Dish of the Day (A Long Good Friday Edition)

Just some film musings of a more succinct, spontaneous and sometimes seditious nature:

Friday, June 9, 2023

Recently, in our Facebook chat room (all readers are welcome to join here), someone posted a piece on censored prints of The French Connection (1971) being shown by various streaming services and at a few revival screenings in theatres. The article can be read by clicking here or on the image below.

Some of the comments that followed on the Facebook post were questions regarding what was actually censored and speculations as to who might have performed these edits and why. (It seems a racial slur was edited out near the beginning of the film possibly by its new owners, Disney.) Others proclaimed their reasons for owning their favourite films on uncensored physical media.

Personally, I find these actions deplorable for a number of reasons:

Storytelling is an art form. Cinema is an advanced form of storytelling that deserves all of the respect one would hopefully give to literature and theatre. Any form of censorship of the arts, especially after the fact, is dangerous to the society that allows it to happen. It’s a form of fascism, in that some know what’s best for others, what they should see and hear and not see or read. The implications are far reaching and dangerous to a free society. This kind of action should be swiftly denounced, the instigators identified, shamed if not punished. The act here is even more insidious since the implication is that no one will notice such a slight omission or worse, care. The fact that this film is an Academy Award winner may make the act of censorship more surprising but any film, book, or work of art once created, must be allowed to be seen in its original unexpurgated form, or else we should resign ourselves to living under the rule of others aka authoritarianism.

All responses are not only welcomed but encouraged in the comments section below.

Hope to see you Monday, June 12.

A.G.