As the First World War dragged on, film became an increasingly important propaganda tool. By 1917 even the public service announcements – the theater’s rules of etiquette for the audience shown before a movie started – had been co-opted by the propagandists. Good citizens should not only be told how to behave properly in the cinema: in such troubled times, they must be reminded how to think and act in general. These are public service announcements screened by French cinema operators throughout 1917; all of them were found on a reel in its present compiled form. Most of them would work just as well in our own troubled times.

Karl Wratschko