Second Round

After New York State's Board of Regents banned Roberto Rossellini's controversial The Miracle as "sacrilegious," the U.S. Supreme Court upset the ban. It ruled that 1) the cinema is entitled to the rights of free speech and free press, and 2) those rights may not be abridged on grounds, e.g., sacrilege, that no U.S. official is qualified to define, because no U.S. official can officially define what is sacred. Last week two other censors banned The Miracle on other grounds. Ohio took exception to the film for purely moral reasons. Citing the seduction of the idiot girl by a shepherd whom she believes to be her special saint, it called the picture "basically immorar' and charged it with condoning "indecent behavior." Chicago's police board of censors banned the film for a direct violation of law: a city ordinance designed to protect any religious group from ridicule.

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