The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1921. CENSORSHIP OF FILMS.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 606, 11 February 1921, Page 4

The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1921. CENSORSHIP OF FILMS.

Film censoring is a difficult and invidious task with more kicks than ha’pence attached to it (says the Dominion). The latest decision of the Minister for Internal Affairs is that pictures in which “thieving, robbery, murder and suicide” are “made a feature” are to be banned. This, we are told, means the end of the picture business in New Zealand. The Ministerial edict is a sweeping one,* and a great deal depends on the interpretation of it. Crime that is not “made a feature” hnay, it seems, still be presented on the screen. The Minister’s object, we take it, is the very good one of making an end of the “shilling shocker” type of picture which has no other object than the presentation of a series of scenes of violence. There are too many such pictures about, and the bulk of the public is not likely to shed tears over their disappearance. At the same time if the structions were read in too narrow a sense numbers of pictures might be banned to which it would bee unreasonable to take exception. The task is one calling for a nice sense; of discrimination, &nd the censor, it may be hoped, will take a commonsense view. In Britain, from correspondence appearing” in the press, it appears that a distinction is made by the censor between romantic crime and realistic crime, between murder in Mexico, and murder in the Mile End. “Guilty love” may be portrayed, but not the “pursuit of lust.” A lightly-clad lady may be shown swimming, but may not be seeen at rest. Even a Jesuitical casuist should be hard put to distinguish between “guilty love' and the “pursuit of lust.”

“We nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice.”