect does not prove that the harmful plays should be
disregarded. Violations of standards of conduct, which must, like
things, result in similar conduct, are frequent under existing con-
ditions, more frequent than is necessary, as has been shown by the
fact that boards of censorship have eliminated many in the dis-
tricts where legal provision is made for such work. Considerable
weight must be given to the peculiar circumstance that the motion
picture industry, one of the largest manufacturing industries in the
country, has not fought facts with facts. No adequate refutation of
the results of the various investigations has ever been offered.

Until present conditions are altered, it cannot be offered. The
industry cannot afford to become entangled in an argument in
which its members would be compelled to argue against their per-
sonal beliefs and the facts to show that their choice of plays, the
result of a box office policy, is not, in a large percentage of cases,
contrary to the accepted social standards.

Sources :

- House of Representatives, *Hearings before the Committee on Education*, January 13, 1916, p. 9.

- Women's Co-Operative Alliance, Inc., *Better Movie Movement*, Publication No. 38, Minneapolis, Minn., February, 1921.

- Donald Young, "Motion Pictures: A Study in Social Legis-
lation". Doctoral thesis. Philadelphia, Pa. : Printed by Westbrook
Publishing Co., 1922.

- The Bioscope [with permission]
A SOCIOLOGY OF
EARLY
AUDIENCES
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Studying Audiences

<figure><img src="image_60.png" /><figcaption>Viele Grüsse aus dem Union-Theater, Berlin, Alexanderplatz
Grösste und vornehmste Tonbild-Bühne der Welt</figcaption></figure>

"Viele Grüsse aus dem Union-Theater, Berlin, Alexanderplatz. Grösste und vornehmste Tonbild-Bühne der Welt"

Zander & Labisch, Photogr., Berlin W; 1909 (Union-Theater, 1909 eingerichtet im Grand-Hotel, Alexanderplatz 5-7)
Studying Audiences

The manager will learn much about his show by watching his patrons as they come out. It is not necessary to inquire what they think of the show. Comments will pass among them, which may be overheard by the manager and by the cashier as they pass the ticket window, commenting favorably and unfavorably upon the film pictures that they have seen a few minutes before. In this manner the manager may learn when any particular picture has favorable comment, and may endeavor to have his film exchange supply more of the same class; likewise, when any picture has a flood of unfavorable comment among the theatergoers themselves, the manager may try to influence his film exchange to avoid sending him that class of subject.

The words, "try to influence his film exchange," are chosen carefully to express the true position of the exhibitor, or theater manager, in the matter of obtaining film pictures acceptable to his patrons. The film exchanges as a rule take all the film pictures produced by the particular manufacturers from whom they buy. All of these film reels look alike to the film exchange man, and he would like to send them indiscriminately to his customers, to the exhibitors, or to theater managers. The service the theater manager will get, therefore, will be "hit or miss" of the film exchange stock of reels unless the manager uses some influence to govern the classes of pictures furnished him. Film exchanges are notoriously lax in the matter of selecting pictures for particular theaters. If the film service is to be what the manager desires, the deliveries of the film exchange must be watched constantly and carefully.

The manager who has learned the tastes of his audience should consider their tastes a requirement for obtaining the preferred
classes of pictures from his film exchange. The audience's respon-
siveness in the theater is one barometer of public approval; the at-
titude and conduct of patrons leaving the theater is another. The
ticket sales will be another, but this last is not so quick in its re-
sponse indications.

When a picture pleases the audience, it may be the specific pic-
ture, or it may be the general class to which the picture belongs;
in one neighborhood, dramatic and scenic may please more than
comic or historical; in another nothing but comics can draw the
crowds and send them away smiling.

The Program. Whether vaudeville is advisable and profitable,
whether the song is a drawing card, or whether the audience would
rather have solid pictures, all may be learned from watching the
house during the performance and the faces and comments of the
patrons as they pass out after seeing the performance. The choice
of a program is an excellent factor in determining the theater's
competitive position. There is little expense difference between a
three-reel program, two reels, and a song.

***

*source*: David S. Hulfish, *Cyclopedia of motion-picture work a gen-
eral reference work*. Chicago: American Technical Society Press, 1911.
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# A Sociology of the Cinema : the Audience

Extract from Emilie Altenloh, *Zur Soziologie des Kino: Die Kino-Unternehmung und die Sozialen Schichten Ihrer Besucher*, translated in part (by Kathleen Cross) as 'A Sociology of the Cinema: the Audience', *Screen*, vol. 42 no. 3, Autumn 2001, p.249-293 [with permission of Screen]. Emilie Altenloh's *Zur Soziologie des Kino: Die Kino-Unternehmung und die Sozialen Schichten Ihrer Besucher* (A Sociology of the Cinema) (1914) is one of the earliest scholarly theses on cinema and continues to be highly regarded today. Emilie Kiep Altenloh (1888-1985) was a German politician and economist with a strong interest in social welfare. Her study of cinemagoers in Mannheim, Germany, has gained recognition in recent years, partly because her exploration of the social factors driving cinema's popularity aligns with contemporary interests, and partly due to a growing focus on cinema as a social space in general. Between 1912 and 1913, Altenloh conducted a study of cinemagoers in Mannheim, which included a questionnaire sent to 2,400 individuals asking about their gender,
age, social status, marital status, employment, religious be-
liefs, political affiliations, and filmgoing habits. Altenloh's
methodology and findings remain significant for cinema his-
torians. Her published study is divided into two parts, fo-
cusing on production and audiences. It includes very little
information from the completed questionnaires, with the ex-
ception of an entry from a fifteen-year-old machine fitter.
The favorite films listed by respondents include, in order: an
unknown film, *Um fremde Schuld – Eine Episode aus dem Leben*
(Germany 1912), *Die keusche Susanna* (Germany 1911 – a one-
reel synchronized sound film of the Jean Gilbert operetta,
not a four-part film), and another unknown film, presum-
ably based on the 1912 operetta *Die moderne Eva* by Victor
Holländer and Jean Gilbert. It is noteworthy that the Ger-
man publishing initiative KINtop republished Zur Soziolo-
gie des Kino in a collective volume entitled Emilie Altenloh:
Zur Soziologie des Kino. Die Kino-Unternehmung und die
sozialen Schichten ihrer Besucher. This new German edition,
published in the KINtop Schriften 9 collection, was released
by Stroemfeld publishers in Frankfurt and Basel in 2012. The
volume includes 15 contemporary reviews of Altenloh's orig-
inal book, as well as contributions from researchers such as
Andrea Haller, Heide Schlüpmann, Gerd Roscher, Martin
Loiperdinger, Christiane Eulig, and Uschi Rühle. The volume
totals between 108 and 128 pages, offering a rich academic
context around this pioneering study on the sociology of cin-
ema. A new bilingual edition, both in French and English,
edited by Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb and Hilda Inderwildi,
was published in 2025, with contributions of Marianne Beau-
viche, Renaud Guinaveau, and Julian Hammer.
Methodology: data collection

The observations set out below have been gleaned with reference to specially conducted surveys. This study draws on statistics indicating the frequency of cinema visits in a fairly large industrial town during two months in the summer and two in the winter. These statistics were kindly made available by four theatre owners, and the similarity of their results made it possible to get an idea of the significance of cinemas in general. In addition, these sources were underpinned by a survey, undertaken in the same town, whose aim was to establish the connections between social grouping, entertainment and cultural interests. In order to ascertain the nature of people's interest in the cinema, the following questions were asked, some of which were answered verbally and some by filling out a questionnaire:

1. Name or sex (of respondent)

2. Occupation

3. Father's occupation

4. How old are you

5. Where were you born

6. Which school did you attend

7. Do you go to the theatre, public lectures, concerts, variety shows?

8. What do you enjoy best?

9. Do you go to the cinema? How often?

10. On your own or with other people?

11. What prompts you to go to the cinema on each occasion?

12. When do you usually go to the cinema (day of week, time of day)?

13. Do you stay for the whole programme?
14. What kind of films do you like best (dramas, comedies, nature documentsaries etc.)

15. Has anything made a lasting impression on you? What?

16. Has the cinema offered you any artistic insights?

A total of 2400 responses were obtained. This was achieved by contacting the committees of various trade associations, as the aim was to include as large a percentage as possible from each social group. Some committees then put us in contact with individual members of their associations. Young people (fourteen to eighteen years old) were surveyed in vocational and trade schools, while workers were surveyed in person. The remaining occupations -artisans, clerical workers, engineers, students, officers, and so on - were sent the forms exclusively through their trade associations or specialist publications. This yielded little success out of a total of 15,000 forms distributed, only about 200 were returned. With these groups, information had to be gathered in a different way, and personal impressions were incorporated to a greater extent than elsewhere in characterizing relationships to the cinema.

Generally speaking, for this latter group it can be assumed that judging the level of interest in cinema showings and the frequency of cinema visits solely on the basis of the completed questionnaires would be misleading. Among those surveyed through the trade associations, those who never went to the cinema generally put the form to one side with no further thought so that almost no forms were received from non-cinemagoers. This assumption is further strengthened by comments to this effect made by members of the associations surveyed. Numerical comparisons between the trades and other social groups are therefore impossible. In the case of laborers, however, as well as all the women surveyed, the results are more complete and allow for internal comparison. Answers were
obtained in each case from all the members of the groups gathered specifically for the survey, enabling conclusions to be formed about the group as a whole. A similar situation holds for the results from the elementary schools, further education schools and trade schools, where all individuals in particular classes were included in the survey.

Most comprehensive, finally, are the results from one commercial further education school, gained by surveying all fifty-five classes with a total of 1381 pupils of both sexes. Attendance at this school is compulsory for all male and female apprentices of commercial trades. The school is organized based on a three-year attendance period, so that the first class is attended mainly by fourteen-to-fifteen-year-olds. The second is mainly by fifteen-to-sixteen-year-olds and the third by sixteen-to-seventeen-year-olds. In addition there are special classes for those who have obtained their one-year certificate from a middle school. This section of the survey includes all young people of a particular sort, categorized according to age. Due to the completeness of this part of the survey, analysis in this case will include a more detailed discussion of particularities and deviations from the overall picture, since these may be seen not as coincidental failings of the sample surveys but can be numerically adjusted, and assessed for their significance. Given the great expansion of trade in the town selected, all young entrants to the major occupations have been included. This is especially useful for cinema statistics because more money is generally spent on entertainment - and on the cinema in particular - during the years between when a young person starts to bring in a wage and when they get married than is spent later, something that is especially true in the case of young shop assistants. This is clearly demonstrated when this group is compared with members of other occupational classes (even if no account is taken of the fact that, of
these latter, only those who show most interest in the cinema are included in the survey).

In order to be able to assess how significant cinema is for a town's population, it is crucial to ascertain whether it represents the only -or virtually the only - means of entertainment available, or whether other pastimes occupy the audience's time and capture their attention. There therefore follows a brief overview of other forms of entertainment in Mannheim, such as theatre and concerts.

Until 1908 there were no independent cinemas in Mannheim. People's desire for spectacle was satisfied by the Hoftheater, or court theatre, a second larger theatre and three speciality theatres. Occasionally, at a fair or some other popular festival, a traveling picture-show might exhibit the odd film, usually of a fairly poor technical standard. For the less well-off classes the court theatre was hardly an option - and indeed less so than today, when popular theatre productions with cheap seats provide at least a thinly spun thread between the theatre and those in the lower social classes who are particularly interested in it. General trends in the development of the modern stage suggest a further reason why most of the population has become alienated from the theatre. These trends are a result of the social divisions that have arisen alongside the contemporary organization of economic life. Most people are integrated into the overall economic system like a small cog in a machine, and this system not only dominates people's working lives but also constrains the totality of the individual. The free, inviolable sphere within which a person has sovereign control has been reduced to a minimum. This kind of life produces individuals defined primarily through the work they do, who find it very difficult to look for new avenues of development outside the sphere of life in which they find themselves. The ways in which people from
different social groups seek to be entertained and have fun display certain characteristic features, and there is little understanding of what goes on outside one's own circles, let alone a sense of working together or of communal enjoyment.

In contrast to this highly constrained group is a comparatively small elite whose more favourable external circumstances have allowed them to retain a greater degree of inner freedom. These people are far removed from the majority in their whole way of feeling and thinking. For them, such manifestations of intellectual life as books and works of art do not remain external objects. Instead, they draw them into themselves and render them a living and integral part of their personality It is through this continual assimilation that the elite become bearers of the entire culture, and in turn determine its content.

This one-sided development is especially clearly revealed in modern theatre, whose entire repertoire can be divided into three groups. Firstly, there is modern drama, in which all the action is transferred onto the protagonists' inner life. The drama lies in the processes of highlighting and solving purely psychological conflicts. Nowadays this type of drama is cultivated at the best theatres, which have almost the character of private gatherings. It is here that members of this intellectual elite seek intellectual nourishment with their more finely-tuned emotional life, they alone are in a position to understand the playwright. Alongside these are the classical dramas. However, since the average person today is rooted more than ever in the present and has proper understanding only of contemporary problems and issues, he is less drawn, purely in terms of human sensibility, to things classical and indeed often lacks the level of understanding required for forming a judgment from an artistic point of view, since this is only possible with a certain cultivation of taste. The third type is opera, which has
numerous adherents from all social circles and constitutes the very essence of theatre for broad sections of the population today. Modern comedies and operettas in particular continue to attract large audiences, and have been staged in Mannheim from time to time over the past few years in response to an urgent need for light entertainment. Most of the big concerts of the season take place in the three auditona of the town's concert building. Variety shows and cinemas, of course, also provide entertainment. What is more, they draw away from the theatre all those whose principal concern is to spend a few hours being entertained. Finally, the various cycles of lecture series should be mentioned, which on different evenings of the week during the winter are a source of fascination for some sections of the population. They might, therefore, have the effect of diverting them from the cinema.

This was the situation regarding pleasure and entertainment facilities in the town when the cinema movement entered dramatically onto the scene in 1908. Although emanating from the urban centers, cinema also made its presence felt in provincial towns. In both locations, the same process occurred first the audience's attention was diverted from similar entertainment forms, variety shows and cabarets. But new options awaken new needs, and thus the number of cinemas has grown far beyond the number of cognate establishments. The trend in Berlin typifies this, where in addition to the thirty-four variety theatres that existed in 1908, another 300 cinemas have since sprung up. Typically, this trend did not emerge immediately after the new invention became well known, but only when sensations-drama or sensational drama brought a radical change to film representation and when the picture houses were transformed from dimly-lit, confined spaces into luxurious and comfortably furnished buildings. These two factors have proved decisive for the role played by the cinema today.
From that point onwards in its development, cinema won over ever more elevated social groups and became, as it were, ‘presentable’. At first, cinemagoers traveled incognito and were actually somewhat embarrassed if their predilection became public knowledge. Times have moved on, for today a screening of *Der An dere/ The Other*, with Albert Bassermann in the leading role, constitutes a society event. The modern city-dweller nowadays considers the phenomenon of cinema as something perfectly natural, and an occasional visit to the cinema is just as much a part of life as taking afternoon tea at five on the Kurfurstendamm.

The same development has been repeated on a smaller scale in provincial towns, including Mannheim. As has already been noted, two out of three variety theatres have disappeared, one of these was converted to a cinema, and eleven additional cinemas were built from scratch. Five of these are located in the town centre and seven more around the edge of town. Most of them have only come into existence during the past three years. Their location is also a key feature. Until 1910 only four movie theatres existed in the town centre and one in the town’s suburbs. At that time there was as yet no appreciable difference between them. In terms of both their external appearance and the content of their screenings, they were all tailored to the most primitive expectations. Accordingly, the audience was almost exclusively recruited from the lower social groups. Then the cinemas began to spread rapidly. In Mannheim this involved three new cinemas being opened in 1910 and three more in 1911. These theatres are by no means all located in the town centre, but rather in those parts of town where the largest section of the contemporary cinema audience lives, namely the labourers. At the same time, two film theatres in the town centre began to differentiate themselves by the more elegant design of their audition, the introduction of more expensive seats, and by employing a small
ensemble of musicians instead of an orchestra or solo piano player
The location and interior design of movie theatres, then, as well
as the ticket price, are more significant in determining the com-
position of the audience than the quality of what is being shown.
Hence the opening in 1912 of a competitor establishment, the third
of this more luxurious group.

The same phenomenon that had occurred some years earlier in
Berlin was now being repeated here, cinema became a fashion, in-
deed different social circles became actively involved in support-
ing and promoting it. A demonstration screening was organized by
the Verein der Kunstler und Kunstfreunde (Association of Artists
and Friends of the Arts), in which the peculiar pictorial effects
made possible through cinematography were shown, using extracts
from various films as examples. These illustrations did not provide
a model for producing good film programs so much as an educa-
tion in an artistic way of viewing: the emphasis was not on the
material content of the film but solely on the effect of individual
images and movements. In practice only very few film directors
have as yet shown any interest in achieving an image in which the
succession of moving bodies forms a continuous whole with the
background of a scene in order to create a harmonious aesthetic
impression In film, however, when such an impression is achieved,
all attention becomes focused solely on film's potential as a series
of images, with action and plot neglected. Thus a degree of perfec-
tion is achieved, but only ever in one aspect of film presentation

Similarly, and despite all efforts, there has never existed, even
in theory, the movie theatre with a perfect programme. Any judg-
ments that might be made concerning the excellence or quality
of any given enterprise can therefore be of only limited signifi-
cance. The three town center theatres mentioned above, which in-
cidentally are owned by rather large theatre chains, in contrast to
the private enterprises of the suburbs, differ from the smaller ones mainly in terms of their external appearance. At least the worst excesses have been eradicated from the program, partly out of consideration for the reputation of the enterprise, and in their place, nature documentaries have come to constitute a somewhat larger part of the repertoire.

The remaining cinemas, usually situated at various locations in the suburbs, differ from one another in only a few minor respects, the most important being the quality of ventilation in the auditorium. They offer everything that those seeking horror and sensationalism could possibly want, and appeal to the type of person vilified in many quarters as pernicious and lacking in taste. Loud, garish posters with sensational titles, often specially altered to appeal to a particularly unshockable audience, cover entire facades. Just how low the level is and what kind of visitor is expected is best summed up by the following notice in one of the auditorial "Wrecking of chairs and benches is prohibited". Anyone who has ever strolled through the suburbs knows this kind of den. Each is no better and no worse than the other and is. In the end, always tailored to the needs of audiences who remain shockingly indifferent to, and uncritical of, the entertainment they enjoy, as long as what they are watching does not require any intellectual effort.

Taken together, the twelve cinemas [in Mannheim] offer about 4500 seats for a population of around 204,000. A certain degree of saturation appears to have been reached with this figure, and further theatre openings would be unlikely to be profitable. The proportion of cinemas to inhabitants is similar in a number of other industrial towns. But cinemas have already achieved such widespread popularity that all other forms of entertainment lag far behind. One cinema (albeit one of the largest) has as many visitors every evening as the court theatre. Based on an estimated number
of seats and on statistics from all the different theatres, it can be
concluded that around 7500 people go to the cinema every evening.
By contrast, even when all the other entertainment establishments
are counted together and when, for example, several events are tak-
ing place at the same time, audience figures still do not equate with
those for cinema.

The number of cinemagoers on particular days of the week
seems to be subject to certain regularities. This is clearly demon-
strated by a curve whose shape varies according to whether the cin-
ema is located in the centre or in working-class areas of town. In
the case of the former, the minimum frequency falls with greatest
regularity on a Friday. The reason for this is not immediately ap-
parent. Perhaps we need to postulate a psychology of the different
days of the week in order to explain it. Fridays represent a kind of
preparation, a time of waiting for events that will occur on the free
Saturday afternoon and Sunday, which are usually devoted exclu-
sively to the pursuit of pleasure. Fridays have always been largely
devoted to work, perhaps precisely in order to increase the sense
of anticipation for the coming days of rest Saturday itself, on the
other hand, is almost already a part of Sunday, especially since the
introduction of earlier closing times. One practical reason could
also be the fact that Friday has traditionally been cleaning day in
multi-roomed apartments, when the women of the petite bour-
geoisie and middle classes are busy with domestic duties: these
women make up a large proportion of the cinema audience, espe-
cially in the film theatres under consideration here.

The curve for the frequency of cinema attendance in the sub-
urbs shows that the minimum falls on Thursdays, when money has
probably already become a little tight, whereas on Friday, pay day,
the frequency picks up again The majority of visitors to these cin-
emas are laborers, that is people who have to manage with limited
means and who have usually spent their weekly wage by Thursday. For the majority, however, going to the cinema seems to be the Sunday outing. For those who are busy at work during the week, going to the cinema is the only time when they are completely freed from the daily grind. All other forms of entertainment are more expensive (for instance, the theatre) or more difficult to arrange (as is the case with plays). But picture houses can be found in every part of town. So on Sundays all the cinemas are reserved for those sections of the audience who only have time to go on that day. Moreover, both the suburban establishments and the bourgeois cinemas in the town centre show a three- to fourfold increase in audience numbers on Sundays compared with weekdays. After all, everyone likes to be seen out in their Sunday best, so people will happily pay a little extra for the greater comfort provided by the better theatres. On the remaining days of the week, cinema attendance manifests fewer but also fairly regular fluctuations.

The relationship between day of the week and cinema attendance is the only factor that has a consistent impact on the shape of the curve. No other factor seems capable of disrupting this regular cinema attendance not the weather, nor well-attended events happening at the same time in the theatre or the Rosengarten, nor even the festival weeks of I to 12 May or special entertainment programs. At most these circumstances have the effect of increasing or reducing the level of cinema attendance in one instance or another within the frequency shown on each day of the week.

This is true first and foremost for particular programmes. But it is only in isolated instances that any of the above influences can be identified at all. In the absence of any other decisive factors the likely reason why extraordinarily large numbers of people go to the cinema on some days may be rainy weather. Boredom and inactivity soon set in, and for many that is just the right mood for a trip.
to the cinema. What also emerges from the questionnaires is that bad weather in itself can be a reason for going to the cinema. But those who are thus motivated do not constitute the majority. Even if the odd rainy day does not always mean a particular increase in cinemagoing, business does fall off greatly during the summer months, which explains the large number of bankruptcies during the warm season.

It is easy to see why the theatre and concerts do not exert much influence on attendance figures when one considers that two cinema establishments alone have, almost without exception, more visitors daily than the court theatre and the Rosengarten put together - and there are twelve cinemas in town. Generally speaking, a person will rarely have any trouble choosing between the theatre or the cinema, because each suits a completely different mood. This is even more true where concerts are concerned: thus these too exert no diversionary influence. For example, within a given two-month period, the greatest number of cinema visits occurred at the same time as three well-attended concerts in the Rosen-garten Public lectures on science pose still less of a challenge to the cinemas. The obvious inference is that the cinema audience is re-cruited from different circles than the audience for other events. Where individuals are strongly influenced by a lively interest in things musical or scientific, the lure of cinema seems to be less en-ticing. But wherein lies the great attraction that still guarantees it a sizeable following. By what means has cinema gained an audience that at one time was completely indifferent to any kind of artistic representation? Let it be remembered that one cannot watch a film drama while sitting at a table drinking beer, for example, as one can a variety number, or as one might elsewhere enjoy the "Indian Nightingales' or some peasant band from the Schhersee as back-
ground entertainment. And how does the cinema win for itself an
ever-increasing audience from among the educated classes ?

We shall first consider some general reasons for the above be-
fore going on to consider films which have proven particularly ap-
pealing to audiences Whenever the question is raised as to why
cinemagoing is on the increase, the answer usually given is, ‘The
admission price is low, and you can go anytime without making
any special preparations’ The strongly sensual nature of most films,
intensified by the accompanying music as well as the darkness of
the cinema auditorium, is also emphasized as exerting appeal. This
certainly represents part of cinema’s mysterious power of attrac-
tion. But these factors can only have an effect when they act in
concert with many other causes, products of the general character
of our times which influence the audience in particular ways.

The low admission charge certainly plays an important role For
someone of modest means there is, after all, a difference between
spending seventy-five pfennigs on the most uncomfortable seat in
the theatre and occupying a box in the cinema for considerably
less However, as the questionnaires show, almost one third of cin-
emagoers, including those from less well-off social groups, go to
the cinema once or even several times a week, and therefore spend
just as much money on entertainment as they would on a once or
twice-monthly trip to the theatre, a fact that substantially under-
mines this line of argument. The second reason holds more water-
namely, the fact that going to the cinema is possible at any time
one chooses. What seems to me more crucial, however, is that both
the cinema and those who visit it are typical products of our times,
that characterized by constant preoccupation and a state of ner-
vous restlessness. Those who are constantly on the go at work dur-
ing the day can not even free themselves from this haste when they
want to relax.
As they pass the cinema they will go in to seek some distraction for a short period of time and, as they do so, will already be half thinking of how they might fill the next few hours In order to connect with a work of art, whether it be drama, a piece of music or a painting, a certain amount of time and leisure is required, as is a focusing of the mind. Cinema does not demand such concentration It creates such powerful effects that even shattered nerves can be stirred to life, and the rapid succession of events, the jumble of the most varied kinds of things, allow no room for boredom.

But it is not only the fast-paced, overwhelming form of cinema (which is indeed its very element) that satisfies so completely the needs of a broad mass of people: the content of cinematic representations also does this. The fact that erotic films and films about criminals attract such large audiences is utterly explicable' surely these films are the only ones that can strike a chord among the mass of people whose intellectual life is often in deep slumber and who have nothing in common with each another, at least as far as more elevated matters are concerned. As Heine wrote of that mode of understanding that is founded on the common basis of inferior emotions. "Rarely have you understood me, rarely too have I understood you, but whenever we found ourselves in the mire, we understood one another straight away".

Alongside these particular attractions there is another possible reason for cinema's great popularity. Cinema drama has stepped in where theatrical literature has left a gap. Nowadays, dramas are not at all popular and yet they are exactly what a large part of the audience is looking for and appears to have found in the cinemas. Plenty of action, lively changes of scene these are the main characteristics of cinema drama, and those who seek such excitement come here at their own expense. The particular suitability of cinematic technique has placed cinema drama on this path and
earned it its popularity. Objection might be raised at this point
that historical and classical theatre dramas are just as rich in ob-
servable action. This is why they are still the most popular, rela-
tively speaking, because people understand them But in general the
current generation is not especially interested in history, and the
social problems of today are much more of a lively presence in peo-
ple's lives. The same themes provide the basis for most film dramas.
Here they are dealt with not in abstract form, but through real ex-
amples and in the most powerful possible form. Whether or not
what is shown has artistic integrity is not at issue here, the point
is that cinema moves with the current of the times, it is the prod-
uct of a general sensibility. In a certain sense, people's interest in
printed news and weekly reports in the cinema is not so different
from their interest in cinema drama. Certainly one major reason
for this is their devotion to and immersion in the present. Film
drama enters and touches people's everyday lives. It might be that
extraordinary. Which way this trend will go we cannot yet predict;
but it will certainly be in stark contrast to modern theatrical liter-
ature.

The features that characterize cinema drama have already been
named, and the more pronounced these typical features are the
more they captivate the audience. If one looks at those programs
that have proven especially popular, this success can usually be
traced to particular dramas. For example, the Asta Nielsen dramas
were without exception the most popular ones shown in the better
theatres (In contrast, the situation in the suburbs was exactly the
opposite. For the film *Zu Tode gehetzt / Harried to Death*, with Asta
Nielsen in the lead role, audience numbers fell below average). A
programme containing the hit *In der Nacht des Urwalds / Jungle
Nights* had almost the same high frequency of attendance, as this
film is named again and again on the questionnaires.
All these box-office successes (they include, along with the Asta Nielsen dramas, *Das Weib ohne Herz / The Heartless Woman*, *Abgnommde / Abyss* and *Fraulein Frau / Little Miss Woman*) have certain uniform features in common. Dramas made by German companies, exclusively, are at the centre of interest. It is true that most of the great dramas that are shown originate from German-based companies, simply because these can in general be sold somewhat more cheaply. Furthermore, a degree of conformity to national tastes seems to be the most favourable precondition for great success in terms of the kinds of films shown. In the case of the majority of cinemagoers, one cannot yet speak of a cosmopolitan sensibility in people's tastes. Films that allow members of an audience to make a connection with their own social environment, whether depicting life as it is or as they wish it could be, are the most popular and allow for greater emotional identification. Indeed emotional identification really is the crucial factor here, for film representations have a very direct effect, sweeping spectators along with the action and enabling them to experience the hero's predicaments. Foreign films are less able to arouse this sort of interest because they are characterized by a foreign sensibility and only seldom strike a chord.

In terms of their content, all the films deal with that issue which constitutes the object of representation not just in film but in every area of art nowadays, and it is this theme that gives rise to their popularity in the first instance. Social issues are the focal point of attention. These dramas usually describe a woman's struggle between her natural, sensual instincts and the social conditions she faces that contradict these instincts. Her options are either spinsterhood on the one hand or the possibility of marriage to a husband who usually comes from a significantly higher or lower social group on the other. The details of the action, such as the
strong sensual content of individual scenes to which the material frequently lends itself, do not miss their mark and are the reason why these films are especially popular. These kinds of drama are so significant for cinemas and so popular within individual occupational groups that we have already addressed above the question of their overall role in the cinema. The following chapter sets out, however, to examine in greater detail their relationship within and towards the cinema movement as a whole. [...]

Sources:

1. Emilie Altenloh, *Zur Soziologie des Kino - Die Kino-Unternehmung une die sozialen Schichten ihrer Besucher*, Andrea Haller, Martin Loiperdinger, Heide Schlüpmann (Eds.), Frankfurt am Main : Stroemfeld Verlag, coll. Kintop Schriften, 2007.

2. Emilie Altenloh, *Zur Soziologie des Kino: Die Kino-Unternehmung und die Sozialen Schichten Ihrer Besucher*, translated in part (by Kathleen Cross) as 'A Sociology of the Cinema: the Audience', *Screen*, vol. 42 no. 3, Autumn 2001, p.249-293.

3. Emilie Altenloh, "A Sociology of the Cinema: The Audience". I: Simpsons, Philip, Utterson, Andrew og Shepherdson, K.J. (red.) (2004), *Film Theory: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, volume III*. London: Routledge.

4. McCormick, Richard W. og Alison Guenther-Pal (red.) (2004), *German Essays on Film*. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc.
5. Luke McKernan (11. august 2012) *A sociology of the cinema* [Internet], The Bioscope : http://thebioscope.net/2012/08/11/aaSociology-of-the-cinema/ [Lest 25. may 2024]

6. Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb and Hilda Inderwildi (eds.). Emilie Altenloh: On the Sociology of Cinema: The Cinema Enterprise and the Social Classes of Its Visitors. London - New York : OpenCulture Academic Publishing, 2025

<figure><img src="image_63.png" /><figcaption>Dr. Emilie Kiep-Altenloh at a reception in the 1960s
(credits : Hamburg State Archives)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_64.png" /></figure>

How Workingmen spend
their spare time

How many people writing on early film know about this? Using a bit of lateral searching on the Internet Archive, I found *How workingmen spend their time*, a doctoral thesis by one George Esdras Bevans, submitted at Columbia University in 1913. I've not come across it before, and it seems few film histories refer to it, yet it is a marvellous source of information on cinema-going, audience leisure tastes, and the relationship of earnings and work-time to leisure, with a wide range of evidence demonstrating the prime position of cinema in the public mind just before the First World War.

Here's the author's description of his methodology:
Bevans then goes into great detail, describing the processes he took, the particular statistical method employed, and the resistance that he sometimes received (questions were asked, "Who is back of the study?" "What capitalistic scheme is this?" "Why not investigate the employers and see how they spend their spare time?"). He also provides the questions asked and the forms supplied. The main body of the text is tables with accompanying analysis, under such headings as 'The Relation of Occupation to the use of Spare Time', 'The Relation of Wage to the Use of Spare Time', and 'What Men Usually Do on Certain Hours and During Certain Hours'. As an example, here's one of the tables accompanying the heading 'The Relation of Hours of Labor to the Use of Spare Time':

<caption>TABLE 1</caption>

Percentage of men who report time spent for various purposes during one week according to specified Hours of Labor.

<table><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Number of men</th><th colspan="4">HOURS PER DAY</th></tr><tr><th>8-9</th><th>9-10</th><th>10-11</th><th>11 and over</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td>289</td><td>257</td><td>128</td><td>132</td></tr><tr><th>SOCIAL AND OTHER AGENCIES</th><th>%</th><th>%</th><th>%</th><th>%</th></tr><tr><td>Labor Union</td><td>39.4</td><td>24.8</td><td>16.4</td><td>8.3</td></tr><tr><td>Clubs or Lodges</td><td>58.1</td><td>44.7</td><td>35.9</td><td>26.5</td></tr><tr><td>Church or Synagogue</td><td>51.9</td><td>51.0</td><td>52.3</td><td>50.0</td></tr><tr><td>Public Lectures</td><td>32.2</td><td>26.4</td><td>16.4</td><td>5.3</td></tr><tr><td>Art Galleries</td><td>8.7</td><td>7.7</td><td>3.9</td><td>0.7</td></tr><tr><td>Library</td><td>14.5</td><td>15.1</td><td>10.1</td><td>2.2</td></tr><tr><td>Private Study</td><td>16.3</td><td>14.3</td><td>14.8</td><td>3.0</td></tr><tr><td>Night School</td><td>6.2</td><td>10.8</td><td>9.4</td><td>3.0</td></tr><tr><td>Motion Pictures</td><td>55.0</td><td>63.0</td><td>64.0</td><td>57.5</td></tr><tr><td>Theatres</td><td>56.7</td><td>44.3</td><td>39.0</td><td>24.2</td></tr><tr><td>Dance</td><td>25.0</td><td>14.3</td><td>13.2</td><td>9.0</td></tr><tr><td>Saloon</td><td>31.1</td><td>31.1</td><td>32.8</td><td>28.7</td></tr><tr><td>Pool</td><td>14.9</td><td>10.1</td><td>13.2</td><td>8.3</td></tr><tr><td>Cards</td><td>37.0</td><td>30.7</td><td>36.7</td><td>44.6</td></tr><tr><td>With Family</td><td>82.0</td><td>76.2</td><td>78.1</td><td>81.0</td></tr><tr><td>Newspaper</td><td>96.2</td><td>93.3</td><td>92.1</td><td>78.7</td></tr><tr><td>Magazine</td><td>31.1</td><td>22.5</td><td>15.6</td><td>19.6</td></tr><tr><td>Books</td><td>40.8</td><td>33.0</td><td>22.6</td><td>17.4</td></tr><tr><td>Friends</td><td>78.9</td><td>79.7</td><td>79.6</td><td>67.4</td></tr></tbody></table>

This isn't the place to go into a detailed analysis of the data, but essentially one finds that whatever the working man's circum-
stances, his hours of work or his earnings, the motion picture was the favoured way of spending one's spare time. This might be expected, but it is invaluable to see the assumption tested against other leisure options, the availability of free time, and the means to pay for it. Here's a table on the relationship of age to spare time:

<table><caption>TABLE 15</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>17-24 years</th><th>25-35 years</th><th>36-45 years</th><th>46 yrs. and over</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Number of men</td><td>207</td><td>331</td><td>187</td><td>82</td></tr><tr><td>SOCIAL AND OTHER AGENCIES</td><td>%</td><td>%</td><td>%</td><td>%</td></tr><tr><td>Labor Union</td><td>15.9</td><td>25.3</td><td>33.1</td><td>45.1</td></tr><tr><td>Clubs or Lodges</td><td>48.3</td><td>40.1</td><td>44.9</td><td>51.2</td></tr><tr><td>Church or Synagogue</td><td>39.1</td><td>45.3</td><td>62.5</td><td>69.5</td></tr><tr><td>Public Lectures</td><td>28.0</td><td>26.5</td><td>17.1</td><td>14.6</td></tr><tr><td>Art Galleries</td><td>9.6</td><td>6.6</td><td>5.3</td><td>3.6</td></tr><tr><td>Library</td><td>20.7</td><td>11.7</td><td>3.7</td><td>7.3</td></tr><tr><td>Private Study</td><td>26.0</td><td>10.8</td><td>6.4</td><td>3.6</td></tr><tr><td>Night School</td><td>17.8</td><td>6.6</td><td>1.6</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Motion Pictures</td><td>43.9</td><td>65.2</td><td>48.1</td><td>46.3</td></tr><tr><td>Theatres</td><td>63.2</td><td>45.9</td><td>31.0</td><td>28.0</td></tr><tr><td>Dance</td><td>37.6</td><td>16.3</td><td>6.4</td><td>1.2</td></tr><tr><td>Saloon</td><td>17.8</td><td>32.6</td><td>42.7</td><td>30.4</td></tr><tr><td>Pool</td><td>25.1</td><td>12.3</td><td>2.6</td><td>2.4</td></tr><tr><td>Cards</td><td>25.6</td><td>39.8</td><td>41.7</td><td>26.8</td></tr><tr><td>With Family</td><td>65.7</td><td>80.3</td><td>94.6</td><td>85.3</td></tr><tr><td>Newspapers</td><td>94.6</td><td>90.3</td><td>89.8</td><td>92.6</td></tr><tr><td>Magazines</td><td>29.9</td><td>23.2</td><td>21.9</td><td>18.2</td></tr><tr><td>Books</td><td>45.8</td><td>26.8</td><td>27.8</td><td>20.7</td></tr><tr><td>Friends</td><td>81.6</td><td>80.0</td><td>71.6</td><td>65.8</td></tr></tbody></table>

OK, not everyone interested in silent cinema is going to be that engrossed by statistics, but the sociology of early cinema is still a grievously neglected subject, and if we don't relate the films to the people who saw them, it's hard to say what we are doing investigating early films at all.

There were other such early sociological studies. The most notable is Emilie Altenoh's study of film audiences in Mannheim, Germany over 1912/13, published as *Zur Soziologie des Kino: Die Kino-Unternehmung und die Sozialen Schichten Ihrer Besucher* (1914), part translated as *A Sociology of the Cinema* in *Screen*, vol. 42 no. 3, Au-
tumn 2001. I hear tale that a full translation into English is under-
way. Another is M.M. Davis' *The Exploitation of Pleasure: A Study of
Commercial Recreation in New York City* (1911). There is always some-
thing a little unsettling about people being studied anatomically
in this way – and generally working-class people. What seemed
irrational or in need of explanation (and then control) by elites,
seemed wholly rational to those enjoying the experience. But we
still have to be glad that such studies were done. As Bevans' data
amply proves, watching movies was, quite simply, a good way of
spending your time.

Luke McKernan (august 2012).

***

source :

1. Luke McKernan (11. august 2012) *A sociology of the cinema* [Internet], The Bioscope : http://thebioscope.net/2012/08/11/aaSociology-of-the-cinema/ [Lest 25. may 2024] [with courtesy of Luke McKernan]

2. George Esdras Bevans, *How workingmen spend their time*, Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, New York : Columbia University Press, 1913. Available on Archive.org.
HOW WORKINGMEN SPEND
THEIR SPARE TIME

BY

GEORGE ESDRAS BEVANS, M. A.

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of
Philosophy in the Faculty of Political Science
Columbia University

NEW YORK
1913
<figure><img src="image_65.png" /></figure>

The photoplay : A
psychological study

Hugo Münsterberg (1863-1916), a German-American psy-
chologist, published *The Photoplay: A Psychological Study* at
a pivotal moment in his academic and personal career. In-
vited by William James to Harvard in 1892 to direct the
psychology laboratory, he was a pioneer of applied psychol-
ogy, constantly seeking to extend scientific methods to new
domains. Published in 1916, just months before his sudden
death during a conference at Radcliffe College, this work
represents the first systematic study of cinema as an artistic
form and psychological experience. In a context of personal
and geopolitical tensions, Münsterberg, torn between his
German origins and American adoption, was under signifi-
cant pressure during World War I. His pro-German positions
had led him to be suspected of espionage and marginalized
by his Harvard colleagues. His study of cinema was part of
a broader approach to applying experimental psychology to
cultural phenomena, examining the perceptual and cognitive
mechanisms of the spectator. His methodological approach
offers an innovative analysis of cinematic perception's psy-
chological processes, developing the hypothesis that cinema
constitutes a new autonomous art form whose experience
transcends physical reality. Münsterberg examines the mech-
anisms of identification with characters and the aesthetic di-
mension of the medium, making a decisive contribution to
the emergence of cognitive film theory and anticipating fu-
ture developments in psychology and film studies.

Everything so far has referred to the emotions of the persons in the play, but this cannot be sufficient. When we were interested in attention and memory we did not ask about the act of attention and memory in the persons of the play, but in the spectator, and we recognized that these mental activities and excitements in the audience were projected into the moving pictures. Just here was the center of our interest, because it showed that uniqueness of the means with which the photoplaywright can work. If we want to shape the question now in the same way, we ought to ask how it is with the emotions of the spectator. But then two different groups of cases must be distinguished. On the one side we have those emotions in which the feelings of the persons in the play are transmitted to our own soul. On the other side, we find those feelings with which we respond to the scenes in the play, feelings which may be entirely different, perhaps exactly opposite to those which the figures in the play express.

The first group is by far the larger one. Our imitation of the
emotions which we see expressed brings vividness and affective
tone into our grasping of the play's action. We sympathize with the
sufferer and that means that the pain which he expresses becomes our own pain. We share the joy of the happy lover and the grief of the despondent mourner, we feel the indignation of the betrayed wife and the fear of the man in danger. The visual perception of the various forms of expression of these emotions fuses in our mind with the conscious awareness of the emotion expressed; we feel as if we were directly seeing and observing the emotion itself.

Moreover the idea awakens in us the appropriate reactions. The horror which we see makes us really shrink, the happiness which we witness makes us relax, the pain which we observe brings contractions in our muscles; and all the resulting sensations from muscles, joints, tendons, from skin and viscera, from blood circulation and breathing, give the color of living experience to the emotional reflection in our mind. It is obvious that for this leading group of emotions the relation of the pictures to the feelings of the persons in the play and to the feelings of the spectator is exactly the same. If we start from the emotions of the audience, we can say that the pain and the joy which the spectator feels are really projected to the screen, projected both into the portraits of the persons and into the pictures of the scenery and background into which the personal emotions radiate. The fundamental principle which we recognized for all the other mental states is accordingly no less efficient in the case of the spectator's emotions.

The analysis of the mind of the audience must lead, however, to that second group of emotions, those in which the spectator responds to the scenes on the film from the standpoint of his independent affective life. We see an overbearing pompous person who is filled with the emotion of solemnity, and yet he awakens in us the emotion of humor. We answer by our ridicule. We see the scoundrel who, in the melodramatic photoplay, is filled with fiendish malice, and yet we do not respond by imitating his emo-
tion; we feel moral indignation toward his personality. We see the laughing, rejoicing child who, while he picks the berries from the edge of the precipice, is not aware that he must fall down if the hero does not snatch him back at the last moment. Of course, we feel the child's joy with him. Otherwise, we should not even understand his behavior, but we feel more strongly the fear and the horror of which the child himself does not know anything. The photoplaywrights have so far hardly ventured to project this second class of emotion, which the spectator superadds to the events, into the show on the screen. Only tentative suggestions can be found. The enthusiasm or disapproval or indignation of the spectator is sometimes released in the lights and shades and in the setting of the landscape. There are still rich possibilities along this line. The photoplay has hardly come to its own with regard to these secondary emotions. Here it has not emancipated itself sufficiently from the model of the stage. Those emotions arise, of course, in the audience of a theater too, but the dramatic stage cannot embody them. In the opera the orchestra may symbolize them. For the photoplay, which is not bound to the physical succession of events but gives us only the pictorial reflection, there is an unlimited field for the expression of these attitudes in ourselves.

But the wide expansion of this field and of the whole manifoldness of emotional possibilities in the moving pictures is not sufficiently characterized as long as we think only of the optical representation in the actual outer world. The camera men of the moving pictures have photographed the happenings of the world and all its wonders, have gone to the bottom of the sea and up to the clouds; they have surprised the beasts in the jungles and in the Arctic ice; they have dwelt with the lowest races and have captured the greatest men of our time: and they are always haunted by the fear that the supply of new sensations may be exhausted.
Curiously enough, they have so far ignored the fact that an inexhaustible wealth of new impressions is at their disposal, which has hardly been touched as yet. There is a material and a formal side to the pictures which we see in their rapid succession. The material side is controlled by the content of what is shown to us. But the formal side depends upon the outer conditions under which this content is exhibited. Even with ordinary photographs we are accustomed to discriminate between those in which every detail is very sharp and others, often much more artistic, in which everything looks somewhat misty and blurring and in which sharp outlines are avoided. We have this formal aspect, of course, still more prominently if we see the same landscape or the same person painted by a dozen different artists. Each one has his own style. Or, to point to another elementary factor, the same series of moving pictures may be given to us with a very slow or with a rapid turning of the crank. It is the same street scene, and yet in the one case everyone on the street seems leisurely to saunter along, while in the other case there is a general rush and hurry. Nothing is changed but the temporal form; and in going over from the sharp image to the blurring one, nothing is changed but a certain spatial form: the content remains the same.

As soon as we give any interest to this formal aspect of the presentation, we must recognize that the photoplaywright has here possibilities to which nothing corresponds in the world of the stage. Take the case that we want to produce an effect of trembling. We might use the pictures as the camera has taken them, sixteen in a second. But in reproducing them on the screen we change their order. After giving the first four pictures we go back to picture 3, then give 4, 5, 6, and return to 5, then 6, 7, 8, and go back to 7, and so on. Any other rhythm, of course, is equally possible. The effect is one which never occurs in nature and which could not be
produced on the stage. The events for a moment go backward. A
certain vibration goes through the world like the tremolo of the
orchestra. Or we demand from our camera a still more complex
service. We put the camera itself on a slightly rocking support and
then every point must move in strange curves and every motion
takes an uncanny whirling character. The content still remains the
same as under normal conditions, but the changes in the formal
presentation give to the mind of the spectator unusual sensations
which produce a new shading of the emotional background.

Of course, impressions which come to our eye can at first
awaken only sensations, and a sensation is not an emotion. But it
is well known that in the view of modern physiological psychol-
ogy our consciousness of the emotion itself is shaped and marked
by the sensations which arise from our bodily organs. As soon as
such abnormal visual impressions stream into our consciousness,
our whole background of fusing bodily sensations becomes altered
and new emotions seem to take hold of us. If we see on the screen
a man hypnotized in the doctor's office, the patient himself may
lie there with closed eyes, nothing in his features expressing his
emotional setting and nothing radiating to us. But if now only
the doctor and the patient remain unchanged and steady, while
everything in the whole room begins at first to tremble and then
to wave and to change its form more and more rapidly so that a
feeling of dizziness comes over us and an uncanny, ghastly unnat-
uralness overcomes the whole surrounding of the hypnotized per-
son, we ourselves become seized by the strange emotion. It is not
worth while to go into further illustrations here, as this possibil-
ity of the camera work still belongs entirely to the future. It could
not be otherwise as we remember that the whole moving picture
play arose from the slavish imitation of the drama and began only
slowly to find its own artistic methods. But there is no doubt that
the formal changes of the pictorial presentation will be legion as soon as the photoartists give their attention to this neglected aspect.

The value of these formal changes for the expression of the emotions may become remarkable. The characteristic features of many an attitude and feeling which cannot be expressed without words today will then be aroused in the mind of the spectator through the subtle art of the camera.

## THE FUNCTION OF THE PHOTOPLAY

Not only the news pictures and the scientific demonstrations but also the photoplays can lead young and old to ever new regions of knowledge. The curiosity and the imagination of the spectators will follow gladly. Yet, even in the intellectual sphere, the dangers must not be overlooked. They are not positive. It is not as in the moral sphere where the healthy moral impulse is checked by the sight of crimes that stir up antisocial desires. The danger is not that the pictures open insight into facts which ought not to be known. It is not the dangerous knowledge that must be avoided, but it is the trivializing influence of a steady contact with things that are not worth knowing. The larger part of the film literature of today is certainly harmful in this sense. The intellectual background of most photoplays is insipid. By telling the plot without the subtle motivation that the spoken word of the drama may bring, not only do the characters lose color, but all the scenes and situations are simplified to a degree that adjusts them to a thoughtless public and soon becomes intolerable to an intellectually trained spectator.

They force on the cultivated mind that feeling which musical persons experience in the musical comedies of the day. We hear the melodies constantly, feeling like we have heard them ever so of-
ten before. This lack of originality and inspiration is not necessary; it does not lie in the art form. Offenbach and Strauss and others have written musical comedies which are classical. Neither does it lie in the form of the photoplay that the story must be told in that insipid, flat, uninspired fashion. Nor is it necessary in order to reach the millions. To appeal to the intelligence does not mean to presuppose college education. Moreover, the differentiation has already begun. Just as the plays of Shaw or Ibsen address a different audience from that reached by the "Old Homestead" or "Ben Hur," we have already photoplays adapted to different types, and there is not the slightest reason to connect with the art of the screen an intellectual flabbiness. It would be no gain for intellectual culture if all the reasoning were confined to the so-called instructive pictures and the photoplays were served without any intellectual salt. On the contrary, the appeal of those strictly educational lessons may be less deep than the producers hope, because the untrained minds, especially of youth and of the uneducated audiences, have considerable difficulty in following the rapid flight of events when they occur in unfamiliar surroundings. The child grasps very little in seeing the happenings in a factory. The psychological and economic lesson may be rather wasted because the power of observation is not sufficiently developed and the assimilation proceeds too slowly. But it is quite different when a human interest stands behind it and connects the events in the photoplay.

The difficulties in the way of the right moral influence are still greater than in the intellectual field. Certainly it is not enough to have the villain punished in the last few pictures of the reel. If scenes of vice or crime are shown with all their lure and glamour the moral devastation of such a suggestive show is not undone by the appended social reaction. The misguided boys or girls feel sure that they would be successful enough not to be trapped. The mind
through a mechanism which has been understood better and better by the psychologists in recent years suppresses the ideas which are contrary to the secret wishes and makes those ideas flourish by which those “subconscious” impulses are fulfilled. It is probably a strong exaggeration when a prominent criminologist recently claimed that “eighty-five per cent. of the juvenile crime which has been investigated has been found traceable either directly or indirectly to motion pictures which have shown on the screen how crimes could be committed.” But certainly, as far as these demonstrations have worked havoc, their influence would not have been annihilated by a picturesque court scene in which the burglar is unsuccessful in misleading the jury. The true moral influence must come from the positive spirit of the play itself. Even the photo-dramatic lessons in temperance and piety will not rebuild a frivolous or corrupt or perverse community. The truly upbuilding play is not a dramatized sermon on morality and religion. There must be a moral wholesomeness in the whole setting, a moral atmosphere which is taken as a matter of course like fresh air and sunlight. An enthusiasm for the noble and uplifting, a belief in duty and discipline of the mind, a faith in ideals and eternal values must permeate the world of the screen. If it does, there is no crime and no heinous deed which the photoplay may not tell with frankness and sincerity. It is not necessary to deny evil and sin in order to strengthen the consciousness of eternal justice.

But the greatest mission which the phot may have in our community is that of aesthetic cultivation. No art reaches a larger audience daily, no aesthetic influence finds spectators in a more receptive frame of mind.

***
Source :

Hugo Münsterberg, *The photoplay : a psychological study*. New York, London : D. Appleton, 1916.

<figure><img src="image_66.png" /><figcaption>Advertisement for the Brixton Scala</figcaption></figure>

Brixton Free Press, 1914
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# Psychology of the Cinema
## Audience

<figure><img src="image_68.png" /><figcaption>Students at the Majestic, Ann Arbor, Michigan, watching a movie (1913)</figcaption></figure>

[courtesy of the Media History Digital Library & Archive.org]

The manufacturer of photoplays studies his audience through the box office. To him there are two kinds of audiences, the good and the small. He calls a given photoplay ninety-five percent
perfect if ninety-five out of a hundred local exhibitors report good
audiences on the particular day or week when the play was exhib-
ited. But we as students or critics or serious minded photoplay-
wrights cannot afford to make hasty inferences from the mere facts
of dollars and houses. If we are to improve the photoplay as art we
need to penetrate more philosophically into the nature of the audi-
ence, we need to understand the experience of the average member
of that audience, his reactions, sensations, feelings, and thoughts
during the exhibition of a picture. As practical artists we must see
our goal before we start, we must address our message before we
send it. And we should know our audience before we attempt to
communicate with it.

It must never be forgotten that the theatre audience is a crowd.
A crowd is a compact mass of people neva together by a single pur-
pose during any period of t.itne whether long or short. The vari-
ous units are in close contact with each other, the crowd existing
as such while this close contact is maintained. In the théâtre a par-
ticular crowd exists as such only during the time of the perfor-
mance and can never exist again once it has been broken up after
the particular performance for which it came together. The close
contact is spiritual as well as physical. You not only touch elbows
with your neighbour and live in his atmosphere but you are in-
fected by his emotions and share his desires, purposes, reactions.
This close contact gives the crowd a peculiar psychology. The in-
dividual in the crowd is not the same ias when alone. He is sub-
consciously influenced by his companions or neighbours until his
emotions are heightened and his desire or ability to think is low-
ered. He laughs more easily and at less comic things in a crowd
than when he is alone. In the crowd he is more responsive, more
demonstrative, more kind, more cruel, more sentimental, more re-
ligious, more patriotic, more unreasoning, more gullible than when
alone. A crowd, therefore, is more emotional and less intellectual
than its members were before they came together.

While the crowd is single-minded the public is manyminded. The public may be looked upon as a vast web-like association of unified groups, families, cliques, coteries, leagues, clubs, and crowds. A crowd can never exist as such for more than three or four hours at a time, or while the close contact is maintained and the single interest is held. But a public may have space between its units and time between its sessions. Furthermore, the public is permanent in its existence. Its groups come in contact, though not simultaneously; views are exchanged, discussions are carried on, letters are written, until as a result of all this reflection a deliberate expression is arrived at. This deliberate expression is called public opinion.

But a crowd by its very nature never has time to reflect. It must decide and act on instinct or impulse or, at best, on the first flash of thought. After that crowd has been broken up, the individuals may upon reflection reverse their decisions. These second thoughts, these mature judgments may then become a part of public opinion. It happens, therefore, very often that political orators — we need mention no names — can sway crowds but cannot sway the public. It happens too that a play may be applauded by three or fifteen or fifty crowds and yet not finally make for itself a public. This is so because the crowd grasps at the obvious and immediate, because it is impressed by surface values. But a play cannot become a permanent possession of civilizational unless its values are deep, fundamental, vital, subtile, and permanent; unless, in short, it will stand the test of study and time.

Classic stage plays such as Macbeth or The School for Scandal or Lady Windermere's Fan have stood this test and have their public, who will attend a performance whether done by college
dramatic society, society amateurs, or the best professional talent And, through their masterpieces, dramatists like Shakespeare, Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw, Maeterlinck, and Barrie have their public, who will be interested in any play, no matter how obscure or inferior, attributed to these authors. But in the brief history of the photoplay no scenario writer has succeeded in winning a public. It is true that Mr. Griffith has a public; but he is a director and producer as well as a writer. At present not one photoplay out of a hundred gets a public. The momentary nature of exhibition prevents it. Photoplays are seen and judged by single isolated crowds, in Boston and Kalamazoo and Galveston, but rarely by a steady succession of crowds in one place, a succession that might finally develop a public criticism. There are exceptions, of course, such as *The Birth of a Nation*, and *Intolerance*.

But in the motion picture world it is the “star”, the actor or actress, who gets the public. Mary Pickford has her public. Francis Bushman has his. The Drews and Chaplin have theirs. Here again the conditions of exhibition are responsible. A play is flashed upon the screen, fades away, and dies with that performance. It lives again somewhere, perhaps in Brooklyn or Hoboken, but not for us. We cannot read it. Nor can we find it or see it again at will. It exists only for a crowd. The plays go; but the “stars” remain. In the same theatre we may applaud them again tomorrow or next week. They will exhibit their powers in a new story, a new “vehicle”, but we give the “vehicle” casual attention, because we know that it, too, will be whisked away. Meanwhile we become familiar with the performers. We know their names, and ages, and favourite amusements. We criticize them. We tell our friends that they are not so wonderful as advertised to be, or that every one must be sure to see them. Thus under present conditions the interpreter, rather than the play, secures a firm grasp upon the public.
Yet these difficult conditions in the motion picture world need not discourage the cinema composer. If he can only capture enough crowds, say a thousand or more, he, too, will ultimately win a public, providing, of course, that the surface appeal which pleased the crowd will, when penetrated, reveal a deeper appeal capable of holding the public. But how can he coax even one crowd into activity? The cinema composer studies the psychology of spectators in a motion picture theatre, he will discover that for them three classes of appeal exist in every film that telles a story. They are:

• first, the *sense appeal* to the eye;

• second, the *emotional appeal*; and,

• third, the *intellectual appeal*.

The sense appeal and emotional appeal are primary, elemental, and strong, while the intellectual appeal is secondary and relatively slight.

The visual sense of the spectator reacts first to the beauty of the subject photographed. Thus a moonlit lake, a surfswept beach, sprucecovered foothills, an Italian villa near a mountain pass, the interior of a richly furnished mansion — all give the eye a sensation of pleasure, a pleasure which is quite apart from their meaning, their relation to the plot of the play. The spectator might be too stupid to understand the story and yet might thoroughly enjoy the picture. This delight of the eye is a primitive sensation; yet it is experienced by every spectator whether he be an infant or a mature man of culture. It is more than an appreciation of a picture; it is a delight in the subject itself. The spectator easily imagines that he is in direct contact with the beautiful reality itself, and forgets that the camera has intervened.
The eye is especially pleased by certain types of physical movement which the motion picture can transmit, and which cannot be transmitted through any other art medium. When a pebble is thrown into a pool a number of circular ripples immediately take form and, expanding in concentric rings, finally flatten out and lose themselves in the still surface of the pool. The eye is pleased by these expanding ripples and by the endless multiplication of rings which rise mysteriously from the point where the pebble went down. The eye does not discover any particular meaning in this subject; it merely enjoys the abstract motion. If motion were absent, and the rings were still, as they would seem in an ordinary photograph, there would be no sense of visual pleasure. Other examples of pure motion pleasing to the eye are the pouring rush of a waterfall, the rhythmic undulations of the sea, the fan-like spreading of a sky rocket, the slow curling of smoke from a factory fimnel, the varying balance of a bird in flight, the steady forward thrust of a yacht under full sail. In all these subjects it is the continuous movement rather than the static moment which pleases the eye. And the motion picture is the new and unique medium through which these movements may be reproduced with artistic effect.

There is a keen pleasure of the eye also when appealing motion identifies itself with the expression of the human body, individually as in the case of a dancer, and en masse as in the case of a regiment on parade. This response of our senses to human form and physical movement is primary and elemental, and takes place before our brain has time to interpret the dramatic significance of the visible stimulus. Hence we see that a fundamental duty of the photoplaywright is to give the performers full scope for the physical appeal, and to set their action amid an environment which shall instantly impress the eye of the spectator. This first impres-
sion on the observer is tremendously important. And the scenario
writer must remember that it is his business to furnish good sub-
jects for the director, and that both he and the director must con-
spire with the photographer to captivate the eye of the audience,
because whatever other appeals a photoplay is to make, it must
first appeals to the eye.

While the spectator at a photoplay feels the visual or purely
physical sensation described above, his spiritual experience is en-
riched by the emotions which are being kindled by the play. We
have already said that the crowd is very highly susceptible to emo-
tional appeal, that the individual in the crowd is more emotional
than when alone. His emotional experience is of a twofold nature.
He feels what we may call "self-emotion" or emotion which has
no reference to any person in the play or to any other person in
the world, and he feels a social emotion, a feeling of social rela-
tion with, and a personal interest in, the characters of the play. The
self-emotion in the cinema theatre when viewing a pictured scene,
is like the self-emotion in real life face to face with real nature. We
have all experienced it, yet cannot easily describe it. Sometimes it
may be a vague sense of longing as we look through the slender
birches across a wide bay at the low majesty of the spruce-covered
bank beyond. But the longing does not formulate itself. We do not
know exactly what we want or feel. It is a mysterious mingling of
contentment and sadness. In the same way the eternal whiteness of
an Alpine peak, a dim sail on the far horizon, the luminous reflec-
tion of a summer cloud in a mountain lake — all stir in us an emo-
tion of silent marvel or wonder or a vague longing for something
— something beyond our present experience. Sometimes the self-
emotion may be more naive, a thrill or excitement at some action
or disturbance, at a street crowd rushing to a fight or a fire, even
when we are not quite sure or do not really care what it is all about.
The sense of an incipient or impending stir outside us stimulates a corresponding agitation within us, and we are impressed before we really know what it is that has impressed us. The spectator in the motion picture theatre easily yields to these simple emotional appeals. He surrenders to the illusion of art, and easily imagines that he is in the presence of real nature or of the actual original action. But the spectator's emotional experience is still more vivid in his dramatic sympathy, his social interest in the characters on the screen. The fact that social emotions can be aroused by something which is confessedly not real, by mere pictures of people who do not exist except in imagination, is of fundamental importance in dramatic or literary art. This illusion makes drama a tremendous power. It makes our world very large and our human acquaintance very wide. Fiction becomes real. Fictitious characters become more real even than their authors. To us Shylock seems more real than Shakespeare. We could almost believe that the Jew was a historical figure and the Englishman. Don Quixote, Sherlock Holmes, and Peter Pan surely are more real than Cervantes, Conan Doyle, and Barrie. We know the characters of story so intimately because through the medium of art we have come in personal contact with them, have admired their powers, or sympathized with their joys and sorrows. In the motion picture theatre this illusion of personal contact with the characters is especially strong. We admire or dislike, love or hate, approve or disapprove, forgive or refuse to forgive, these mere shadows on the screen. We select our friends from among the heroes and heroines, but we scorn the villainous, the stupid, and the low. We weep real tears over sorrows which we know do not really exist. We applaud triumphs which we know are never really achieved. We have definite fears and dreads and hopes and ambitions for merely imaginary characters.
These social emotions arise in us, not only because we are sym-
pathetically interested in the outcome of any human struggle, as
we shall see in a later chapter, but because, by a law of psychology,
we project our very selves into the characters on the screen. Thus
every spectator in the audience may get by proxy the experiences
and emotions of the character he is observing. The identification
of self with fictitious characters is especially true of childhood.
Lovers of Dickens will remember David Copperfield's statement
that as a child his only and constant comfort was reading novels,
putting himself into all the good characters and putting Mr. Murd-
stone, his hated stepfather, and Miss Murdstone into all the bad
ones. In the theatre today the little girl identifies herself with the
queen or with the adventuress. She imagines herself as magnificent
as one and as clever as the other. The little boy identifies himself
vividly with the hero in all his nobility or with the villain in all his
shrewdness. It is human nature to crave an increasing experience,
an experience which is not limited by the boundaries of circum-
stance, or propriety. Where actuality imprisons us, art sets us free.
In art the janitor may become a king, the postman, a general; you
may become a train robber, your sister, a vampire, and I may be-
come a millionaire. Thus all of us may get vicariously the experi-
ence which we could not get or would not want in actual life.

An interesting representation of this projecting of self into a
character may be found in the Blue Bird photoplay Undine. The
film represents a man reading the story of Undine to his little girl.
When they get to the part about the fisherman's child the little
girl says to her father, "I want to be their little girl". The father
gives her permission, and through the rest of the film we see the
role of the fisherman's child played by the same girl who sat on her
father's knee and listened to the reading of the story about that
child.
One of the factors involved in our srmpathies with the char-
acters on the stage or on the screen is the factor of the performer
who plays the part. After having seen Sarah Bernhardt in Camille
or David Warfield in The Music Master or John Barrymore in Jus-
tice we can never think of the chief characters in those plays re-
spectively except in connection with the performers. A reading of
the play in book form before or after it is acted does not make the
stamp of the actor's personality any less indelible. In the case of the
photoplay where the film version is the only one, the coalescence
of the actor with the part he plays is even more complete. In fact
it would be impossible for us to come in contact with the photo-
play character at all except through the photographed pantomime
of the performer. Therefore in the photoplay our social emotions
toward the characters are largely conditioned by our like or dislike
of the actor or actress.

In fact, the “movie fan” is quite content to admire acting apart
from its significance in the interpretation of character. His eagerly
surrendered dime is a tribute to the physical skill or daring of a
fellow being, some comedian who rolls humorously down a flight
of stairs, or some actress who leaps from a racing automobile to
the cowcatcher of a train. This is an elemental and primitive emo-
tion. For thousands of years gaping humanity has been thrilled by
the juggler and the acrobat. And who of us has not inherited this
savage appreciation ? Which of us does not some time steal away
from the press of business, the depths of philosophy, or the heights
of art to thrill at the gifts of the baseball pitcher, the prize fighter,
or the cabaret dancer? Such admiration of physical skill in a fellow
being is basic in all the appreciation we have for theatrical perfor-
mance. Julia Marlowe and Charlie Chaplin, antipodal as they may
seem, have built their success on the same foundation, this social
emotion of the crowd, this admiration of physical ability in a fel-
low. The crowd by no means objects to well-developed characters in a play, but it demands that these characters shall be conceived or adjusted to reveal the powers of favourite actors or actresses. Any theatre crowd, except one composed of dramatists and critics, would rather see a first class actor in a second class play than a second class actor in a first class play. This emphasizes what we have already said, that the crowd grasps at the obvious and immediate, and is impressed by surface values. The actor is the surface value of the character he interprets. In the case of the good actor this surface value is an accurate index to the character which lies beneath. In the case of the bad actor the surface value is like a gaudy curtain which prevents our seeing the character created by the author. In either case the eye of the crowd feeds eagerly upon the show of the surface.

Here then is the moral. If the cinema composer wishes to arouse the social emotions of the crowd, if he wishes to give every spectator a personal escape into the fascinating region of vicarious experience, he must conceive and delineate his characters in the terms of the greatest acting values. The emotions of an audience are the treasure trove of the artist; and for the time being the motion picture "star" is the only one who can unlock it.

The intellectual appeal of a photoplay is slight compared with its emotional appeal. The momentary, flashing nature of exhibition and the psychology of the crowd give the spectator little opportunity or desire to exercise his intellectual faculties. Yet he has certain intellectual experiences while seeing a photoplay. The fundamental one is the satisfaction of curiosity. We constantly desire new material to add to our store of knowledge. We crave novelty. The average American scans his newspaper with bated breath. But the recognition of a thing as new is an intellectual process. Our judgment declares a thing new by comparing it with the old which
we already possess. Then the new itself becomes old and the adven-
ture of the mind must begin again. Only yesterday the hiction pic-
ture itself was a kind of novelty. With rapt attention we observed:
“The picture moves !” It doesn’t hurt our eyes ! “Things look so
real!” “How clever the photographer is!”

Today the mechanical devices of story telling on the screen are
still new. The devices of leaders, cut-ins, close-ups, flash-backs, vi-
sions, dissolving views, fade-outs, fade-ins, double exposures, dual
roles, etc., have a strong appeal of novelty. I In the light of his ex-
perience the spectator recognizes these processes as new; and he
is eager to see the next play released because it may contain some
new evidence of the mechanician’s ingenuity.

Novelty of physical content appeals to the spectator as well as
novelty of physical form. He eagerly satisfies his curiosity with re-
gard to other places and climes, other people and phases of life
than those with which he is familiar. The South Dakota cowboy
finds novelty in the story which is laid in a Cape Cod fishing vil-
lage or on board a millionaire's yacht. The child of the Ghetto finds
the same novelty. The fisherman, the colonial dame, and the heiress
find novelty in the bitter story of the Ghetto, or in the spacious
drama of the South Dakota ranches. It matters Uttle that these
scenes may be "faked" by the producer of the film. The satisfaction
of curiosity still takes place in the mind of the spectator. In fact,
the illusion of the screen is so great that for the time the specta-
tor feels that he is in direct contact with the reality. The impres-
sion will remain; and in the confused memory of old age this same
spectator, though he has never traveled, will say, "When I was in
Yokohama" — or "When I stood before the sphinx" — only to be
interrupted by some indulgent grandchild who will explain, "You
know, granddaddy was never there at all; he only saw those things
in the movies!"
Curiosity concerning surface structure of a play and its physical
content can always be successfully appealed to by the photoplay
wright. But he will never find the crowd very much interested in
the abstract principles and laws upon which a play is built. It has.
no critical appreciation of craftsmanship. The trained cinema com-
poser may show commanding ability in his mobilization of human
materials for the play ; he may show keen logic in the motiva-
tion of his action ; he may show economic originality in drama-
tizing his pictorial setting; he may show great deftness in his plot
weaving, and the crowd will sit through it all without a single aes-
thetic thrill. Aesthetic appreciation of workmanship is the result
not of impulse but of analysis ; and the play must become estab-
lished as a public favourite before these values are discovered and
admired. After a play has reached the public its chances of becom-
ing a classic are multiplied by good craftsmanship; but good crafts-
manship as such is of little value in helping the play to reach the
public. Therefore it would be stupid for a photoplaywright to say,
“It’s strange this play didn’t win the crowd; I’m sure it’s perfectly
constructed.” In other words, craftsmanship is a means and not an
end, as far as the audience is concerned. The author must design
and contrive deftly, almost secretly, to please the senses and cap-
ture the emotions and add to the intellectual possession of the au-
dience. The results are paramount, while the ingenuity and artistry
of the methods will either be ignored or unrecognized. But, to re-
turn to our theme, the primary intellectual experience of the spec-
tator during a photoplay is the satisfaction of curiosity, curiosity as
to content, and curiosity as to the photographic devices of telling
the story.

Another intellectual process is the recognition of comic value.
We are amused when we are surprised into observing an incon-
gruity, an example of human unfitness; we laugh because we know
better. In a flash we compare the unfitness of the thing with what
we know should be its fitness. This comparison is a momentary,
subconscious intellectual process. To be sure, the tax on our sub-
conscious judgment is very slight. It is almost absent in our appre-
ciation of slapstick buffloonery. It is greatest in our appreciation
of comedy of subtle or whimsical situation. In making compar-
isons between fitness and unfitness we naturally choose ourselves
as examples of the former and the dramatic victims as examples of
the latter. Thus we are more dignified than the clown who makes
grimaces; we are more comfortable than the teacher who sits down
upon a tack; we are more self-controlled than the talkative drunk-
ard; we are wiser than the idiot who fears a stuffed bear; we are
more sophisticated than the country lout who tries to mail letters
in the fire alarm box. This sudden recognition of personal superior-
ity pleases us to the point of laughter. A sensation of pleasure and
a feeling of hilarity sets in, which sweep the cobwebs of care from
our brains. The slight, almost negligible, mental effort of recognizing
incongruity relieves the brain of all mental strain, the seriousness
of real life is forgotten, and we abandon ourselves to the caprice of
the sportive unreality on the screen.

It must be remembered that the motion picture makes its ap-
peal primarily through the eye. Hence it is only natural that the
individual of the crowd, with his lowered intellectuality, should
respond more easily to caricature of physical appearance and ac-
tion than to the humour of situation which must be inferred from
grasping the dramatic significance of the characters and their ac-
tivities in the plot. In a following chapter we shall take up a more
careful discussion of comedy in general and the possibilities of
screen comedy in particular. Suffice it to say here that audiences
are fond of comedy, and that they respond primarily to the kind of
comedy which can be grasped visually, instantaneously, and with
the least mental effort.

The process of comparison and judgment which we have just
said is present in comic appeal, is a subconscious process of the
mind. The opportunity of deliberately judging and reasoning
would not be welcomed by the audience. The theatre crowd is nei-
ther willing nor fitted to weigh evidence and come to conclusions
concerning questions of debate. The crowd is sentimental rather
than philosophic. The crowd wants to see the lovers reunited at the
end of the play; but it does not care to apportion the rewards of
these characters according to the principles of absolute equity and
justice. The crowd thrills at the proposition that no man shall treat
his wife as though she were a mere chattel; but it would not warm
up to a screen discussion of property rights. The crowd cheers the
Stars and Stripes or a picture of the President; but it remains cold
towards the tariff. The explanation of all this is that law, social sci-
ence, and statesmanship require close application of thought and
are only mildly diverting: and the audience wants the maximum
of entertainment with the minimum of thinking. Mental recep-
tivity is determined by mood; and the mood for visual pleasure
and emotional thrill is not the mood for argument. The scenario
writer must not infer from our discussion that his play may safely
be brainless, but, on the other hand, he must not hope to impress
the theatre crowd by the originality of his thinking, nor must he
look to the photoplay as an easy medium for argumentative expres-
sion. It is true that, if he expects to reach the public and to hold it
permanently, he must make the underlying philosophy of his com-
position sound and valid, but he must also see to it that this phi-
losophy is underlying and not outstanding; because he cannot feed
the crowd with philosophy unless he incases it in the sugar coating
of emotional entertainment. The most intense intellectual ex-
perience of the spectator during the exhibition of a photoplay is
the state of suspense concerning the outcome of any given situa-
tion or of the plot as a whole. Mental suspense is the fundamen-
tal element of dramatic appeal, and no play could hold the interest
of an audience without it. How to arouse and maintain suspense
is so important a question that we shall devote a separate chapter
to its discussion. Let us merely say here that suspense is a combi-
nation of emotional and intellectual experience. The spectator is
in a state of thrill and wonder regarding the progress of action;
at the same time he matches his wits with the author, playing the
role of detective and prophet, and tries to forecast and anticipate
the action. He observes alertly every detail of the plot and makes
rapid inferences concerning the content of the pictures yet to be
flashed on the screen. His attention is firmly fixed until the end
of the action comes, when a mental relaxation sets in, which is as
pleasant as rest after bodily exertion. Without suspense a photo-
play is merely a succession of pictures, and can no more hold the
unwavering attention of the spectator than a row of pictures on a
museum wall. Such a play displeases the individual of the audience
because it deprives him of the intense mental joy of being kept in
a state of doubt, anxiety, and expectation concerning the progress
and outcome of a dramatic action.

Suspense is a quick, cold process of the mind, but it is also a
warm state of the heart; if it were not, the crowd, being highly
emotional, would never desire It. Suspense, as we have said above,
is dependent on social emotions, on a definite personal sympathy
with the characters in the play, and a warm interest in their careers
and fates.

The individual in the crowd is willing to think providing he
may think with his heart. He is also willing to think providing
he may think as he pleases. There is no intellectual activity easier
and more restful than the play of fancy. It is easy because it is not constrained by law; the individual may let his mind rove where it pleases. It is restful because it gives him a refreshing escape from the hard, prosaic facts of everyday life. Since the spectator enjoys the exercise of his imagination the cinema composer should spare no effort to provide him with an opportunity for this mental exercise. The fascinating thing about the motion picture is that, although to a certain extent it robs the imagination by presenting photographically to the body's eye things which had hitherto been seen only by the mind's eye, yet it admits of many entirely new means and methods of appealing to the imagination. It will be interesting to analyze and illustrate in following chapters the possibilities of appealing to the spectator's sense of wonder as well as to his imagination in new ways through the medium of the motion picture.

Thus we have studied and tried to understand the nature and mood, the affections and aversions, the whims and reliabilities, the emotional impressionability and intellectual receptivity of the average crowd in the motion picture theatres. After the cinema composer has some notion of the psychology of the crowd, after he knows pretty clearly what his aim is to be, he may more intelligently decide upon his methods for accomplishing that aim. We are now facing our problem; let us try to discover the best methods of solving it. Let us learn how best to please the eye, how to stir the self-emotion of the individual in the crowd, how to arouse and maintain his social sympathies, how to give him intellectual entertainment without mental fatigue; and let us constantly remember that if our photoplay is to become a classic it must possess beneath the attractive surface which appeals to the crowd the permanent values of illuminating truth, universal meaning, and unfading beauty.
***

*Source:* Victor Oscar Freeburg, *The art of photoplay making*. New York: Macmillan Company, 1918.
Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb is a Professor of Information and Communication Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Avignon, France. His research focuses on Media economics and audience studies. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and Los Angeles (1999) and has been elected from 2001 to 2003 Faculty member of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Emmy Awards, USA). He has also served as a Visiting Professor at various international institutions (Italy, 2010; Florida, USA, 2010; Poland, 2011; Colombia, 2012; Tunisia, 2014). His work investigates the effects of public support on cultural consumption, such as emerging film and cultural funds. He delves into the evaluation methods and criteria used by Select Committees for supporting the Arts, incorporating empirical policy-relevant research that spans cultural norms and quality assessment over time within public funding frameworks. His research also examines the characterization of popular culture audiences and the consumption patterns of artistic-cultural goods.
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