Rhett Butler’s chopper

This item in today’s Independent caught my eye and certainly made me think how times have change in Ireland. The country's notoriously strict film censors banned violent movies such as A Clockwork Orange, The Wild Bunch and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But they didn’t stop there by a long chalk: Such seemingly inoffensive titles as Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Brief Encounter, The Quiet Man and On the Waterfront were also banned or heavily censored. In all, about 11,000 films were cut and about 2,500 completely banned.

Dublin's censors sliced through celluloid with an almost zealous energy. Movie-goers watched Gone with the Wind blissfully unaware of the passionate clinches between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, which were deemed far too hot for the Irish screen. In one famous instance, censors in the staunchly Catholic country even cut footage of the Pope. Today, things are very different with just four hardcore pornographic films and one violent video game banned last year. The Censorship Office is to be renamed the Classification Office.

In the old days, the censor would solemnly set out his reasons for prohibiting all showings of films such as King Creole. "I have had much trouble, particularly from headmistresses of girls' schools," he explained, "regarding the antics of Elvis Presley with his most suggestive abdominal dancing." Another censor, who banned 200 films in one year alone, was appalled by the amount of kissing. He protested that Hollywood depicted kissing "to the accompaniment of the most sensuous music, lavishing miles of celluloid on this unsanitary salute".

The state's first film censor, James Montgomery, said: "I take the Ten Commandments as my code." He had a fixation with the perils of dancing: cutting or banning movies which featured "indecent dancing and the customs of the divorcing classes in England and America".He once declared: "If I had my way I certainly would reject any film which shows the rumba." Even a sequence from Singing in the Rain was sent to the sin-bin for lingering on the limbs of one of Gene Kelly's partners.Casablanca was banned during the Second World War because of sensitivities about Irish neutrality. After the war, it was permitted but with significant cuts that excised any reference to the romance between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. That was deemed to offend Irish Catholic morality.

Sexual affairs, homosexuality, birth control, abortion and prostitution had no chance. The version of The Graduate seen in Ireland was baffling. First it was banned altogether. But the censor then allowed it, leaving 11 sections on the cutting-room floor and removing all references to Dustin Hoffman's affair with Anne Bancroft. As John Kelleher put it: "The seduction scene is at the core of the film but the Irish audience, which was not allowed to see that scene, remained blissfully unaware they were having anything more than a nice cup of tea." Even the word "virgin" was forbidden, and Montgomery once complained that a film "bulged" with babies. He said in a reproachful report: "It will dispel the cabbage myth from the child mind and bring a blush to the cheek of the unmarried young girl sitting holding hands with her embarrassed boyfriend in the darkest part of the cinema."

The Catholic church also used the practice to protect its image. A scene in On the Waterfront in which a priest buys Marlon Brando a drink was snipped since it was thought inappropriate for a priest to drink in public.Depictions of lapsed or defrocked clerics were chopped. The Pope was cut from a 1937 newsreel because of acute sensitivity over representations of the sacraments. One unlikely victim of the censor was Cliff Richard. The Irish public missed out on scenes in the 1959 movie Espresso Bongo in which Cliff was given a massage and later seduced.

How times have changed! Not all progress is for the better but if it means not chopping the crux of the Graduate then I’m all for it!