‘Contra/Banned’ at the Siskel Center: Sex, religion, Jayne Mansfield and other movie troublemakers
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The history of film tells a parallel history of censorship, protest and moral guardians, such as the Catholic Legion of Decency, determined to keep certain notorious movies away from inquiring eyes.
Rebecca Fons, programming director of the Gene Siskel Film Center, thought there’d be a ripe series in that part of the history. Particularly now, she says, “with book bans in Florida and around the country, and textbooks getting pulled out of school curriculum. We may have thought we were past the time of literature or art being censored or banned or at least regulated in controversial ways. It felt like the Film Center could do something in response to all that, with a good, eclectic, odd lineup.”
The “Contra/Banned” series spans 1932 to 1988 in a 10-film survey of films either protested, studio-edited, slapped with an X rating or banned outright by the feds.
The relatively obscure 1968 film “The Girl on the Motorcycle,” directed by the brilliant cinematographer Jack Cardiff and starring Marianne Faithfull, received the first-ever X rating.
There’s also “L’Amore” (1948), Roberto Rossellini’s pairing of two short films starring Anna Magnani. In the second film, “The Miracle,” the Italian star plays a woman who believes she has been impregnated by Saint Joseph. Well! Boom! Condemned by the Legion of Decency, the film’s U.S. distribution met with fierce legal opposition until the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in with a unanimous ruling in favor of the distributor.
The series also includes the director’s cut of “RoboCop” (1987); “Ecstasy” (1933); “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988); “Promises! Promises!” (1963); “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” (1970); “Scarface” (1932); “Pink Flamingos” (1972); and “Flaming Creatures” (1963).
Our interview with Fons is edited for clarity and length.
Q: Can you break the series down for us? You’ve programmed some examples of an outright ban, and in other cases, you’re dealing with films that caused significant controversy, or made history in their own way but did reach a wide audience.
A: Right. Some films were literally stopped at the U.S. border, or at the door of a movie theater. And then there’s “RoboCop,” which was a case of the Motion Picture Association of America (now known as the Motion Picture Association) telling the director to make his film a little less insanely violent to avoid the NC-17 rating. (NC-17 replaced X in 1990.)
In the case of “Flaming Creatures,” Jack Smith’s film (a mere 43 minutes long) had one showing in New York and after that one screening it was deemed obscene. Filmmakers and exhibitors and projectionists were actually arrested, Jonas Mekas being one of them.
Q: Let’s talk about “Scarface,” the great and seriously destabilizing gangster classic from 1932, since it’s a Chicago story front to back. That one took forever to even get shown on a movie screen in Cook County, right? Like, nine years after it was released?
A: I sort of hesitated to include “Scarface” in this series, because we showed it not that long ago. But I really didn’t want this program to be all sexy stuff. Like a lot of cities, Chicago had big problems with “Scarface,” and the city censor board, which was run by the police department, demanded reshoots and wanted a bunch of stuff added to make it less complimentary or sympathetic to the gangsters. And less sexual. (In director Howard Hawks’ film, largely written by Chicago-bred ace Ben Hecht, mobster Tony Camonte has plainly incestuous feelings for his party-girl sister, Cesca.) It eventually got released with the subtitle “The Shame of a Nation.”
Q: Though the movie doesn’t really feel that shame-y. At all.
A: Right. The title “Scarface” is so badass, and then comes the apology.
Q: In your “Contra/Banned” series you’re not dealing with strictly high-minded stuff. For example: “Promises! Promises!”, an enormous success at the time, and generally credited with the first nude scenes by an established star, Jayne Mansfield.
A: “Promises! Promises!” is so weird. Not a great film. But because Jayne Mansfield is naked — very — you can see why it was shocking in 1963. Finding that one proved to be a fascinating detective experience, and we’ve Frankensteined it back to life as best we can.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences archives turned out to have two prints of it, and the Academy lab does a full print examination and a print report. Turned out one print was the TV cut, so that was a no. And even in the other print, all the nude scenes had been cut out too. I mean jarring cuts. Basically, all the nudity’s in the first seven minutes; Jayne’s in the bathtub, or the bed, and then they come back to those scenes in flashback.
We ended up formatting it for digital projection, with the first seven minutes shown digitally. It’ll look OK. And then we’ll switch to 35 millimeter print projection for the remainder. It’ll be very, very clear to the audience where the cuts were made. Tommy Noonan starts to have a flashback when he’s thinking about Jayne and then, boom, there’s a cut to the next scene. It’s like pages ripped out of a book.
Q: Some say “The Girl on the Motorcycle,” which came out five years after “Promises! Promises!,” is actually less explicit —
A: It’s so tame! And it got the first X rating! Marianne Faithfull is nude for a moment, and then she’s riding around on her motorcycle remembering her love affairs. Another X-rated one we’re showing, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” falls into the “tut-tut” category.
Q: We should point out the obvious Chicago angle there, since Roger Ebert wrote the screenplay for director Russ Meyer. So what do you mean by tut-tut?
A: Widespread disapproval. “Valley of the Dolls” was a hugely popular book by Jacqueline Susann, turned into a hugely popular movie. Twentieth Century Fox hired Russ Meyer to direct “Beyond,” and it was marketed, fairly deceptively, as a sequel. But there was huge concern about what kind of film it turned out to be, you know, sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll. And then the Fox board, which included Grace Kelly, by then Princess Grace of Monaco, thought it was beyond the pale. Indecent. I’m sure she saw it while literally clutching some very nice pearls.
We’re looking at these films and the reasons why they were objectionable to people. And to think about the way artists sometimes get around protestations to their work. Two of the films we’re showing, “Scarface” and the Hungarian film with Hedy Lamarr, “Ecstasy,” are nearly a century old. That one’s a beautiful, gauzy, romantic exploration of a woman’s sexuality. Barely any nudity.
Q: The implied female orgasm was what really did it for some people. As you write in the Film Center program notes, the film was stopped cold by the U.S. Customs Service for being “dangerously indecent.”
A: Right. Hard to believe. But 30, 40 years from now, I mean: What will we think of what’s happening right now?
I hope Chicago can remain a bastion of sanity. With film, at least, nobody’s forcing anyone to watch anything they don’t want to see. We live in a city that allows us to invite people to explore these films, and we’re trying to show you what the filmmakers meant to be seen. We live in a city where we can reflect on all of it. That’s special, and not to be taken for granted. And it should be protected.
‘Contra/Banned’ at the Siskel Center
“L’Amore” (1948): 6 p.m. Sept. 1; 1:30 p.m. Sept. 9
“RoboCop: The Director’s Cut” (1987): 8 p.m. Sept. 1; 6 p.m. Sept. 11
“Ecstasy” (1933): 3 p.m. Sept. 2; 6 p.m. Sept. 6
“The Girl on the Motorcycle” (1968): 5 p.m. Sept. 2; 1:30 p.m. Sept. 10
“The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988): 7:30 p.m. Sept. 2; 3:30 p.m. Sept. 9
“Promises! Promises!” (1963): 3 p.m. Sept. 3; 6 p.m. Sept. 6
“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” (1970): 5:15 p.m. Sept. 3; 8:30 p.m. Sept. 8
“Scarface” (1932): 6 p.m. Sept. 4; 3:45 p.m. Sept. 10
“Pink Flamingos” (1972): 8 p.m. Sept. 6; 7 p.m. Sept. 9
“Flaming Creatures” (1963): 8:30 p.m. Sept. 11
Through Sept. 11 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.; tickets $13 for individual screenings at siskelfilmcenter.org
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune
