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Forbidden Films: Censorship Histories of 125 Motion Pictures (Facts on File Library of World Literature)

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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 interpretation by the author: and dry reference works require a higher standard of accuracy.

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: Movies, Censors and the First Amendment, makes it look like it is a copy of such book and no actual research was ever done to actualize, itemize or distinguish one text from the other. In short this book could be helpful on legal matters and cross reference from one legal case to another,since it does provide the actual case numbers and states where cases where trialed (picture yourself battling the Supreme court and having this book as a resource for enlightment on appeals, injunctions and motions), as far as film is concerned, I personally know of at least 125 more banned films within one decade alone and after the Hays Production Code or the Christian Legion of Decency to write a book on. Sova deserves credit for sticking it out with the female stars and the sex/erotic/porn oriented genre, but I for one think of film as a much broader medium in which the powers that be relish to exert their power to limit the means of expression whether this be of religious, sexual or political nature. Recommended for the high school reader with a strong suggestion to do further reading

There are a few easily discernable factual errors in FORBIDDEN FILMS (which could have been avoided with a bit more time in fact-checking), but the big disappointment here is the format. Dawn Sova has chosen 125 movies, made between 1908 and 1998, that have run into censorship trouble in various countries and at various levels: from city, state and national agencies, as well as various private pressure groups and the American film industry's own self-censorship apparatuses, i.e., the motion picture association's Production Code and, after 1968, its ratings system.

Instead of presenting a historical sense of the development of motion picture censorship (principally in the United States, long the most important film production center and audience market), Sova chose to list her 125 films in alphabetical order, by title, giving each a list of major credits, a brief synopsis, and a "censorship history" for each title. With the exception of a few relatively minor errors, the information on each individual film is relevant and logically presented. What's missing, however, is much sense of the progression of film censorship: how it grew in the early 1900s (due in part to a sympathetic U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1915), how Hollywood itself -- under strong pressure from the Catholic Church and other moralistic organizations -- instituted its own self-censorship system in the 1920s that dictated the limits of American film content for decades, how the Supreme Court reversed itself in 1952 and made the gradual demise of government censorship almost inevitable in the United States, and how Hollywood's self-censorship system also imploded in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, only to be replaced by a ratings system that has created its own problems for filmmakers seeking to show their movies in U.S. theaters.

You can glean this story in bits and pieces from reading FORBIDDEN FILMS, but if Sova ever gets a chance to revise this book, she would do well to arrange the 125 exemplary films in chronological order (and perhaps increase the number a bit) and include some connecting text that would create a smooth and continuous narrative instead of the disjointed articles that now constitute this book. (The present book does include a three-page introduction that tries to give an overview of American film censorship, but it's not adequate in the context of so many films.)

Much of the "censorship histories" include references to and quotations from various court decisions on various individual films. No doubt many of these are important, but after a hundred films or so they get a bit repetitive. There's also a section of short biographies of the directors of the 125 films Sova lists, but this information is easily available elsewhere (e.g., the Internet Movie Database) and, in many cases, the stars (e.g., Mae West), movie producers (Irving Thalberg, Carl Laemmle Jr.), and censors themselves (Joe Breen, Martin Quigley) are of more interest and significance than the directors of mediocre exploitation films.

This is an adequate supplementary work for those interested in the history and issues surrounding U.S. film censorship, but there are other books listed on amazon.com that are better starting points, i.e., better organized and more comprehensive.

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 photographs would have helped. Moreover, there's no apparent logic behind the films chosen for inclusion, no particular point to the "sampling", and since many of the entries are obscure to the average film-goer, its value as a reference is restricted. Nonetheless, for someone wanting an easily encompassed glimpse of film censorship world-wide, the book may fit the bill.