Sweden one of the last democracies to ban film censorship

Before the film censorship law was abolished in 2010, Sweden had had a close to 100 year tradition of cutting and censoring films before they were approved to be shown in theatres. When the law, which is said to be the first of its kind, was introduced, in 1911, the Swedish film industry was still in its infancy, and despite that Sweden has a long tradition of Freedom of speech dating back to the 18th century, it was not very controversial at the time, says Gunnar Bolin, a journalist with Swedish Radio's culture department.

*From the very beginning it wasn't that controversial. If you look at it in an international context, a lot of countries had some sort of censorship. The big question is whether you censor something before the piece of art has been finished or if you look at it afterwards*, says Bolin.

In Sweden, it was the latter. Up until five years ago, a national Censorship Board, called Statens Biografbyrå, was in charge of viewing every film that would go up on the silver screen before they premiered in order to either approve, ban or censor them. No film was allowed to be shown at a public screening if it hadn't been licensed by the board.

The board was on the look out for things like explicit and controversial sex scenes such as scenes showing someone getting raped and sadistic or very graphic violence. The members could then decide to either cut, censor or ban a film completely from the theatres. Gunnar Bolin says that most people were fine with the board's work when it came to films like low-budget slasher movies or action flicks, but every time the Censorship Board decided to cut in a more artsy film, it prompted heated debates.

One such example was in the 1960's when the film 491, which was based on a Swedish novel, showed a scene where it was implied that a woman had sex with an animal. The board cut that scene and two others from the film, which caused an outcry among Sweden's film critics and the cuts were even discussed in Parliament.

But this wasn't the first time that one of the board's decisions stirred up controversy. Bolin says that the reactions were almost as strong when the board decided to ban Alfred Hitchcock's film 'The man who knew too much' decades earlier.

"Even in those days people knew that Hithcock wasn't considered as an artist who just wanted to provoke for the fun of it. And when you looked at it 20 years later it felt totally ridiculous that it was ever banned", Bolin says.

A few other films that were completely banned from Swedish theatres include; the horror movie Nosferatu, the first installment of the Mad Max trilogy and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation.

The last film that was cut by the Censorship Board was the 1995 gangster film Casino by Martin Scorcese. Two scenes, of about 45 seconds each, were cut, one of which showed two men getting slowly beaten to death with baseball bats.

The board argued the scenes were too realistic and graphic and had to be cut, but many critics disagreed.

"Scorcese was definitely not doing it to get more people to come to the threate, he was doing it because it was part of a very violent story, which is based on a very violent history where they did those kinds of things. He wanted to show it they way it really looks, not the way an action movie like James Bond would do it. That was also a big debate back then; why can you show Rambo or James Bond kill thousands of people but not one realistic murder scene?' ", says Bolin.

That debate caught fire in the 1980's, with the advent of video films. Suddenly, people could watch uncut movies in the comfort of their home, and the Censorship Board had no power to intervene. Throughout the years, the Censorship Board cut fewer and fewer films, and while it did take Sweden another 15 years from when the last cut was made until the law was finally abolished, it was bound to happen sooner or later, says Gunnar Bolin.

"If you favour Freedom of speech, it's very difficult to argue for any sort of censorship. Some things are against the law, of course, such as hate speech, but that's something else entirely," says Bolin.