FILM CENSOR TALKS

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 234, 2 October 1937, Page 13

FILM CENSOR TALKS

BRITISH PRODUCTS. WHY THEY ARE CUT. NEVER MISSES MAE WEST. (Special.—By Air Mail.) LONDON, September 11. Mr. W. Cress well O'Reilly, film censor of Australia, spoke about his job this week at Ilford, Essex, where he is spending a holiday. "If w e know that a Mae Y\ est or a Garbo film is to be viewed, then both my assistants and myself are present," he declared, laughingly. Mr. O'Reilly revealed that British films gave him more trouble than those from America. "Last year," he said, "1684 films were imported into Australia. Of those more than 1000 came from America, 500 from the United Kingdom and a little over 100 from other countries. Twenty-six per cent of tlie British films were cut, compared with 19 per cent of the American films, while 2.7 per cent of the British films were rejected, against 1.4 per cent of those from Hollywood."

"Don't." lie warned, "run away with the idea that because a film is British it is all right. It is extremely important in a part of the Empire like Australia that the people should have the best impression of Britain —that is the general attitude we take. Since 1933 films have improved vastly from a moral as well as a technical point of view. Before we had to cut 50 per cent of the long films which came to us, and on the average reject 6 per cent." Mr. O'Reilly said s tliat his experience was that moral pictures always paid from a box-office point of view. "When I retire," he said, "my song will be:—• 'Picturns new and pictures old, Of maidens fair and heroes bold. Of love scenes tender and villains tough, I thank the Lord I've had enough * "