When the film was originally banned—or rather, when the news of its banning leaked out—there was a protest, of course, but that was by irresponsibles like Film Societies and MPs and it was soon pointed out that there wasn't any real right of appeal from this decision, anyway.

Now when the Tournament Organizers wanted a film to show at a private screening during Tournament, they thought of this. They knew that a private screening had been arranged for "Indonesia Calling" after its ban; therefore there could be no law against showing such a film. But when they went to the company in charge, they were told that "It is not our policy to show banned films."

Are We Too Pure?

This seems a pretty strange sort of heavy-handed censorship to us. We hear that a group of MPs who wanted to make up their own minds about the thing, were similarly turned down—apparently, though "Brighton Rock" is good enough for the general population of England, even our MPs aren't adult enough to see it! What's wrong with the thing? Is it so bad as all that? The Catholic film weekly "Focus" (January, 1948) had no comments to make on its morals: it was "not milk for babes," but it was certainly "well made." On the whole, the author seemed to think that it was a closer approach to what he was trying to say than any film so far made of his books. And Greene is admittedly one of the best of our novelists. The Boulting brothers, who made the film, were responsible for "Thunder Rock" and a number of other fine films; they too are among the top flight in their profession. Yet the result isn't even fit for the pure minds of NZ audiences. Strange, isn't it?

Lord knows where the morals of this country would be If we didn't have such a nice kind censorship to look after them.