By Nicolas Rangel

The 1970s was the most significant period of artistic exploration in film history, in my humble opinion. In the UK, as in the rest of the world, it was a time of unlimited possibilities – unlimited ideas that led to new, unlimited lifestyles. The younger generation in the 1970s built on the optimism of the 60s, tweaked it, and took the ideas of freedom and liberation to a whole new level, creating changes that the previous generation was outraged by. Their optimistic exuberance and fearlessness was reflected in their clothes, their music. Similarly, film directors of the decade tested the boundaries of what was acceptable, constantly looking to provoke a reaction from a public which expected to be surprised and shocked as well as entertained. 

     In the 1970s, in Great Britain, cinema continued to be quite open-minded after the period that came just before, called “The Swinging Sixties”. This was a period of youth-led cultural revolution that took place in the UK in the mid-1960s. It saw a flourishing of art, music and of course cinema. Suddenly people, particularly young people, wanted things to be real and reflect the harsh reality of the time: long dole queues, grinding poverty, shitty weather all year round. They wanted to see real people in real-life situations. Films such as Private Enterprise, 1974, and Pressure, 1975 were breakthroughs in the field of minority film-making, showing eager audiences what life was like for the growing Asian and Black communities in the country. Similarly, filmmakers such as Derek Jarman and Ron Peck (Nighthawks,1978) shone a light on the gay community.

Of course, not everyone was happy with this ‘brave new cinema’. Many members of the public, particularly older people, found these films unpleasant and offensive. Not everyone wants a large dose of reality in their cinema. And that’s where the BBFC comes in. The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) was created in 1912 to determine which films could be shown and which were to be banned as a result of a restriction issued by the UK government. It was or still is illegal to make obscene art public. A work of art is deemed obscene when it has the capacity to alter and corrupt (make morally bad) the people who are likely to see it. However, no sanction is taken if the publication is justified as being for the public good, on the grounds that it is in the interest of science, art or literature. The BBFC also based a number of its decisions on other protection laws, such as The Protection of Children law in 1978.

     So the BBFC had the public’s best interests at heart, or so they said. The films that it decided to ban at that time were for reasons of disturbing scenes such as sexual harassment, verbal and physical violence and extremism of racial ideas. And yet some of the films they banned are the best of that decade. For instance, one of the greatest films of this, and any, time was “A Clockwork Orange” by Stanley Kubrick, which came out in 1971. It was the most shocking, outrageous and realistic piece of cinema of that year, written by Anthony Burgess and directed by one of the best directors of all time, Stanley Kubrick. Unfortunately, however, the BBFC was not impressed and banned it because it contained gruesome rape scenes and shows a psychological destabilization. The importance of good and evil in human nature is a fundamental theme of A Clockwork Orange. Alex is despicable because he gets carried away by his violent impulses, but this sense of freedom is also what makes him a human being. At the time the character of Alex created a lot of controversy and even led to fear of copycat killings.

   There were also a number of other controversies during the seventies. For example, Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), which was accused of blasphemy, Last Tango in Paris (1972), which was accused of being ‘obscene’ and The Exorcist (1973), which was deemed psychologically unsafe on young people.

In the case of each film, the decision of the BBFC to ban was overturned by a number of local authorities. Groups such as The Festival of Light, and Lord Longford’s Committee on Pornography also put immense pressure on the BBFC. The Festival of Light had an unsuccessful private prosecution against the BBFC. Many movie fans also continued to criticize the BBFC, defending freedom of speech. One banning in particular enraged the BBFC detractors – Andy Warhol’s film Trash (1970), which the BBFC banned after only seeing a few parts, and without giving any justification!

I think the main motive of the BBFC at ths time was fear – the fear of facing the reality of a complex world that was changing. The board was made up of conservative elderly people who were resistant to change. And society at the time, as I already mentioned was pretty bleak. They probably believed that films should uplift and entertain, not talk about unemployment and the rain. 

This era of censorship had an immense impact on the movie industry, forcing producers and filmmakers to be wary of their steps when it came to making and rating movies. That is why  today, in the case of most movies, you always have the same ‘safe’ formatted content that doesn’t distinguish itself, and you rarely have any artistic message from the director.

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