Cinema: World Cinemart, 1938

Biggest 25¢ worth of facts & figures the cinema industry could buy last week was a 377-page review of foreign film markets during 1938, issued by the U. S. Department of Commerce. Most comforting figures: despite censorship bans and trade barriers in authoritarian countries, Hollywood lost only 6% of its market abroad, still ruled the 1938 roost by supplying 65% of all the films shown in the world’s cinemas. Most disturbing fact: in Esthonia, esthetic censors banned several Hollywood films for mere banality.

Other facts & figures:

> Czechoslovakia’s pre-Hitler censorship regulations forbade films that might “threaten the Czechoslovakian democratic system directly or indirectly through propaganda of a dictatorial regime.”

> French cinema interests are pushing legislation to shoo U. S. films out of France by eliminating double features.

> In Germany, film imports must receive Propaganda Ministry certificates of nonobjection (Unbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung) before they go to the censors to be scanned for scenes “racially offensive,” “reflecting against German prestige,” etc.

> Banned in Poland: films depicting class struggle, misery as a source of agitation, Russian background.

> British film classifications: U for universal exhibition, A for adults, H for horrific (not for children).

> The U. S. S. R. has 30,000 cinema theatres, almost as many as all Europe’s put together, but only 8,000 are wired for sound.

> The Théatre Moderne, in Papeete, Tahiti, shows pictures five to 20 years old.

> New Zealand cinemakers produced one film feature in 1938, showed it in one theatre, junked it.