PICTURE CENSORSHIP.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 3, 28 December 1912, Page 6

PICTURE CENSORSHIP.

SUBJECT'S TO BE BANNED. Although some objection has been J msc# ‘ Aim tic bin filmA exhibited in [England, there is a censorship of films in the United States, and the censorship established by British manufacturers, is, in its main outlines, a copy of the American organisation. The British censorship will, however, be more strict than the American one, as public opinion is more conventional in Great Britain than in the United States. The following are some of the principal restrictions imposed by the National Board of Censorship in America : The Board does not recognise the "unwritten law” as applied to crime. It will not allow the reproduction of unique methods of execution, etc., nor any scene that might be an instigation to society to a suggestion of self-destruction. Burglary scenes will be allowed, so long as the burglar is not represented in the actual act of "jemmying.” He may be pictured with his back to the audience opening a safe and extracting money and papers therefrom, but he must not be shown opening the safe by any means known to the art of the burglar. Represetations of lynch law only permissible when the inaident transpired in the days when lynch law was the only law. The following are some of the suggestions which Mr Redford proposed to lay before the British National Board of Film Censors: — No cremations. No final, tear-impelling scenes at funerals, such as lowering the body into the grave, and so on. No scenes representing murder, sudden death, or suicide. No “faked” representations of disasters by sea or land or air. No mixed bathing. No “compromising situations.” No cock fights, no dog fights, and nothing where unnecessary cruelty is brought in either to man or beast. All Biblical scenes to be watched very carefully—particularly anything from the New Testament.

No sovereigns, judges, ministers, or such high officials of the land to be treated in an unbecoming or undignified or ridiculous manner, and no living individual to be lampooned.