The Motion Picture Director (Sep 1925 - Feb 1926)

1926 The Battle of Bunker Hill BOUT the year 1900, the motion picture appeared and in ten years it began to take its place with the kindred arts, Literature and the Drama. Today, literature and the drama enjoy the same freedom of expression that was their heritage from the War of Independence. Today, the motion picture is the victim of a pernicious and growing class legislation. In the year 1909, the writer produced a two-reel historical film portraying the life of George Washington. Then an unbelievable thing happened ! Our Chicago office wired that the Chicago Board of Censors, headed by one Major Funkhauser, refused to permit the showing of our Washington film unless we eliminated the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Yorktown. Further particulars convinced us that it was not a huge joke as we first suspected. The redoubtable Funkhauser and his misguided associates were in deadly earnest. When asked for an explanation, he pointed to Clause V in the list of scenes and action subject to elimination under the local censorship board’s ruling. There it was, in black and white: “Clause V. It shall be a misdemeanor to exhibit in moving pictures on the screen in any public place, scenes showing firearms being used with intent to kill, and such scenes shall be eliminated before a permit can be issued for exhibition.” The Battle of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Yorktown typified the beginning and end of the Colony’s struggle for freedom, but the Colonial and British troops were “using firearms with intent to kill,” and so the stupid censors, in their doltish and destructive ignorance, applied Clause V to the case in hand without regard to the injury it worked upon those who made the picture and those who wanted to see it. As a matter of fact there is no need for censorship as it is imposed on the American screen. The sternest censors of motion pictures after all are, first, the public itself, and secondly, the exhibitors — the men who show the films. The big, high-class theatres will not debase themselves by showing the type of pictures that is essentially censorable. The neighborhood theatres would not dare to show them. Such houses cater to a regular clientele which would quickly draw away were pictures of a genuinely objectionable nature to be shown. If a picture is so bad that it is not fit to be exhibited anywhere there are very plainly worded laws on the statutes of every community providing for just such contingencies. But as a whole the petty censorship imposed by the self-appointed censors of the smaller communities accomplishes nothing and is seriously damaging the picture that is made for and belongs to the American public. The very people who are themselves most directly affected by censorship — the theatre patrons of the country — are the ones who have it in their hands effectively to eradicate a censorship that arbitrarily imposes its will and its whims on the screen and permits literature and the dramatic stage complete freedom of expression. Suppose, for instance, that every novel that is written were at the mercy of local censors, that before the people of a community could buy it or read it, it had to be reviewed by the local censor boards. Suppose that every traveling theatrical 3 company when arriving at a new city or town had to change the lines and rehearse the show in order to conform to some notion of the community censors, what kind of a play would it be? Certainly it would soon cease to be the author’s work as originally conceived and presented. Actually this censorship question does not affect the producer of films one-half as much as it affects the rights of the public in the kind of picture they want to see. And the people have at their hands the most potent of weapons to combat pernicious censorship in the power of public demand, a power that, expressed at the box office, has greater force than all attempts at regulation exerted by individually created censor boards. Let us for a moment consider the film situation in Russia. In a recent article in The Film Daily Ernest W. Fredman explains that in Russia the government recognizes what a force the cinema plays in the lives of their people. The government controls films by a state department under the name of Sovkino that entirely deals with the film industry. The Sovkino is a big renting organization which has the monopoly in film renting throughout the whole of Soviet Russia and to whom every foreign country sells its product. A stranger to a Moscow or Leningrad cinema gets the complete shock of his life when he sees an American picture. If it is a social drama and contains scenes of high life, it is either cut to shreds or it is twisted about so as to convey propaganda that the rich are living at the expense of the poor. Native production gets preference and, as almost every one of these films has propaganda of some kind, it can be easily understood how the Soviet subtly weaves its ideas into the minds of the people. The Censor Board is very strict in Russia. They view everything from the revolutionary point of view. Films in which monarchy is portrayed are utterly taboo; kissing frowned upon, and all Biblical films have been banned. Not much difference between Funkhauser and Sovkino, except in the spelling. One hundred and fifty years ago, the war for independence was fought and won. Our forefathers fought and died for the high principles of Liberty — liberty of thought, liberty of speech, liberty of action, liberty of government “of the people, for the people, by the people.” For nearly one hundred and fifty years this country rejoiced in what was recognized throughout the civilized world as the most perfect form of government. Class legislation was not permitted and trades, professions, societies, religions and the arts and sciences were allowed full freedom of expression. If they transgressed the laws and statutes based upon the Constitution of the United States, means were provided by law to punish them. It was not until censorship singled out the motion picture, over fifteen years ago, that class legislation began to be permitted and suffered. Motion picture censorship was the original Sovkino. Censorship is class legislation pure and simple. It prohibits the cinema from doing what the press can do with complete freedom. It denies the motion picture the freedom enjoyed by literature and the drama. It very definitely indicates that the police and other proper authorities deemed competent to handle every sort of crime, are incapable of exercising control over motion pictures. Censorship could easily be considered as the greatest laugh of the century if it were not working such injury to the very principles for which the patriots fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. THE MOTION PICTURE DIRECTOR THE DIRECTORS CHAIR J. Stuart Blackton