One Man's Obscenity

"Sex," wrote Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan in a censorship case last summer, "is a great and mysterious motive force in human life." Following the lead dictated by that statement, and citing that case (Roth v. U.S., Alberts v. California--TIME, July 8), the Supreme Court last week reversed the decision of a federal circuit court of appeals upholding the Chicago ban of the French movie The Game of Love.

The picture, a Colette story in which a teenaged boy is seduced by an older woman, was screened by a censorship board in Chicago more than two years ago and denied a permit because, the board claimed, the film was obscene. Lawyers for the U.S. distributor. Times Film Corp., set out to prove that 1) the picture is not obscene, and 2) the city's censorship ordinance is unconstitutional. They did not get far on either count. Chicago Police Commissioner Timothy J. O'Connor upheld his citizens' board, explained to a master in chancery that The Game of Love was obscene because he had become sexually aroused while watching it. To the dismay of the lawyers, both a district court and a circuit court of appeals sided with the censors.

In last week's decision the Supreme Court, after running a private screening of the picture, relied on Justice Brennan's opinion for a standard of obscenity: "Sex and obscenity are not synonymous. [Obscenity] deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest." The court thus seemed to reach its conclusion on the evidence of the film's content alone, not on the fundamental question of prior restraint, i.e., the constitutionality of community and state censorship laws. It has yet to make its views known on that score.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.