Dear Censor: The Secret Archive of the British Board of Film Classification

This new documentary screened on BBC4 in September was a welcome look into the notoriously clandestine British Board of Film Classification and the business of film censorship, but I couldn't quite escape the nagging feeling that it was a calculated PR stunt by an ever sensitive BBFC, weary of being seen as overbearing buttoned-down nanny staters after the recent high profile rejections by the Board of The Bunny Game, and The Human Centipede II (now passed with cuts).

Dear Censor focuses on the Board's most controversial epochs beginning with John Trevelyan's reign from 1958 to 1971 which coincided with the emergence of Exploitation Cinema and a number of edgy, confrontational art films from Europe. After Trevelyan stepped down to write his memoirs, Stephen Murphy took up the post of chief censor from '71 to '75 and was often at the receiving end of public fury over the new wave of violent and sexually explicit films like A Clockwork Orange, Straw Dogs, Death Wish, The Devils, and Last Tango In Paris. Finally and perhaps most notoriously of all, James Ferman's tenure as head censor from 1975 to 1999, saw the Board emerge into the era of home video and the moral panics of the Video Nasties controversy of 1984, and the Hungerford Massacre and James Bulger murder, two tragedies which the media blamed on violent videos.

Where the documentary really scores is the extraordinary correspondence collected in the Board's somewhat elaborate and impenetrable vaults between the Board and film distributors and directors, such as Columbia's cringe-worthy letters to censor Arthur Watkins pleading with the Board not to ban The Wild One (which fell on deaf ears), or Warners' lobbying for the lower certificate for Rebel Without A Cause, the Board seemingly unmoved, awarding the film a restrictive adult X certificate. Some film makers fostered a relationship with the Board, like Ken Russell who submitted the screenplay for Women In Love to John Trevelyan and sought advice before production began, later reaching an agreeable compromise over the famous homoerotic nude wrestling scene by darkening the negative. Russell was not so successful however with his 1971 film The Devils which deeply troubled the Board with it's depiction of sexuallly crazed possessed nuns. Despite Russell's best efforts to appease the Board - "I have cleared up the shit on the altar, slashed the whipping and cut the orgy" wrote Russell in a letter to Trevelyan, the Board insisted that the so called Rape of Christ sequence had to be removed.

If film makers like Ken Russell thought it better to have the Board onside, others were less inclined. Michael Winner who had something of a censor-baiting reputation from his early nudie film Some Like it Cool and the explicit bad language of I'll Never Forget What's 'Isname, brazenly refused to accept cuts to Death Wish. Interviewed for the documentary Winner remained unapologetic - "He was crazy this idiot... crazy", referring to Stephen Murphy. "He doesn't represent society, he's some individual moron who happened to get a job". Winner held fast in the face of Murphy's list of proposed cuts and won the battle, securing an uncut release for Death Wish - "Well he didn't stand on any of this, he collapsed on all of it", Winner defiantly declared. Ultimately, Murphy resigned from the Board after much criticism for passing a number of contentious films, his short-lived career at the Board summed up by Christopher Frayling as being "the right man at the wrong time"

Following Stephen Murphy's departure in 1975, James Ferman, a soft-spoken New York born television film maker became the BBFC's next head censor, and contrary to his own belief that he would remain with the Board a mere 5 years, Ferman remained in the job until 1999, becoming one of the most dominant forces in British film censorship. Ferman's early defense of Pasolini's Salo might have marked him as a liberal but Ferman became increasingly conservative, preoccupied by various cinematic trends like violence against women and weapons fetishism. Ferman also introduced a more stringent code of silence regarding cuts and decisions the Board applied to films that passed through their offices in Soho square. In this final section of Dear Censor, the documentary is less satisfying, focusing on Ferman's predicament with what he perceived as the weapons worship of Rambo III, and instead skipping over Ferman's more notorious decisions, like his refusal to grant a video certificate to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - even after the distributor had submitted a cut version of what is essentially a bloodless film, Ferman decided that it had not reduced the psychological torture of the film and declared the film "censor-proof". Texas Chainsaw Massacre would remain unavailable in Britain until Ferman's departure.

Probably Ferman's most well known bête noire is The Exorcist. The film had been available on VHS in stores across Britain up until the BBFC began classifying tapes. Warners eventually submitted the film for video certification some years after the Video Nasties furore died down but Ferman refused to pass The Exorcist, one of Warners' biggest selling titles, explaining that the film had the potential to disturb and even damage younger viewers. Legend has it, Warners would contact Ferman annually to inquire about The Exorcist but Ferman time and time again would tell Warners that the time just wasn't right. Another significant film that goes unmentioned in the documentary is John McNaughton's powerful drama Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, a bleak look at a sociopath which was so troubling to the BBFC that the film languished with the Board for quite some time before it was passed with cuts. What was noteworthy about Henry was that Ferman not only cut the film in accordance with his wishes but made quite a deliberate modification to one sequence in the film where Henry and his sidekick Otis are seen watching a VHS recording of their latest murder. McNaughton has quite brilliantly structured the scene so that VHS tape plays out without any cutaways, but Ferman, worried that the scene would be used as a masturbatory aid, inserted a shot of the Henry and Otis seen watching the tape, in the middle of the sequence, thus diminishing the power of McNaughton's original intention. This modification was done without McNaughton's permission, Ferman himself felt he was the better film maker.

Omissions aside Dear Censor is a worthwhile whistle-stop tour through almost 50 years of BBFC history, the record of cuts and rejections reveal a fascinating index of the shifting moods, attitudes and opinions of the day. It's a shame that the documentary was only granted access to files over 20 years - a senior examiner at the Board teasingly mentions some very interesting correspondence between Oliver Stone and James Ferman regarding Natural Born Killers, but this remains closely guarded such is the Board's strict policy. In 1999, a definite line in the sand was drawn when James Ferman left the Board, and an unprecedented period of liberalization followed in his wake. Much of the power of the BBFC has been diluted since the advent of DVD, films that have been cut by the Board are relatively easy to get hold of in their original versions, and perhaps it’s a sign of the times that film critic Kim Newman had this to say about the late James Ferman, "Now I have actually a great deal of sympathy with James Ferman, I think that at least he was trying to do an extremely difficult job".