CENSORING FILMS

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 251, 21 September 1929, Page 8

CENSORING FILMS

OBJECTIONS MADE. LESSONS FROM THE PAST. k (By Telegraph—Special to Standard). AUCKLAND, Sept. 20. The need which was urged in the Legislative Council for a censorship of talking pictures in order to prevent loose speech being introduced to common usage was discussed by Mr Henry Hayward, who expressed disapproval of the present system under which films were censored by one man only. He considered that the fears that speech in New Zealand would be affected were ill-foundgd in view of the improvements ir. articulation being insisted upon by the producers. A serious objection to the present system of censorship was the fact that it was carried out by one person and not by a committee. Mr Hayward said that the exhibitors had to abide by the judgment of one man and this meant that he was the sole arbiter on the worth of a film. The censorship was inclined to bo carried to unwarrantable extremes. One of the best talking pictures ever made, ‘Alibi,” was being shown in every part of the British Empire, yet it had been banned by the New Zealand censor. The English Censorship Board was composed of well-known persons, including Mr T. P. O’Connor, and it had seen fit to release this film. Here iigain, an individual’s opinion dictated what the whole of New Zealand should see. “The censorship only means the arbitrary judgment of one individual, human, and subject to human prejudice and bias as all of us are.” Mr Hayward added that a censorship banned “Pilgrim’s Progress” and threw tho author into gaol. “Calvin, great man though he was, censored the works of Martin Servitus and burned the writer at the stake. A censorship banned the work of our greatest lyric poet, Shelley, and expelled him from Oxford University; it forbade the reading of books of Thomas Pain and outlawed the author who wrote grandly: ‘The world is my country; to do good my religion.” It banned Zola’s heroic defence of Dreyfus and outlawed the writer. A censorship prohibited ttie grejit philosophical play of Henrik ibsen until public opinion censored the censorship. “Mussolini believes in the censorship and liberty of expressio'n is dead in Italy to-day. The Russian Soviet believes in the censorship with grim death penalties, and personal liberty is dead to-day in Russia. There may be film posters which offend the public taste; so there are book covers of decadent magazines; so there are sex novels infinitely more objectionable 'ban any stories ever screened; so there are newspapers which live and trade on tho dirty evils of human life.”