This image is taken from the cover of Shall we go to the Pictures? Some Thoughts about the Cinema and Ourselves, a pamphlet produced for the Mothers' Union by Lilias Edwards around 1955.
The influence of the cinema on society was a recurrent concern for the Mothers' Union. By the 1930s, a ‘Cinema Sub-committee' had been created under the auspices of the Watch and Social Problems Department. The aims of the committee were to give guidance on the content of films to prospective viewers, to discourage the industry from portrayals of immoral behaviour and to stimulate debate on censorship. ‘Cinema Visitors' were dispatched to their local picture house to report on the latest films; their warnings and recommendations being disseminated via the society's journal.
Verdicts such as those on James Bond films (seen to glamorise crime and ‘create incentives to murder, violence and promiscuity') and apprehension regarding depictions of marriage and divorce may suggest an unenthusiastic response to developments in the cinematic world but the society's attitude could be very positive. In fact in the 1930s the Union found itself denouncing not the films but the criticism levelled at them by the general public, which it felt to be exaggerated and founded on inadequate observation. Shall we go to the Pictures? extols the virtues of the medium, which, the author argues, offered opportunities to learn anything from fruit-preservation and surgery to swimming technique and sex education.
The interest of the Mothers' Union in the media was part of the society's wider concern in public morality and a desire to safeguard family life. These aims led the society to work in the fields of education, healthcare and the reduction of poverty on behalf of some of the least fortunate communities worldwide.