- In the past, the BBFC did not have any written rules or code of practice like the Motion Picture Production Code
- Policy evolved along practical lines, whilst seeking to reflect public attitudes
1916
- T.P. O'Connor was appointed President of the BBFC
- One of his first tasks was to give evidence to the Cinema Commission of Inquiry, set up by the National COuncil of Public Morals in 1916
- He summarised the Board's Policy by listing forty-three grounds for deletion laid down for the guidance of examiners:
- Indecorous, ambiguous and irreverent titles and subtitles
- Cruelty to animals
- The irreverent treatment of sacred subjects
- Drunken scenes carried to excess
- Vulgar accessories in the staging
- The modus operandi of criminals
- Cruelty to young infants and excessive cruelty and torture to adults, especially women
- Unnecessary exhibition of under-clothing
- The exhibition of profuse bleeding
- Nude figures
- Offensive vulgarity, and impropriety in conduct and dress
- Indecorous dancing
- Excessively passionate love scenes
- Bathing scenes passing the limits of propriety
- Reference to controversial politics
- Relations of capital and labour
- Scenes tending to disparage public characters and institutions
- Realistic horrors of warfare
- Scenes and incidents calculated to afford information to the enemy
- Incidents having a tendency to disparage our Allies
- Scenes holding up the King's uniform to contempt or ridicule
- Subjects dealing with India, in which British Officers are seen in an odious light, and otherwise attempting to suggest the disloyalty of British Officers, Native States or bringing into disrepute British prestige in the Empire
- The exploitation of tragic incidents of the war
- Gruesome murders and strangulation scenes
- Executions
- The effects of vitriol throwing
- The drug habit. e.g. opium, morphia, cocaine, etc
- Subjects dealing with White Slave traffic
- Subjects dealing with premeditated seduction of girls
- 'First Night' scenes
- Scenes suggestive of immorality
- Indelicate sexual situations
- Situations accentuating delicate marital relations
- Men and women in bed together
- Illicit relationships
- Prostitution and procuration
- Incidents indicating the actual perpetration of criminal assaults on women
- Scenes depicting the effect of venereal disease, inherited or acquired
- Incidents suggestive of incestuous relations
- Themes and references relative to 'race suicide'
- Confinements
- Scenes laid in disorderly houses
- Materialization of the conventional figure of Christ
- During this period the kind of material that caused concern included horror and gangster films, as well as those that dealt with aspects of sexuality
- Some councils were beginning to bar children from films classified 'A', even when they had been cut by the BBFC to achieve a certificate
Frankenstein (1931) - The London County Council and Manchester City Council banned children from seeing Frankenstein, despite a scene in which the monster drowns a small girl being cut. In response to such material, the adisory category 'H' (for horror) was agreed in 1932, to indicate the potential unsuitability for children of the horror theme
1948
- Arthur Watkins was appointed Secretary to the Board in 1948, under the Presidency of Sir Sidney Harris
- Many film-makers sought the Board's advice on scripts before films went into production
- Watkins and Harris formulated new terms of reference for the Board based on three principles:
- Was the story, incident or dialogue likely to impair the moral standards of the public by extenuating vice or crime or depreciating moral standards?
- Was it likely to give offence to reasonably minded cinema audiences?
- What effect would it have on children
- An 'adults only' category was increasingly seen as desirable, not only to protect children, but as an extension of the freedom of film-makers to treat adult subjects in an adult fashion
No comments:
Post a Comment