Government officials didn’t like the film’s parody of the virgin birth of Jesus as an episode of drunkenness, so they banned it.
Background
This incident, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court, established that films have First Amendment protection.
The Catholic Church in the U.S., particularly the New York Archdiocese, objected to Roberto Rosellini’s film, The Miracle. In the film, a young peasant becomes drunk and mistakes a man for Saint Joseph. She later discovers she is pregnant and believes her child’s birth is a miracle.
The Catholic Cinematographic Center, a branch of the Vatican which reviews movies for morality, criticized the film but did not call for a ban on it when it was first released in Italy in 1948. Catholic leaders and some concerned residents in New York picketed outside the Manhattan theater that was showing the film. The New York Film Board, a government entity, decided that the film was “sacrilegious” and ordered the theater to stop showing it.
Film distributor Joseph Burstyn challenged the New York Film Board’s decision, arguing that film licensing by the government violated the First Amendment. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in the Burstyn Inc. v. Wilson (1952) case.
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the sacrilegious standard used by the film board was too vague and therefore unconstitutional under the First Amendment. This ruling overturned an earlier decision in Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Comm'n (1915), where the Court ruled that films were not protected by the First Amendment because they were created for profit.
In the Burstyn case, Justice Tom C. Clark wrote in the majority opinion that books, newspapers, and magazines are also sold for profit and are protected by the First Amendment. Clark said the Court sees no reason why films shouldn’t be included. He also cited court decisions that came after the Mutual case, such as Gitlow v. New York (1925), where the court repeatedly affirmed that freedom of speech and press were safeguarded by the Fourteenth Amendment. Clark wrote:
“It cannot be doubted that motion pictures are a significant medium for the communication of ideas. They may affect public attitudes and behavior in a variety of ways, ranging from direct espousal of a political or social doctrine to the subtle shaping of thought which characterizes all artistic expression. The importance of motion pictures as an organ of public opinion is not lessened by the fact that they are designed to entertain as well as to inform.”
Justice Clark noted that although films are protected forms of speech, “it does not follow that the Constitution requires absolute freedom to exhibit every motion picture of every kind at all times and all places. That much is evident from the series of decisions of this Court with respect to other media of communication of ideas.”
In the Burstyn case, the Court was looking at the claim that The Miracle was sacrilegious which is different from other restrictive First Amendment standards such as obscenity.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision, the motion picture industry continued to self-regulate itself because of fears of censorship. The Motion Picture Association of America formally adopted its rating system in 1968. Click here to read more about the history of film censorship in the U.S.
The Miracle: Film Censorship and the Entanglement of Church and State National Coalition Against Censorship Primary source: Justice Tom C. Clark’s majority opinion in Burstyn Inc., v. Wilson. Cornell University Law School, Legal Information Institute Religion: The Miracle Time Magazine. February 19, 1951 |