The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 43

PAGES 43 54 FILMS MUSIC BOOKS RELIGION ART WOMEN'S SOCIAL FEATURES A Ll VI AO'S MONTREAL, MARCH 3, 1973 Whose moral code guides film disfributors? f- ll life 1 The New York theatre marquee after Deep Throat ban The unproven case uebec By DANE LANKEN of The Gazette The seizure Feb. 15 by the Montreal police Morality Squad of the film Sex and the Office Girl opened an old wound in Quebec, film circles, one that has been dogging movie people and politicians for years. The problem is essentially a jurisdictional dispute between provincial authorities and city police departments with film distributors and theatre-owners caught in the middle. It is particularly bad for the theatre-owners. They can find themselves in the 'unconstitutional' situation of being caught between two opposing sets of laws.

By law and tradition, jurisdiction over the cinema rests with the provinces. In Quebec, this power is with the Bureau de Surveillance du Cinema, a branch of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs set up in 1967 to replace the old Censor Board. It is the Bureau that accepts or rejects (but never cuts) films for showing in the province and classifies them into Over 18. Over 14 and For All categories. In theory, once a film is given a 'visa' by the Bureau it is allowed to play anywhere in Quebec.

However, as Captain Aube, the Morality Squad officer who seized Sex and the Office Girl explains, "this visa doesn't prevent us from charging a film under the Criminal Code." The Criminal Code of Canada has provisions outlawing an "immoral, indecent or obscene performance or representation" and that includes movies. The Montreal police are using Article 152 of the Code to give the 'Office Girl' a hard time. this means," said one Montreal film distributor, "is that the province can say 'okay, this film is not obscene. You can show And then when you show the film the city can come back and say 'we think this film is obscene. You're under arrest'." It happened to the Danish film a Woman in Montreal in 1968; it happened to two Quebec skinfacks, Apres-Ski and Pile ou face, in Quebec City In 197ITand it happened to Sex and the Office Girl last week.

"Technically you can ignore provincial law, as the police jdidj and base; your intervention on thCriminal president of the Bureau de Surveillance du Cinema, said this week. I $ut in a civilized societywe should try to -airthoritiegjSuch a situation is unfortunate because it gives the impression to the citizens thatthe police canjgnore a law which has been passed by the Parliament of Quebec." Guerin is proudof his Bureau, and of the Quebec vinema act which created it. if The setup is "really very he said, "very very democratic." "Thrrp nro still npnnlp whn tpcnrrf rimona in terms of the pre-war American dnema," he" said. "Pure show business. "They have not.

accepted the cinema as something that can explore everything. But the cinema today is something that refliects the social realities around us.v "The 'sexploitation' film V- andsI include Sex and the Office Girl is a fact of Iff like Playboy magazine. You cannot ignore it." Guerin added that this does not mean all sexploitation films are accepted for showing in Quebec. He rejects what he considers -pornog raphy just as he excessive violence. "In fact," he said, cinema todav is violence.

I make a distinction, between the type of violence that is traditional in Jortn American society ana tne "new type' that turns up in some films today "We have a reputation of being liberal; but on violence we are very severe. We have that in common with our Scandinavian counterparts. Half the films we reject are on the basis of violence." But, particularly in matters sexual, the bureau retains its liberal stance. "People in Canada can vote at 18," Guerin A scene from pile rejects turns displayinglkvdelighted "the main problem in a ou for censorship imMiMiiwn-rt'-'iiaiiiiiiiiif-mriiirift mi mi imi.hi frmm iniiiiiiiiii rum mi A Scene from Sex and The Office Girl seized by Montreal police. (Picture amended in the interests of propriety.) Quiet Days in Clichy mysteriously disappeared from local screens after its short initial run in 1970.

(The mayor, of course, rose" to power with his promises to 'clean up' Montreal.) "We act on our own," Captain Aube maintained. "We go to films all the time and when we see an obscene one, we act. Sex and the Office Girl is the first one we've seen in some time." "Hard to believe," was the reaction of one film industry figure to that statement. "After all, that film was much like the other skinflicks that have been playing in town for years. "My impression is that a directive came down from the mayor's office.

It was time to make a case again." And so, while the governments bicker, the discuss With them tha films we Must hear that they have seized ft film.t X. Nor does it seem to make sense that someone with the sweeping intellect of your average customs inspector should be allowed to decide what books you may or may not read. Of course it is not the morality squad officer or the customs inspector who is to blame. They are merely the enforcing arm of bad laws. The pro-censorship litany is always based on some cant-ridden rubbish about defending the public right to be protected from outrages against their decency.

This is surely one of the greatest infringements of the right of a free choice which we are supposed to hold so dear. And can there be a greater anomoly than the one which starts wars to "defend and then re-defines that freedom in terms of what a John Diefenbaker or a Charlotte Whitton might deem offensive. EXPERIENCE Of course it is wrong to force anyone to experience something which they find repugnant. But I've never seen any truncheon-wielding policemen forcing people into a skin flick. And surely freedom of choice implies that you can choose what you wish to entertain yourself, providing you don't bother anyone else.

Prime Minister Trudeau, in a rare burst of incisive thought, once said that the government has no place in the nation's bedrooms. But neither does it have any place in deciding what we may purchase in order to amuse ourselves. The philosophy of censorship is based on the interesting assumption that a panel of lawyers and insurance brokers hired by a group of politicians, most of whose cultural knowledge could be contained on the back of a postage stamp, can draft laws defining decency. I consider the Barbi Doll als on children's television to the height of depravity, but I would not ban them. I can explain their fa'sitv to my child and.

if pressed, I can forbid him to watch the programs they sponsor. The best censor in the world is the hand that turns to dial or declines to reach for a wallet each time a new pornographic film arrives in town. On the other side of the coin, however, pornography can have a positive value. This was demonstrated to me on a reeent trip to New York for a screening of Marlon Brando's film Last Tango In Paris. Before attending this film I saw Deep Throat.

'Throat' is probably as well a produced (See Censorship, P. 45) By DAVE BILLINGTON of The Gazette The great American iconoclast and student of human excess H. L. Mencken more or less summed up the case against censorship when he wrote "show me a puritan and I'll show ydU a son of a bitch." He then amplified this point by his definition of puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy." In Mencken's time, of course, censorship was a much greater problem than it is now. Joyce and Lawrence were still banned, Henry Miller was writing in Paris with no hope of American distribution, and the Hayes Office in Hollywood made sure that films were as un-real as possible whenever they dealt with human sexuality.

But the Grove Press decision on Ulysses and the British court decision on Lady Chatterly's Lover freed novelists from the excisions forced on them by hypocrites. Likewise the United States Supreme court decision on films which defined hard and soft-core pornography and defended the film makers right to use sex in films so long as the sum of the film's statement was of "redeeming social value" opened the way for many honest and worthwhile films. CLEARED THE WAY Of course these decisions also cleared the way for every pornographer in the business to get to work churning out cheap-jack books, films and live shows that had no "redeeming social value" save to increase the bank balances of the "porn" men. Sexually explicit works whether done in the interests of serious art or merely as a means of exploiting people's curiosity about the vicarious desires for voyeuristic sexual experience, draw more fire from the hypocrites than almost any other action. Armies can slaughter babies, film makers can portray almost any kind of violence they wish in exquisite detail and -6hysters can bilk the public of millions of dollars and no one turns a hair.

But let an outright pornographic film like Deep Throat begin to capture serious attention and immediately the "blue nose" brigade swings into action. NEVER PROVEN The case for censorship has never been proven. Except for religious restriction on its own membership there seems to be no logic with which to defend the censorship which allows say, the Montreal police to decide what films you may or may not see. said. "If you're bid enough to choose your own government" ybu can choose your own i films." 4, But Guerin regrets cot everybody agrees.

"Our doors are always open to discussion," he said. "We are known "around the world for being willing to discuss matters publicly. "What surprises usCis that the police don't contact discuss but problems. We'd be The Montreal police see that their right. 'Our normal procedure; said Captain Aube, is wpsee a film wjtn.

our legal wejthink it's obscene, we get atwarra irom a juage ana seize ine mm. We sajy Sexifind the Office Girl 'aid we thought thi3 film was definitely Everytime Morality Squad acts ASnors fly that ihe move was prompted by Mayor Drapcau's notoriously straight-laced' vision of Montreal, bach was the case when a woman, was seized to J968, and sorit was, again wnea face, banned by police in Quebec and then don't agree onBut they don't contact us; we yy i theatre-owners remain stuck in the middle. unable to ipore the continuing demand for Spt-nlnifntinn films nnrl at iha tunu timo yjiervous about possibility of police action, and of the criminal records they could get for pursuing then livelihood. cleared by the courts mm 1 1 mm linn 'm mihiiimum I.