CHILDREN CRY FOR IT

However completely without honor in its own country, the American movie has received a fost favorable welcome in South America. The people of Brazil have recently announced that they will have neither German films, with floors, walls and ceilings meeting in such fantastic juxtaposition, nor French films, which put them to the necessity of censoring most of the interesting parts, nor any kind of film, in fact, but American-made ones.

After the biting criticism and scathing sarcasm poured from every corner of America on our defenseless pictures, this flattering attention from the artistically inclined Latins must be like myrrh and frankincense to the harassed directors and producers. With films barred from first one state and then another on account of an actor's misdemeanors or an actress' imprudence, it must be comforting to know that the Brazilians prefer American films because they show "American life", and never fail to point a moral! To the jaded American move-goer, this moralizing is usually the last straw which urges him to demand his money back; while his object in going at all is often to get away from the realities of "American life" and lose himself in the make-believe world presented in the cinema.

Meanwhile the Brazilians have learned that all our wives are foolish, all our youth is flaming, and all our sunsets are obscured by an enamoured couple locked in a long and lingering embrace. In America, the chief effect of this sort of stuff is a certain softening of the brain. If Brazil can eat it up, as after all, America, eats it up too and get away with it, without the accompanying cerebral debility, Americans will be the first to rejoice and incidentally, to profit.