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2 GEORGIA BULLETIN, THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 1968
PRIEST’S BOOK ASSERTS
Church Over-reacts To Cinema Sin
NOTRE DAME, Ind. (CPF) -
The Church must undo several
decades of faulty guidance on
movies before it can expect
Catholics to benefit from today’s
“adult” films or to understand
why the Church is suddenly
giving prizes to pictures like
“Darling,” “Georgy Girl” and
“Bonnie and Clyde.”
This is the main theme of
“Movies & Morals,” a
just-published book by the Rev.
Anthony Schillaci, O.P., who
believes “it is definitely the
responsibility of those who
formed the more narrow moral
perspectives” toward art in films
to quickly re-educate Catholic
audiences who were trained to
see motion pictures as either
pleasant, escapist entertainment
or as a source of possible moral
harm-nothing more.
“It would be comforting to
report that there is a mature
general audience for the excellent
adult films which are appearing
on our screens each year, but this
is not the case,” writes Father
Schillaci, who is on the staff of
the National Film Study Project
at Fordham University. “As soon,
as films begin to treat serious
human problems, they invariably
touch on serious human failures.
To many, this is a disturbing
situation and one which has
soured them on attending films
which they even suspect are of a
morally controversial nature. ’
In answer to people who ask,
“Why Aren’t Movies Like They
Used to Be?”, the Church must
explain that the film has become
a genuine art form and “it is the
role of film art today to prevent
our thinking that nothing has
changed,” Father Schillaci
believes.
Christians must accept “the
cinema’s invitation to gaze upon
the absurdities of our existence,”
he continues, and we must allow
films to show immorality as it
really is.
“If the artist must show men
gripped by sin and immorality,
these must be shown as they
are-enticing to the characters, if
not to the audience,” the priest
comments. “If we portray sin as
completely without lure, then we
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are not being moral, but immoral,
in the sense of the unrealistic.”
He cited a Hollywood film on
the life of St. Francis, one part of
which was to show “the wild
youth he led before his
conversion. The ‘orgy’ came and
was no wilder than a Scout
picnic. The impression was that
he hadn’t really made a choice or
given up any real pleasure.”
In contrast, he priased films
like the controversial ‘ La Dolce
Vita,’ which “gives a revealing
view of the life of sin, its
boredom and surfeit, its banality
and pettiness, its degeneracy and
emptiness. Only the participants
in such a life, the characters, are
so much in its grip that they do
not see it for what it is.”
But Catholic moviegoers
became so well conditioned to
reacting vehemently against adult
material in films when the
Church regarded motion pictures
as primarily an entertainment
medium, that today these
Catholics automatically raact
negatively against films which are
saying something highly moral
about today’s society, Father
Schillaci thinks.
“Today, the National Catholic
Office for Motion Pictures is
pointing the way toward a new
mode of film appraisal,” the
priest writes, referring to
NCOMP’s refusal to condemn
such adult-theme films as “Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”,
“Ulysses,” “Divorce, Italian
Style,” “The Knack” and others.
“The trend does not represent a
relaxation of censorial vigilance
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but a recognition that even gross
immorality can be treated in a
manner that is good art, and
perhaps even good Christian art.”
He a rgues that the
contemporary artist who uses
film as his medium must use it to
show modern man what is
happening all about him, and of
necessity the artist’s films will
deal with Loss of Identity, which
leads to mental disorder (“The
Collector,” “Repulsion,” “The
Red Desert”), Loss of Vocation,
due to the absurdity of
meaningless work life (“Saturday
Night and Sunday Morning”), the
Death of Community, which
leads to violence (“The
Pawnbroker,” “Hiroshima, Mon
Amour,” “Bonnie and Clyde”)
and the Death of Love, leading to
meaningless and joyless sex, as in
the films of Antonioni.
While many such films show
the “delicate moral sensitivity”
of the film artist, Father Schillaci
laments, too many Catholics
merely write off a film like “A
Taste of Honey” “as a movie
about unwed mothers,
prostitution, fornication,
homosexuality and abortion,”
and decide that no films should'
deal with such topics.
Since films have become the
most important art medium of
our day, Father Schillaci argues,
the Church must encourage film
artists to deal with such topics,
and comments that the Catholic
film office prizes to “Darling,”
“Georgy Girl” and, this year,
“Bonnie and Clyde” are an
Rites Held For
Cenda Schweers
'Funerafsemces for Vincencia
Allen (Cenda) Schweers, 3, were
conducted Wednesday morning at
the Cathedral of Christ the King
by.Father Michael A. Woods.
Burial was in Westview
Cemetery.
Cenda, who was lost in
Highlands, N.C., was found in the
bottom of a lake Monday. More
than 1,000 persons had searched
for her. She was the daughter of
Mr. and Mrs. Edward H. Schweers
of 2195 Brookview Dr., N.W.
Other survivors include two
brothers, Ted and Charles
Schweers of Atlanta;
grandparents, Mr. and Mrs.
Kenneth A. Campbell of Atlanta,
Mrs, E. H. Schweers of Augusta.
important step in the right
direction.
“The shocked reaction to
(such) awards indicates that a
vast educational policy must be
undertaken before there can be
collaboration with the film
artist, ’ he writes. “Nevertheless,
such common effort is a present
necessity. For the Church to
refuse would be as unthinkable as
for St. Paul to refuse to walk the
Roman roads, or for Christians at
the time of Gutenberg to refuse
to print the Bible.”
Reaction to “Tom Jones,”
one of the first of the very
controversial films in the 1960’s,
is indicative of the kind of
re-education that must be done
by the Church, Father Schillaci
writes.
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