Miracles and Sacrilege: Robert Rossellini, the Church, and Film Censorship in HollywoodMiracles and Sacrilege is the story of the epochal conflict between censorship and freedom in film, recounted through an in-depth analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down a government ban on Roberto Rossellini’s film The Miracle (1950). In this extraordinary case, the Court ultimately chose to abandon its own longstanding determination that film comprised a mere ‘business’ unworthy of free-speech rights, declaring for the first time that the First Amendment barred government from banning any film as ‘sacreligious.’ Using legal briefs, affidavits, and other court records, as well as letters, memoranda, and other archival materials to elucidate what was at issue in the case, William Bruce Johnson also analyzes the social, cultural, and religious elements that form the background of this complex and hard-fought controversy, focusing particularly on the fundamental role played by the Catholic Church in the history of film censorship. Tracing the development of the Church in the United States, Johnson discusses the reasons it found The Miracle sacrilegious and how it attained the power to persuade civil authorities to ban it. The Court’s decision was not only a milestone in the law of church-state relations, but it paved the way for a succession of later decisions which gradually established a firm legal basis for freedom of expression in the arts. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 82
... national boycott as a means to force Hollywood into strict compliance with the so-called 'Hays Code.' From the perspective of Spellman and his advisers, by getting New York State to ban The Miracle, they had vindicated the chastity of ...
... National Committee . ( She would later back Cox's run for the Presidency . ) Her agenda included much stricter censorship than she had seen from the private Board of Censor- ship , whose refusal to come down hard on the film industry ...
... national citizenship , the provision was an adjunct to the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery , and simply provided former slaves legal equality with other citizens.16 Additional ambiguity clung to the terms ' citizens ...
... in choosing U.S. bishops , who in turn looked for approval not to Gibbons but to Rome . Gone were the peri- odic national councils issuing progressive letters like that drafted by The Church , ' Modernism , ' and ' Americanism ' 29.
... national councils issuing progressive letters like that drafted by Gibbons himself in 1884. Dennis P. McCann has called Testem Benevolentiae a preemptive strike ' against the kind of Catholicism the American priests had wanted , forcing ...
Contents
9 | |
20 | |
37 | |
55 | |
Johnson_2153_072ps | 72 |
Johnson_2153_087ps | 87 |
Johnson_2153_103ps | 103 |
Johnson_2153_118ps | 118 |
Johnson_2153_203ps | 203 |
Johnson_2153_216ps | 216 |
Johnson_2153_229ps | 229 |
Johnson_2153_242ps | 242 |
Johnson_2153_283ps | 283 |
Johnson_2153_307ps | 307 |
Johnson_2153_322ps | 322 |
Johnson_2153_334ps | 334 |
Johnson_2153_128ps | 128 |
Johnson_2153_137ps | 137 |
Johnson_2153_155ps | 155 |
Johnson_2153_184ps | 184 |
Johnson_2153_361ps | 361 |
Johnson_2153_445ps | 445 |
479 | |