The Manchester Guardian (11/Nov/1938) - Hitchcock on Censorship
(c) The Manchester Guardian (11/Nov/1938)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1940), Titanic
STUDIO AND SCREEN
Hitchcock on Censorship
The most recent footnotes to the formal censorship (as opposed to that which, according to a Manchester exhibitor, begins with "I say, old Chap" over the telephone) comes from an interview given by Alfred Hitchcock to a British film weekly. "I have always wanted," he says, "to make films with some sociological importance, but I have never been allowed to do so.... Soon after the general strike in 1926 I wanted to put the whole thing into a film. I saw in this subject a magnificently dynamic motion picture. When I suggested the idea to my production-chief he approached the British Board of Film Censors, who immediately vetoed it." Hitchcock gives further examples of interference by Whitehall and the board and of ideas which got no farther than his production chief, who said "Sorry, Hitch, but the censor'd never pass it."
Hitchcock goes to Hollywood soon to make "Rebecca," from Daphne du Maurier's novel. His other proposed Hollywood film, "Titanic," is being opposed by the shipping companies, who think that a successful film of the disaster would affect, cruising business.
"I would like to come back to Britain," adds Hitchcock, "and weave a film around a pit disaster or an incident of sabotage in the Glasgow dockyards, or around the crooked financiers in the City. But I am afraid that such subjects, handled as I must inevitably handle them, would have great difficulty getting past the censor."
