Forbidden Films: Censorship Histories of 125 Motion Pictures (Facts on File Library of World Literature)
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Forbidden Films: Censorship Histories of 125 Motion Pictures (Facts on File Library of World Literature)
Since the earliest days of the film industry, mainstream films have been banned for their sexual, religious, social, and political content. Forbidden Films traces the efforts to censor 125 films, ranging from the silent Birth of a Nation to Schlindler's List. This fascinating reference examines the continued efforts to regulate the industry, providing a summary of each banned film-including production details, censorship history, and suggestions for further reading.
Coverage includes: * Early efforts to regulate the movie industry, such as the Hays Code in 1922 and the Motion Picture Production Code in 1930 * The emergence of the Catholic League of Decency, which wielded extensive power for nearly forty years * The reasoning behind different types of film censorship-including racism and anti-Semitism, sexual "indecency," and the fear of Communism * Classic and contemporary films that have faced censorship, for sexual content (Last Tango in Paris, A Streetcar Named Desire), social content (Basic Instinct, Of Human Bondage), political content (Anna and the King, Revenge at Daybreak), religious content (La Dolce Vita, The Last Temptation of Christ), and violence content (Natural Born Killers, Scarface) * Appendixes profiling the directors of the banned films, films classified according to the reason for their censorship or ban, and a listing of 125 additional challenged, censored, and banned films.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 2.0 / 5.0
Disappointing:
Of interest mainly as a reference source, but a risk for the casual reader. Each of the 125 entries contains a summary of the film's context, a sketch of the censorship travails, and a brief bibliography -- encompassing on the average, one to three pages for each entry. Considering the subject-matter, the discussion style remains curiously colorless and detached. Despite the suggestive title, there's clearly no exploitation of the contents. And yet, the text could use some pepping up -- well-chosen... more info
Hugely inaccurate:
It doesn't take long to find errors in this book: just read the wholly inaccurate plot synopsis of The Last Picture Show, which is hardly obscure or difficult to find on video, and thus would have been easy to check.
Or how about the reference to a film receiving an R rating from the MPAA *several years prior to the establishment of the MPAA's rating system*?
Had this been a book of insights or analysis, a few such lapses might have been forgivable. But this is a dry reference work, with little... more info
A touch of free speech with a sense of lacking:
Even though this book brings important items out to light, the work itself is lacking and at times incomplete. It also has a strong sense of sensasionalism to it, think of watching NBC on daily news. The mention of films like The Great Dictator as items under censorship and controversy is in itself sensasionalistic, as opposed to Citizen Kane which is not mentioned at all, gives a better idea of how subtle and hyped this work is, besides, the constant reference to the De Grazia book by title Banned Films:... more info
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