The Catholic film office became the Media Review Office of CNS in 2010, allowing the mission of reviewing and assessing movies for the artistic and moral value to continue. However, those movie reviews and classifications continued to be one of the most popular features among CNS subscribers, who to this day run them in their Catholic newspapers and magazines and on their websites. The Catholic film office shrunk in size, utilized fewer freelancers and eventually discontinued its film classification and review newsletter, Mulderig said. Dick, a renowned film scholar and author who was a movie reviewer for NCOMP from 1967 to 1981. “Then we got the announcement of course that our services were no longer needed,” said Bernard F. The movie studios slowly made fewer of their films available for advance private screenings by the Catholic film office, which by the 1980s was called the Office for Film and Broadcasting.Įventually those private screenings stopped altogether and movie critics for the Catholic film office had to preview wide-release motion pictures at viewings designated for all reviewers. “As I was leaving NCOMP and on through the ’70s, I think they lost any ability to convince the studios to make any changes or cuts,” said Jesuit Father Kenneth Meehan, who worked as a movie reviewer for the Catholic film office in New York in the 1970s. Movie audiences in the 1970s became more accustomed to limited nudity, suggestive sex scenes and violence and as the decade progressed, fewer producers feared the ‘O’ classification from the Catholic film office. There also was discussion about the gory violence depicted in the film, “but the violence didn’t have the same negative reaction from the reviewers and consultants that sex did,” he said. “So, they clipped 10 seconds from the movie and now they could give it an ‘A-IV (Adults, with reservations) rating.'” “He gave them the ultimatum that ‘we’re going to have to condemn this movie'” unless changes were made, Frost told CNS during a September interview at his home in McLean, Virginia. membership affiliate of the International Catholic Organization for Cinema, now known as Signis, and a movie critic for NCOMP from 1964 to 1971.Īn early version of the film contained a brief scene where actress Faye Dunaway’s bare breasts were exposed, prompting the meeting between the film’s producers and Father Sullivan. “I remember Pat Sullivan reporting back to us reviewers - with some satisfaction - that he had met with the producers of (the 1967 film) ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and given them (an) ultimatum,” said Frank Frost, a founder of the U.S. However, getting studio heads to make the changes was becoming more difficult because they were sensing that the hit they’d take at the box office for an “O rating” was not going to be as severe as it had been in the past, said John Mulderig, assistant director for media reviews for Catholic News Service. Sullivan, who served as the director of NCOMP in the 1960s and 1970s, continued to have some clout with movie producers about moral content. Those modifications appeared to work in the 1960s and 1970s to give the Catholic film office continued advance screenings of films so it could let Hollywood studio chiefs know what they would need to change to avoid an “O (Morally Offensive) rating.” The Catholic film office - known as the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures, or NCOMP, beginning in 1965 - had already made adjustments to its classifications in the 1960s to reflect more leniency when it came to language and sexually suggestive scenes and added movie reviews to evaluate artistic value.

movie theaters contributed to the altered tastes of audiences.

Social change in the 1960s and the emergence of European and independent films in U.S. NEW YORK (CNS) - The once influential Catholic film office had been able to get Hollywood studios to change content in movies it deemed morally offensive for decades, but that power was extinguished as the 1970s rolled into the 1980s.

Catholic movie production company