1930s Censorship of Western Films

    Besides producing a film and getting it into the distribution and exhibition market, an important  phase in the process was the review of films before release, a function performed jointly by the Chinese government working with the studios, sometimes post-release in reaction to public opinion.  After the Nationalist Party unified China in 1927, the central government established a board of review similar to the later Hays Office in the U.S.  Unlike the Hays Production Code, however, the Chinese review board’s mandate covered foreign films, which still dominated the Chinese market.
    It is interesting to note which foreign movies were banned by the board during its existence, which lasted right up until the outbreak of war with Japan in 1937.  One of the criteria by which a foreign movie could be banned for distribution in China was whether it looked down upon or was hostile to the Chinese people or portrayed them in a negative manner.  Sometimes the films were banned after they had been released in Chinese theaters, in reaction to public outcry.  Perhaps the most famous incidence of this occurred around 1930, when Shanghai audiences' reaction to Harold Lloyd’s “Welcome Danger” threatened to result in violence.  “Thief of Baghdad” (1924) was banned retroactively, although when it had been released a few years earlier, public opinion was fairly evenly mixed regarding its Asian characters.  Some other 1930s Western imports banned for their portrayals of China or the Chinese included:  “Shanghai Express,” “Tod über Shanghai” ("Death Over Shanghai"); “The Bitter Tea of General Yan” “The Cat’s Paw” (another Harold Lloyd), and the joint German-Japanese production “Atarashiki tsuchi/Die Tochter des Samurai” ("The New Earth").  Examples of American films banned  during this era for reasons other than their portrayal of the Chinese image were 1931’s “Frankenstein,” and 1932’s “Forgotten Commandments” and “High Society.”  The grounds given for blocking distribution of the first two was they carried an aura of “superstition,” and the third for having “pornographic content.”