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Article: Hitchcock and the Censors.(Alfred Hitchcock)
- Article from:
- The World and I
- Article date:
- August 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Through collaboration and clashes with Hollywood's Production Code censors, Alfred Hitchcock--born a hundred years ago--developed the art of suggestion into powerful cinema.
In the 1930s, in a drab, unmarked building in the West End of London, the British Board of Film Censors scoured new motion pictures for "anything repulsive and objectionable to the good taste and better feelings of the English audiences." Good taste was in the eye of the beholder--literally the eye, as director Alfred Hitchcock understood. The chief British censor wore glasses with one opaque lens, Hitchcock once recalled, and whenever an "offending piece of film approached, I said, 'Mr. ...