Saturday, 17 September 2011
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Local moral standards
Once upon a time, in towns much like yours and mine, before a movie could be shown in the local theater, the projectionist would cut up the film, snipping out scenes that failed to meet the local moral standards. The short film, Forbidden Images, consists entirely of such scenes cut from films in one old movie theater somewhere in Pennsylvania.
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Comments (16)
Fascinating. It is sad that so many old films have had this happen in so many different cities/states/countries; they tore the hell out of Fritz Lang's Metropolis and it has only been recently that preservationists have been able to put most of it back together again...
i'm sure the people who made these decisions would be appalled at what is on tv now - anyone with one can just turn it on and watch way worse things!
Heheh... Kind of makes me think of the fashion magazines that get imported here in Bangladesh. It's pretty standard to find a few pages ripped out that may have contained "objectionable content". :D
Wow. I never realized feet were so subversive until now.
Some of those actresses could have used a few dance lessons.
I am glad you posted this. I wonder what those same people will say or how they will react to the current atmosphere in the filmdom at the way the nakedness is revealed with no line for imagination!
Early Hollywood was such a scandalous place
!!! How interesting that this happened -- and that they have been able to piece together 4+ minutes of such 'outtakes.' Thanks for posting this little bit of history!
Oh yes, how dare a woman show any skin, or move her hips in any manner! Scandalous!
The music was haunting and beautiful. Thanks for sharing this, it was very interesting. :)
oh yeah that woman's calf gave me such a boner. And the woman in the trash bag dress, I could barely contain myself. Oh Lord, those bathing suits. hot stuff.
What upsets me about today's morals is the way children are exploited sexually on screen and tv.
This is also what ONE projectionist found objectionable... you rightfully note this as "local" morals, which are always questionable. Of course nothing scandalous happens in OUR community, but those hooligans across the river? We're quick to gossip about what's going on over THERE! And it doesn't matter which side of the river you live on for this to happen.
A film buff friend of mine used to make a point I find very interesting... it was just that what we reference as the "Golden Age of Cinema" coincides directly with the worst periods of censorship in America's history. The heydey of Katherine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and Alfred Hitchcock is also the time when the Hays code was in full force, and the MPAA was fully supported by the Catholic Church. He would go on to claim that the line-item nature and strict review panels forced filmmakers to think "outside the box"... you couldn't show a topless girl, or a couple in bed, so you had to insinuate their conduct. You couldn't show a bloody full-body explosion, but you still had to come up with a way to convey the horror of war. Solving those problems is one of the things he credits as making those movies so much more convincing than the action scenes or love scenes of today, many of which we may be able to copy and paste between movies with nobody noticing.
I'm not sure if I agree completely, but the idea of censorship driving innovation is an interesting one. It also was said to help out the "little guys" in getting established... though considering the current dominance of the big 6 (86% market share), I'm not sure that's true.
Our society has defined deviancy downward to such a point where there are no longer any standards at all.
I can still remember Mother wearing dresses in the 50s that had a skin-toned fabric panel to cover "certain areas" of her body that, today, no one would think twice about showing.
Oh women, we have always been so dangerous to the world. I blame Eve.
Haven't been 'round these parts in years. Glad to see some of my favorites are still around. Might just pop out a post before baby is born. I kinda think I need to update, as so far there's only, like, maybe one resolution I managed to keep.
I had every intention of commenting, but the sight of those feet rubbing together has brought on such a case of raging lust, I don't know that I can type.
This is SO interesting! Especially given the fact that the people watching the movies, and the people making the movies, were just humans who were "naughty" in their real lives.
I love the scenes of wiggly feet and flailing limbs!
HUGS!
@Shahrazad1973 - Ha! Please don't blame me!
Oh wait...now that I think about it...it is MY fault! 
HUGS!