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Mrs. Robinson, would you like to go to a movie?

♪ SOARING MUSIC ♪

'These great moments in cinema history have one thing in common.'

What?

'They were all all deemed to be unsuitable for an Irish audience.

'Since the foundation of the state, thousands of films were banned,

'while generations of Irish cinema-goers

'were completely unaware

'that they were watching movies with key scenes removed.'

Here's looking at you, kid.

Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me.

They think I'm the Messiah, Mum.

SHRIEKS

'All that banning and all that cutting

'provides a fascinating insight

'into how Irish society evolved over 100 years.

'And it was all done at the decree of one man, the Irish Film Censor.

'Since 1923, only 9 people, all men,

'have held that title,

'and I was the last.

'And this extraordinary power given to me and my predecessors

'to determine what could and couldn't be shown

'to an Irish audience

'all stems from a phrase written into the statute books

'back in 1923:

'"In the Opinion of the Censor."

'When Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ"

'was released in 1988, the film censor of the day,

'Seamus Smith,

'came under huge pressure to ban it from Irish cinema screens.

'Mother, stay with me. Don't leave me.'

SCREAMS

'The campaign, led by churches of all denominations,

'gathered 100,000 signatures

'protesting the screening of a film it believed to be blasphemous.

'From the time that cinema first came to Ireland,

there have been moral crusades

trying to control what should be seen on the cinema screen.

'The row over "The Last Temptation of Christ"

'was actually an action replay

'of the row over the biggest hit movie of 1912.

'First major controversy in relation to the cinema was

'""From the Manger to the Cross,"

'which was the first major film about the life of Christ.

'Amongst other problems that the churches had

was the Protestant Church objected to any representation of Christ.

'From a Catholic point of view,

'the Virgin Mary was played by a divorcee,

'and also they objected to the fact that the St. James Bible

'was used for the intertitles.

'And at the time, The Irish Times wrote 3 editorials

'about why the film should be banned or restricted.

'The film became a huge hit,

'but it also was one of those controversies

'that really helped fuel the anti-cinema campaign

'as it developed later in the decade.'

♪ OPERATIC MUSIC ♪

'That eventually came to fruition in September of 1916'

when Dublin Corporation began to appoint film censors

to regulate the films being shown publicly.

♪ SONG: Delle Haensch "Petite Ballerina" ♪

'The problem with that particular approach

'was that they had no cinema themselves,

'they had no paid censors,

'and they went to see the film after it was being screened.

'So the whole situation became very shambolic.

'By the time the activists really began to get their act together,

'they realised that there was a huge swathe of cinema

'that they found objectionable.'

'And so started a century-long battle

'for control of the Irish cinema screen

'by those who feared the corrupting influence

'that these glamorous, dark, seductive places

'would have on impressionable Irish audiences.'

'Now you go to the cinema to see a specific film,

'but they would go to the cinema just to go to the cinema.

'If you were a courting couple, you went to the cinema.

'If you wanted to just have a cigarette in peace,

'you went to the cinema.'

'This was cheap, available entertainment

and a way of getting out of your often fairly deprived

living circumstances.

'Film is one of the greatest starting points for a shift

'in societal attitudes.

'Film, and film about other countries

'which have a different way of life,'

that is how you bring about change.

It might be slow,

but film has a huge power to make important changes.

'So if we didn't want those changes,

'it was imperative that they had a very strong censorship.'

'When the Free State came into being in December 1922,

'the anti-cinema campaigners were ready to strike.'

A deputation was sent to meet the First Minister for Justice,

Kevin O'Higgins, who was more than happy to support the cause

'of a national film censorship.'

'Kevin O'Higgins was probably the most able

'and energetic member of that government,'

and he hadn't been an advocate of film censorship

or book censorship before it happened,

but it arrived at his desk,

he approved of it, it was part of their overall programme.

There was no great debate about it, they just got on with it.

'He said that he had received

'a thoroughly representative delegation'

of people who were insisting

that it was one of the most important issues of the day.

'It was the Irish Vigilance Association,

'the Priests' Social Guild,

'the Catholic Church in Ireland,

'the Protestant Episcopalian Church in Ireland,

'and the Presbyterian Church.

'Perhaps not these days the most representative group of people,

'but at the time, it was a group of people who felt

'that this was a very important issue and should be dealt with.

With a brand new state to be built,

legislation was being passed

through the Oireachtas at breakneck pace.

'The busiest man in Dublin must surely have been

'the parliamentary draughtsman, one Arthur Matheson.

'Not much is known about Arthur Matheson himself.'

We know that he lived on Fitzwilliam Square.

He was a conveyancer.

The conventional wisdom of that time in, in Britain,

as well as obviously in Ireland,

was that the best draughtsperson

would have a conveyancing background.

'The parliamentary draughtsman gets his instructions

'from the Attorney General.

'So government decides on a bill,'

'and the Attorney General would ask

'the draughtsman to work with the department

'to develop the legal text around the bill.'

'He was turning around draft bills relatively quickly,

'really at ferocious speed in comparison to today's terms.

'So he really would have had very little to go on

'by way of precedent, by way of access to research,

'you know, access to legal advice on complex aspects

of the bill that arose.'

So he very much was a pioneer in terms of creating

the 1923 Censorship of Films Act.

'Matheson's diaries from his time as parliamentary draughtsman

'show his extraordinary workload

'and how for much of the early part of 1923,

'the Censorship of Films Act was a daily feature.

'Matheson's Bill was introduced in the Dáil by Kevin O'Higgins

'on the 3rd of May, 1923..

O'HIGGINS: "I think it will be found to be

"a non-contentious measure and will go through quickly.

"In view of the considerable and growing demand for the measure,

"I feel justified in asking the Dáil to consider it,

"even in times like the present,

"and even in view of the pressure of business that there is."

'The department will have the more common use language about'

this is what the bill hopes to achieve,

and the draughtsman layers that with the legal text,

which is the whole point about reading the Oireachtas debates,

is to try and get some of the colour

behind the drier legal text.

'There was a film shown in Grafton Street some years

'ago called "The Isle of Love."'

'It was diabolical in its naked indecency.

'It had crowded houses.

'A man who is sufficiently unconscionable

'could easily pay his £5 a day penalty and make well on it.

'He would not be deterred by that.

'Legislation, it's got to have longevity.

'The ability for a drafter to project forward

'and think of future circumstances that are not face

'at the time of drafting. It's a critical skill of a drafter.'

The 'in the opinion of the censor' phrase, I guess it flows directly

from the fact that when Minister Higgins was introducing

the bill at second stage in the Dáil, he did make quite

a point about the fact that Ireland was not establishing a film

censorship board, but it was appointing or providing

for the appointment of a censor.

So he's very much, you know, centralising the opinion,

the authority, the power in one person.

'The Censorship of Films Act was passed by the Oireachtas

'on the 16th of July, 1923.

'The Act stipulated that the censor could cut or ban films if,

'in the opinion of the censor, they were obscene, blasphemous,

'or contrary to public morality.

'It was one of the first pieces of legislation to be

'enacted in the Free State.'

'The fact the priority of the new state was

'to bring in legislation for censorship at such an early

'stage tells us an awful lot.'

It shows, first of all, that we were,

we were a voluntary theocracy.

James Joyce said that Catholicism obliterated our need,

our curiosity about the external world.

He blamed Catholicism.

These men are committed Catholics.

'And they're not just the stooges of bishops and priests.'

They are in most cases quite well educated as Catholics.

They belong to organisations such as

the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, for example,

and they feel that they have to create an Ireland that is distinct.

'There were Puritans.'

They had a fundamental belief that the British presence

in Ireland was the reason for most of our

economic failures to develop.

But they also had a strong sense that Britain's moral influence had

a deleterious effect upon the Irish people and that the Irish

people had to be protected.

And they didn't have great faith in the Irish people either.

The Irish people had to be prevented from being in touch

with these influences, which they largely saw

in newspapers papers, books, and films.

'I think there was a tremendous condescension in the attitude

'of our lords and masters towards cultural consumption,

'and film was the popular medium that everyone went to.

'So our moral lords and guardians had to be very, very zealous

'in examining every iota that went out to those people in case faith'

and morals would be jeopardised.

Because, of course, one of the meanings

of the Free State, in the minds of its architects

at least, was that this was to be a holy Ireland,

long prophesied in story and song,

and we couldn't let it down now with this exciting new medium.

'The issue about the appointment of the senator, a fit person is how

'they described it in the debate, and a number of deputies

'and senators wondered whether such a person existed.'

It was a person that they said would need to have great moral

courage in order to be able to balance this right to freedom

of expression versus this view that we should protect particularly our

young people from the dangers of moral indecency.

'So that's the job description.

'The post was advertised in the newspapers,

'and the government found its moral guardian, James Montgomery.

'He had a sense of humour and a colourful turn of phrase.'

"I take the Ten Commandments as my code," he declared.

'From the day Montgomery stepped into the office,

'he and his successors were obliged to keep a record

'of the films they watched.

'The ones they banned and the cuts they made.

'And these leather-bound ledgers now sit on the shelves

'of the National Archives.'

'Every film that was going to be proposed for screening in Ireland

'would be registered in the register,'

so the name of it, the distributor, the length of it, etc.

And then we have the film censor's notebooks,

and that's when he sat down to watch the film,

and his notebook then,

'he would go into extraordinary detail in relation

'to what he was watching.

'So there might be comments on, for example,

'the characters or the theme, or, you know,

'whether it was moral or immoral,

'because always it was about public morality,

'and that was really at the core of the Censorship Act.'

And then we have the decision books,

and depending on the decision, then it would be appealed,

and we have the appeals office books as well.

'So really, from the minute the distributors

'want to show a film in Ireland right through onto the decision

'whether the film is shown or not,

'all of those records are held in the The National Archives.'

'One brave and hopeful distributor presented Montgomery with a film

'called "The Docks of New York."

'Montgomery was never going to allow the Irish public to see this one.

"The story of sailors and dockside prostitutes.

"Highly tainted fare, spiced with lust, suicide, and murder.

"There is a disgusting travesty of a marriage."

'It was a very tough regime that was introduced,

'and at the centre of that was Montgomery's view

'that the family was the unit of the state.

'His approach was really conforming to a very conservative,

'rigid Catholicism, fuelled also by a Catholic nationalist perspective.

'So in that sort of context, anything that was against the law,

'in this case divorce, abortion, birth control,

'homosexuality, and the like,

'were all cut out of films or the films themselves banned.'

'As far as he was concerned,'

the greatest threat was not the Anglicisation

but the Los-Angelisation of Ireland.

'He observed that many of the very objectionable films

'submitted to him dealt principally with indecent dancing

'and the customs of the divorcing classes in England and America.'

'For the most part, they are watching one film one time,

'making all their decisions, and then moving on.

'And I think that's not a way to look at art.

'It's very much an industrial, if you like, structure.

'It's processing, cataloguing, and dismissing.'

It's not looking at an art form.

It's not maybe in any way engaging with what the director's vision or

even the artistic or creative process is.

'Going back to see something like "Gold Diggers" of 1933,

'which is an incredible film about women

'fighting the Great Depression in a way,

'and to see it dismissed with the immortal words,

'"It's merely a film about the seduction of men

'by a certain type of woman." '

'The state of undress of female characters preoccupied him greatly.'

Semi-nude was his term for any exposed area

of the female form below the neck.

"Complaints are coming in from all parts of the state regarding Kisses

"shown on the screen that would not be attempted even on the stage.

"As a matter of fact, a prolonged kiss on the stage

"provokes ridicule.

"But the cinema, to the accompaniment

"of the most sensuous music,

"lavishes miles of celluloid on this unsanitary salute."

'Particularly in the case of men

'who are running the Irish censorship,'

They're looking for a very particular Catholic form

of expression of femininity, and that's in many ways

quite demure, restrained, careful, polite,

non-confrontational, and accepting of patriarchal control.

'That may have been James Montgomery's idea

'of the ideal woman, but Hollywood had a new star

'who observed that good girls go to heaven,

'bad girls go everywhere.'

♪ I've got the face of a saint, on the level it ain't paint

♪ Beware of these eyes, I'm a devil in disguise.

'Mae West was an extraordinary film persona,'

a self-created woman,

and very much the sort of woman that op-ends ideas of, you know,

'staying at home and being quiet and having lots of children

'and being married.'

Oh, by the way, honey, you married or single?

Married 5 times. 5 times?

Wedding bells must sound like an alarm clock to you.

Aww! I don't suppose you believe in marriage, do you?

Only as a last resort.

'I think one of the biggest things that the Catholic Church was

'afraid of was female sexuality.

'They've been absolutely afraid of women, always.'

I like to get around and travel.

'Since the censorship was driven by Catholicism,'

I think it was fear of women, female desire, female sexuality,

childbearing, contraception.

Everything to do with women's bodily functions

were hugely feared.

Oh, Beulah, take the gentleman's hat and coat.

Thanks, I hope I haven't disturbed you.

Not so far.

'Conversation is in many ways very simple, very plain,

''and not unfamiliar from hundreds of other films from the same era.

'The way that she manages to play that, it's also what she's wearing,

'effectively her nightgown,

'and it's got spider webs all over it,'

so, you know, she's clearly going to ensnare him in her web.

CHUCKLES

Do you mind if I get personal?

Right ahead, I don't mind if you get familiar.

'There is no double entendre in much of that scene,

'but even without her famous double entendre,

'she can manage through just rolling her eyes.

'You know, she looks Cary Grant up and down

'as if she's actually thinking about taking all the clothes off

'right then and there.

'She does that in all of her films.

'She just looks at the men in this really greedy, ravenous way.

'In a way that in most films,

'women are the subject of that gaze.

'Distributors recognised that it was too difficult sometimes

'to sell Mae West to the Irish market,'

so her very first film,

"She Done Him Wrong," they know already it won't pass,

so they don't even submit it to the censor.

And that's something that's hard to quantify

in the censorship story,

is all the material that they just looked at and thought,

"There's no point in paying to be told no."

'And then when they try and submit "I'm No Angel,"

'it's a film that's 127 minutes long,

'and they cut 17 minutes to try and get it past him,

'and he still said no.

It is this sort of extraordinary idea that uneducated people

couldn't make up their own minds.

And it didn't... you know, you've got to think it would have

been quite different for the middle classes.

'They wanted to see films imported from, say, France,

'but particularly the really, really influential films

'that were being made in the then Soviet Union.

'This is the heyday of, say,

'"Eisenstein," "Battleship Potemkin."

'They were equally forbidden from seeing these films

'because church and state said, "Uh-uh,

'This is Bolshevik propaganda."'

'From the beginning, Montgomery took the view

'that all films need to be released with general certificates.

'Therefore, the youngest child could view every film.'

In that sort of way that Montgomery,

in common with many of the people in government in the first decades

of the Irish Free State,

treated really the Irish people as if they were children.

'The 1923 Censorship of Films Act established an appeals board

'to which unhappy distributors could take their grievances

'at the decisions handed down by the censor.

'They occasionally allowed some films that Montgomery banned

'to be shown, such as "Blackmail" in 1929.

'But when Irish audiences eventually got to see it,

'the key scene of the movie, in which there's an attempted rape,

'during which the woman kills her attacker, was cut.

'Or, as Montgomery described it, "The 'unstripping and dressing

and the passionate kissing prior to

and including the sex struggle."'

No! No! Ah!

Ah!

'There was an appeals board of 9 people who always had included'

a representative of the Catholic Church

and of the Protestant Church.

And some of these were quite formidable figures who often,

probably contrary to the Act itself,

would sit in with the censor while the film

was being screened for the first time,

and they would determine whether a film

should be permitted or not.

'James Montgomery was completely opposed to anything

'which deviated from traditional Catholic teaching

'on the family and society,

'and it was clear where he was getting his advice from.

'In 1932, when Ireland was the host country

'for the Eucharistic Congress,

'he ordered the removal of scenes of benediction.'

"By order of the Archbishop,

"this must never be shown in a picture house."

'Over 1,700 films were were banned on Montgomery's watch,

'and his time as censor ended with a blockbuster.

'He demanded 13 cuts to an epic tale of plantations, slavery,'

'and the tangled love affairs of a Southern belle

'at a time of Civil War.'

War, war, war.

This war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring.

I get so bored I could scream.

Besides...

'If we might discuss the type of woman that the Irish censor liked.

'You could start with "Gone with the Wind" and Scarlett O'Hara,'

who is one of the feistiest characters in film from that time.

'He censored out the fact that at the very beginning

'she's going to a ball and she's wearing a beautiful dress

'and she tweaks the dress to make herself look more alluring.

'Not madly sexual, just more alluring.

'She wasn't allowed to move her dress off her shoulder.

'That was cut.'

Oh, now, Miss Scarlett.

'So severe was Montgomery's cutting of "Gone with the Wind"

'that the American ambassador intervened.

'He sat through the film with Montgomery

'and managed to win a few concessions.

'But as for the Yankee insults,

'the attempted rape,

'And Scarlett's declaration of birth control,

'that all had to go.'

Women had to be pure, virginal, and when married,

have babies without any seeming intervention by the opposite sex.

'Again, in "Gone with the Wind,"

'the other character Melanie has a baby under terrible circumstances,

'but we just see towels being got and then a baby crying,

'because you couldn't possibly have,

'according to the Irish censor,

'a woman screaming in pain having a baby.'

They had to be like the Stepford Wives.

VOICEOVER: Mr. James Montgomery, the film censor,

has retired after splendid work spread over 17 years of service.

He has seen altogether 17,000 miles of film.

What fun he must have had.

Mr. Montgomery will continue to attend the office in an advisory

capacity to his successor, Dr. Richard Hayes.

'Richard Hayes was a former TD, 1916 veteran, and medical doctor.

'He became censor at a time when Ireland was under

'the Emergency Powers Act,

'introduced to protect the country's neutrality in World War II.'

The government was totally justified in introducing

censorship at the outbreak of the war.

Ireland's neutrality was precarious.

Both it could be in the interests of both Britain

or Germany to invade,

and the government's obsession was to give them no excuse.

This was London in the early days of the war.

'Frank Aitken, the Minister for the Coordination

'of Defensive Measures during World War II,

'banned a film entitled "A Yank in the RAF,"

'a romance set against the evacuation of Dunkirk.

'It was resubmitted 2 years later to Richard Hayes,

'who ordered 29 significant cuts,'

including anything that showed

either side winning or losing in battle.

Look sir, they're coming over the Channel. Spitfires!

Spitfires! Spitfires!

''The joyous cries of "Spitfires!" were cut.

'And in the aerial firefight, German insignia on planes were cut,

'as were the shots of bleeding German pilots.'

DR MANNING: As it operated, it was heavy-handed

'it was partisan, at times it was mad.'

But there was no great outcry,

apart from a few politicians and a few outside observers.

There was no public anger about censorship.

The curious thing about the Irish public during the Second World War

was that they were curiously disengaged.

They weren't particularly partisan in favour of England -

most people wanted England to win -

but there was a strong support for Germany as well in Ireland

an undercurrent support because they were against England.

(SOLDIERS SINGING "DIE WACHT AM RHEIN")

Play La Marseillaise. Play it!

KELLEHER: 'An Emergency Powers order was used to ban Casablanca

'in March 1943.'

"The picture deals with north Africa,

"shows German activities in sinister light

"and Vichy partisans also.

"Unpresentable in a neutral country."

When it was resubmitted after the war in 1945,

Richard Hayes allowed it in -

but with cuts which reflected his simple moral code.

We loved each other once.

If those days meant anything to you...

I wouldn't bring up Paris if I were you.

It's poor salesmanship. Please listen to me.

If you knew what really happened, if you only knew the truth.

I wouldn't believe you no matter what you told me.

You'd say anything to get what you want...

DR ROCKETT: 'His whole strategy was designed to ensure

'that the audience was unaware that there was a love affair

'between Ilsa and Rick in Paris.'

Now, the reason why the affair happened was that Ilsa thought

that her husband had been killed trying to escape

from a concentration camp,

and therefore she felt free as a widow to have the relationship.

The Censor was having none of that because they were still married.

SAM: All except one.

He won't have you.

I can't fight it any more.

I ran away from you once, I can't do it again.

I don't know what's right any longer.

You have to think for both of us.

For all of us.

All right. I will.

Here's looking at you, kid.

ILSA: I wish I didn't love you so much.

KELLEHER: 'You'd think that cutting some of cinema's greatest lines

'would be something that Richard Hayes would regret.

'Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow...'

But soon and for the rest of your life. But what about us?

We'll always have Paris...

'And the Irish cinema audience? Well, they didn't have Paris.'

Hayes's attempts to preserve the sanctity of marriage

on the silver screen extended even further.

Look, do I have to shovel this dirt? Suit yourself.

But remember, your sister wants a divorce...

'Not content with cutting the films submitted to him,

he took it upon himself 'to actually change their titles.

'So, "I Want A Divorce" became... "The Tragedy Of Divorce."'

"Honeymoon For Three" became "Easy To Love."

He retitled "Married Bachelor," "A Bachelor Looks At Marriage."

And, bizarrely,

"Misbehaving Husbands" became "Henry Goes Haywire."

It seems that a lot of these decisions are being made

about safeguarding or protecting

for a particular kind of conservative

kind of mainstream, middle-class kind of audience.

One that, heaven forbid, would say urban rather than rural,

but you get that sense that they're making decisions

for protective reasons, and taking anything with any kind of

'emotional imbalance or uncertainty is immediately removed.

'I think an interesting film to look at

in this regard is probably "Brief Encounter."'

That's very kind of you. Turn round to the light, please.

Now, look up.

'It's a very kind of chaste love affair, very passionate,

'and yet looking back

'and looking at the notes at the time from the Censor, it said,

'"This intriguing pair, as presented,

tend to arouse a certain sympathy '"in their amorous relationship."

'And banned the film.'

How lucky for me you happened to be here. Anybody could have done it.

You did and I'm most grateful. There's my train...

'Even that uncertainty,'

that was too much.

They actually needed certainty.

They needed a very clear, if you like,

delineation, or be able to cut.

'And I think that's one of the interesting things

that they, as a structure,

'wanted to cut, no matter what the impact on the storyline might be.

'I think for certain genres, that worked perfectly well,

'but for others it actually was deeply problematic.'

KELLEHER: 'After wielding his scissors

or maybe his garden sheers for 13 years,

'Richard Hayes stepped down in 1954.

'He was succeeded by Martin Brennan from Sligo,

'prominent War of Independence veteran

'and poll-topping Fianna Fáil TD.

'The body count for banned films went up,

'as Martin Brennan made his predecessors

'look positively liberal.

'Martin Brennan was a medical doctor by trade,

'but when he became Censor he seemed to expand the job's remit

'to that of film critic.

'One of the first movies he banned was "Los Olvidados,"

'a tale of life in a Mexican slum that he described as a film with...

"no merit".

He cut half of all of the films submitted to him,

and he provided very little information

as to the rationale for his decisions.

Although he did in the case of this scene

from one of my favourite films,

a film that won eight Oscars.

'Why?

'Because he felt it was inappropriate

'for a priest to be seen to be having a drink in public.

'Martin Brennan's two-year stint as Censor

'saw him ban one in every 11 films presented to him.

'Liam O'Hora, a Mayo man, came next.

'Instead of the female anatomy which had so preoccupied his predecessors,

'the pelvis he found himself facing

'was that of Elvis.'

♪ SONG: Elvis - "Dixieland Rock" ♪

"This picture is a tough one for me.

"Particularly because it features the controversial Presley,

"who has such an appeal for uneducated adolescents."

'Explaining his cuts to "King Creole" to the Appeals Board,

'Liam O'Hora described the trouble that he had,

'especially from the headmistresses of girls' schools,

'regarding "Mr Presley's most suggestive abdominal dancing".'

♪ Do the Dixieland rock with me

♪ Let your hair down, shake it free

♪ And do the Dixieland rock with me ♪

'O'Hora demanded eight cuts to "King Creole,"

'including, unsurprisingly, where Elvis's character, Danny,

'tricks Nelly into a hotel room.

'Or, as the Censor described it,

'"the proposed seduction".'

What kind of a game are you playing?

It's no game. Honest. I like you...

There's another scene in "King Creole," which can be mentioned,

and that's The Banana Song,

'which the Censor completely cut out

'because having a banana wasn't really quite the nice thing

in 1950s Ireland.'

♪ Bananas

♪ Anybody want bananas?

♪ Ripe and ready this banana

♪ Come and pick it off the tree

♪ Oui! ♪

KELLEHER: 'If dealing with Elvis had been "a tough one" for Liam O'Hora,

'the emergence of Tennessee Williams was a censor's worst nightmare.

'No fewer than eight screen adaptations

of his plays were banned in Ireland

'during the 1950s,

'while his two most famous works, "A Streetcar Named Desire"

'and "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" were released.'

Although they were so heavily cut,

even Tennessee Williams would have had trouble following the plot.

Oh, Brick.

I get so lonely...

HARRIS: '"In Cat On A Hot Tin Roof,"

'Tennessee Williams is exploring a woman and her needs,

'and in this case, she had married.

'She was married to a man who is, very clearly, gay.

'And she is trying to force that man to help her to conceive.'

But in Ireland, the cuts imposed by the Censor,

give you no idea of what's actually going on.

You just think that there's this flirtatious woman

'and she has got a husband who drinks too much.

'The very strong character in that film is Big Daddy,

'played by Burl Ives,

'and he really likes Maggie, Maggie the cat.

'The Censor removed any reference to "cat".

'Apparently, "cat" is far too sexual a word

"for the ears of the delicate Irish audience."

But the character of Big Daddy,

he's questioning his son about why she's childless.

He says, "I hear she sleeps in the bed and you sleep on the sofa"

and he doesn't get... He's saying, in other words,

"I know you're not having sexual relations with her."

That was cut out.

That can't possibly be allowed in Ireland,

but his next sentence is...

You don't like Maggie, get rid of her...

'And suddenly we have this flirtatious woman,

the drunken husband,

'and her father-in-law saying, "Get rid of her."'

That was not at all the way the film actually...

Or the way Tennessee Williams ever intended it to be.

He intended Big Daddy to be a sympathetic character.

'He intended her to be desperate.

'It's all about her frustration her sexual frustration,

'her frustration in her desire to be a mother.

'And this is rendered into a nonsense by the Irish Censor.

'You could not really know what it's about.'

(KEY TURNS)

DR ROCKETT: 'A key element of the film

is after the rowing between Paul Newman

'and Elizabeth Taylor, they finally become reconciled.

'And the Censor was determined not to allow for reconciliation,

'but viewed it as something where Elizabeth Taylor had transgressed,

'with the shot looking at them being reconciled,

obviously going to make love.'

And that is the scene that was cut by the Censor.

KELLEHER: 'In 1964, Liam O'Hora was succeeded by Christopher Macken,

'another War of Independence veteran

and yet another medical practitioner.

'One commentator noted that, with so many doctors,

'their experience of surgery would certainly come in handy.

'Christopher Macken's time in office

'coincided with the advent of significant social change

in the swinging '60s.'

PROFESSOR BARTON: 'You've got a kind of status quo

'throughout the '30s, '40s, '50s.

'Things don't really start changing until the '60s.

'The country then really undergoes a period of quite radical change

'and modernisation,

and you've got to look at a number of different reasons for this.

'Obviously, the opening up of the economy to foreign influences.'

Basically, more money starts to flow into the country,

people begin to move into much more middle classes,

and then you have, crucially, the start of RTÉ

and the introduction of television.

Do you think the present system of film censorship

in Ireland is too strict?

Yes, I definitely think it's too strict.

I think there should definitely be a difference made for the adults

to see all these films that have been banned...

Well, censored, coming into this country.

We should be able to see them and definitely

there should be no censorship

to the degree, anyway, that there is at the moment.

You'd prefer no censorship at all? No censorship at all.

To be able to see all the films that are made,

like all the other countries in Europe

and in the world and in America.

KELLEHER: The rumblings of discontent

with Ireland's authoritarian censorship of films found a voice

from within the smoke-filled confines of the Sunday Independent.

Ciaran Carty, the newspaper's film critic,

set out to expose the highly secretive world of the Censor,

to the point where he was rummaging around the bins

to find the evidence.

NEW SPEAKER: I had noticed that they said the running time

was this.

And I began to feel, "But this film is much shorter

than the running time."

So, I began checking the running time

against the time in the cinema,

and I found that virtually everything was cut.

The Censor, Christopher Macken, I looked into him

and I discovered that he had no experience of cinema whatsoever,

except for one week he'd been on the set of a film

that was being made here and Susan Hayward

was having some trouble with her posterior riding a horse.

He had to come and give her injections,

and that was his qualification.

I'd nothing against the man, I'd never met him,

although he wrote to the paper threatening to sue.

In threatening to sue, he'd made that point.

He said, "The distributors have said

that they quite agree with me,

"you know, being confidential" and all that kind of thing.

At the very same time, the distributors were leaking to me

the cuts that were being made each month.

♪ Can't love without you... ♪

'The whole thing was ludicrous.

'For instance, "The Servant" with Dirk Bogarde.

'It was scripted by Harold Pinter and they decided,

"Oh, we can't have this

'"because there's a suggestion of homosexuality."

'So, they cut it so that there was hardly any indication

'that there was any kind of affection between the two men.'

Your old flame.

One yesterday.

(TUTS) One tonight?

You are popular, aren't you?

She's waiting...

'A lot of individual directors were targeted.'

Not always for what they had on the screen,

but because they were leading immoral lives.

'"Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf," directed by Nichols,

'the same guy who directed "The Graduate."

'He had a rough time with the Censor.

'The Censor banned it. It went on to the Appeals Board,

'and Maguire was the chairman of that,

'and he decided to create a new certificate, Over 21.'

What a dump!

Hey, what's that from? "What a dump!"

How would I know?

You could fight for Ireland, you could join the army at 18,

you could get married...

All these people were supposed to be protected

'from how the Archbishop John Charles McQuaid called it,

'"the insidious nature of sensuality"

'that leads you to do blasphemous and evil things.'

Say nice things to me.

I like it when you say nice things to me. It makes it easier.

'Christopher Macken,'

another medical doctor,

and twice unsuccessful Fianna Fáil candidate for Dáil Éireann,

had been appointed by Charles Haughey, the Minister for Justice,

who was ever careful to keep the Church in his political corner.

Brian Lenihan replaced Haughey in Justice

and he appointed a new Appeals Board

chaired by Judge Conor Maguire,

a board that was much more inclined to challenge the Censor.

What? You didn't really think I'd do something...

'In 1968, Macken banned "The Graduate."

'The Appeals Board overturned Macken's ban,

'but they made no less than 11 cuts,

'so Irish audiences were blissfully unaware of what was going on

'between Benjamin and Mrs Robinson.'

Your husband won't be home for hours. So...?

Mrs Robinson, you're trying to seduce me.

Aren't you?

Well, no, I hadn't thought of it. I feel very flattered.

Mrs Robinson, would you forgive me for what I just said?

It's all right. It's not all right.

It's the worst thing I've said to anyone. Sit down...

You wouldn't know what was going on in "The Graduate"

if you saw it in Ireland with the cuts.

I mean... 'Don't you think he trusts us together?'

The extraordinary thing is we were as bewildered

'as Dustin Hoffman's character was bewildered by what was happening.'

Don't you see? Benjamin, I am not trying to seduce you.

I know that, but please, Mrs Robinson, this is difficult.

Would you like me to seduce you? What?

Is that what you're trying to tell me? I'm going home now...

KIBBERD: 'I think about "The Graduate,"

which is one of my all-time favourite movies.

'I was in Trinity from '69 to '73.'

I think virtually all my friends read

Charles Webb's novelised version of it.

Now, looking back, maybe we were trying to fill in the missing bits,

or the bits our imaginations couldn't rise to!

KELLEHER: 'However confusing "The Graduate" may have appeared

to Irish audiences,

'the new Appeals Board had overruled the Censor,

'and allowed it to be screened.

'But that same year, the Appeals Board wasn't liberal enough

'to overturn the Censor's decision

'on Joe Strick's adaptation of "Ulysses."'

(CHILDREN'S VOICES)

We were so innocent.

'I just thought it was very tame, and it may be because'

Joe was aware that maybe it would be banned.

'Young girls, they want the attention,

'and so as soon as she sees that Bloom is interested,

'of course she's going to, you know, go further and further.

'Yet, at the same time, 'the way it is written,

she is so innocent, she's completely innocent.'

But something inside her tells her

just to lean back and lift her knee,

and so making herself available to him.

'Visually, anyway.

'Yes, I suppose it was rather shocking for the time,

'for Ireland of the time.

'I think Strick could have gone a lot further

in his filming of that scene.'

Could carried it to, you know, the moment

where the Star of the Sea

is peeling out the Angelus and...

You know.

Ten shillings a maidenhead?

'I never had any bad feeling about that.

'Mind you, there were members of my own family... (LAUGHS)

'..who didn't care for the fact that I was an actress,

and they said they would pray for me.

'Yes, you know, all prayers are well received. Thank you, yes.

'I'll take them all, thank you.'

(LAUGHING) They wouldn't watch the movie.

It wasn't made available to them, you know.

No, they would not. They went on praying for me.

KELLEHER: 'The new Appeals Board was more in touch

'with the social and cultural changes

taking place in the Ireland of the '60s.

'Long overdue age-related certificates were introduced

'and issued, rather reluctantly, by Macken.

'However, he continued to cut and ban with gusto.

'In one year alone, 1965, he banned 42 films.

'The Appeals Board overturned his decision on 30 of them.'

VOICEOVER: The new Jury's hotel at Ballsbridge in Dublin,

one of an internationally famous group

of Irish hotels, it upholds their reputation for the finest food

and wines and as a favourite starting point for good causes.

The latest good cause is the annual cinema ball

in aid of the Irish Cinematograph Trade Benevolent Fund

and the Cinema and Theatre Benevolent Society of Ireland.

KELLEHER: 'In 1972, the first Film Censor

'to have any connection at all with the world of film was appointed.'

Gerry Harvey welcomes Mr Dermot Breen,

Film Censor and Director of the Cork Film Festival.

CARTY: 'I rang up to see could I do an interview?

'He was very keen'

to open up to let people see, and this was a symbolic meeting -

the scourge of the Censor coming into the Censor's office.

And what happened then is we agreed to do

a whole series of public interviews.

He was all very open with that.

He had solved the problem about the secrecy of censorship,

but he hadn't solved the problem about the censorship itself.

Well, sex for sex sake I will oppose,

and violence I think I will watch very carefully,

whether it be essential to the plot or not.

CARTY: What would you hope to achieve as Film Censor?

Well, there's not much I can achieve.

It depends on the product that's presented to me for censorship.

But what I would like to see happening in the industry

generally is a greater concentration on films,

family films.

Now, I don't mean wishy-washy films, I mean the type of film

that you don't have to be careful bringing your children to.

Because I think that the industry is damaging itself seriously

and this has been noted, particularly in England,

where there's been a 10 percent drop in attendances,

because we're not developing a young audience.

CARTY: 'He had very reactionary views about film directors.'

Despite the fact maybe because of the fact -

that he had been running a film festival.

'I got on to different directors, like Fellini and Antonioni

'and Schlesinger and people who were having their worked banned,

'and they all responded.

'Antonioni said that he was trying to stop "Zabriskie Point"

'being screened with cuts,

'but unfortunately, the way the production system is,

'that he didn't have the ability to stop individual screenings.'

Schlesinger, for a long time, battled to...

He was a prime target.

'I think one of the reasons was, again,

'it was the usual thing about the morality of the director.

'Schlesinger was homosexual so he assumed anything with two men

'or anything with sex, there had to be an undercurrent of corruption.

'He was absolutely heartbroken, I think, by the whole system.

Because in "Sunday Bloody Sunday," again, this was being butchered.

Fellini's "Satyricon" banned.

Eventually, it came in from the Appeal Board,

but with cuts, over-18.

The idea that over-18s it's like over-21s -

but over-18s was still the way Ireland had changed.

We had a very different population

than we had back when the Free State was set up,

but we were still living in the Free State,

as far as the legislation was concerned.

KELLEHER: Dermot Breen's six-year tenure as Censor

saw a reduction in the banning of films, but the cutting continued,

especially where anything was critical of the Catholic Church.

When Breen was succeeded by one

of the most famous satirists in the country,

there was an expectation that the jokes

would survive this Censor's scissors,

but Frank Hall had different ideas.

He was quite a good satirist,

but he became Censor,

and the satire was suddenly an evil thing.

'He certainly wasn't reluctant to cut and ban.

'It was like the sort of promised saviour had arrived

'and it turned out that he had feet of clay.

'It was very disappointing.'

(NO AUDIO ON CLIP)

'He wasn't as liberal as he presented himself to be.'

Frank had peculiar things.

He didn't like car chases, for instance, in American movies.

(LAUGHING) Because he didn't like to see good cars broken up

or run over the sides of rivers,

or bridges and into rivers, things like that.

KELLEHER: 'Frank Hall was barely a year into the job

'when a film was released

'that had Christians across the world

'turning out to protest outside cinemas.

'There was no need to demonstrate in Ireland.

'Frank Hall promptly banned "Monty Python's Life Of Brian"

'on the grounds,

'as he described it to The Irish Times,

that it was offensive to Christians

'and to Jews as well,

'because it made them appear like a terrible bunch of gobshites.'

Agh!

SMITH: He banned "Life Of Brian,"

and I was working in RTÉ as a producer/director at the time,

and we met in the corridor.

I challenged him about banning "Life Of Brian"

and he became... Irate is the word.

Instantly...

he was almost fuming at the mouth and his eyes were blazing,

something I'd never seen before.

And he was suggesting who the hell was I

to suggest that he shouldn't do what he had to do

because this was a movie that was

insulting to all religions and none.

But he was looked upon then as a liberal, and, well, he wasn't

because he banned what was really a very funny movie.

I had seen it in London, that was the point,

and enjoyed it enormously.

So had anyone else

who had had the good fortune to go to London during that period.

'They were queuing up to see

'"Life Of Brian" because it was hilarious.'

Some thing in life are bad.

They can really make you mad.

Other things just make you swear and curse.

♪ When you're chewing on life's... ♪

KELLEHER: 'Banned films had to wait seven years

'before they could be resubmitted.

'By the time "Monty Python's Life Of Brian" was out of cinema purgatory,

'Sheamus Smith was the Censor

'and, finally, Irish audiences could see the bright side of life.'

(♪ WHISTLING)

'Sheamus Smith was appointed Censor in 1986.

'He had been a senior producer in RTÉ

and Managing Director of Ardmore Studios,

'and he had a very different approach

to how films should be viewed,

'believing that a film was a director's work,

'and the director was the one really entitled to cut it.'

NEW SPEAKER: Sheamus could possibly be

said to be the first truly secular Censor.

There may have been people before

who would like to have been secular,

but it wasn't possible,

and if you had tried to be,

you wouldn't have been the Censor for very long.

KELLEHER: 'Since the row over "From The Manger To The Cross,"

'back in 1912,

'depictions of Jesus have provoked

some of Irish cinema's biggest controversies.

'Sheamus Smith defied those

'who considered "Monty Python's Life Of Brian" blasphemous

'by overturning Frank Hall's ban,

'and he'd upset them again just a year later.'

SMITH: In the case of "The Last Temptation of Christ,"

it had received a lot of pre-publicity.

'We never got any mail in the Film Censor's office

'and suddenly we were getting bundles of mail

from the Post Office in bags.

'These contained rosary beads and holy medals

'and various bits and pieces that were meant to influence me.

'Even to the extent that a friend of mine,

who was a county council politician,

'called to say she wanted me to help out with a friend of hers.'

So, I assumed she was looking for a job or something for her friend.

I said to her, "What was the friend's name?"

'And she said, "My friend is Jesus.

"And if you don't ban this movie

"terrible things will happen to Ireland,

'Sheamus, and you'll be responsible."

REPORTER: 'The campaign against Martin Scorsese's film

'is the biggest protest against any film for years.

'Today, 100,000 signatures were handed in by leaders

'of the Dublin Interdenominational Christian Committee.'

'There's been an overwhelming

'response from all over the country.

'Nearly every county, people have responded.'

There have been TDs, all converts, in Fermoy, Cork, Limerick.

There have been people from the inner city,

people from Northern Ireland even.

It's tremendous to know that it's not just a Catholic reaction,

it's a Catholic-Protestant reaction.

I was in touch this morning with Ian Paisley,

and he assured me of full support

and he is calling for this film to be banned.

SMITH: 'I went into the office one Sunday evening

'and I found that the lady who cleaned the office

was there with her husband.

'I questioned why they should be there on a Sunday evening.

'She said that she had heard'

that the Archbishop of Dublin was going to come in the next day

to see "The Last Temptation Of Christ."

This was totally untrue, of course.

And she said she felt that the office

should be very clean for the Archbishop.

And I did, without being critical of her in any serious way,

I pointed out that I didn't see why the Archbishop

deserved a cleaner office than the Film Censor,

but that's the way people thought in those days.

KELLEHER: 'Despite the protests,

'petitions and the sack-fulls of letters,

'Sheamus Smith allowed "The Last Temptation Of Christ"

'to be screened without any cuts.

'But on two conditions.'

SMITH: 'The exhibitors had to have a notice

'in the foyer of the cinema

'saying this was based on a story by a Greek writer,

'not on the Bible.

'And also that nobody was allowed

into the cinema after the movie had started.'

They had to go in at the beginning and suffer the whole thing...

(CHUCKLING)..before they got to the end.

Because there was a feeling

that people might just go in to see the "sexy bits" at the end.

And that worked, it did.

The movie didn't play very well in Ireland

because nobody went to it.

I don't have to be sacrificed?

No. No, you don't.

HUMPHREYS: 'From my perspective, I didn't really feel connected

'to the censorship rules in Ireland, as a filmgoer.'

I went to the Dublin Film Festival.

I saw a lot of films there that weren't submitted.

So I felt like there was already a portal

that I could see those films.

"The Life Of Brian," that was a big change,

but only because everybody had been watching it anyway

and now we could finally see it in the cinema.

I suppose the other one was

the screening of "Natural Born Killers,"

and the idea that that was still a very live organisation,

a very live office that could still genuinely take something

which only a few months before

had been shown in the Dublin Film Festival.

And I was at that screening it was a late-night screening

in the old Adelphi.

'But now was unable to be screened four times a day

'for whatever it was, three or four weeks, in the IFI.

'That was probably the point

'when I went, "Wow! We aren't as liberal as I thought we were." '

Beep-beep!

KELLEHER: 'Sheamus Smith had ushered in a new era

'in the ways that sex and religion

'were allowed to be shown on Irish cinema screens,

'setting him apart from all those who came before him.

'But the age of banning films wasn't over quite yet.'

SMITH: 'Yeah, I was more concerned

about the violence in Natural Born Killers.

'I felt it was gratuitous and unnecessary.'

People were suggesting I didn't understand

what that film was about.

I think I did and I was the person in the job,

and I had the privilege or the obligation

or the responsibility of doing what I thought was the right thing

and I did what I thought was the right thing.

'The Appeal Board looked at it

'and they thought I did the right thing, too.

'So, that confirmed my attitude to violence.'

(GUNSHOT)

(GUN CLICKS)

Sheamus Smith tough on violence,

liberal on religion and sex.

A Censor with a very clear opinion.

And now, it was my turn.

'Where Sheamus had to deal with Jesus, I had Santa Claus.'

♪ Got me some corn for poppin'

♪ The light are turned way down low ♪

CONNOLLY: 'The mood, generally, was changing.

'I suppose the first real test of where we had to go

'was probably "Bad Santa."

'It was an ideal vehicle,'

for particularly grandparents who had no idea of what we were doing,

probably, and whose grandchildren were with them for a period.

They went to an Omniplex or whatever else,

whatever multi-screen location,

and they just saw the word "Santa".

'So they said, "We'll bring little Johnny and little Jane to Santa."

'They went up and they saw "Very strong language,

'"strong sex scenes and may offend".

'With a 15A classification.'

Ow! Watch the toenails, kid! Shit!

Next.

Next!

What do you want? Fraggle Stick Car.

What the fuck is that...?

'Of course, all the grandparents were high dudgeon.'

I suppose the upshot of that, to our benefit was,

that we needed to get the message across

that there was no point in us giving classifications to movies

if people didn't know why.

KELLEHER: 'It was clear that the public needed

'more specific information

'about how and why a film had been classified.

'So, one of the key initiatives was the IFCO website

'to provide age-related consumer guidance.

'Ireland was changing rapidly

'and it was my job to reflect those changes.

'Occasionally, I had to apply this new approach

'to decisions taken by my predecessors

'in very different times.'

NEW SPEAKER: 'Paddy is a film based on a screenplay

'by Ireland's most-banned author,

or so Lee Dunne would have us believe.

'The film was considered very spicy and very solacious in its day,'

and was banned by the Irish Censor.

But in more recent years, when we were celebrating

the work of Lee Dunne in this film and another,

we submitted the film to John Kelleher

for his approval or disapproval,

and he issued the film with a 12A cert.

So, it was considered

'quite innocent by present-day standards.'

Would you like a drink...?

KELLEHER: 'Allowing Paddy into Irish cinemas

'wasn't a difficult decision,

'but an altogether different film landed

'me in front of a national audience

'to explain my "dangerously liberal" ideas.'

You have cleared "9 Songs" for showing to over-18s.

Em... Why?

I think there has been a huge shift in recent years, um...

And there's been a recognition, I think,

that adults, over-18s, should be -

in our society, in an open society should be within the law,

subject to the law

they should be allowed to choose what they want to see.

'This interview with Pat Kenny on The Late Late Show,

'followed my decision to allow "9 Songs"

'onto Irish cinema screens.

'This was a film with a reputation -

'the most sexually explicit mainstream movie to date.'

CONNOLLY: 'It was the first movie ever classified in this country

'with explicit real sex scenes.

'And from that, before the film was released,'

a campaign was organised by a particular pressure group

and we became inundated with letters

which were all just photocopies of each other.

And nobody had seen the movie.

KELLEHER: I have received more letters about "9 Songs"

than about every other film.

They range from, on the one hand,

people who are genuinely concerned parents

or genuinely concerned citizens,

but I also get letters, it has to be said,

which aren't signed, which are pretty foul.

I got one about "9 Songs" where the man,

who described himself as a committed Christian,

and he ended up saying that he hoped I died roaring.

You don't take those kind of things seriously, though, do you?

No, no. Into the bin. I mean,

if it's not signed, into the bin it goes.

Because if people don't have the courage of their convictions...

One person who does have the courage

of his convictions is in our audience.

Brendan, you don't like what John Kelleher's doing?

Well, let's put it this way, I don't like "9 Songs".

Have you seen it? I haven't seen it, but I...

I have a report from a lady who has seen it. OK?

First we have...

Well, I don't know which was first,

but we have both of them performing oral sex on each other.

Then we see ejaculation.

Then we see full penetrative sexual intercourse.

We closely see close-ups of a man's penis

driving in and out of a woman's vagina.

You may be in danger of advertising this film, Brendan!

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, CHEERS)

CONNOLLY: TDs were getting letters.

Then it came to the notice of the Minister for Justice.

It was the first time I genuinely realised

that we had come to a watershed moment.

It was the first time that a minister of the government said

that the office worked totally independently of the government.

KELLEHER: 'In 2008, my job title,

'Official Censor of Films, was retired

'and I became Ireland's first Director of Film Classification.

'The row over "9 Songs" had clearly shown

'that the age of banning films in Ireland was over.

'The curtain was finally lowered on the long

'and secretive history of censorship

'that dated back to the very beginnings of the state.'

HARRIS: 'Censorship does stem from fear.'

It would also purport to stem from a desire to protect,

to protect the population from unpalatable dark truths.

But if you think about it,

art, by definition, is supposed to look at the dark side.

It's supposed to teach us.

It's supposed to be able to look at darker things in life.

But censorship says, "No, you can't look at that."

So, because of our embracing of censorship, we learned nothing.

KELLEHER: 'It's impossible to imagine

'what James Montgomery would have made

of our new age of film classification.'

♪ I shot the sheriff... ♪

KELLEHER: 'In 2024, "Bob Marley: One Love" was given a 12A certificate,

'which meant that children under the age of 12 could watch it,

'provided they're accompanied by an adult.

'The consumer advice was that the movie featured soft drug use

'that was appropriate to the cultural

'and historical context of the film,

'and that there's moderate gun violence and brief strong language.'

♪ Knocked me down, yeah... ♪

NEW SPEAKER: 'We provide advice and guidance,

'and that's very much reflected in if you look

'at the classifications,

'the structure of the ones that are issued.

'75% of them are in the advisory categories.'

That is the result of the work that we do,

and I think that illustrates the relationship we have

with the audience, with the public.

People are familiar with IFCO,

there's a trust in the work that IFCO has done.

So, I suppose from someone who's only here 18 months,

I'm benefitting from all the work

that was done over the last 100 years.

'Cinema is still a very impactful experience, you know.

'You pay your money, you're in a room. It is immersive.'

In terms of young people's engagement

with traditional broadcasting,

traditional media, that has really decreased.

Research has shown that less than 50% of 16-30 year-olds

are actually watching linear television.

But they're still the core of the cinema audience,

and that's why, I think, there's still a key role for this office

as a public service.

KELLEHER: Arthur Matheson's Censorship of Films Act, 1923,

with some important amendments, is still on the statute books,

and the power his legislature bestowed on the Censor of the day

has had a profound effect on the cultural life of the nation.

For over 100 years, the history of film censorship in Ireland,

what cinema audiences were allowed to see,

or were prevented from seeing has,

broadly speaking, mirrored the history of the country itself.

This was largely due to one very cleverly drafted term

in the 1923 Censorship of Films Act.

And that is in the opinion of this censor.