FILM CENSORS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 55, 6 March 1935, Page 15

FILM CENSORS.

IRISH PURITY MOVEMENT,

DUBLIN, February (5.

The spirit of censorship is active in the Irish Free State. And this in a country which is already one of the most censored in the world. The Government has by legislation taken a hand in censoring reading matter. There are already some hundreds of volumes on the index which it is a crime to read, to have in one's possession, to send through the post, or for a bookseller to sell. Quite a number of periodicals, some of them British, and a few American, are prohibited from entrance to the country.

There is an official film censorship, as a. result of the operations of which, in the opinion of many critics, comparatively good pictures arc so much cut and mangled that their interest and effectiveness are destroyed. While this is the case, and while it is admitted that the Free State film screen is the cleanest in the world, many leaders of the purity campaign are demanding still more rigid criticism.

Recently the film censor ordered certain cuts in a picture. The cinema proprietor who had rented it appealed, as he had a right to do, to the Censorship Appeal Board with the result that the censor's decision was reversed and the cuts restored. This has aroused the advanced purists who want the Appeal Board revised.

The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Alderman Byrne, is taking a leading part in the advanced movement, and recently summoned all the cinema and theatre managers to talk matters over with him. The managers submitted that they were already giving thoroughly clean performances but were willing to be still more selective.

The theatre managers agreed to make a stipulation in their contracts with artists from Great Britain tlmt indecent suggestions or expressions which arc occasionally thrown out ex tempore by variety artists should he avoided, and that a breach of this agreement would lend to dismissal. In fnct, it was stated that in a recent case an artist who made some objectionable remark on the first night of his engagement had been suspended, and was not allowed to appear for the rest of the week. He was, however, paid his salary notwithstanding this.