Your Daily Film

A screening of Last Tango in Paris in the French capital has been cancelled after threats of violence from women's rights protests

French Cinémathèque was due to show 1972 film that features a controversial scene filmed without actor Maria Schneider's prior consent. The cinema said it had dropped the film after receiving threats. Frédéric Bonnaud, the director of the Cinémathèque said:

We are a cinema, not a fortress. We cannot take risks with the safety of our staff and audience, Violent individuals were beginning to make threats and holding this screening and debate poised an entirely disproportionate risk. So, we had to let it go.

The controversial scene was simulated but Schneider, who was 19 at the time, said afterwards it had felt like a violation as it was sprung on her without notice or preparation. Her allegations were first made in the 1970s.

I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and Bertolucci, Schneider said four years before her death in 2011. She said the film had destroyed her life and had driven her to years of drug abuse. Bertolucci later responded to the allegations by insisting the scene had not been improvised on the day of shooting but acknowledging that Schneider had not been informed.

Judith Godrèche, an actor and leading figure in France's #MeToo movement, had been critical of the Cinémathèque's decision to screen the film without providing context to viewers.

Had it gone ahead, the screening would also have come towards the end of the Mazan mass rape trial, in which verdicts and sentencing are expected later this week.

The British Board of Classification (BBFC) has published its Annual Report and Accounts for 2023, revealing unique insights into the UK's film and cinema industry. The latest report reveals an uplift in overall content submitted for cinema classification, marking a ten-year record number of submissions in the two most popular age rating categories.

2023 saw 1,114 cinema submissions to the BBFC, representing a 14% increase from submissions recorded in 2013. The 15 category remained the BBFC's most frequently issued age rating in 2023, totalling nearly 500 submissions 203 another record for the decade. Films classified 15 in 2023 include Oppenheimer, Saltburn, How To Have Sex, Cocaine Bear and Talk To Me . The 12A category also saw a ten-year record, with over 380 cinema films classified at the category in 2023, including Barbie, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Polite Society and The Boy and the Heron .

Last summer, the BBFC announced new advancements in exploring the power of AI to enhance content classification to further its core mission of helping audiences to make informed viewing decisions. Building on its extensive expertise, the BBFC is developing two new tools that utilise AI technology to help the industry adapt to evolving audience viewing habits while improving the efficiency of the human aspect of compliance, which will always remain imperative to the process.

The first of these tools will enable access to locally sensitive age ratings for use in over 100 territories globally, removing the cost and resource barriers currently limiting VoD services' adoption of BBFC ratings in the UK and other established rating systems worldwide. The second tool, currently in development, will use generative AI to identify and tag online content issues, offering large-scale efficiencies to content providers' compliance requirements.

In 2023, as part of its increasing collaboration with streaming platforms operating in the UK, the BBFC announced plans to strengthen its partnership with Prime Video. With a view to establishing a self-rating system similar to the BBFC's existing successful agreement with Netflix, the BBFC worked closely with Prime Video to refine the platform's internal rating processes ahead of the wider adoption of BBFC age ratings and content advice across the service, ultimately making it even easier for Prime Video customers to choose the right content for themselves and their families.

Smile is a 2022 US horror mystery thriller by Parker Finn
Starring Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher and Kyle Gallner

After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, a psychiatrist becomes increasingly convinced she is being threatened by an uncanny entity.

Thanks to Daniel who comments:

Channel 4's screening of Smile on the 19th October was censored.

Despite the fact that the screening started twenty minutes after the watershed and detailed warnings about the content were given just prior, the opening suicide scene was edited to remove a shot of Caitlin Stasey's character impassively cutting her throat with a shard of broken vase. The scene is crucial in establishing the film's tone early on.

There may have been more cuts but I turned it off. I always understood that Channel 4 policy was to screen films intact after the watershed...guess that's no longer the case.

It is worth noting that the subsequent repeat broadcast on 4seven after 10:00pm was uncut. I did query Channel 4 as to why the film's initial broadcast was censored, and they cited Ofcom guidelines as the reason for the 16 second edit. As the film was shown after the watershed and has an 18 certificate, an uncut screening should have been possible.

As Film4 also cut the late night screening of Lords Of Chaos some time back for images relating to suicide despite the fact that it was also classified uncut at 18, I get the feeling that the cut made to Smile is part of a pattern in which images of suicide are being singled out specifically.

All that said, Channel 4 do deserve a bit of credit for correcting the much lower profile repeat. https://www.classification.gov.au/titles/falling-place
 

Update: There's no time left in the day for grown up viewing

9th November 2024. Thanks to Neil

There was a report commissioned by OFCOM in Oct 2023 which discussed research into attitudes towards sex and violence on UK TV - primarily using the watershed as a benchmark for when stronger content can be scheduled by broadcasters.

The broadcasting code, and the wider expectation of the general public as always been:

Whilst there were some initial calls to postpone the watershed to later in the evening to better reflect changing parenting styles, on greater reflection, participants decided a gradual transition from 9pm onwards and the use of clear warnings, was a better option.

In the instance of SMILE on Channel 4, the broadcaster deemed the expository explicit suicide as being too strong during the 9-10pm transition period, and hence why they decided to cut this scene to avoid reprimand from OFCOM.

I agree that Channel 4 should have scheduled this film later, given the 18 rating.