Come Here To Me!

A few nights ago, a friend had the brilliant idea of screening the classic film Life of Brian in his back garden, an excuse to have a few beers and make the most of the incredible Dublin summer. The film of course was difficult to view in Dublin at the time of its release, falling victim to the heavy censorship of the time. There is an article on the controversies around the film at the time of its release in the current issue of Village magazine. It all made me think of some other films which fell victim to the hand of censorship, including my own personal favourite film, in the form of Stanley Kubrick’s celebrated A Clockwork Orange. The film was only removed from the banned list here in December 1999, with a letter writer to The Irish Times noting his opinion then that:

As one who was stopped from seeing this film during my earlier years and who did not appreciate the censor’s power
at the time or his role in protecting the common good of society, it now seems to me that the original banning was
both wise and courageous, in contrast to the more recent sad decision.

A scene from A Clockwork Orange.

The film A Clockwork Orange was based on the brilliant novel of the same title by Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. The novel, much like the film, felt the wrath of Irish censorship, although seemingly long after publication. A 1976 Irish Times report on the banning of the publication Gay News noted that among other titles banned was A Clockwork Orange.

The film opened in London in 1971, though was not submitted to the Irish censor until two years later. At the time of its unbanning in 1999, Micheal Dwyer noted that “The censor viewed the film on April 10th 1973, and rejected it. Giving the furore surrounding it by then, Warner Bros. did not see any point in submitting it to the Film Appeals Board.” While films could be resubmitted to the censor after seven years, Kubrick had made the decision to remove the film from the UK market himself by then, owing to threats against him from those who believed the film was leading to copycat violence. With Britain and Ireland in the same film distribution zone, this ban on the work extended to Ireland.

In February 1972, The Irish Independent ran a picture of a scene from the film, asking “can screening this be justified?” and asking readers “is violence the real pornography?”

The Irish Independent asks if screening the film can be justified.

The banning of the film irked many journalists, with Ciaran Carty complaining in the Sunday Independent that picking the top films of the year for “a cinematic backwash like Ireland is like seeding a Wimbledon tournament from which most of the leading professionals have withdrawn.” In another article for the paper, Carty noted that “not only do we not make any movies of our own, but we are not able to see the work of many of the world’s most original and stimulating directors.”

Stephen Murney, from Coleraine, was serving as the Secretary of the British Board of Film Censors at the time of the films release, noting in an interview that films like A Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs both got through the censorship process in Britain, and that “I recognise that violence is part of our life today…and so it is valid, when the film is not merely exploiting it for its own titillation sake.”

Dave Fanning writes about going to see the film in his autobiography, noting it was just before starting his student days in UCD. Fanning described spending five days in England just before embarking on student life, noting that “I took advantage of the trip by going to see a few films such as Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange that were banned in Ireland back then. It’s easy to forget what a strange priest-riddled society we were – and in some ways still are.”

Opposition to the film was to be found in England too, and the Irish Sunday Independent interviewed Mary Whitehouse, founder of the Clean-Up TV campaign in Britain, who campaigned against the film in the UK. She also claimed that Dr.Who was inducing nightmares in children, and the article noted that she and her husband “begin each day early with joint Bible readings in bed and a cup of tea.”

‘Crusader or Crank?’ asks the Sindo.

In November 1973, an attempt to get-around the censorship of films in Irish society came in the form of the Dublin Film Institute. Hugh Leonard, Robert Bolt and others were involved in establishing the Institute, which it was reported would confine itself to private membership and which the journalist Ciaran Carty, such a vocal critic of film censorship in Ireland, hoped would “enable people to see films they could not see in the past. Many were not shown because cinema managers were too conservative. Invariably, there will be films that have been banned.”

Stanley Kubrick found himself in Ireland not long after the controversy around what is perhaps his most celebrated film. Shooting much of Barry Lyndon here in 1973, he filmed some scenes for the work in the Irish capital. Arthur Flynn recounts the story of Kubrick’s time in Ireland brilliantly in his book The Story of Irish Film, noting that:

On the day when Dublin was hit by a spate of bomb hoaxes the unit was lining up a shot in the Phoenix Park. Kubrick heard the news and immediately left the set and returned to his house in Leixlip and refused to leave. It was late afternoon before his associates could persuade him to return to a new location in Dublin Castle but not until he got a Garda escort and an assurance that civil war had not broken out. He had constant fears of the IRA and wanted armed guards on the set.

It is worth noting that the film A Clockwork Orange itself actually contains a little bit of a Dublin reference, with an early scene showing an Irish tramp attacked by the gang central to the film, as he sings Molly Malone. This scene was filmed in Wandsworth in London: