International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1932)

954 affirm its attitude in the matter, mentioned by M. Chautemps, and to state once again its wish to see the use of acetate film become in a not too distant future a universal fact. The Institute does in this face of the fact that modern productive technique seems direc ted towards definite possibilities of producing a type of film, which, while possessing the undoubted advantages of non-inflammable film, maintains, from the point of view of the art of the cinema, all the essential characteristics of the cellulose film. FILM CENSORSHIP AND AUTHORS' RIGHTS The following two news items, one taken from a Geneva paper, the other from a Paris review merit a brief comment. Three years ago the censorship commission of Valais forbade the exhibition of the film " La nuit est a nous ", based on Kistermackers' play, because the film advocated free love and attacked the principle of marriage. Learning that a new request for approval of the film had been recently presented to the same censorship commission for a fresh and naturally expurgated version the Courrier de Geneve of October 29, 1932 pointed out the absurdity of these revised editions patched up in order to escape the censors' ban. The film in question is one of those films which cannot be mutilated at all, and which ought either to be projected in its original form or forbidden altogether. In such cases, the censors have either to uphold their previous decision at the risk of being accused of intransigency or else authorize the projection with cuts and show their lack of good sense and artistic taste. " L'Ecran, of Paris (N° 859 of November) publishes a note regarding the right of exhibitors to change the titles of films they project. M. Georges Leveque looking at the matter from the commercial point of view, maintains that the right to alter titles cannot be seriously contested, provided the new title does not alter the essential idea of the film and succeeds in attracting the public to it. Both points are interesting, and while the first is concerned with a substantial criticism of the censorship systems existing in almost all states, both touch the matter of authors' rights. The fact complained of by the Courrier de Geneve in connection with censorship commissions is unfortunately true. The severity of the censors, often enough justified and based on motives of a political or moral character, contrasts with the interests of the producer or renter. The former has made, often at great expense and the latter rented at a high price a film which they are both unwilling to see suppressed by the censorship, which as a result is accused of stupidity or Puritanism. It is then that recourse is had to the system lamented by the Geneva newspaper. Some individual as often as not unfit for the task is entrusted with revising the film and endeavouring to follow the suggestions and policy indicated by the censors. A botched up affair is produced which resembles the original work about as much as some monster resembles a healthy child. The attempt is then made to put this piece of contraband goods on the market under the specious pretext that public and private morality or political ends have been adequately protected. The censorship commissions, especially when they do not include in their number some genuine art or cinema dilettante, fall into the trap and the paying public protests because it understands as a regular frequenter of the cinema and through that peculiar intuition which never seems to fail it even among uncultured masses that it is being shown something badly done and badly altered which ought never to have been shown on the screen. The problem becomes even more serious when the original film is written by some