FILM CENSORSHIP

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17062, 21 September 1929, Page 5

FILM CENSORSHIP

OUTSPOKEN CRITIC DANGER OF INTOLERANCE (Special to the Herald.) AUCKLAND, this day. The need which was urged in the Legislative Council for a censorship of talking pictures in order to prevent loose speech Oeing 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 the'fears that the speech of New Zealanders- would be affected were illfounded, in view of the improvements in articulation being insisted upon by producers. The 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 exhibitors had to abide by the judgment of olie man, and this meant that he was the sole arbiter on the worth of a film. Censorship was inclined to be 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 bad 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 again an individual opinion dictated what the whole of New Zealand should see. “Censorship-only, means the, arbitrary judgment of otie’ individual, who is human, and subject to human prejudice and bias, ns all of us are,” Mr. Hayward added. “Censorship banned ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ and threw its author into gaol.. Calvin, great man though he was, censored the works of Martin Servitus, and burned the writer at the stake. Ctensolship banned the work of our greatest lyric poet, Shelly, and expelled him from Oxford University. It forbade the reading of the books of Thomas Pain, and outlawed the author who wrote grandly, ‘The world is my country; Jo do good, my religion.’ It banned Zola s heroic ‘Defence of Dreyfus, and outlawed the writer. Censorship prohibited the great philosophical plays of Henrik Ibsen until public opinion censored the censorship. Mussolini believes in censorship, ..and the liberty of expression is dead in Italy to-day. The Russian Soviet believes in censorship, with grim death penalties, and personel lilxirty is dead to-dfty in Russia. There may be film posters which offend public taste; so there are book covers; so t here a resex novels, infinitely more objectionable than any stories ever screened ; so there are newspapers, which live and trade on the dirty evils of human life.”