CAN-CAN GIRLS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 March 1939, Page 5

CAN-CAN GIRLS

TOO MUCH FOR CENSOR. The “Naughty Nineties” have proved much too naughty fox- the film censor. He has ordered the removal of the legs of the Victorian dancing girls in the film “New Worlds Foi’ Old,” made by the gas industry, writes Ritchie Calder in the “Daily Herald” -(London). Paul Rotha, the producer, in ordexto show aspects of life in the nineteenth century, had introduced a sequence showing the Can-Can Girls dancing behind the gas footlights of the music hall. The sight of the frills, flounces, and stoc.king-and-gartered legs shocked the censor. He allowed the girls to remain in the film, but insisted that they should not be allowed to show leg. The censor has already passed

“Evergreen,” “L’Atlantide,” “The Girl From Maximes,” and other films of nineteenth century music-hall. But the letter of his injunction was strictly obeyed when the film; with other films made by the gas industry, was shown at a premiere before an invited audience at the Cambridge Theatre.' “Before I ~~ k ade the film,” Paul Rotha said a _r the show, “I saw most of the films in which Can-Can girls appeared. Because of the nature of the film, a documentary of life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in which the music-hall sequence is only an incident, the version was necessarily restrained. “I am quite at a less to know why objection should have been taken.” “So am I,” adds Mr Calder. “After seeing the film a fortnight ago I had forgotten that there were any legs in it. Until the censor's cuts reminded me, all I remembered was an overdressed chorus. “The result of his intervention

makes the film a hundred times more suggestive, , in a way that the original never intended. “The bodies sway in the preparatory kick, • and—blackout. “I blushed—not so much from embarrassment as for the censor.”