One of the problems of contemporary life is whether the movies should help people to solve, or forget, contemporary problems. Most Hollywood producers favor forgetfulness. Consequently, films which are even remotely concerned with social problems are rarities. Last week's big cinema news was the simultaneous opening of two such pictures.
Boy Slaves (RKO Radio), based on a case history, was made in Hollywood by P. J. Wolfson with a cast of comparatively unknown actors. Its purpose: to denounce juvenile peonage, as practised in a southern turpentine camp.
Small Jesse (Roger Daniel) runs away from home and gets into bad company. Caught pilfering on the street, he and his friends are put in jail, paroled in the custody of the turpentine camp operators. They have a miserable time. The food is wretched, the superintendent has an ugly temper and they are overcharged at the company store. Presently, Jesse and friends try to run away. Bloodhounds trail them. They are hauled into court again, but this time a kindly judge sends them off to a kindly reform school, sternly reprimands their employers.
". . . one-third of a nation" (Paramount) is an adaptation of the Federal Theatre Project's most successful play (TIME, Jan. 31, 1938). It was directed by Dudley Murphy (Emperor Jones) and produced in Astoria, L. I.'s Eastern Service Studios by Harold Orlob. Its purpose: to denounce bad housing.
Pretty Mary Rogers (Sylvia Sidney) lives in a firetrap. When a fire breaks out, her small brother falls off a ladder, a bystander (Leif Erikson) takes both to the hospital. He turns out to be the owner of the tenement. Convinced that he has been remiss, he decides to pull down all his old tenements, put up better ones. Legal, social and domestic difficulties impede him. But when the tenement where Mary Rogers lives flares up again, he finally goes to work.
In general the movies may be applauded for trying to attack, instead of to compensate for, U. S. social ills. As examples of a trend, Boy Slaves and ". . . one-third of a nation" are commendable. Unfortunately, they are also individual products, to be judged according to their merits, and as such they are dishearteningly trivial.
First requisite of a picture with a moral is that it make its moral seem important. Second is that it make its moral seem :rue. Boy Slaves fails in truth because its bad characters are not human but monstrous. ". . . one-third of a nation" fails in importance because its characters do not seem worth bothering about. And in addition to being inherently feeble, both pictures suffer from amateurish acting, writing and direction.
Hollywood often wastes superb treatment on worthless themes, sometimes miserably botches good themes. Boy Slaves and ". . . one-third of a nation" are likely to discourage Hollywood from tackling like matters, for if these pictures are financial failures, producers will blame it on the material rather than their methods.