Work Print: A College English Department and Films

Abstract

ENGLISH teachers have talked quite a little about the motion picture as a new art form' and of their responsibility in regard to it.2 And while we've talked the students have brought movies to the campus in extracurricular film series and film clubs.3 Courses in the motion picture will, I think, become a part of most college curricula before many more years elapse, but here is an account of what an English instructor, and then an English department, did to speed along the inevitable and to provide solid film fare for a campus and a community in the interim. Of the five movie houses in the college town all but one was owned by a large and unenlightened chain. They pursued a vicious sort of programming, relying heavily on repeated showings of Man-Eater of Kumaon and avoiding even the Hollywood product which had received slight praise for intelligence and taste. (Mourning Becomes Electra was canceled to permit a full week's run of Mother Was a Freshman.) A solid minority of the townspeople didn't go to entertainment movies because of religious scruples, but turned out in hundreds for free public library show-