by Lawrence Napper

“Whilst many persons are railing against the cinema as a disseminator of disease, there is, I am glad to find, one gentleman who is putting theatre to good account as an influenza combatant.”

Previously I reported on some of the debates that the influenza epidemic of 1918 precipitated within the cinema trade. In the struggle between local medical board officers who wanted cinemas closed, and local exhibitors who wanted them open, some quite curious notions about how the disease was spread flew around. Some exhibitors claimed that there was ‘clear evidence that people are more likely to catch infection out of doors than inside places of entertainment’, perhaps drawing on the age old (but erroneous) association of the ‘common cold’ with being cold. Others, following this logic, argued against ‘taking the germ laden air from the streets and pumping it into the theatres.’

Others set great store by the disinfectant qualities of camphor and other strongly scented chemicals.

Reading such reports one might be forgiven for thinking that the mechanism for the spread of influenza-like infections was as yet unknown to medical science. Nowhere are measures such as facemasks, hand-washing or social distancing mentioned. However, it is clear that these measures were well understood, and cinema itself was an instrumental mode by which such precautions were impressed on the public, in the form of the film Dr Wise on Influenza. ‘The “hero” of the film is Dr Wise,’ reported the Birmingham Daily Gazette,

… and during the story he offers a good deal of advice without asking the customary fee. Here are a few specimens:

A person suffering from any kind of cold or fever should stay at home until all the symptoms have abated.

Exclusion of fresh air involves retention of germs in deadly strength.

Gargle throat and douche nose with a solution of potassium permanganate and common salt.

It is important to keep fit. Alcohol and public houses increase risk of infection.

The reviewer for The Bioscope found it ‘difficult to repress a shudder’ at the images of flu microbes as seen under a microscope, but reported that like all good public information films, the message was conveyed not only through a lecture, but also through an involving story:

The foolish man who would not nurse his cold was shown. He went to the office, sneezed in the tram, on the train, in the streets, at the office, onto his letters, into his telephone, and indeed everywhere the contagion was likely to spread to others. It did spread. The chief culprit, and several whom he infected, died. Another figure in the story who took precautions when he got cold, soon recovered.

The film’s powers of suggestion were so great, reported the reviewer, that while it was being shown, the auditorium was temporarily full of coughing and sneezing patrons.

Dr Wise on Influenza had been made by Joseph Best B.Sc., who was a long-term advocate of the educational value of cinema. Before the war he had been the manager of Pathé Frères’ educational and scientific department. This was not his first foray into public information filmmaking, having previously been commissioned to make a film called Whatsoever a Man Soweth by the National Council for combating venereal disease. Dr Wise on Influenza was itself commissioned by the Local Government Board (the precursor to the Ministry of Health) and it was distributed by them to local medical officers who then took responsibility for getting it into local cinemas. Considering the tension I’ve already noted between these officers and local exhibitors, one might wonder how widely it was shown. By the end of the war there was considerable resistance among cinema managers to the continued expectation that they would allow screen time for the showing of government information films. Films dealing with venereal disease or dealing with issues deemed by the CEA to be politically partisan were a particular bone of contention and when in the December 1918 election the coalition government sent slides displaying Lloyd George and his ministers out to cinemas, the CEA after much outraged debate absolutely refused to display them. The withdrawal [or suppression] of Maurice Elvey’s The Life of David Lloyd George (1918) can also be understood in this context. A few years later in 1920 an interesting debate arose in the Leeds and District CEA branch meeting when the local medical officer asked if exhibitors would be prepared to display a single slide in support of ‘Child Welfare Week’. A refusal was their instinctive reaction. During the ensuing debate a supporter of the scheme pointed out that the slide was a compromise after a previous request for them to show a short film had similarly been refused. The medical officer, it was reported, ‘held pronounced views as to the utility of the cinema with regard to the propaganda of health matters.’ The speaker reminded the branch that during the influenza epidemic they had fought against the closure of the cinemas precisely by arguing that a better course of action would be to make use of their facilities by showing public information films advising on how best to avoid infection – so the refusal of the present request looked very like hypocrisy. This argument was met with a dusty answer, and further rehearsal of various grumbles about the ‘ridiculous’ 1918 restrictions.