It is not our province to discuss the methods of the
censors in making decisions, though in some sections the local board
carries the censorship idea to extremes, even barring some subjects
that have already passed the National Board. It is safe to say,
however, that the folly of hacking to pieces a film portraying
Shakespeare's tragedy of "Macbeth," on the ground that it contained
too many scenes showing murder and other crimes, will soon become
apparent even to over-zealous police and other censors of certain
cities. As Mr. W. Stephen Bush writes in _The Moving Picture World_:
"A very small and a very short-sighted minority of motion picture
manufacturers, together with occasional lapses of National
Censorship," are responsible for the exceedingly silly and
presumptuous system now existent in some localities.
It is because of this "small and short-sighted minority" that we offer
this advice: Write as your conscience and a sense of decency as an
individual and as a good citizen dictate. The chances are that then
your photoplay will meet with no serious objection. Do not introduce a
crime-scene into your picture simply because when you saw a similar
scene in a photoplay it aroused a moment's thrill among the
spectators. The fact that it passed the National Board and the local
censorship committee--if your city has one--does _not_ mean that it is
the kind of picture the better class of theatre patrons want, and the
better class ought to be set up in your mind as the judges of all you
write.
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