CENSORSHIP OF FILMS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2632, 1 December 1915, Page 8

CENSORSHIP OF FILMS

CONFERENCE TO-NIGHT

AN INTERESTING QUESTION

(By "Sylvius.")

Censorship of anything is a most difficult and complex task, as unsatisfactory usually to the censor as to one or other of the various sections of tlio business community or society affected. It is perplexing and i'roublesome because it is difficult to create standards that are not unreasonable to some section of the public, and if possible to create them it is even moro embarrassing to maintain them in face of" tho fact that the kaleidescope of life is continually setting new patterns. Many of the things we do or say or, wear to-day would have shocked the good people of fifty years ago, and probably some of the things then practised would seem odd to us nowadays. Some folk assert that our ideas are that the acceptation of that which tends more and more to the unwholesome in plays, pictures, literature, dress, etc., proves that wo are becoming "broad-minded" as time goes oil. That is the easy. way of winking at what is going oil, and is throwing one's arms (as well as mind) open to further' license under the various heads. enumerated. As to the point t'hat standards are almost impossible to maintain, one has to glance back over the history of the subject. In Queen Elizabeth's days all political allusions were barred on the stage, so we find Shakespeare' cloaking . certain political thoughts ill a most ingenious fashion m his plays, otherwise the writers for the stage had a pretty free hand, and some of their lines would, if written in i conformity with modern parlance, ' "raise one's hair." When Cromwell and his Puritans came into power, the stage rand stage works were written down as unclean things, and all the theatres were closed as though they were pest-houses. Feilding's plays, "Pasquin" and "The Historical Register," which followed the Restoration, were so free in their political allusions that in 1737 powers of censorship were given to the Lord Chamberlain, and an Act was passed rigorously restricting the number of authorised play-houses, which had to' be under the immediate patronage of some noble lord or other, for the players , were then considered to be rogues and vagabonds in whom there was no health. Tho Theatre Act of 1843 remove 3 these restrictions, and resulted at oncc in an enormous growth of theatres. '

Still the censorship of plays ha? been vpry properly maintained, if not at all times judiciously exercised. Saint Saens's opera, 'Samson and Delilah," was banned by the English censor (Mr. G. A. Redford) for • .years because of the play ifc made on Holy Scripture, yet fpr six or seven years.before the war this opera was seldom absent from the Covent Garden repertoire. Plays that have been banned and subsequently released were Ibsen's "Ghosts,!' Maeterlinck's "Monna Vanna," .and Shaw's ''Mrs. 'Warren's Profession," "Press buttings," and "Blanco Posnet," all of which were liberated after certain slight alterations had been made. Granvillo Barker's "Waste" was also barred because of tho dubious character of the end of the first act.

A Force at Work. When one comes to picture the task of applying a proper censorship throughout the world it appears to be almost too bewildering to contemplate, but in New Zealand, where we,' fortunately, are not so 'broad-minded" as they are in South America, and perhaps in the North, parts of the Continent, and the Near East, the task should be a fairly simple the avenues through which all our films aro received are few in num-ber,-and, we are securely isolated from all sources of supply by worlds of water. In pictures lie_ powerful influences for good or ill, as in a decade they have become the commonest recreation to the mass of the people ever created in the history of tho world. More people witness a successful picture in a week m the world than they do the most successful play ever written 'in twenty years. Pictures that entertain'us entertaui the natives of Delhi, the rice-gath-erers of Japan, and the citizens of Timbuctoo. They speak a language that is more universal than any ever dreamt of by r the sanest of philologists—the language of tho eye—to which are allied tho graces of expression and gesture to cover all emotion known to'the human species irrespective of colour, language or creed' that is why pictures can, and are, today a force, working by day and night throughout the world, emitting ideas forming character,' and teaching, for over teaching—what?

Think of the Children I There are few who will not agree that this gieat silent force, which appeals to youth and age alike, should be directed' properly. No one wishes to see pictures an instrument for anything but wholesome entertainment and a powerful educator, yet there are films creep into programmes occasionally that give one a sense of shock, that make people'if not exacty ashamed, at least embarassed. \ ho has not sat m the gloom of a picture theatre with their children and felt that the subject matter of the picture or the manner m which it is being presented is absolutely wrong? Unfortunately the picture leaves little to the imagination, xlie obvious has to be almost strained at times to make the subject understandable to the dullest intellect Censorship opsonic sort is coming, but the task will be no easy one, as the censor must be a keen critic with a mind removed from petty prejudices, and, above all he must always remember that the children of the Dominion rorm a very substantial proportion of the patrons ot the hundreds of theatres that dot this picture-loving country. To-night's conferenoo of local bodies to consider the question of film censorship should open up a clearer understanding on the wliolo question.