MovieChat Forums > La Belle Noiseuse (1991) Discussion > The Movie That Ended Censorship in Japan

The Movie That Ended Censorship in Japan

posted 18 years ago by lazarillo
3 replies | jump to latest

It's hard to believe that a tame movie like this (which actually manages to make Emmmanuelle Beart's nude body become boring after awhile)would be controversial anywhere, but it was in Japan. In fact, this was the movie that finally brought about the end to the "optical fogging" of full-frontal nudity in that country.

It's hard to believe that the same country that has a series of movies about a superhero name "Rapeman" (because he rapes evil women who really deserve it), created the disturbing "tentacle rape" genre (where vaguely pubescent schoolgirls were violently penetrated by multi-tentacled monsters), and gave us such tastefully entitled fare as "Entrails of a Virgin" and "Violated Angels" would have a problem with pubic hair, but Japanese authorites insisted on optically censoring such offensive imagery up until the mid-1990's when this FRENCH movie slipped into theaters unaltered.

Whether you like this movie or not then, you have to give it credit--it ended what was probably the most ridiculous form of censorship ever witnessed in the history of world cinema.

[–] Krustallos 18 years ago

DH Lawrence had his paintings censored in England because they showed pubic hair. For a long time this was seen as the difference between art and pornography. Kurt Vonnegut has a joke about it in (I think) "God Bless You Mr Rosewater".

"I don’t like the term torture. I prefer to call it nastiness."

Donald Rumsfeld

[–] Sanjuro-15 14 years ago

Ah, but (in some censor's point of view)there's a subtle difference between animated pornography and the depiction of a real person's pubic hair (and quite frankly, lots of countries have perverted porn, not just Japan - that it becomes mainstream entertainment in the West is quite a bit more disturbing!)

The penis is still mosaicced out in Japanese films, at least until it becomes a 'fake penis', that is one not attached to a person. That leads to some quite surprising moments in films like Ai no Corrida and Ai no Mukidahsi where a quick stroke of the knife blade leads to sudden switch off of mosaiccing (and a huge bloody mess).

But, yeah, awfully daft censorship rules. Completely ruins a lot of art films by suddenly drawing too much attention to some otherwise nochalant genitals (thus actually rendering art into pornography as I think Oshima Nagisa once argued).

Anyway, was very pleased to watch this the other night (in 4 hours of mosaic free glory). My wife was convinced I'd rented some porn though as the case proudly exclaims "Completely uncensored!" quite prominently.

[–] kkevinn6 11 years ago

was this movie even released in Japan?