Inferno - The BBFC Verdict (carry the chat about the BBFC on here only!)

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

I think it's very hard to determine what is 'serious' animal cruelty and what is not as who is to say where the line lies? Different cultures have different attitudes towards different animals, such as the squid scene in Oldboy. In Asia they have very different opinions of what is right vis-a-vis fish and other waterborne invertebrates. I've seen a video online of people in an Asian country (I'm not sure which one) eating a fish that, despite being cooked, is still alive and can be seen trying to breathe when they touch its gills with their chopsticks. If you look at the film like The Isle, obviously Koreans don't have a problem with taking a fish out of water, cutting part of its flesh off to cook and eat before returning the wounded fish back to the water to fend for itself.

In the same way that opinions about how to cheat animals are different around the world, they also differ wildly across Britain and, as many people here don't really see the issue in the cat eating a mouse, there will be others who would be horrified by the very idea of a film including a scene where a mouse is killed and eaten.

I'm not being an apologist to the BBFC, far from it, only to suggest that they have a very difficult job when it comes to deciding what should be acceptable and what should not. The easiest way around this problem is to let the viewer decide for themselves by introducing an 'unrated' category with information for the viewer on the DVD/BD packaging.

[phelings]

The bottom line is that there are no other countries where this film would be censored.
The US and Europe treat adults like adults , not to be looked after by the Nanny State.

We are the stupid odd ones out .
Nobody else cares.

I just sat and watched Sex and The Censors , the notorious 1991 C4 documentary that I taped at the time and we have come a long way since those dark days of stupidity and although it took Britain until the 21st century to actually get into the 20th century we are still playing catchup with the rest of the world where citizens are not treated like morons

[re.form]

I have read through thris thread and it gets quite exhausting.

Regarding the Old Boy scene - there is an argument that can be applied that the scene carries the story forward. I think this is true.

(I'm going to bight my lip tightly on the subject of people judging what varying cultures like to eat. People that have a problem with different cultural eating habits - and then get butt-hurt when the BBFC cuts out 4 needless seconds of footage from a film for whatever reason - need to have a word with themselves).

It's been many a year since I watched Inferno on my VHS copy but I can guess that the cut scene in question is just random Argento tomfoolery - and he wont even remember it if asked, IMO. I do not think it will be missed.

I will be buying the DVD.

[phelings]

Pretty irrelevant whether eating habits can justify cruelty.
Would not even consider a cut dvd having had it uncut for 10 years.
But the Bluray is likely to be irresistable

[Freudstein]

Exactly, the Blu-ray will be bought without a shred of hesitation, however objectionable the BBFC tampering may be. I just re-watched this on Italian DVD and it remains a firm Argento favourite with its gorgeous imagery and ominous atmosphere, can't wait to see it in hi-def.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

I imagine a couple of the posts above were aimed my way so, to address them very briefly, I would just say that I don't think that eating habits justify animal cruelty -- they are just an indication of that culture's attitude towards a certain animal or life form. These cultural norms will therefore have a huge leaning on what goes into the films made in the country.

If the infamous mouse scene in Inferno was was staged and the mouse was deliberately fed to the cat then it does make me uncomfortable but if, as is more likely given Argento's vegetarianism and love of animals, that it was something fortuitously caught on the set by a second unit and brilliantly weaved into the narrative, then I don't have a problem with it and believe it should be kept in.

[nekromantik]

I am a vegi so dont like any animal being eaten BUT I also agree with that fact that censoring will not bring the animal back or undo the damage caused so there is no point in cutting it. If the cruelty was really bad then yeah maybe, like the turtle scene in Cannibal Holocaust. Yes I know people in tribes maybe do that in real life but that was made just for the film and I hate it. So yes I skip that scene when watching it.

With chickens, they are killed all the time for food so BBFC may not pay much attention to that in films like Hidden and Abnormal Beauty.

Speakin of Hideen, I didnt like that at all either. Tbh it was a waste of my time

[bdc]

Can't someone from the production (or Argento himself?) be contacted to give more details about the scene?

[Libretio]

Originally Posted by phelings

The bottom line is that there are no other countries where this film would be censored.
The US and Europe treat adults like adults , not to be looked after by the Nanny State.

We are the stupid odd ones out .
Nobody else cares.

I just sat and watched Sex and The Censors , the notorious 1991 C4 documentary that I taped at the time and we have come a long way since those dark days of stupidity and although it took Britain until the 21st century to actually get into the 20th century we are still playing catchup with the rest of the world where citizens are not treated like morons

It's not about treating people like 'morons', it's about taking a moral stand on an issue where filmmakers cross the line into harming living creatures for nothing more important than a film. We may love those films with a passion, but that cannot justify the abuse of an animal nor the retention of that material for the sake of the historical record.

The BBFC really has moved on from the days of Sex and the Censors, as you suggest, but animal cruelty remains the least contentious aspect of their work. It was the one area least complained-about during James Ferman's reign.

As for the idea that 'nobody cares' - I'm sure that plenty people do care, hence this ongoing debate about INFERNO and the issues it raises. And if some of us in the UK care enough to engage in such a debate, you can bet that plenty of other people across the world - in countries where this kind of 'intervention' is not on the cards - feel exactly the same way.

Originally Posted by Nosferatu

If the infamous mouse scene in Inferno was was staged and the mouse was deliberately fed to the cat then it does make me uncomfortable but if, as is more likely given Argento's vegetarianism and love of animals, that it was something fortuitously caught on the set by a second unit and brilliantly weaved into the narrative, then I don't have a problem with it and believe it should be kept in.

But how does Argento's vegetarianism and love of aninals square with the lizard scene in DEEP RED? I'd still like to know if that scene was real or if - as was suggested elsewhere - it was simply a shot of a lizard trying to remove an appliance.

Originally Posted by re.form

Regarding the Old Boy scene - there is an argument that can be applied that the scene carries the story forward. I think this is true.

So, for no other reason than the 'carrying forward' of a scene in a movie, a living creature was basically tortured to death? The filmmakers could have illustrated the point in a thousand other different ways, but they chose to do it in this fashion? The rest of the film demonstrated an overabundance of imagination and craftsmanship, so it's not like they lacked the capacity to think of another means of expressing themselves. Of course, such behaviour amongst animals occurs naturally in the wild, and Mankind is carnivorous by nature, but this was staged for nothing more important than a film. Really, isn't the human animal supposed to be better than that?

[Libretio]

Originally Posted by nekromantik

I am a vegi so dont like any animal being eaten BUT I also agree with that fact that censoring will not bring the animal back or undo the damage caused so there is no point in cutting it.

But as a vegeterian, don't you think the animal deserves better than to have its death agonies preserved on film for all time, just because "cutting it won't make any difference"? If it doesn't make a difference, then surely it works the other way, too?

That the animal was killed needlessly for the purposes of 'entertainment' is bad enough, but there's no reason to preserve its final moments just because that's the way they 'used' to do things and we don't do it anymore. In fact, that argument doesn't hold water, since both HIDDEN and THE ISLE were produced in the last 10 years, and actor John C. Reilly walked off the set of MANDERLAY (2005) in protest over the killing of a donkey. These things are not a product of the distant past - they're still happening on movie sets all over the world. Maybe not as much as in the past, but even so...