Abstract
The question of the aims, machinery and impact of the censorship of films can scarcely be described as a subject which has excited much discussion amongst historians of Britain in the twentieth century. The impact of the cinema itself has indeed been long noted in our ‘standard books’, such as Britain Between the Wars by C. L. Mowat1 and English History 1914–45 by A. J. P. Taylor2 or social history such as Britain in the Age of Total War by Arthur Marwick,3 but there is no mention of the subject or even the existence of censorship at all. The specialist literature of ‘film-history’ of recent years has also relatively little to say about the subject. Professor Thorold Dickinson’s An Appreciation of the Cinema4 deals with the existence of censorship and its impact by implication only. Mr Basil Wright, who has been personally associated with the socially and politically committed film ideas of John Grierson, does not mention the subject at all in his massive study of the cinema The Long View.5 The most significant, and indeed pioneering, historical study concerned with the impact of political ideas projected by the cinema in the interwar years, Jeffrey Richards’ The Visions of Yesterday 6 makes no reference at all to censorship as far as Britain’s ‘Imperial Cinema’ was concerned.
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Notes
C. L. Mowat, Britain Between the Wars (London, 1955).
A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914–1945 (Oxford, 1965).
A. J. B. Marwick, Britain in the Century of Total War (London, 1968).
Thorold Dickinson, A Discovery of the Cinema (London, 1971).
Basil Wright, The Long View (London, 1974).
Jeffrey Richards, Visions of Yesterday (London, 1973).
Rachel Low, The History of the British Film, 1918–1929 (London, 1971) p. 64.
Roger Manvell, Film, revised edition (London, 1946) p. 170. Chapter 7 dealing with censorship is titled ‘Censorship. No Controversy, Please: No Fires’.
Guy Phelps, Film Censorship (London, 1975) pp. 144–60.
Paul O’Higgins, Censorship in Britain (London, 1972) p. 90, cited Phelps, op. cit., p. 160.
Neville March Hunning, Film Censors and the Law (London, 1967).
Thus the Lord Chamberlain banned In the Red Shadow, dealing with Ireland in 1924; Red Sunday — in 1929, deeming that the Soviet Revolution was a subject ‘too recent’ and that Tsar Nicholas II appeared in it which might still break the ‘representation of living persons’ rule. Who Made the Iron Grow? dealing with persecution of Jews in Germany was also banned in 1933 on account of it being a current issue. On the other hand a play plainly critical of Queen Victoria The Queen’s Progress by Housman, was, after a good deal of argument, passed in 1931 on the ground that it was no longer ‘current’. Dorothy Knowles, The Censor, The Drama and the Film, London 1934, pp. 120–3. This book based on a Leeds University Dissertation, is a mine of reliable information.
Forsyth Hardy, ‘Censorship and Film Societies’ in C. Davy (ed.) Footnotes to the Film (London, 1937) p. 264.
Viscount Brentford, Do We Need a Censor? (London, 1930) p. 16.
BBFC Annual Report 1928, pp. 9–10. The matter was re-stressed in 1931 and 1933, when Hollywood studios were especially asked to note it for films to be released in Britain. Jack Vizzard See No Evil: Life Inside Hollywood Censorship (New York, 1970) pp. 17–21. Vizzard was the head of the Hollywood office of the Hay’s Organisation; like the other American censors, he was a Jesuit seminary priest and shrewdly claimed that while the American censorship was a moral censorship, the British was political. The 12 rules and 36 sub-rules of the Hay’s Office do not contain either ‘Political’ or ‘Social’ or ‘Military’ or ‘Administration of Justice’ categories. The only category which comes at all near to the BBFC is that of ‘National Feelings’ (cf. ‘Wounding Just Susceptibilities of Friendly Nations’). It contains two sub-rules.1. The use of the Flag shall be consistently respectful.2. The history, institutions, prominent people and citizenry of all nations shall be represented fairly. Under ‘Seduction or Rape’, it did include a rule, II/6 ‘Miscegenation, sex-relationship between the white and the black races, is forbidden’ . The contrast between the BBFC’s various wordings and the American version is perhaps the clearest illustration of the difference between the ideas motivating the two systems. On the other hand, France which openly operated political censorship, as well as having Ministries of both ‘Information’ and of ‘Public Instruction and Culture’, produced rules which came much closer to those of the BBFC. They were summed up by the Director of the Sureté Générale as ‘All films which are concerned with revolutionary questions, which show violent conflicts between capital and labour, clashes between the army and the people, revolts in prison, victims of police charges …’. Hunning, op. cit., p. 339. The French, after 1932 included Newsreels, with a special commission, not only excising but also ordering the inclusion of items, in operation, and with an export licence system, after 1936, permitting the export of only such films as gave a suitably laudatory picture of French life and culture. See Remy Pithon, ‘La censure des films en France et la crise politique, 1934’, Revue Historique, 258 (1977) pp. 105–30.
John Grierson, ‘The Course of Realism’ in C. Davy (ed.) op. cit., p. 141. Grierson liked to boast that he had a thorough understanding of the political world and that he could lead the Treasury into things they would never sanction, had they not been led by the nose by himself and Sir Stephen Tallents. This view is part of the mythology of the Documentary Movement. A thorough study of the Treasury and other government records, including the GPO reveals a very different picture: that of a man well and truly seen through and manipulated by the Civil Servants and their masters. A man wholly kept in the dark too — and easily so because of his assumption that his opponents were rather less clever than himself. See Paul Swann, The British Documentary Movement, 1926–1946, unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 1980.
‘Movies are entertainment, but they are also symbols, and behind every shadow on the big screen is the struggle to impose definitions upon what is and what should be. The power of any single movie to influence a viewer permanently is limited, although repetition obviously has its effect. Constant repetition that emphasises certain stereotypes … is overpowering.’ Daniel J. Leab, From Sambo to Superspade, The Black Experience in Motion Pictures (London, 1975).
For an account of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and its policies before 1914 with particular reference to political censorship see Knowles, op. cit., and J. Palmer, The Censor and the Theatres (London 1912);
for books see F. Fowell and F. Palmer Censorship in England (London, 1913).
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© 1982 Nicholas Pronay and D.W. Spring
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Pronay, N. (1982). The political censorship of films in Britain between the wars. In: Pronay, N., Spring, D.W. (eds) Propaganda, Politics and Film, 1918–45. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05893-8_5
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