Volta™ – Irish Independent Film Online

The Birth of a Nation

D.W. Griffith’s silent American Civil War epic has been cited by film historians as marking the invention of long-form narrative cinema, and a classic of the silent age, but the story it tells is far less laudable. Essentially a lengthy recruitment film for the Ku Klux Klan, the film caused widespread protests on release in 1915, particularly when it was reported that it had initiated a surge in racist violence against African-American people. It was banned in several American cities and, almost 100 years later, remains controversial and is very rarely screened in public.

Peeping Tom

Michael Powell was one of British cinema’s most revered directors, responsible for a string of classics including A Matter of Life and Death and The Red Shoes. In 1960 he made Peeping Tom, the story of a studio cameraman who films young women then kills them on camera. The film was vilified in the press with the director denounced as a depraved pervert. Withdrawn from circulation, Peeping Tom wasn’t seen again in cinemas until 1979. The controversy essentially ended Powell’s career. The film is now universally regarded as a classic, the equal of Hitchock’s Psycho (released in the same year).

Antichrist

Lars Von Trier's art-house horror repulsed audiences with his nihilistic psychological drama about the pain of bereaved parents who hide out in a remote country cabin and, eventually, chop each other to pieces. Frequently gruesome and sexually explicit, the film caused uproar at its premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival where von Trier was loudly booed although Charlotte Gainsbourg went on to win the Best Actress award.

Performance

Nic Roeg and Donald Cammell’s hallucinogenic dissection of the hippy dream had James Fox and Rolling Stones lead man Mick Jagger in a story of a London gangster who hides out in a faded rock star’s drug-filled mansion and is slowly drawn into a world of sex, drugs and violence. Originally pitched as a comedy, the mind-bending film was completed in 1968 but was deemed so disturbing it wasn’t released until two years later, after the directors saved the negative from being destroyed by the studio. Fox was so upset by the experience of making the film that he quit acting for a decade saying “Performance made me doubt my entire life”.

Scarface

Howard Hawks’ 1932 gangster epic had Paul Muni play a thinly veiled version of mobster Al Capone in a film so shocking that the American censors demanded that the studio subtitle it “The Shame of a Nation”. Telling the story of a mobsters rise through the criminal underworld, the censors pressured Hawks to reshoot his original ending, where Muni escaped from the police in a hail of gunfire, to one where he meekly handed himself over to the authorities and is sent to the gallows. Despite Hawks spending his own money on the reshoot, the alternative ending was also rejected, so he went back to his original. The controversy helped the film become a box office sensation.

Bandit Queen

Shekhar Kapur’s visionary 1994 biopic told the legendary real-life story of female folk outlaw-heroine Phoolan Devi, based on interviews she gave after she was arrested in 1983 and imprisoned for eleven years. Growing up in poverty, she was abused, married off at 11 and banished as an outcast. Kidnapped and raped by a gang of bandits, she eventually became their leader, leading them to a bloody revenge against her enemies. Banned in India for its frank depictions of sex and violence, the film was so controversial that Devi (now released from prison and running for political office) sued the producers to prevent its release. Nevertheless, Bandit Queen won Best Film at the Indian National Film Awards and, following a sensational screening at Cannes, was distributed internationally.

Lolita

Stanley Kubrick’s name will pop up on any list of controversial films, but it was his sixth film that first raised a brouhaha. A blackly comic adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s notorious novel about a middle-aged man’s sexual obsession with a teenage girl, Kubrick pre-empted the inevitable uproar by asking the question “How did they make a film of Lolita?” on the movie’s poster. Even though Kubrick sanitised the most outrageous elements of Nabokov’s work, the film was picketed everywhere it played. His 15 year old star Sue Lyon was too young to attend the X-rated film’s premiere.

The Outlaw

Ever the savvy businessman, Howard Hughes realised that a good way to drum up box-office business for his otherwise unremarkable 1943 western would be to earn the film a bit of a reputation. The first thing he did was accentuate the bust of his star, Jane Russell, by designing a bra that would enhance her cleavage. Then he waged a public battle with the American censors, which played out in the press, accompanied by pictures of Russell lying recumbent in a haystack. But Hughes overplayed his hand and the film was pulled from cinemas a week after it opened. He tried to release it again in 1946 and the same thing happened. It wasn’t until 1950, and its third release, that Hughes saw the film play to audiences across the United States.

Bad Lieutenant

With its scenes of drug-taking, transgressive sex and the brutal rape of a nun in a church, to say nothing of random incidents of robbery, molestation and physical violence), controversy has dogged Abel Ferrara’s film since its release in 1992. What saves Bad Lieutenant from being little more than provocation for its own sake is the audacious performance from Harvey Keitel as the despairing cop and Ferrara’s unstoppable commitment to his down-and-dirty vision.

In The Realm of the Senses

Japanese director Nagisa Oshima’s 1976 erotic drama told the story of an affair between a young geisha working in a hotel and her older boss. Based on a notorious true-life incident from the 1930s, the film’s unsimulated sex and gory violence broke every cinematic taboo in quick succession, leading to it being banned all over the world. It wasn’t released uncut in the UK and Ireland until 2011.

Freaks

Director Tod Browning was on a high following 1931s Dracula but the scandal that arose around his follow-up film Freaks, destroyed his career. The dark story of a gang of carnival attractions exacting a terrible revenge on those who mocked them starred real life ‘human oddities” and was too much for the studio MGM, who promptly cut half an hour of the scariest scenes and tacked-on a reshot happy ending. Even so, the film was a major financial flop and was banned outright in territories all over the world with the British censor not lifting their ban until the mid 1960s.

Dans Ma Peau

Marina de Van’s uncompromisingly disturbing drama about a young woman who becomes obsessed with self-mutilation following a cut to her leg was an instant horror sensation, extreme even for fans of the genre. De Van, who also wrote and starred in the film, faced a barrage of criticism for the film’s intense gore with reports of audience members fainting or fleeing at screenings. Not one for the squeamish, the complex psychological horror is an unforgettable experience.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Although completed in 1986, John McNaughton’s harrowing low-budget horror Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer sat on a shelf for four years with the studio unwilling to release it because of its gruesome content. Telling the story of a random killing spree by a ruthless murderer and his accomplice, the film was loosely based on the real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. The film wasn’t released uncut in the UK and Ireland until 2003.

Last Tango in Paris

Bernardo Bertolucci’s hypnotic 1972 romance raised an enormous international scandal on release in 1972 for its frank depiction of an affair between two anonymous lovers in Paris. The graphic nature of Bertolucci’s script drew the ire of censors all over the world but it was the noisy pickets, death threats and reports of audience members fainting from outrage and shock that sealed the film’s reputation. Despite the accusations of obscenity, star Marlon Brando was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar with Bertolucci nominated for Best Director.

A Clockwork Orange

Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ already controversial novel of the same title provoked an unprecedented public backlash on release in 1971, particularly when stories emerged in the British press about copycat incidents of violence which led to the director receiving death threats. Kubrick immediately pulled his film from cinemas in the UK and Ireland, where it wasn’t screened again until the year after his death in 1999.

The Last Temptation of Christ

If Martin Scorsese thought the fuss his ultraviolent, taboo-breaking Taxi Driver created was bad (particularly after an assassin claimed watching the film caused him to shoot Ronald Regan) the clamour that greeted his 1988 adaptation of Nikos Kazanzakis’ novel The Last Temptation of Christ was doubly intense. A devout Catholic, Scorsese first optioned the novel in the early 1970s, drawn to its depiction of Christ’s all-too human struggle with temptations including doubt, cowardice and lust. Religious fundamentalists picketed the film wherever it was shown but the worst incident involved a French group firebombing a cinema in Paris, which injured thirteen people. Contrary to popular wisdom, it was never banned in Ireland.

Reservoir Dogs

Like Kubrick before him, Quentin Tarantino is no stranger to controversy. His 1992 debut Reservoir Dogs created a tabloid firestorm about violence in cinema, with its amoral depictions of torture and death somehow made even worse by the character’s hip, casual conversations about music and movies. His 1996 horror collaboration with Robert Rodriguez, From Dusk Til Dawn, was banned by the Irish censor until 2000 while his 2009 WWII adventure Inglourious Basterds was heavily criticized for re-writing the deeply serious history of Nazi Germany as a gory comedy. 

Natural Born Killers

It was Tarantino that provided the script for Oliver Stone’s 1994 ultraviolent satire Natural Born Killers, which told the brutal story of Mickey and Mallory Knox, a pair of gun-slinging serial killers run amok in America, being trailed by a sensationalist television news journalist who turns the pair into media celebrities. The American MPAA demanded 150 cuts before the film could be released in the US and it was banned outright by the Irish censor on release, with a mini-controversy arising over the Irish Film Centre’s attempt to screen the film privately to its members.

The Last House on the Left (1972)

Wes Craven’s gruesome 1972 horror about a rural family terrorised and brutalised by trio of escaped prisoners was a scuzzy reimagining of Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, itself based on a medieval Swedish folk tale. Banned in dozens of countries, the British and Irish censors refused it a classification due to scenes of sadism and violence. It was banned again in 1984 as part of the tabloid-inspired “video nasty” campaign, and it wasn’t until 2008 that it was released uncut on DVD.

Irréversible

French controversialist Gaspar Noe raised the bar for what audiences can endure with his second feature in 2002, which told the extremely violent story of a brutal sexual assault in a series of long, unbroken takes. Also, he presented the events backwards.  Profoundly disturbing and harrowing, the film was screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where half the audience walked out in disgust and the other half acclaimed it as a major masterpiece.