Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
government said it contained ‘‘inaccuracies.’’ The struggle<br />
to have this important political film seen by the<br />
public began with a limited theatrical release at<br />
London’s National <strong>Film</strong> Theatre in 1966. With an ‘‘X’’<br />
certificate and cinema chains refusing to exhibit the film,<br />
its national release was mainly through church and community<br />
halls, where it was booked as an educational<br />
screening by groups opposed to nuclear weapons such<br />
as CND and the Quakers. Despite The War Game’s<br />
winning <strong>of</strong> an Academy AwardÒ for Best Documentary<br />
in 1967, the BBC refused to lift its ban on the film until<br />
1985.<br />
Historically, the BBFC had refused to classify political<br />
films, waiting until 1954 to grant an ‘‘X’’ certificate<br />
to Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film, Bronenosets Potyomkin<br />
(Battleship Potemkin). It had banned the film in 1926<br />
famously declaring that cinema ‘‘is no place for politics.’’<br />
The recently introduced ‘‘X’’ certificate was designed<br />
to allow many <strong>of</strong> the foreign films <strong>of</strong> directors such as<br />
Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, and Michelangelo<br />
Antonioni to be passed uncut. The censor was now<br />
prepared to view this new world cinema as art cinema,<br />
to take into account the film’s artistic intentions and the<br />
maturity <strong>of</strong> its probable audience. The view <strong>of</strong> the BBFC<br />
was that a foreign film shown only in art cinemas and by<br />
a smaller audience was ‘‘less likely to produce criticism.’’<br />
Such a view allowed Vittorio De Sica’s La Ciociara (Two<br />
Women, 1960), with its depiction <strong>of</strong> a double rape, to be<br />
passed uncut, though when the film went on general<br />
release and was shown to a wider audience, the scene<br />
was removed.<br />
As an extreme example <strong>of</strong> controlled distribution,<br />
Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971)—a film<br />
that had been banned in the Canadian provinces <strong>of</strong><br />
Alberta and Nova Scotia, among other places—had been<br />
passed uncut by the BBFC but was unavailable for<br />
screening or broadcast in the United Kingdom for more<br />
than twenty-five years, after Kubrick requested that<br />
Warner Bros. withdraw all prints from circulation.<br />
British newspapers had begun reporting cases <strong>of</strong> copycat<br />
acts <strong>of</strong> violence, in which juveniles were apparently<br />
inspired by the content <strong>of</strong> the film; it was rumoured that<br />
Kubrick began receiving death threats, and in 1973 the<br />
film was withdrawn. Its removal was heavily enforced by<br />
lawyers, which resulted in the successful prosecution <strong>of</strong><br />
the Scala, a cinema that dared to present a screening in<br />
1992, and an injunction (later lifted) on British television’s<br />
Channel 4 to prevent it from showing twelve<br />
extracts from the film in 1993. The film was released<br />
again in the United Kingdom only following Kubrick’s<br />
death in 1999.<br />
The cult that grew around A Clockwork Orange made<br />
the poster for the film an iconic image. Other posters and<br />
Censorship<br />
advertising material for films have been denied exposure,<br />
and though replacement images are found, the cultural<br />
impact <strong>of</strong> the movie is adjusted. In the United Kingdom,<br />
one <strong>of</strong> the most powerful poster-regulating authorities is<br />
London Transport, which owns the advertising sites on<br />
the underground and key billboards on its aboveground<br />
properties. In 1959 it banned a poster for a double bill <strong>of</strong><br />
The Alligator People and Return <strong>of</strong> the Fly, for fear that it<br />
would frighten children who would be in central London<br />
in large numbers for Christmas shopping; in 1989 it<br />
removed part <strong>of</strong> a poster for Peter Jackson’s film Bad<br />
Taste, which featured an alien with its middle finger<br />
raised, that was deemed <strong>of</strong>fensive; and in 1994 it filled<br />
in a gap in the split skirt <strong>of</strong> Demi Moore displayed in the<br />
advertising for Disclosure, which it considered erotically<br />
charged.<br />
SEX AND VIOLENCE<br />
The sensational and exploitable elements <strong>of</strong> sex and<br />
violence have created the biggest debates in film censorship.<br />
Under the new ‘‘X’’ rating in the United States, a<br />
wave <strong>of</strong> 1970s ‘‘porno chic’’ or ‘‘middle-class porn’’<br />
appeared on movie screens, exploiting the commercial<br />
possibilities <strong>of</strong> an adults-only rating. In films such as<br />
Deep Throat (1972) and The Devil in Miss Jones (1973),<br />
explicit, nonsimulated, penetrative sex was presented as<br />
part <strong>of</strong> a reasonable plot and with respectable production<br />
values. Some state authorities issued injunctions against<br />
such films to protect ‘‘local community standards’’; in<br />
New York the print <strong>of</strong> Deep Throat was seized mid-run,<br />
and the film’s exhibitors were found guilty <strong>of</strong> promoting<br />
obscenity. Caligula (1979), financed by Penthouse magazine,<br />
was one <strong>of</strong> the few <strong>of</strong> these films to make it to the<br />
United Kingdom but only after heavy cuts and initial<br />
seizure by British customs. In New Zealand Deep Throat<br />
was eventually passed in 1986, yet it remains to be<br />
shown; only one cinema tried to organize a screening<br />
but was thwarted by the city council that owned the<br />
building’s lease. Such is the tight regulation <strong>of</strong> sex in<br />
the cinema that its history has been one <strong>of</strong> a series <strong>of</strong><br />
certificated firsts. In the United Kingdom this has<br />
included the first film to show pubic hair (Antonioni’s<br />
Blowup, 1966), the first film to depict full frontal nudity<br />
(the Swedish production Puss Misterije organizma<br />
[W.R.—Mysteries <strong>of</strong> the Organism], 1971), and the first<br />
theatrically distributed film to depict the act <strong>of</strong> fellatio<br />
(Intimacy, 2001). Definitions <strong>of</strong> sexual explicitness vary<br />
widely across national cinemas, with Belle époque (1992)<br />
and The Piano (1993) banned in the Philippines.<br />
Sex crime has generated particular concern. In 1976<br />
the BBFC claimed that, in that year, it had viewed fiftyeight<br />
films depicting ‘‘explicit rape,’’ declaring scenes that<br />
glorified it as ‘‘obscene.’’ As opposed to questions <strong>of</strong><br />
SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM 243