It was only a forty-minute foreign film, but it sparked a legal
confrontation that has left its mark on America for more than half
a century. Roberto Rossellini's Il Miracolo (The Miracle) is
deceptively simple: a demented peasant woman is seduced by a
stranger she believes to be Saint Joseph, is socially ostracized
for becoming pregnant out of wedlock, but is finally redeemed
through motherhood.
Although initially approved by state censors for screening in
New York, the film was attacked as sacrilegious by the Catholic
establishment, which convinced state officials to revoke
distributor Joseph Burstyn's license. In response, Burstyn fought
back through the courts and won.
Laura Wittern-Keller and Raymond Haberski show how the Supreme
Court's unanimous 1952 ruling in Burstyn's favor sparked a chain of
litigation that eventually brought filmmaking under the protective
umbrella of the First Amendment, overturning its long-outdated
decision in Mutual v. Ohio (1915). Their story features a more
formidable cast than did the film itself, with the charismatic
Francis Cardinal Spellman decrying the film as a Communist plot,
while outspoken film critic Bosley Crowther vigorously advocated
"freedom of the screen." Meanwhile, movie producers stood by
silently for fear of alienating the Church and its large
movie-going membership, leaving Burstyn to muster his own
defense.
More than the inside story of one case, this book explores the
unique place that the movies occupy in American culture and the way
that culture continues to be shaped by anxiety over the social
power of movies. The Burstyn decision weakened the ability of state
censorship boards and the Catholic Church to influence the types of
films Americans were allowed to see. Consequently, the case
signaled the rise of a new era in which films would be more mature
and more controversial than ever before.
Focusing on this single most important case in the jurisprudence
surrounding motion picture expression, Wittern-Keller and Haberski
add a significant new dimension to the story of cinema, censorship,
and the history of First Amendment protections.
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