The Banning of the Miracle

THE BANNING OF THE MIRACLE

Critical Acclaim

On 30 December 1950 the New York City License Commissioners banned the showing of Roberto Rossellini's award-winning film, The Miracle. The movie, shown in Italian with English subtitles, concerned a half-witted peasant girl, played by Anna Magnani, who is seduced by a man calling himself "Saint Joseph." The girl becomes convinced that she has miraculously conceived her child. Although the New York Film Critics gave The Miracle its award as best foreign film for 1950, the film attracted the attention of the New York archdiocese, which secured a permanent ban from the city's license commission on the grounds that the movie was "officially and personally blasphemous."

Pastoral Condemnation

A temporary injunction against the ban was secured, but in January 1951 Francis Cardinal Spellman issued a pastoral letter to the two million members of the New York archdiocese. He condemned the film and decreed that New York Catholics boycott it. Spellman also recommended a boycott to all Catholics. A month later the New York State Board of Regents issued a ban, calling the movie sacrilegious, citing a state law which made it unlawful to "treat any religion with contempt, mockery or ridicule."

CARDINAL SPELLMAN'S DECREE ON BABY DOLL

On 16 December 1956 Francis Cardinal Spellman instructed American Catholics not to see the racy film Baby Doll. The steamy movie starring Carroll Baker was masterfully suggestive. Not even a kiss was exchanged in the film adapted from "27 Wagons full of Cotton" by Tennessee Williams. Cardinal Spellman decreed:

In the performance of my duty as Archbishop of New York, in solicitude for the welfare of souls entrusted to my care and the welfare of my country, I exhort Catholic people to refrain from patronizing this film under pain of sin.

It has been suggested that this action on my part win induce many people to view this picture and thus make it a material success. If this be the case, it will be a indictment of those who defy God's laws and contribute to corruption in America.

The effect was controversial. Critics called the boycott decree religious censorship while supporters hailed Spellman for his courageous moral stand. The controversy no doubt contributed to the commercial success of the movie.

Source:

Robert I. Gannon, The Cardinal Spellman Story (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), p. 335.

Supreme Court Ruling

In the 1952 case Burstyn v. Wilson, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling by the regents as an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. In his unanimous decision Justice Tom C. Clark wrote that the state could not ban a movie because it was sacrilegious. Such a level of censorship would set local censors and the courts "adrift upon a boundless sea of conflicting religious views" and might end in favoring one religion against another, a clear violation of the establishment clause. For the first time movies were recognized as being protected under the First Amendment, perhaps even as broadly as the printed word.

Sources:

"Catholics & the Movies," Time (22 December 1952): 66;

Walter Kerr, "Catholics and Hollywood," Commonweal (19 December 1952): 275-279.