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censorship document > censorship card
Title
Farsangi mámor (censorship card)
Description
The permit card (number 6039) issued by the German film censor's office in Berlin on 23rd June 1922. The censor passed the film for public screening to adult audiences only, demanding that only one short scene measuring 7.4m be cut first. According to the card, the forbidden scene initially appeared after the 14th inter-title in the 3rd reel of the film's German distribution version. In May 1920, film censorship in Germany was restructured, leading to two film censor's offices ("Filmprüfstellen") in Berlin and Munich and a senior censor's office ("Oberprüfstelle") in Berlin. All films, whether German or foreign in origin, had to be submitted to the censor's office before they could be publicly shown in the country. If a film was deemed unsuitable for screening by one or other of the main censors then the company that had submitted it could appeal to the senior censor, who had the power to overrule the decision. Every film deemed suitable for screening received a permit card without which it was impossible to legally screen the film. These permit cards – around 40,000 of which, produced between 1920 and 1945, still exist today – contain the names of the distributor and production company, the name of the film, the length of the film and the censor's designation (e.g. whether the film was considered suitable for all audiences or for adults only). Scenes which were declared unsuitable for screening, and thus had to be removed, are described in detail, right down to an accurate calculation of the length of the sequence to be removed. Significantly, the cards also contain a full list of the intertitles present within the film, in their correct order. This makes them extremely valuable documents not only for historians and scholars but also archivists and film restorers, who can often determine missing or incorrectly ordered scenes in surviving prints and/or negatives based on them. Although not relevant in this case, it is worth noting that after the introduction of sound in cinema the list of intertitles was naturally replaced by a transcription of the lines of dialogue spoken in the film – though confusingly these are still referred to as "intertitles" on cards dating from the earliest years. Oliver Hanley / Ute Klawitter, 06.12.2010 Selected literature (all links still active as of the publication date) * Anon., "Zulassungskarten deutscher Filmprüfstellen 1908-1945," on the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv's official website, 18.02.2010 * Herbert Birett, "Einleitungstext zu den Zensurentscheidungen," on kinematographie.de, last updated 29.02.2008
Id number
BArch_ZK_B6039
Classification
censorship document > censorship card |
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