Dear reader,
The year was 1955, and Billy Wilder had a problem.
The American filmmaker wanted to show a married man’s infidelity in his film, The Seven Year Itch, but Hollywood’s Production Code Administration was about as unbending as an iron bar. His solution? Create one of cinema’s most iconic moments: Marilyn Monroe standing over a subway grate, her white dress billowing upward in what became a masterclass in suggesting without showing. The censors got their “clean” movie, and Wilder got a scene that’s been referenced, parodied, and celebrated in the nearly seven decades since it was first shot.
Starting from the 1930s, America was the hotbed of censorship in cinema. In 1934, the first full year of the PCA’s enforcement, 353 films were rejected. That’s almost one film per day getting the dreaded “absolutely not” stamp. By 1968, when the modern rating system mercifully arrived, over 12,000 films had been either rejected or modified. As someone put it, that’s more cuts than a nervous barber on their first day.
Across the Pacific, Soviet filmmakers elevated censorship evasion to an art form. Take Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), which on paper was a simple science fiction tale about three men entering the Zone, a mysterious restricted area. The censors nodded approvingly at what they thought was just another sci-fi film, completely missing that the Zone was a metaphor for everything the Soviet state controlled and forbade.
Each culture and geography has developed its own unique methods of circumvention. When Brazilian director Glauber Rocha wanted to criticise the military dictatorship in 1967, he created Terra em Transe (Land in Anguish), setting his story in the fictional country of El Dorado. The film passed censors who missed its pointed critique of Brazilian politics. Similarly, Argentine director Fernando Solanas’s The Hour of the Furnaces (1968) was secretly filmed and screened in workers’ homes and universities, becoming a paramount example of guerrilla filmmaking.
Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s Tony Manero (2008) cleverly used its protagonist’s obsession with John Travolta’s character from Saturday Night Fever to comment on life under Augusto Pinochet’s regime. The film’s seeming focus on disco dancing provided cover for its darker political message.
In Iran, where strict religious censorship prevails, directors like Jafar Panahi have turned restrictions into artistic innovations. Banned from filmmaking in 2010, Panahi made This Is Not a Film (2011) in his apartment, and smuggled it to the Cannes Film Festival on a USB drive hidden inside a cake. The film, documenting a day in his life under house arrest, became a powerful statement about artistic freedom.
Iranian filmmakers developed what might be called the kids’ menu approach to serious topics. Unable to directly address certain adult themes, they began making children’s films that were about as exclusively for children as Animal Farm is about agriculture. At a film festival a few years ago in Kerala where a Mohsen Makhmalbaf film was screened, a critic from Iran told me that filmmakers in her country had developed more than 35 distinct visual techniques just to imply romance without showing physical contact.
Chinese directors faced similar situations. Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine (1993) faced censorship for its homosexual undertones and political commentary. His solution? He focussed on the film’s status as a historical epic celebrating Chinese cultural heritage. It worked so well the film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, proving that sometimes the best place to hide a controversial message is in plain sight.
Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) managed to convey intense eroticism without a single sex scene, using tight qipao dresses and shared glances to bypass Hong Kong’s conservative censors. “It is a restrained film about restraint,” one critic called it. This incident reminds us of another important aspect: The history of censorship is inextricably linked with the portrayal of sexuality in cinema.
Charlie Chaplin proved that humour could be the perfect Trojan horse for serious messages. The Great Dictator (1940) managed to criticise Hitler at a time when Hollywood was still tiptoeing around Nazi Germany. More recently, Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin (2017) used dark comedy to address historical atrocities. While the film was banned in Russia, its satirical nature allowed it to be shown in many other countries where direct criticism of Stalin might have faced resistance. As a witty Irish writer once said, “If you’re going to tell people the truth, make them laugh.”
Sometimes, dear reader, the most powerful statement against censorship is silence itself. Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu became famous for his “pillow shots”, seemingly empty transitions between scenes that actually carried a deeper meaning. These moments of silence became a way to express what could not be said directly in post-war Japan. Similarly, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami (an all-time favourite of yours truly) often used long takes of characters driving through Tehran, letting the city’s landscape speak volumes about social and political conditions without explicit commentary.
Modern filmmakers face new challenges but have new tools at their disposal. When David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999) was released in China in 2022 with an altered ending, Chinese viewers quickly spread the word of the original ending on social media. The censors’ victory was pyrrhic—their intervention boosted interest in the uncensored version.
The rise of streaming platforms has created new battlegrounds. In 2021, Netflix reportedly faced 555 demands from governments worldwide to remove content. Yet, these platforms have also provided new avenues for distribution. When The Interview (2014), a satirical film about the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, faced distribution challenges, its online release became a watershed moment for alternative distribution methods.
Evidently, filmmakers continue the proud tradition of creative rebellion. From using CGI to sneak past content restrictions to employing video game aesthetics to discuss forbidden topics, the art of cinematic subterfuge keeps evolving.
In India, the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) presents a daunting visage: in 2019 alone, the board demanded nearly 26,000 cuts across 6,700 films. Yet, Indian filmmakers have historically found creative ways around these restrictions, developing what one film scholar termed “the aesthetics of suggestion”.
For more insights on creative defiance, I recommend reading our brilliant film critic Prathyush Parasuraman’s piece on how cinema circumvents censorship through “minor” tricks and tweaks. Trust me, it’s a provocative read.
Which is the most sneakily subversive film you have seen? Write and tell us.
Wishing you uncensored happiness in the coming week,
Jinoy Jose P.
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