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scrupulous spirit as regards religion and morals, to the extent of excising and altering scenes that are in no way offensive to morals, thus producing tedious and disconnected shows that young people shun, preferring to spend their evenings in bars and similar undesirable resorts.
The censorship in Ireland is regarded as particularly severe (The Daily Film Renter, London 18/195), while, in England, it has been officially stated in the House of Commons that there is no need for a regular system of government control as the present system meets ail the necessities of the situation in a very competent and effective manner. The contrary point of view is being stressed in Germany, where the Reichstag has referred to a special Committee the question of introducing certain emendations in to the present system of censorship, so as to render it severer, especially for the protection of the young, while vesting the local authorities with powers to prohibit the exhibition of films which they regard as deleterious to public order. The exportation of Censured films that tend to diminish the national prestige, ought not to be countenanced (18/225). The Committee on the Cinema Industry of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce and Industry has, however, protested against these proposals (Licht-BildBiihne, Berlin 18/218) and, at the same time, the Political Academy of Berlin (Film Kurier, Berlin 18/225), the League for Safeguarding the interests of German Authors, held a series of lectures on the question of the censorship, in which liberal views were advocated.
In Spain, on the contrary, there is a tendency not so much to suppress or restrict the censorship as to centralize at Madrid, under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the two offices now functioning at Madrid and Barcelona, both for the convenience of producers and renters and to secure by this means uniformity of standards of revision, which are inevitably almost wholly lacking under present circumstances (Projection, Madrid 18/201).
In any case, notwithstanding the protests of the trade, there is a general tendency not to exercise any undue rigour in the actual censoring of films, especially in considera
tion of the fact that imported films have generally already been censored in the country of origin. Thus out of 315 films censored in Berlin during the first 9 months of 1929, 135 were German as against n 1 American films and 69 of other nationalities (19/382). To cite two American examples, out of the whole mass of the films examined in Portland, Maine, 177 were passed subject to slight alterations and only 14 were subjected to serious excisions. (Exhibitors' Herald World, Chicago 18/214). In the State of Ontario, out of 171 films examined in October 1929, 122 were passed without alterations, 44 were passed subject to excisions, and only 5 were rejected (The Daily Film Renter, London 18/215).
The main purport of world censorship, whether official or non-official, is always the same : to safeguard public morals in the widest meaning of the word ; to defend the dignity of the State. This principle is at the root of the proposal put forward by Chiappelli (Vita Nuova, Bologna 18/219) to the effect that the Italian censors should suppress — without any regard to private interests — all scenes in which the spirit and traditions of the Country are depreciated or falsified and has induced the French Ministry of Public Instruction to notify Sam Goldwyn of the interdiction to exhibit in France, or any French Colonies, the talking-film « Condemned » which casts reflections on the French prison system, and has further urged the International Rhineland Commission, for obvious political reasons, to prohibit throughout the whole of the occupied territory the exhibition of the film « Andrea Hofer » (Licht-Bild-Buhne, Berlin 18/204).
Moral reasons are sometimes well grounded as in Monaco, where the police prohibited the showing of a film on vivisection (Film Kurier, Berlin 18/203) ; but in some other instances they incline towads the grotesque. The Exhibitors' Herald World (18/ 206, 210) states that under the pressure of the women's associations of his district, the Sheriff of the little town of Lynn in the United States has prohibited the exhibition of films in which Women are shown smoking ! Thus also the German censorship, according to the Film Kurier of the 7th November